How the campaign works

One war, fought over many sorties. The map remembers: what you destroy stays destroyed, what you seize stays yours, and the two armies rebuild whatever you leave them.

A sortie is one trip out: insert from Mother Base, work the map, extract. Between sorties the war moves on without you.

Pick how the squad goes in at the Sortie Parameters table: by helicopter to a landing zone, a HALO jump, a boat to the beach, by road - or straight to a rally point or safehouse you already hold.

Rally points and safehouses are footholds. Hold them and the next sortie starts closer to the fight.

Main objectives are spread across the whole map, not tied to the last place you were. Taskings are earned: intel recovered in the field builds toward intel packages, and a finished package opens a tasking.

Intel only counts once it is home. Carry it back to Mother Base.

Open your map and the field assessment rail rides its right edge. BRIEF tells you what to do next. INTEL is the running feed of everything that happened. TARGETS lists what has been located, by type. FORCES shows each army's capability and how much they have seen of us.

The suggested actions are an estimate, not an order. Picking the target is the squad's call.

Each army runs on supply, transport, command, air and morale. Their sites feed those - depots, motor pools, radar, comms, airfields. Hit what feeds the pool that is already cracking and it breaks.

They improvise: a site you destroy can be rebuilt somewhere new, and you will have to find it again. Never right away, though.

Every army keeps its own picture of us: CLEAN, NOTICED, TRACKED, HUNTED. Contact, noise and being seen push it up. Quiet ground lets it fall.

The more they know, the harder they look - and they will answer what you hit. Leave quietly when you can.

Take a civilian car, or one of their own vehicles, while nobody has eyes on you, and they take you for what you are driving. A close look, a shot, a hit, or being spotted on their base ground gives you away - and that vehicle is burned for the sortie.

Their aircraft work for a minute after lift-off before anyone asks questions. Use it to get clear.

Downed is not dead. Your squad can bring you back, and while you wait you watch over them from above. If nobody can reach you, you can come back in at a rally point with the kit you were carrying.

Call the bird to a pad, hold it, and get everyone aboard. The sortie ends when the squad is home - that is when the intel counts and the debrief writes up what you did.