Base Building and Resources

Base building is the foundation of every real-time battle in Dust Front RTS. You establish a foothold, raise production and resource structures, and defend them while you assemble an army. Construction is tied directly to the wider war: every structure you raise also counts toward your strength on the global map, and what you produce feeds the units described in Units and Armies. Buildings are also unlocked and improved through technology and doctrines as your campaign progresses.

Establishing a Base

A base typically begins with a mobile construction vehicle, the MCV, which deploys to create your starting structures on the battlefield. From there you expand outward, adding the production and economy buildings you need for the mission at hand. A hard rule governs these battles: if all of your buildings are destroyed, you are defeated. Holding and protecting your base is therefore as important as fielding troops, and many missions task you with destroying the enemy's own structures, such as their factories, warehouses, and watchtowers, or with holding a position against attack.

The developer describes the game as having traditional real-time strategy base building and unit production, so the familiar loop of expanding, producing, and defending applies here rather than a restricted or preset force.

Resource Gathering

Resources come from gathering and refining minerals. Dedicated facilities extract and refine raw minerals into the materials your war machine needs, while storage capacity keeps what you collect on hand for production. Because economy structures matter on the strategic layer as well, the mining and production you set up locally feed into the global economy that you manage between battles.

The developer's own advice for the demo puts economy first: if you are short on resources, move your base, develop a passive economy, and set production to run continuously. He also warns against holding too narrow a front, because a compressed line lets the enemy commit their whole army at once and your resources can run out before a passive economy pays off.

Building Types

The structures below are the confirmed building types seen in current builds. They are not an exhaustive list, and they are presented here without numeric values, which remain preview details.

Beyond your own production and economy buildings, missions also feature objective structures on both sides, such as watchtowers and warehouses, which can be targets to destroy or assets to defend.

Macro Buildings

Each faction has its own macro buildings, a small set of structures that unlock technology and improve every unit on the battlefield at once. They work in the spirit of the progressive armour and damage upgrades familiar from older strategy games, but folded into the buildings themselves so that improving your army and expanding your base are the same action rather than two separate menus of buttons. The faction you play in the demo has three of them.

The Complector is described as a structure of the Fourth Industrial Empire. The developer notes that a building in that slot would ordinarily raise infantry health, but that doing so would sit badly with the faction's character, so it produces free troops instead. For how these fit alongside doctrine research and per-unit blueprints, see Blueprints and Upgrades.

Building Connections

Buildings are not independent of one another. Some structures can be connected together to grant bonuses, which turns base layout into a real decision rather than a matter of finding free space. Factories linked by a pipe and placed in a row receive a production discount, and a power plant connected to a Complector speeds up unit production. The developer presents these adjacency effects as a substantial help to macro play.

Power matters in the other direction too: a material fabricator and a flame turret both shut down when power runs low, so an over-extended base can lose its defenses and its production at the same moment.

Defense and Repair

Static defensive turrets guard your perimeter, among them a flamethrower turret that punishes attackers who push in close. Trenches and other defensive structures can also be built, giving infantry dug-in positions on open ground. To keep your army in the field, repair vehicles restore damaged units, letting you recover and press a worn-down force back into action rather than rebuilding it from scratch.

• Defensive turrets, including a flamethrower turret, hold key approaches to the base.

• Trenches and other defensive works give infantry protected positions.

• Repair vehicles move with your forces and mend damaged units during and after a fight.

• Storage at the barracks keeps gathered resources available for ongoing production.

Automatic casting and mass selection for repair abilities were planned before the demo but did not make it in; the developer has said they will be added later.

Buildings on the Global Map

What you build does not stay confined to a single battle. Every structure also matters on the global map, where mining and production within your territories shape the strategic economy. Certain strategic structures are raised from the map itself rather than during a battle, including a missile silo, a siege fort, and an airport; those are covered under The Global Map. A base is both a local strongpoint and a contribution to your overall power across the campaign, which is why the choices you make in construction echo well beyond the battlefield you make them on.