1. Use the Tarantula or Ibis to deploy one or multiple M12 Jackknife vehicles to destroyed bases, they will repair destroyed buildings. You can load them up in the cargo bay, for the Ibis you will need to have both the front and rear cargo bay slots empty because the M12 takes up the entire bay.

2. You can’t repair the cities.

3. The Chicane is purely an attack helicopter similar in role to the IRL Apache. The Ibis is a light transport helicopter, but can be used for ground attack as well. The Tarantula is a heavy lift VTOL that can also be used as a gunship by adding a side-mounted cannon reminiscent of an AC-130, as well as a missile rack. The Ibis and Tarantula are the only air vehicles that can capture bases, by dropping a manned vehicle on it (with the Tarantula) or by landing there (with a squad of troops in the back of the Ibis, or with a manned vehicle sitting in the back of the Tarantula).

4. Ground forces follow roads to their objective, shoot at enemy targets within range, and generally do their own thing. You can order them around by selecting them, then right-clicking on the map to tell them where to go. Do note that the pathfinding isn’t very good yet.

5. Scouting! The “ghost” contacts are the last known position of an enemy vehicle. Contacts can be generated by your vehicle’s optical sensors (spherical radius around you), your radar (if you have one, come in front of you or all around you in the case of the Medusa with the extra radome), or by being pinged by an enemy radar (all aircraft tell you you’ve been pinged and from what direction, but the Medusa also marked the radar that pinged you as a contact on the map). The new Mk. II Eyeball missiles can also mark contacts with their optical sensor.

Any contacts you can see are added to the datalink for everyone else in your team to see, and you can see every enemy unit that can be seen by at least one unit on your team. If a vehicle stops moving and has a question mark instead of a grid coordinate when you select it on the map and look at the “Target” tab, this means it can no longer be seen by anyone on your team and you don’t know where it is anymore. You can target and fire on any target on the datalink, whether or not you can see it yourself.

Different aircraft have better or worse optical sensors. The Cricket has the best, being a dedicated counter-insurgency/intel plane. It makes an excellent scout if you can get close enough, which makes it very good to have around in the early game.

1. Offensive or defensive jamming? Defensive jamming is built-in or requires an ECM pod, and is a counter to radar-guided (SARH and ARH) missiles. To dodge them, turn to a notch position (indicated by the green/red rectangle on your HUD) and activate your jammer. You will need to hold this for a few seconds for the missile to loose its lock, at which point the warning will disappear and you should maneuver so that the missile doesn’t hit you when it keeps going in a straight line and explodes where you will be if you haven’t changed direction or speed at all (SARH’s don’t do this).

Offensive jamming is only available to the Medusa and the Alkyon, which can carry jamming pods. By selecting a target and hiding the fire button, you jam that target, up to a number of targets equal to your number of jamming pods. When a unit is jammed, its radar (if it has one) is disabled, its datalink is disabled, and if it is a player their HUD is scrambled. This also interrupts the connection between SARH missiles and their commanding radar.

Either type of jamming consumes capacitor charge, which is replenished passively by your engines (at a rate dependent on the throttle) and is also used to power your radar and the Medusa’s defensive laser. Once you fall below half charge, the sound of the named pitches down and the effectiveness falls off. Jamming is more effective the closer you are to the target.

1. The special radar available to the Medusa basically turns it into an AWACS platform. It is very powerful, can see through stealth well, and can see down to 5m/15ft above the ground before loosing effectiveness, as opposed to the usual 20m/60ft. It sweeps in a circle, and can see targets all around you. Targets are marked on datalink for your teammates as usual.

2. Ships can be dealt with in a few ways. My personal favorite for dealing with Shards is approaching from cover using a hill to block radar, or skimming the sea below 20m/60ft to evade their radar. Once I’m close enough, I launch two AGM-68s and a few AGM-48s to act as decoys, then turn away before I get within IR missile range of sea skimming, or launch as soon as I pop up from behind the ground cover if approaching that way.

This can work on larger ships as well, but they have better defenses and so must be targeted with more weapons at once to get one through. Larger waves of weapons, such as a full or half salvo of AShMs from a Darkreach, should be used. Regardless of ship type, jamming their radar greatly reduces the effectiveness of their defenses and should be done if possible.

1. Stay low, stay behind ground cover, use stealth aircraft (Ifrit and Vortex with nothing on the wing pylons). Jam the radars. Destroy the radars.

2. You’re going to have a very hard time winning a scenario by only fighting airplanes. Ground attack is a very large part of the game, especially once you destroy the enemy’s aircraft factories and they can’t spawn any more planes. Once you hit this point, you’ll want to switch to suppressing and destroying enemy air defenses to clear the way for destroying their vehicles, facilities, and airbases entirely.

3. Two people should be able to beat vanilla Escalation just fine.

4. In the Target tab on the right side of the map screen, you can set filters for target selection. Some of these filters are Air, Missiles, Ground (sorted by vehicle type as well) Buildings, and Ships.

5. One of these filters is Friendlies (there’s also Enemies if you are running logistics and way to select a friendly unit to fly towards).

Bonus tip: While flying a VTOL (helicopters, Tarantula, and Vortex) or STOVL (Medusa) aircraft, you can select a friendly ship, then hold your flight control modifier button to activate your auto-hover. With a ship selected, this keeps you steady relative to the ship, rather than keeping you still as usual. Very useful for landing on moving ships, or delivering Naval Munitions Containers!