To start this off, this is not my mod. I just love REDCON and saw it as a mod on one of my favorite games. I posted the link in the guide's description for that reason!

The mod is quite complex, having many moving pieces and generally being hard to balance them all.
Hell, some people don't know how to build, which I don't blame them! The creator did post a tutorial on the mod itself, but they were images explaining how they worked vaguely. That's why I'm here to help people understand this mod! It also is a bit more difficult for both ends (creator and audience) because I don't think the creator speaks English, at least not as their main language. I'll go through the three stages I learned there are in this mod and break them down the best I can.

DO NOTE: I have only played this mod singleplayer, so some things may be forgotten about that'd help in multiplayer settings.

This will cover the very beginning of your game and what you have, will need, and my recommendations (though you don't need to follow these of course!).

In the beginning, you start with an CoMO building (pretty much just a command center), a residential building, and a bunker, plus one builder. The CoMO produces credits and builders, the residential building produces operators, and the bunker produces soldiers from said credits and operators. This is where your game begins and where you must know what does what.

We'll start off simple! Roads are the most important (though annoying) buildings you will need to construct. Building roads allows you to place buildings beside them, which almost every building can't stand without. Some buildings can, such as farms, mines, skeleton rigs, embassies, bunkers, institutes, and (unsurprisingly) other roads. Roads must be built to even start anything in terms of production. There are two types of roads: vertical and horizontal. They take up two slots in their designated directions and cost the exact same.

Starting production on metal right away isn't a must, but it's recommended. To do so, the creation of a mining station is the best option for the beginning of the game. Miners are slow yet sturdy machines that don't attack. Instead, they go to and mine at the rock formations found randomly throughout the map. They will go out, collect ore, return, deposit, and repeat. Ore cannot be used in its current state, so we'll move along to forges. Forges smelt the ore into metal, though this process is slow. It is recommended you create multiple miners and forges to collect ore and smelt it into metal quicker. The more miners and forges, the more metal you will produce.

One thing though! You can't place it down... why? Warehouses are needed as well! Warehouses are buildings that allow other buildings to function. All buildings that require a resource must be located near a warehouse. Their area of influence appears when you click on it, but take this with a grain of salt, as some building must be closer than others.

Now we're smelting! What else should we set up in the beginning? Well, we'll need farms to produce food and food factories to harvest said food. Food is probably the most valuable resource besides credits. Farms are relatively cheap to create and you can build them in such a way where it's like a grid to maximize the food factories you can surround it with. Food factories, on the other hand, are quite a bit more expensive and would be a main incentive early game to pump out residential buildings to maximize the amount of operators you get. The more farms and food factories, the more food you'll produce. The more residential buildings, the more men you have to put to production.

Embassies are a multiplayer product where you can choose the empire you wish to pledge yourself to. You can leave these at any time of course, but it's better to pair up than go alone. There are currently four factions that don't differ in any particular way, those being the Statist Empire, the Krux, the USR, and the Samraahtan. I believe this effects the market you can also build, which allows you to trade items with it. In an image on the mod, there are resources surrounding the markets, but you can't choose to buy anything in the market, only sell.

Lastly for the beginning stage of the game, we have the economic institute. Building it will give your country the option to enter light production, which initiates the next stage of the game: the production stage.

The production stage is the longest and most complex stage of the mod. In this stage, the biggest trouble is stabilizing and maintaining your country's resources. This stage would also be the hardest if the AI worked as people would in this mod, but it is in beta currently, so that could change.

The first thing you'll realize is the opening of many new buildings you couldn't access before. Your hangar, air platform, and shipyard all had no power before this, but that can change now. The reactor produces power, which in turn activates anything that needs power assuming it reaches the demand of the building. It uses food to create energy, though this can be switched to flux being the fuel by pressing the button in the reactor (more on flux later). The reactor can power any building nearby a warehouse (though I swear it didn't do that before). Transformers are used to scale power up and make it easier to power everything easier.

With power, you can now expand your resources even further! One thing needs power to produce a new type of resource: bullet factories. Bullet factories produce bullets from metal for your men to use. Without bullets, they can't fight. Bullet factories tend to chew a bit into metal, especially if you have multiple, pair it with the engine fabricator, or both. Just keep an eye on your metal and adjust as needed!

You'll also unlock the military institute with the beginning of light production. You can conscript an army and upgrade units with what you can buy here. Your only option in the beginning is to conscript said military while upgrades are locked behind a hidden resource called science. You get science from entering heavy production though the economic institute, which is it's last upgrade.

Going into heavy production unlocks three buildings: the engine fabricator, the skeleton rig, and the flux filter.

The engine fabricator creates engines from metal, so be cautious of your metal! These engines allow you to make vehicles from the hangar, air platform, and ship yard given to you before light production.

Now the flux! Raw flux is found in these purple crystal formations that look like four-pointed stars. To extract flux from the deposit, you must build a skeleton rig around it. You can have up to four skeleton rigs on one deposit at a time, but this chews through power very quickly! Now that you have raw flux, you can use the flux filter to refine it into usable flux. This resource is used in machines.

After getting the "Protracted War" upgrade, you finally move into the final part of the game: the fortress stage. This stage will actually see you fighting AIs or friends the most!

NOTICE: I do not know the most on this stage, as I don't know how to build the fortress guns yet. This entire guide will be updated (hopefully) as the mod continues or I discover more. Thank you.

The fortress stage will likely be the bloodiest stage of the game. Upon finishing the "Protracted War" upgrade in the military institute, you unlock the ability to use the Builder Walker from the Hangar. This machine can build fortresses and its internals.

Forts are made up of five things: walls, hallways, utilities, defenses, and weapons. The construction part of the fortress consists of the walls and hallways mentioned, plus the doors you can install as well. The walls make up the outer border of the fort along with the walls of the separate rooms you can create in the fort. Hallways act as the floor and ceiling, which you cannot see through unless a unit is inside of the hallway or you have the Active Defense System (ADS) active. An ADS controls the defenses and allows you to see through the roofs of any visible fortresses. This isn't to be confused for the EWS, which vastly extends the fog of war's distance while also managing the fortress cannons. These utilities cannot be place on hallway tiles, instead near them.

The only defenses I've found so far are the autocannons that shoot at incoming shells. I'm assuming that's what they do anyway.

As for the guns, I've yet to find how to get them.

So, it's tough! It's a balancing game of resources while trying to outgun your enemy with superior firepower and manpower. The AI's busted of course, but this mod would be fantastic for a group of friends to go head-to-head with each other. That was all I've picked up on in my time of playing around with the mod. Thank you for reading!