Leave No One Behind is RTS you find enjoying once you master the controls. It is our job as developers to help you to do this in the quickest and most effective way possible. Therefore, we incorporated the tutorial in the 1st mission Occupation of LZ Falcon. We emphasize that Falcon mission is not a ´tutorial mission´ in the sense that it is easy and made only for learning purposes. The opposite is true. It is one of the most demanding missions in the game because players must learn the controls while fighting and in general doesn´t have the fire support which is available, plenty of it, in the following missions.

Unfortunately, some players may leave the game at the beginning, frustrated by user interface they don´t know and being overwhelmed by enemy force at the same time. We admit that our game is not easy and that was the intention. On the other hand, when you learn to control it and master the core principles, it may be very easy to win, especially at the first two difficulty levels.

Therefore, we prepared this text walkthrough of the Falcon mission to help new players dominate the Vietnamese battlefield.

You appear on the map with only one asset: the scout helicopter. The purpose of it is to find suitable terrain to disembark your HQ company. This shouldn´t be difficult. You navigate through waypoints marked by smoke until you find the right place in the northeast of the map.

The HQ is the heart of your small army. It is a fighting unit on its own, it can move and return fire but it will spend most of the time seated in one place. It is your tool to command your troops, call for artillery, air and mortar support, ammo drops (very important in later missions!), manage the medical care of your troops and also for calling in reinforcements. After you find the right spot with your scout helicopter, your HQ platoon will automatically fly in and disembark. At the start, it is a mobile unit but it will not stay this way for long.

The setting up of HQ should be easy, there is a special button ´Unpack HQ´. The 2nd necessary step is to establish landing zones for your helicopters. It is done simply by using the LZ button in HQ´s controls and choosing the right terrain free of obstacles which will be shown in white. The tutorial gives you the possibility to clear the LZ by explosives because of dense vegetation. To do this, you must detach a patrol from your HQ (the button with binoculars), select the dynamite button in the patrol´s submenu and select the spot on the map near the HQ but not to close! Otherwise, you may blow up your own troops. But you can set up the LZ without this action in several places around HQ, just move the cursor until you find the right spot. It is also better to establish more than one LZ.

The combat platoon is the workhorse of your small army. It occupies terrain, kills enemies and observes the zone of control. The 1st platoon is automatically available. To call it, use your HQ and click on the button ´Call Platoon´. The helicopters will come and land your troops.

To call the other platoons, there is more work to do: click on the money button above the mini-map and the ´E-Shop´ for reinforcements will open. You can buy one additional platoon from the start; just click on the large icon of the unit you want and confirm your choice. If you play well (i.e. killing enemies with minimal losses), you will soon earn money for one additional platoon.

Later on, you will have the option to get the skill to call reinforcements and buy additional platoons above the limit of three. The HQ has a skill tree which is hidden under the special button – 1st from the left in the HQ top down menu. Use your command points to choose the right skill. In this case ´Reinforcements´.

With this skill procured, you can go back to ´E-Shop´ via money button above the mini-map and if you have money, you can call more platoons. In later missions, your army can grow up to six platoons which roughly corresponds to the strength of the infantry battalion in the Vietnam War.

You have three places on the Falcon map to conquer. The first is the central position destined as the spot for your artillery. The other two are small Vietnamese camps in the northeast and southeast. The central artillery position is nearest to the HQ so it is usual for players to go for this spot first. One platoon should be enough to fulfil the task.

There is a group of Vietnamese on the spot. Better than attacking them head on, it is better to get near enough that they see you and are lured to attack you. The enemies in the game are instinctive attackers. They want to take as many American lives as possible without taking much care for their own losses. To limit your losses even more, you can work with formations and stances in the platoon´s menu (you see the bonuses you get when you scroll over the buttons).

The best formation for saving the lives of your troops is ´Arches´ formation so the recommended tactics is to get close to the enemy in arches formation, set the formation to arches and let the firefight go your way. The arches formation is also the slowest for the movement of a platoon. The fastest formation well suited for quick movement without fighting is the column formation.

There are other tricks which help you in infantry combat. It helps to send more platoons in line so they will crossfire on the enemy. The best way to minimize your losses is to kill the enemy faster than he kills you. You can also detach a patrol from your platoon so you get instantly two units (one weaker of course) instead of one.

After you conquer the artillery spot, your big tubes will start coming hanging under CH-47 Chinooks. Pay attention that you don´t leave them undefended. It is recommended to leave one platoon to guard the artillery.

To make the task of defending the god of war (i.e. artillery) easier, you can entrench your platoon by occupying the right position which is predefined by game designers. It is marked by the white silhouette of the kneeling soldier. Left-click on it with a selected platoon and soldiers will automatically jump in. To leave the position and move with the unit freely again, you must left-click on the Hold button (the icon of cancelled boot in the platoon´s menu)

Regardless of how well you manage the movement of your troops and combat, you will probably suffer losses. Fallen soldiers are marked in red, wounded in yellow. It is not easy to find them in the terrain. For this purpose, go back to HQ controls and click on the button of the first aid station that looks like a hospital bed (on the left side). The list of your dead and wounded soldiers appears. By double-clicking on it, the map is centred on the position of a selected KIA or WIA. When you know the place, you should call the stretchers (another class of personnel in your HQ). Click on the stretcher button in the HQ menu (the one with hospital mobile beds) and mark the area on the map you want your stretchers to go to. You can mark more than one area and stretchers will automatically proceed from one to another. It takes some time to get your dead and wounded back to HQ. Stretcher-bearers are foot soldiers as any other.

In the tutorial mission, you have the option to use mortars but you can win without them. Mortars are the weakest tool of fire support but still do a good job. If you want to use mortars, first you must obtain mortar skill in the skill tree of your HQ. Then you must buy your mortar team. You do this by opening the personnel roaster of your HQ platoon which is done in two ways: either by clicking on the HQ icon in the ´E-Shop´ or by clicking on the colorful (usually green) strip on the right side in the frame showing the strength and personnel structure of your HQ (you must first have your HQ platoon selected to see it).
Then you see the structure of your HQ platoon including the slot for mortar team. Buy at least one mortarman and in a minute (after a helicopter brings the man to your HQ), you can fire! Better said, you can fire as long as you have ammo. Your HQ at the beginning automatically has 20 mines to fire. It should be enough for Falcon mission but you can buy more if you like to kill the enemy from afar without threatening the lives of your men. One last note: mortars are nor fast, nor precise. The best tactic in the tutorial mission is to discover your enemy without going close to attract their attention and then shell them mercilessly.

The scout helicopter has its big moment at the beginning of the Falcon mission but then you can happily forget it. But if you let it hover indefinitely, it will run out of fuel and crash. To save your first chopper, you must have a free landing zone. Click on the landing/take off button in the helicopter menu and then select the free LZ as your landing spot. You can refuel and rearm your helicopter when landed. If you want to use your helicopter skilfully in the later phases of the Falcon mission, you can use it in concert with mortars. The scout helicopter has the farthest line of sight in the game and is also the fastest unit. Discover enemies from afar and then pound them with mortar fire. You can theoretically conquer both Vietnamese camps in the corners of the map without your combat platoons firing a single shot. But beware of moving your scout chopper within the Vietnamese range of fire. It will die quickly.

Once you have conquered the central position for your artillery, don´t forget to garrison it with one platoon. If you manage the game well, you should have two additional platoons available to conquer the camps. The northern camp is easier as it has a weaker garrison and only one machine gun nest. After you occupy the camp, you can earn some money and get some free ammo from the ammo crate in the center of the camp. Just right click on it while managing your combat platoon and it takes it. If you obtained mortars, this the right place to use them. It will save you a lot of men.

The southern camp is better fortified and attacking it head on can lead to a fast massacre of your troops. To make things easier for you, there is scripted event: When you discover the camp, you can use aerial bombardment; this is the single occasion in this mission. Aerial bombing takes place in the game in lines you mark by clicking and dragging your mouse while holding the left button. It is recommend aiming at the tower, which is a pretty strong position, and the machine gun nest (the fortified circle built with sandbags). You should cover both places in the single bombing line. Again, this is a welcomed opportunity to use mortars, if you procured them, to pepper the survivors of the aerial bombing.

With artillery landed and two camps destroyed, you are the winner of Falcon mission. We admit this may be the most difficult gaming tutorial in the history of gaming. But Vietnam was hard from the beginning and didn´t forgive mistakes.

And that´s it. When you learn the controls, wining the 1st mission almost without losses is possible, even on the highest difficulty level. Please pay attention that when you fulfil all tasks, the mission doesn´t end automatically. You have a couple of minutes of free time. You should use it to collect your dead and wounded (it is both the commander´s duty and a great money saver), reinforce your units, get them more ammunition etc. In the Falcon mission, it is not necessary; money and skills are not transferred to the next mission. In the following missions, it is almost a must.

The tutorial doesn´t teach you the necessity of logistics, i.e. resupplying of ammunition. In the following missions it is absolutely essential. As this is the description of the Falcon mission we will not dive in details but mind the core principle: To keep your platoons supplied with ammo, first you must have it in your HQ platoon which serves as the ammunition depot and distributor via the ammo bearers who are one of professions in the HQ.

The tutorial doesn´t teach you artillery support, despite the fact that Falcon mission is the only one where you physically see the cannons. To use artillery support, you must first buy Artillery skill in the skills´ tree and the second grade, Faster Navigation, should follow very soon afterwards. Why? The basic artillery skill means that you must type coordinates, i.e. eight digits, manually to hit the target. It takes time and coordinates are sometimes difficult to see (this feature kind of simulates the difficulties faced by artillery observers in combat). Faster navigation enables you to simply mark the spot where to fire and point the direction of the barrage at the right angle.