Editing User:Growling Badger/Sandbox


== Guide to Camp Building ==

Not necessarily the right way to do it, but this is the way I did, hope its useful. Bear in mind my camp is near FL so your maps may be different depending on location.

== Before you start ==

1.Save, save, and save some more. Understand that you may win a camp auction but have you got the cash to build the camp. Whilst your crews are busy taking stuff to camp they are not scouting or racing to earn money. Make sure you have lots of reserves as it will be a while before you start manufacturing and selling. My camp cost about $24,000,000 at auction and then you need to consider building materials costs, fuel to get your convoys to camp and back, weekly gang costs whilst you are not earning in other activities (if focusing solely on camp development). 

2.Get good and moving lorry squads. You will need lots of trips to build a camp. I had three squads and used the following:

1xFlash:
Flash, 2L rotary engine, A armour: F:8,Re14,L10,Ri10,T6,B8, Re:FOJ, 4 reinforced tyres, 1 driver, cargo: 2 reinforced tyres, 1 FOJ ammo, 2 fuel tank. The driver of this vehicle should be your scout. Use the best scouts you have as there is more chance of trucing encounters rather than having to fight them.

2xLorry:
Lorry, 9.4L engine (exposed),A armour: F:40,Re50,L40,Ri40,T15,B15, F:HSS, Re:HMG & HFOJ, 4 reinforced tyres, 1 trucker and 1 large gunner, cargo: 4 reinforced tyres, 4 HMG ammo, 4 HFOJ ammo, 4 HSS ammo, 150 fuel tank. This leaves space for about 1860 bulk.

1xApache:
Apache, 3.2Lv8 engine, B armour: F:19,Re:33,L30,Ri30,T:10,B9, Re:2xHMG, 4 reinforced tyres, 1 driver, 2 large gunners, cargo: 4 reinforced tyres, 4HMG ammo, 2 fuel tank.

Set up towards the rear of the circle so that if the enemy spawns in front of you you have more space to turn around. Give your vehicles space between them to turn around without crashing and try to arrange them so that the lorries and flash are at the back dropping FOJ. If you have to turn around make sure there is a route for your Apache to get in front of the lorries to avoid their FOJ. When enough FOJ  has been deployed let the apache drop to the rear to take out any persistent offenders. You need good large gunners for this because the penalty for rear firing means at 70 to 100m it is probably easier for the enemy to hit you than it is for you to hit them. 

3.Have at least 4 mechanics trained to 100 or more. The more you have the easier it will be as you will get more mech points and therefore be able to repair your lorry squads more at camp, before heading back to town for more materials.

4.Have a stock pile of building materials at the town nearest your camp. Not essential but if you have it all ready you weill not need the money later on and if it is at the nearest town you will not have to worry about moving it. If you have loads of building materials elsewhere it may be worth it to simply sell them there and buy near your camp instead.


== What to build  ==

1.I built a mech shop first because you may need to repair vehicles damaged on the way to camp, and to protect your vehicles if you stay at camp overnight. Your camp mech rating defines how much CR of vehicles your camp can accommodate overnight. If it is not high enough (when you start out it they at camp over night. Therefore it is a good idea, if you can, to send enough lorries with enough stuff to build a mech shop in one go, drop it all of at camp and set off back before night (roughly 00:15 each day). If your vehicles are on the way back to town they will not be damaged because of insufficient mech rating, although any vehicles left at camp will suffer the damage. 

For this reason it is important to try and minimise any damage to your vehicles on the way to camp. If one or more is damaged so much that you dont want to send it back consider the damage it will take just form staying at camp overnight with insufficient mech rating.

Don't forget to take sufficient fuel for the journey home!

Mech shop needs:
$50,000
600 stone
200 scrap metal
200 car parts
20 electronic parts

If taking all this in one go, including fuel for the return journey, you would need 7 lorries. Alternatively, as stone an scrap metal don't get damaged when left out overnight you could take that first and come back for the other materials in the second trip.

2.In order to leave some fuel and ammo stored at camp for the return journeys, and to protect the building materials that do decay I built a lock up next.

3.Depending on what natural resources your camp has may define what buildings you build next, I built a stone plant and then a house (to get workers for the stone plant) so that I have a supply of stone coming in daily, reducing the need for lorries, although not by much - with low stone resources and 1 stone plant I only get 40 stone per day at this point.

4.I found that I didn't have enough mech rating to protect vehicles over night or to make sufficient repairs to my vehicles so I built another Mech shop. Now with 2 mech shops I had a mech rating of 33 with the following mechs:
131,126,116,101,56,15,13,7 - clearly room for improvement! This gave me about 560 mech points to make repairs with. Note the following repair "costs" from mech points:

1 pt B armour on Apache 5.7
1 pt A armour on Apache 22.8
1 pt A armour on Lorry 6.8
1 pt A armour on Buzzer 36.4
1 pt A armour on Flash 20.8

I know seem to have enough CR to accommodate my vehicles over night without damage and, leaving a lorry at camp to store stuff, and 6000 bulk space in buildings I seem to have just enough space to keep ammo, fuel, food, a few spare weapons just in case, and car parts and electronic parts for building.

5.Next, for similar reasons to building a stone plant above, I built a metal plant and a house. With medium metal resources this may negate the need for me to bring in any scrap in lorries.

6.With fuel resources at camp I built a house and 4 oil plants (as you only need 5 workers per oil plant and a house gives 20. This means I don't have to bring fuel to camp, and now in fact I am exporting it for sale! finally a return on investment!