Red Solstice 2 Survivors: Condatis Guide (Campaign Research, Engineering, and General Flow)

Riles Company, the force you are leading in the Condatis Campaign, is vastly different in strategic play and super weapons than the Howell-Barrex or Elysium campaign, with no access to outposts at all.

You are given 6 followers of the Condatis Assault class after the first mission, in addition to your starting 3 Condatis Assault followers.

You also start off with only the Condatis Assault class unlocked. This campaign is also the only campaign wherein you have access to the Psychic suit.

Your super weapon does not kill many STROL mutants compared to the SOLAR or HASROC strategic weapons, however it does give you plenty of intelligence in all regions.

You cannot gain any additional resupply income from outposts, nor gain any extra deployment from regions, nor gain two or more city bonuses at a time.

Condatis Assault followers have no starting ability besides being able to carry secondary weapons. They however have excessive versatility in build, being able to be built as either healers, DPS, or a mix of both. They will always be weaker than a combat suited marine though, as all of their abilities are the basic level only.

The Condatis Assault class you have access to has its maximum level for any ability capped at the third level and has among the lowest armor with a base 7% kinetic resistance. In exchange, you have a good amount of versatility with with a grab-bag of modules from the Medic, Assault, and Psychic classes, with some systems from the Recon class. The Psychic suit is an upgraded version of the Condatis Assault suit, trading non-psychic abilities and life for more raw psychic power, better life regeneration, and a higher level cap for the psychic abilities.

Your superweapon is not to be used primarily for clearing infestation, global or otherwise. Instead it is used when entering a new region cluster you have not been previously to make it easier to enter and survive in.

Overall you are under-equipped relative to the starting situations of other campaigns, and have to rely on critical strikes to manage infestation in local regions and secondary missions within them to gather supplies and specialists.

You have the VLAK, your men, and nothing else. Upgrade Assault Squad to get starting troops on a mission, to screen for you and unlock artillery support.

The main limiting factor in the Condatis campaign is Specialists. Supplies are given in fistfuls of a hundred or so via Deliverer, and beyond that you can use certain engineering items to make hundreds of supplies per mission, if you are diligent enough.

Specialists however you are going to want at all times, whether for upgrading your VLAK and company, or for the passive boost to research. Thankfully, doing the side missions gives you a decent amount of specialists overall, but it is still rather important to manage your specialists.

Your research tree is unlike the other, standardized factions. You have a set of repeatable research, which is as follows.

• 3D Printing
• Desperate Assault
• Bastion
• Repair VLAK

In addition to these repeatable research, you have campaign unlocked research and a chain of research. The chain of research is the Equip Condatis chain, with costs equal to one thousand to three thousand supplies per research.

You can only access regions via your VLAK. The upside is that it’s fast, taking at most three days to move anywhere. You’re more than able to travel the entirety of Mars in a month if you so desired. With the fact that your VLAK is how you’re travelling, you’ll always have at least some intel in your VLAK’s region.

The research you have as a Condatis force is limited, with no ability to research a specific technology. Instead, you have access to six non-repeatable technologies, and four repeatable ones.

• Misplace Technology:
  The most important technology you can research, it spawns a technology crate that, when recovered, gives you technology for your combat suits, instead of the research system used by the other campaigns. After research, you can see which research you will get after recovering a crate.
• Condatis Equipment (1-3):
  The second most important technology to research, each one costs 1000 supplies more than the previous research, but each one unlocks more equipment for you to produce in the armory, most of which provides a major buff or change in gameplay. It may also improve the durability of your Condatis Troopers
• Agony Stimulate:
  The late-game research you unlock near the end of the game, 2 missions or so before the final mission. It massively buffs you as a psychic, with ability cooldown buffs and ability damage buffs, speed, vision range, and doubling your health. No idea if it works on other suits however.
• Loboterminator Autopsy:
  Unlocked after the first mission, all it does is allow progress. Nothing much otherwise.

• 3D Printing:
  Base time to research of about a week and change, it provides 100 supplies upon completion, unaffected by any research cost reductions. Do it if you don’t have anything else going on but any thing else takes priority.
• Desperate Assault:
  Spend 500 supplies and a good chunk of time to reduce infestation in your VLAK’s region by 2. Good with a lot of supplies and specialists for clearing out mission regions before you do them.
• Bastion:
  Spend 250 supplies and a good chunk of time to reduce infestation in your VLAK’s region by 1, give it 4 intel, and give you 1-2 specialists. Nothing special, but you’ll be taking this for the specialists than anything else, given your VLAK already provides a hefty intel bonus.
• Repair VLAK:
  One day to finish and no supplies required, you hit this when your VLAK’s taken a beating.

You have several upgrade lines, all of which relate to your VLAK or your company.

• Assault Squad:
  The most important upgrade you can get, it sends in a starting group of Condatis Troopers to support you on every mission, including story missions. You will absolutely need this and it is recommended to get it ASAP. Three upgrades in total, costing 5/15/30 specialists per level.
• Defense Troops:
  A more defensive version of Assault Troops, it adds more troopers around your VLAK. You start off with a couple of them already around your VLAK but this adds more. Three upgrades in total, costing 8/16/24 specialists per level.
• Supply Cart:
  Boosts your resupply income by 33%, or rather 17 supplies. Possibly bugged, or only the first one is bugged. Decent but not the best, given you can get many more supplies in a mission. Three upgrades, each requiring 100 supplies and 10 specialists.
• Improvements:
  Two separate chains of upgrades, one for improving the VLAK’s durability and one for giving it Reaper Turrets.
  The first line, located on the left with all other upgrades, boosts your VLAK’s life by 30%, or 6000 life per upgrade. Only two upgrades, but it certainly makes your VLAK tougher. Two upgrades, requires 150 supplies and 3 specialists for the first level and 200 supplies and 6 specialists for the second level.
  The second line, located on the right, attaches a powerful reaper gun to your VLAK. With two upgrades, each adding a reaper turret, it comes in at 200 supplies and 10 specialists per turret.
• Field Support:
  Now this is probably the second most important upgrade you can get. It gives a chance to replace Condatis Troopers that fall on the field with new ones. At maximum level it can replace them fast enough that a Hunter Queen can’t kill them fast enough to get to you. Three levels, first requiring 10 specialists and 100 supplies and further upgrades requiring 100 supplies and 15 specialists.
• Intel Management:
  Possibly the third most important upgrade, second and third levels increase the minimum intelligence in surrounding regions, making it a bit easier to do missions. Three levels, costing 5 specialists/50 supplies and 10 specialists/100 supplies and 15 specialists.

As a Condatis company, you have several unique pieces of equipment you can create for your company. All of them are unlocked by researching Equip Condatis Troops.

• Flak Jacket:
  Possibly one of the best equipment items you can have, giving 100 life and 25% kinetic resist for you and maybe your bots. With nearly the bonus life of a duplex life module and the damage resistance of two nanoplates, it is an extremely powerful bonus to your survivability, especially against enemy marines and their kinetic guns.
• Tight Packing:
  The most important engineering item you can get, it boosts locker supplies by 4, for a total of 5 supplies per locker, requiring 6 lockers looted to recoup its cost. More importantly, its bonus supplies can stack with previous supply increases on field armories, resulting in 100+ supplies for fully looting a field armory. This, in combination to most Condatis colonies having at least two field armories means you can get massive supply gains, not even counting prefabs like the Howell-Barrex firebase, with a whopping total of 8 or so Field Armories on that prefab.
• Experimental Boots:
  Interesting item, it might be good for low-intelligence high-storm areas, or for running and gunning, or for letting you move even if you have more poison than blood in your system and both legs broken. Otherwise it’s of minimal use.
• Pizza Time:
  Start with 8 bandages in your inventory. Delicious, but you probably have better healing available to fuel your psychic powers.

• Trinity’s Holy Blessing:
  Prevents all bleeds and poisons from hitting you, as though you have a holy congregation praying for your safety at all times.
• Blazing Rifles:
  Extremely good item, it provides a fully loaded light weapon system from the start of the mission to end of mission, providing a good boost to damage.
• Assault Vlak:
  Highly expensive item to reduce infestation in the mission area, not sure how it works since I don’t remember many changes. Might only affect infestation on the field instead of in the region
• Condatis Scouts:
  Decent equipment for high-value missions that are difficult, maybe have one in storage at all times for when you get a mission that gives 100+ supplies, but really you don’t need this that badly.

• Whale Mind Assault:
  Reduces Whale health by 75%, letting you kill it as though it was a very entrenched biomass. Never got it, because killing whales doesn’t do anything on the strategic map and in tactical gameplay you can just summon more men to counteract desecrator leaders from the whale.
• Psyhotic (sic) Overload:
  You may have used Target Designation early on, when you use the Condatis Assault class. You may have noticed how it makes bosses die faster to the guns of your forces. This is target designation, but for every monster and boss on the field for every damage type. Helps you gun down anything from desecrator leaders to specimens.
• Questionable IED:
  Provides a Questionable IED to deploy, exactly like the one used to kill Whales. Never took it, because it’s unwieldy to use against bosses and you don’t need to kill whales.
• Airdrop:
  Exactly like the Deploy Charger Nodes engineering item for Howell-Barrex, this drops Supply Drops on every intersection, right on top of the gas valve. Not good, since you already have more than enough loot from regular buildings and can’t use it to get more supplies.

There are several things you need to know about Condatis Critical Strike Missions.

• They have low initial deployment costs, like in the Howell-Barrex campaign.
• They generally lower infestation in the region on completion, like certain Howell-Barrex missions.
• They generally don’t give many Specialists.
• They have a chance to give supplies, anywhere from 50-500 I believe. They are not reliable enough to be a source of supplies.
• They may rarely increase intel in the region.

Now, as they don’t give many specialists, nor are they guaranteed to give supplies, this means you are in a bit of a bind, since you don’t get as many resources or specialists as you can from just completing the mission. This means you have to channel your inner Condatis Trooper, and run around the map doing everything you can.

Secondary missions always give specialists and supplies, but do not lower infestation in any region. Generally they average to about 4 specialists and 100 supplies per secondary mission. As you will be using a lot of both for upgrading your VLAK or for doing operations, doing them will absolutely help you survive and even thrive against the STROL hordes.

The Condatis Emergency Orders superweapon reduces infestation in all regions surrounding your VLAK and the region your VLAK is in by a measly 1 infestation level. However, it sets your intel level for every region affected to 6 immediately. This makes the missions in them easier as you move faster and have higher ammo reserves.

Critical Strike/non-story missions occur more often in regions you have not been in contact with for a month perhaps, so you should be moving often to rescue Condatis civilians and colonies. You should also always do them, as they nearly always reduce regional infestation.

Overall, you should view Riles company as the cavalry for Condatis colonies, riding around Mars and rescuing civilians and companies from the local STROL horde, Lobo kidnappers, or other threat.

Following information is only valid if you have the MERCs DLC, which gives you access to the Garage and enables vehicle prefabs to spawn I believe.

You may check your research list, and notice that you have no research options to start up Vehicle Modifications, which unlocks vehicle access in any other campaign.
The first or second technology crate you recover from Misplace Technology should give you the Vehicle Modifications research in addition to its listed technologies for that crate. This will unlock the research for Basic/Advanced/Elite Vehicle Modifications, so don’t worry, you just need to get the rest of your tech up.

As you’re Condatis, you won’t have access to any fancy tanks probably. Won’t fit on the VLAK in any case. You do have access to the HARV and Tuna though, the former as it’s a reliable car and the latter as it’s possibly the second most common vehicle for Condatis. As you’re mostly running around doing everything, and the relatively tight areas of the smaller maps, the HARV is a good choice, while the Tuna provides a decent weapons platform for deployment on heavier waves.