Welcome to Firestorm: Red Thunder!

The first hours and days of a global campaign can be a bit overwhelming as all the factions start to fill up with commanders and the opening attacks take place.

Here are some tips to help you ease into the process.

First Hours

In your first hours, you should:

• Go into your faction’s briefing room to introduce yourself and get to know some of the other players.
  Campaigns are a fantastic way to meet new people who share your love for the game!
• Download the Firestorm Campaign pdf to catch up on the background to the campaign.
• Take a browse around the open theatres and download their mission pdfs for some great new missions tailored to the campaign.
  Remember you can play a custom mission of your own in any of the open theatres so the golden rule is… just have some fun!
• Start formulating strategies on how to best take control of theatres with other players in the briefing rooms.
  Campaigns are very much a team effort and keeping in touch with one another in the briefing rooms is the best way to make your efforts have maximum effect.
• Reach out to your friends and gaming buddies and get them involved and organise your first game or two.

First Days

We have noticed that factions that have the most fun tend to keep morale high and almost always punch above their weight.
To make sure you and your compatriots have an enjoyable and successful campaign:

• With your fellow players, organise a few players to act in a leadership role in your briefing room. These players will help guide your faction and motivate everyone when the battle gets tough!
  Tip: The sooner a faction organises itself, the more effective it is in the campaign.
• Report your first battle.
• Go to your briefing room and share a link to your battle report so that your compatriots can read and rate them.
• Read other people’s battle reports and rate them and add your comments. This will help both you and them advance in rank.
  Take some time to browse the battles being posted into the system and provide fair ratings to them (Warning: we record all ratings and those systematically providing unfair ratings to reports will be asked to take no further part in the campaign). If you think the commander who posted the report did a great job, consider giving them a commendation by clicking the medal button!
  You can also post comments on the reports for the author and others to read. Please be respectful, the system this campaign runs on is deliberately designed to facilitate all kinds of player, so please don’t be negative on people’s reports if you don’t like their style — just move on to the next one.
• Keep an eye on the home page for news updates on what is happening on the campaign and how the battle is panning out.
• If you have an issue either technical or with any other participant, please send a support request to [email protected]. The more details you can provide (username, links, screenshots etc.) the quicker we will be able to resolve your issue.
• Don’t burn yourself out, pace yourself.

Fog of War

The war console has a fog of war element you need to be aware of. All battles that are submitted will affect the scores and charts showing each side’s victories in real time. There is also an AI Historian running behind the scenes. This ranks battle reports based on their quality. The team uses this system along with the raw wins and losses information when deciding where the campaign will go next.

The AI Historian gives bonus points to the best reports. This includes losses as well as wins, as good battle reports demonstrate that you fought a hard battle, causing delay and damage to the other side. So, get those losses in and report them well! On the other hand, bare bones reports that have no real information in them won’t pick up bonus points as the high command won’t learn much from them, and may even consider them to be just propaganda. No report gets deleted or removed though, they all count!

We recommend that you try to have a minimum of 150 words and at least 3 pictures of your game to give it a good chance of having a solid impact on the way the campaign’s story unfold, but a beautifully written report without images may do equally well!

It’s important to remember that the key goal is to have fun and enjoy yourself! The system is deliberately flexible to allow you to enjoy your gaming, and for others to enjoy theirs — in a manner that suits each individual.

Tip: Don’t rush to publish your battle report before it’s ready, take your time and add a description and photos to it first. This will increase your chances of getting higher ratings and commendations from your fellow players. Coming back to a report later and adding to it is not ideal, as reports only live at the top of the list for a short while and may get overlooked later. So don’t rush in, make your report count!

Most importantly of all – Have fun and enjoy a bunch of games!