My guides aren't for under-achievers and people under the age of 16. If the guide's too long, learn to use tables of contents efficiently, or just don't use guides at all. Besides, some people appreciate having lemmings around to use as distractions or meat-shields.

This guide was written years ago referencing older versions of Liberation. Newer updates and modifications may cause inaccuracies in certain areas and some mechanics may be left out, so keep that in mind. Resources in particular are outdated, as this was written before supply lines, storage, and civilian reputation were part of Liberation. Most non-resource elements are still accurate, however..

The most popular versions nowadays seem to be a modification by a group called Killah Potatoes (KP), or a derivative of that version. From what I can tell, the KP version overhauled the resource system into an annoying waste of time, added a civilian reputation system, and separates irregular guerillas into their own faction that can pester both other sides. What this means for the guide is that any mention of "guerillas," "insurgents," or "irregulars" should be replaced with "CSAT Infantry." It also means that resources don't really materialize from nothing after you capture a point, instead being replaced with a time-consuming pain in the ass system. To get resources in KP Liberation, you can either manually fill a truck with resources found on an objective and drive it all the way back to the FOB, or use a factory, build a storage area, move or make resources into that storage with an production settings UI, organize supply lines as the commander, and move them to each FOB, whose resources are stored separately. I suppose this is meant to be more realistic, but it comes at the expense of making the commander do nothing but micromanage the resource UI and drive/fly resources around.

Depending on parameters, be careful when assaulting villages or cities since civilian casualties and destroyed or damaged buildings tend to piss off the populace. If you avoid civilian casualties and property damage, heal any injured civilians after a firefight, and capture enough minor points of interest, CIVPOP will flip to your side. Allied civilians means occasionally spawned informants that work more-or-less identically to surrendered enemies, and guerillas will occasionally get involved in combat to support you.

To be frank, I like the original system better. The new resource system is too annoying to be worth it and essentially removes the strategic value of military bases and points of interest beyond "there's bad guys there" and "base give plane I like plane." I suppose the resource overhaul is meant to be more realistic, but it comes at the expense of making the commander do nothing but micromanage the resource UI and drive/fly resources around. If you're into those truck simulator games it could be fun I guess. The civilian reputation system is a nice touch, but players should be watching out for civilians and excess property damage anyways without needing additional encouragement. Informants give too little intel to make the time-consuming trip to get them worth it, and while the guerilla system is a genuinely interesting idea, their cells are much too small (5 dudes) to make a difference and are generally shredded within 2 minutes of showing up. But whatever, all this paragraph was just my opinions, so make up your own mind about the KP version.

If you happen to be using one of the older versions, then this whole tirade is entirely irrelevant.

Once you start Liberation, you'll come to a screen with two prompts: Join the Fight! and How to Play

If you're new, I recommend visiting How to Play first, since it'll gloss over everything much faster than I can. However, it's still insufficient to some people, and that's why this guide exists.

Once you hit join the fight you'll be sent to a spawn selection screen, which will also show up any time you die or choose the Redeploy option available near FOBs, the HQ, and mobile respawn units.. If you have saved any loadouts in virtual arsenal, you can choose to spawn with one of them using the drop-down menu here, but each of your weapons will lose a piece of ammo due to how the script works. You can choose to spawn at Base Chimera (a permanent safe-zone), a FOB that has been established by players beforehand, or a deployed mobile respawn unit. Beware of spawning at FOBs and mobile respawn units, since hostiles might be nearby.

Once you spawn in, you'll notice a few special HUD icons on the right side of your screen. These signify special resources and game mechanics in Liberation. For more info on what each of these mean, see the Resources section.

Note: At nearly all times while alive, the "Extended Options" menu will be available through the scroll-menu. When selected, a menu appears allowing you to manage player groups, alter your view distances, and access certain HUD addons which mostly aid in tracking your teammates.

All Resources are shared amongst the entire team. Try not to be too selfish.

Note that since Liberation has become a bit more widespread, there are many tweaked versions out there that change how resources work. This describes the base version's (and most common) resource system. If you're on a modified version, there will probably be some differences you'll need to figure out on your own.

Manpower- Green fist icon: This resource is used to build units at FOBs. It is usually used to build infantry, but there are a few exceptions. You can get more manpower by capturing villages. This resource is based on a sort of "cap" system, where your team can only spend a certain amount of it before you can no longer purchase more. If an asset bought with manpower is destroyed, its full value will be returned to the resource pool, so there's not much of a reason to try to conserve your team's manpower.

Ammo- Red bullets icon: This important resource is used to build armed vehicles or infantry with special weapons. This one's harder to get, and goes away permanently once spent, so try to conserve it. Depending on the server's parameters, there are different ways to obtain more ammo. Most provide small ammo bounties for the destruction of hostile vehicles; 10 for light vehicles, 20 for armor, and 40 for helicopters and jets. However, the best way to get ammo is through capturing hostile military bases. Depending on the server, these military bases will provide more ammo income, or simply spawn ammo crates. These ammo crates must be transported to a FOB and recycled to add ammo to the team's resource pool. Some vehicles can be very expensive so be careful what you spend it on.

Fuel- Olive fuel can icon: Similar to manpower, but harder to get and mainly used to build vehicles. You can access more of this resource by capturing fuel depots. Like Manpower, it's based off a sort of "cap" system, where each active vehicle your team has built will drain a specific amount of fuel. With this in mind, make sure not to abandon any vehicles out in the middile of nowhere; either repair and use them, or just destroy them, otherwise they could limit further vehicle construction.

Pop cap: This one's pretty obvious. It measures the amount of friendly soldiers on the map besides those idling at HQ. This includes AI and players. If it reaches the cap, no one can buy any more AI soldiers until the population goes down again. It has never really been an issue for me, since most people don't want to go through the hassle of transporting a squad of AI to wherever they're going, but just be careful if you notice it straddling the limit.

Alert level- Exclamation point, color varies: This one's less of a resource and more of a measurement of how much you've pissed off the enemy. When the game starts this value will be at 0%, but it will rise as the team engages hostile locations on the map. As it rises, your enemy will slowly become better equipped. For example, at 0% alert on Altis, radio towers will be guarded by small teams of light riflemen who are only carrying basic rifles and aren't even wearing helmets. At 100%, however, the towers will be guarded by heavily armed squads, carrying several high-caliber MMGs and Marksman rifles. Likewise, fuel depots go from being defended by basic technicals, some light riflemen, and irregular forces, to being defended by tanks and well-armed infantry. The rate at which the alert level rises depends on what objectives are being attacked. If you attack a military base you will raise the alert level much more than if you attacked, say, a radio tower. The only way to reduce alert level is to complete secondary objectives such as FOB Hunting. See the Secondary Objectives section for more information.

Intel- Blue Star icon: This one's an important but rarely understood resource. Intel has one purpose- to activate secondary objectives which can reduce the alert level. There are two ways to gain intel, three if the server supports the Search and Rescue secondary objective. The first is the easiest but most tedious. If you capture a hostile sector that still has enemy soldiers in or around it, most of these soldiers will lay down their weapons and surrender. If you walk up to one of these guys after he surrenders, the Capture option should show up in your action menu if you're alone or a group leader. This action will add the prisoner to your group and you can give him orders as if he was an AI teammate. If you take a prisoner to a FOB, he'll leave your group and sit down as a message appears on everyone's screen saying that a captive has been interrogated, providing some intel. If the prisoner is far enough away from you, he will leave your group, run away, and you won't be able to get him back, so you must be with him during the entire trip. The second way to get intel is by finding special intel items. These items show up randomly in enemy-controlled locations, but I've found that they spawn most often in enemy military bases, especially those with barracks. To retrieve that intel, simply walk up to the document or laptop and look at it until the Take Intel option shows up in the action menu. Press it and you'll instantly add some intel to the total pool. I won't go over Search and Rescue here because it's a secondary objective and most servers don't provide it.

All secondary objectives cost intel to start, but hell, what else are you going to spend the intel on? Besides, each have some nice benefits.

FOB Hunting: This is the most popular, easiest, and, in my opinion, the most useful secondary objective to pursue. Starting this objective will spawn a hostile FOB somewhere on the map in enemy territory. These FOBs usually look like tiny military bases, with H-barriers for walls, a few pre-fab structures, some Taru cargo containers, and a few empty vehicles. Your objective is to destroy the Taru containers, as the rest can be left standing while still satisfying the objective, meaning you can use those empty vehicles to exfiltrate in a pinch. The general area in which the FOB is located will be marked on the map as a half-shaded red area with a question mark in the center, but the exact position won't be pointed out. The easiest and fastest way to pinpoint its position is to HAHO jump right over the question mark. Open your 'chute relatively high up and look around below for the FOB. Once you see it, use landmarks nearby such as roads or buildings to pinpoint the FOB's location on the map, then slap a marker on top of it so the rest of your team knows. At this point you can use artillery to level the place, or take some satchel charges and do things the old-fashioned way. Either way is not too difficult, since every FOB is only guarded by a squad or two of CSAT infantry, with no vehicle support to speak of. Just dont try it with a chopper since a few of those guards will probably be carrying AA Titan launchers.

Once the Taru containers have been destroyed, a message will show up stating that the FOB has been destroyed. This will reduce the hostile alert level by up to 40%, but once the alert level dips low enough, the alert reduction will see diminishing returns, so don't do more than 2 FOB hunts in a row unless you're okay with wasting intel.


Convoy Hijack: There's not too much to explain here. A CSAT convoy spawns on the map, its path is marked. Go blow it up. Some of the trucks have ammo boxes you can take to a FOB for recycling, but that's up to you. Once it's completed, the alert level will go down slightly, but the main benefit is going to be whatever ammo you can get your hands on.


Search and Rescue: Most servers don't have this one, and I've never done it, but here goes anyways. This side mission's supposed to spawn a pair of friendly pilots you need to rescue before they get shot to pieces. If you manage to get them back to the FOB, you'll receive an intel bonus for each guy you save, potentially resulting in a tidy intel profit you can use to go after something else.

Radio tower: These are distinguished by their small square icon with the comms tower inside. They are lightly defended by up to 7 infantrymen each, and are usually easy enough for a very small team to capture. They don't provide any specific resource unlike the other points, but they allow nearby enemy sectors to call for reinforcements, and when under friendly control they mark the approximate location of hostiles within a certain radius of the tower. This ability is an extremely powerful tool for determining where an enemy counterattack may be coming from, or where to look for the last few stragglers in an urban environment. Since they're so useful and easy to take, I recommend capturing these as soon as possible. A small team HALO jumping directly on top of the sector will be able to finish off the hostile guards within minutes.

Points of Interest: These small hostile emplacements are marked by a square with a single black dot in the center. if captured, villages will provide some Manpower.They are defended by irregular forces such as FIA or Syndikat, and unless they're in an Ifrit they won't have night vision, so feel free to use IR lasers on your weapons if you're attacking at night. They usually have a squad or two patrolling around, a light vehicle like a technical or MRAP sitting around waiting to see someone to shoot, IEDs on the roads, and hostiles populating any buildings close enough to the center of the sector. The difficulty of attacking these areas can usually be judged by the amount of buildings nearby. If there are little or no buildings, it'll probably be easy to take as long as you kill the vehicle first. If there's a bunch of buildings, it's going to be more difficult since more hostiles will populate the buildings, necessitating some risky and time-consuming room-clearing. These villages are usually unimportant, but leaving them in enemy hands may make traveling dangerous and may potentially allow a counterattack to show up behind friendly lines.

Factories: These sectors are marked on the map by a square with a gas pump in it. If captured, they, obviously, provide your team with some fuel. These tend to be guarded by a combination of irregular forces along with regular CSAT forces, some IEDs on nearby roads, and a hostile vehicle or two which, depending on the alert level, can be as small as a technical, or as large as a main battle tank, so come prepared. More buildings = more hostiles in them. It's much more important to capture these than Points of Interest, since fuel is more rare and useful than manpower, and the heavy armor it can potentially spawn if left in enemy hands will wreak havoc on anyone passing by.

Military Base: Bases are marked by the diamond-shaped armory marker. These provide your team with additional ammo boxes to recycle, and some unlock powerful vehicles such as up-armored slammer tanks or Blackfoot attack helicopters. The buildings within the base's limits may also contain laptops or documents full of intel, and it tends to be much more efficient and easy to grab this intel on the spot rather than take captives back to a FOB. However, the bases that provide these benefits are very difficult to capture, second only to major cities. Bases are guarded by several armed vehicles, including anything from Ifrit HMGs to T-100 tanks. On top of that, they are patrolled by significant numbers of CSAT infantry, and often contain well-armored and fortified structures that need to be cleared manually by infantry. Before attacking a military base, make sure you plan and coordinate with your team to ensure success, and make sure everyone has the proper equipment, too. Considering the firepower that normally guards these installations, exercise extreme caution while traveling nearby.

Major City: You can't miss these major objectives on your map. They are distinguished by massive squares over some of the largest cities in the area. The objective of Liberation is to capture all of them. Once you get them all, the game ends and stats are displayed. Capturing these cities is far easier said than done, however. The bad guys are going to use everything they have to defend the place. Guerillas infesting the buildings and streets, CSAT infantry on patrol, technicals, armor, hell, even gunships might show up. To make things worse, there are civilians around, so you can't just use artillery to turn the place into dust. If you want to take one of these positions, bring your best gear, your best vehicles, a mobile respawn or two, and as many players as you can get your hands on. Good luck.

Note: Civilians show up everywhere except for most radio towers, military bases, and some factories. Watch your fire and think about where you are before using artillery.

Once the alert level rises high enough and, in my experience, whenever you're doing something that requires your attention, the enemy may assemble a battlegroup to attack a FOB or retake a point you've captured. These battlegroups consist of several armored units, helicopters, and infantry usually tagging along in trucks or ready to parachute out of the choppers. As the alert level rises, battlegroups tend to bring even better vehicles, such as replacing wheeled APCs or MRAPs with full-fledged tanks, or replacing Orcas with fully armed Kajman attack helicopters. Alert level also seems to affect the sheer number of hostiles, but even the minimum battlegroup size is intimidating. They usually bring about 2 or 3 squads of infantry, somewhere from 4-7 armed ground vehicles like APCs and Tanks, 1 or 2 transport trucks, 2 Taru transport helicopters, anywhere from 1 to 4 armed gunships, and, if you're very unlucky, even a CAS jet or 2.. When a battlegroup is formed, an alert will show up on your screen saying "Enemies have been spotted near X," with 'X' being the point on the map they're closest to. A marker in the shape of a large red circle enclosing a '?' (as opposed to enemy markers provided by radio towers, which are smaller and use a '!' instead of '?') will also show up on your map near the aforementioned 'X.' This marker indicates that battlegroup's "staging area," where they will gather their units in preparation for their attack. After some time, the group will begin to move, causing another alert to pop up stating "Enemy forces are heading towards Y," with 'Y' being the location the group is heading towards. Note that the location the alert mentions will not necessarily be the first place the battlegroup attempts to capture; they generally steamroll whatever is in their way first.

Once the battlegroup has reached one of your points, a friendly AI rifle team will spawn near the center of the location, a 20-minute countdown will begin, and an alert will pop up stating "(location) is under attack!" Once the countdown hits 0, the point can be completely retaken by the enemy, meaning that you'll have to retake it all over again, fighting the same resistance as before. FOBs will simply be destroyed, so you can no longer deploy there or purchase units there. For this reason, it's very important to note which point is being attacked if you're already in the middle of something. For example, it's not a big deal if they're attacking a radio tower, but it is a very big deal if they're a major city, base, or a FOB, especially if you only have one FOB left. If you lose every FOB, it will be impossible (on most servers) to build any units or interrogate captives, so you will be limited to only players as infantry, maybe a mobile spawn chopper, and besides intel documents found in military bases, no way to gain intel and therefore no way to reduce the alert level. No FOBs = you're screwed, but I digress.

It is very important to deal with battlegroups when they appear. Even if they recapture a point or FOB, they won't magically disappear. Instead, they will choose a new target to attack and, if left unchecked, can absolutely devastate your lines. Besides, it's never a good idea to let the enemy have loads of tanks, AAA, and gunships roam freely to harass any nearby friendlies. Although a friendly rifle squad will show up to help defend threatened points, they are not equipped to deal with heavy armor or aircraft, so player intervention is imperative. That's not to say those AI defenders are worthless, though, since they can definitely hold their own against infantry and light vehicles, so, if they're still alive, focus on eliminating the heavier equipment so these grunts can mop up. Still, taking out these battlegroups is far easier said than done, and it's going to take a lot of effort to effectively defend against one. Use powerful vehicles such as armor or attack helicopters to help even the odds, and ensure infantry are carrying the proper heavy AT and AA gear to stand a chance. Hostile infantry often disembark from their transports too early and need to move on foot to their objectives several kilometers away, and never mount back up if the point is captured, so they generally aren't much of a threat.

Last point concerning these counterattacks: Prioritize. You'll generally be in the middle of something whenever a battlegroup starts to form, so you'll need to decide whether to finish up what you're doing, or to drop it immediatly to deal with the impending counterattack. It's best to consider the value of the point under attack; you can afford to lose a radio tower if you've made progress towards capturing a military base, but in most cases you should drop whatever you're doing if they're attacking a major city.

Liberation provides scripts for unflipping stuck vehicles. This can be used on any unoccupied vehicle, even enemy tanks and helicopters. Enemies will also disembark vehicles that are damaged enough or (usually) immobilized. Use this knowledge to your advantage, you'd be surprised how sloppy the AI can be with heavy equipment and armor can be a real force-multiplier. My fireteam and I once managed to decrew, repair, and steal a hostile tank. It was eventually destroyed, but not before we took a major city on our own, and took out a hostile battlegroup's air support of 2 or 3 gunships and a jet from 2 klicks away using the tank's main gun. This is not to mention the numerous times I've been able to do this on my own, but let's just say there's a reason you want a full crew in your tanks.

Liberation has a revive script built into it with customizable parameters. Some servers may change these around or use their own system but on most servers the setting is "Basic FAKs can stabilize to stop the bleeding, but you need a full medikit to actually revive to get the guy back on his feet." Try to check to make sure what the server's setting is, and ensure you and your team have the proper medical equipment at all times. Also, if noone else says they'll help one of your wounded teammates who is reasonably close to you, it's your job now. Do not leave anyone to just bleed to death if you have a chance to commit a rescue. I still remember someone being wounded in a major city most of the team was capturing while I was out somewhere on my own dealing with a hostile battlegroup or military base or something like that. I didn't think much of it at first since there were about a dozen friendlies in the city, it was almost cleared, people were reassuring me that they'd get to her, and I was away worrying about my own damn problems. After a while, though, noone had gotten to her. Then they'd captured the city, but still no-one was heading her direction. It was pretty clear everyone there was expecting someone else to do it, morons. I finished up whatever it was I was dealing with and immediately changed course to try to get to her, but I only managed to get there a few seconds too late. It still pisses me off when I think about all those guys in the city, including medics, who were so damn irresponsible they couldn't save one wounded person, even with me reminding them. I mean, at the very least they could have used a FAK to stop the bleeding; if they did that I would have made it in time. Just don't be like those idiots.

• Quickload, Jakob, Flyinghellfish, and Bradford342: for being the best budget spec-ops team I could get my hands on. You guys annoy the hell out of me, but you do good work.
  
  
• Phoenix Consulting PMC: for running a damn good server that helped out my research. Also, you didn't badger me to join your teamspeak or unit or forum or any of that bullcrap I get all the damn time, so that's another plus.
  I recommend their server to anyone reading this guide.
  However they have heavily customized their liberation server so some parts of the guide may not apply, particularly concerning resources. Update: Phoenix now hosts liberation on older maps, so you'll need the CUP Terrains packs to join them. Still worthwhile, though.
  
  
• The few good support pilots that I've seen: I really appreciate all the ammo runs and air support you guys do, you're a massive asset to the team. I'm always bummed when one of you leave the server because it usually means my job's gonna be harder for a while.
  
  
• Most other pilots who ask for flight permissions and an attack chopper immediately after joining: Thanks for giving me and most other people on the server someone to direct our hatred towards. It's not always easy to find someone that everyone hates, but between the drain on resources, endless complaining, lack of infantry skills and often flight skills as well, general unhelpfulness, and, for many of those with headsets, the very annoying squeaky voice that never shuts the hell up, we all can easily find one thing that absolutely drives us insane. My only complaint is that I'm penalized if I shoot you whenever I see you.
  
  
• Willownu: This guy is so awesome words can't describe it. Besides being ridiculously good-looking, I've seen him do some pretty crazy stuff, usually on his own, and still come out on top. If I were you, I'd probably pull a lil' Keanu Reeves whenever I see Willownu and just go "Dude, whoa." God, Willownu is so great. He's so humble, too. . .

I'm aware this is very wordy and the lack of screenshots or videos make it unexciting. Suck it up, nuggets.