Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance: Detailed walkthrough

This guide is based on the realistic difficulty. It presents the best way and decisions to get through the campaign. It does not cover how to get achievements or what less “effective” decisions leads to. It also does not cover data mined details like armour ratings that can be found on other sources.

I limited the scope to this much as the guide will already be a huge undertaking and quite long. I am also publishing before final completion as this will probably be a month long project.

Take the difficulty that you feel you are most comfortable with. Realistic is a real save/reload slug. Normal is more in line with the hard difficulty found in other more mainstream RTS games.

Realistic experience in a nutshell:
Wants to move fully upgraded tank 20 feet — saves — moves tanks, gets blown up — reload.

Do not skip the tutorial missions as it lets your initial core founders troops acquire more experience and nets you 3 more drivers units.

Losses in men are acceptable. Yes really.
Losses in crucial weapon systems are unacceptable. Yes really.

A founder infantry man getting killed? no biggie. A militia sniper armed with a plasma rifle gets wrecked? reload.

More in the next section for what weapons systems, how many and what units we are aiming to get for the last mission.

S tier units – never get rid off, can never have enough

Founders Infantry, Rangers and Engineers. Tank crews (you’ll get about 12 of them). Supplies HEMTT.

A tier units – To keep a good number of

Militia Technicians. Founders Drivers.

B tier units – Kinda useful, kinda not

Sniper (founders or militia), RPG squad.

Trash units They are useful to an extent at the very beginning only

ATGM squad after R2

All other units

Special units notes –

Hero snipers in the Kondo unit can be disbanded after the Oklahoma mission. They lose all usefulness after it. But an achievement can be gotten if kept till the end and their supply upkeep is dirt cheap. Up to you.

Mercenaries are strong since each man in the unit is armed with a crucial unique weapon. Meaning you cannot allow them to be killed in a battle. They also cannot be trained as they gain experience.
Their best use is to be bought, stripped of their nice weapons and sold back.

The Black hawk helicopter is a legion tank hunter-killer, but most often gets killed by the light vehicles always accompanying legion tanks. Quite sad.

Artillery units under 155mm are trash.

Notes on vehicles –

Light vehicles are useful up to Vega. However, spawn conditions in missions means you need to keep like 4 Humvee for the first 5 minutes of late game missions before having them sit out the next 50 minutes.

10k Supplies vehicles are super important.

Fuel supplies can be found in every mission you do or the missions are too short to justify keeping them. They net high goodwill credits when sold however.

Always leave a mission by taking all possible vehicles, then sell them in the next possible location.

By end game, all fighting vehicles that is not a Bradley or an Abrams is absolute trash on high difficulties.

Notes on supplies and goodwill credits

Goodwill credits are always used to buy supplies. And less used to buy upgrades, vehicles and units.

1 goodwill credit is worth 10 supplies on the map.

Reserve manpower cost 75 supplies per day. And 10 goowill to buy at a settlement. So it is technically cheaper to buy reserves when possible than drag them around the map with you.

All units have a fixed supply usage on the map, whether they have lost some men or not. So it’s cheaper to restore your units with reserve manpower than not.

Notes on unit trainings

Most trainings are useless and some are situational.

Survivalist training is crucial for founder units at the start and loose value the closer you are from the end of the grand journey.

Founder drivers and tank crews only need survivalist, extreme driver and best gunner.

EMP devices and hacking is too dangerous to use on realistic and hard.

ATGM squads are trash so why train them.

Militia technicians only need Tank Olympics which adds another man to the unit for no extra supply cost and let’s them use tanks. But you won’t need many trained in this by end game.

Number of days on your grand journey –

Variable but minimums are:
Start to R1: 0 days
R1 to R2: 1 day + 1.25 day (says 3 days but there’s an hidden mission. Optional 2 days for integrators trade, not worth it.
R2 to R3 (new tortuga): 1 day, then supplies, 5 days Optional 2 days +36k for integrators trade, no worth
R3 to R4 (bridge): Instant or avoid mission for 1 day
R4 to R5 (chihuahua): 3 days
R5 to R6 (vega): 6 to 7 days then 5k goodwill for shortcut then 2 days
R6 to R7 (Oklahoma): 5 days
R7 to R8 (fort worth): 5 days optional 2 days int so worth and 2 days mili no worth
R8 to R9 (midlands): 3 days
R9 to R10 (Int camp): 0 days
R10 to R11 (Gavelston): 8 days

Grand minimum: 41 / with worthy detours 43 (counted before the new missions added in the update)

From Sumatris guide, expected daily supply needs of your force (amount for easy difficulty) :

After Abiquiu: 40,000 (56,000)
After Albuquerque: 45,000 – 50,000 (63,000 – 70,000)
After Tortuga: 50,000 – 55,000 (70,000 – 77,000)
After Chihuahua: 65,000 (91,000)
After Vega: 70,000 (98,000)
After Oklahoma: 75,000 – 90,000 (105,000 – 126,000)

All salvage values bellow unless stated otherwise are taken for not upgraded, fully supplied and fuelled salvage.

The damage or repair status of the salvage does not appreciably change the value of the salvage.

Upgrades on salvage cannot be removed but do not loose value when sold with the salvage. So a technical with a 150 goodwill armor will sell for 150 goodwill more than it’s unarmored counterpart.

When refuelling and resupplying a salvage, the golden ratio of 1 goodwill per 10 supplies holds true. Your salvage will rise in goodwill value accordingly. Exemple: Refuelling for 100 supplies will give the salvage 10 goodwill in value.

Salvage: Goodwill value

Armored carrier trailer: 1650

Fuel station trailer: 2070

Supply trailer: 2070

HEMMTT fuel tanker: 2460

Stryker: 1274

M113 APC: 1256

Main tractor: 1272

Technical: 498

Van: 543

Light platform: 770

Humvee: 679

The final and hardest mission, Gavelston, only lets you spawn a limited amount of units. The efficient soft limit is thus:

5 Abrams tanks
8 Bradley IFVs
4 artillery units
4 supplies or fuel vehicles
4 light vehicles is the minimum I got away with to do well at the beginning of the last missions.
47 total foot units including the drivers of the above vehicles // So only 22 units will fight on foot in Gavelston

The best weapons to have for the efficient soft limit:

12 mounted minigun – Abrams and light vehicles
1 mounted plasma recoilless rifle – light vehicle
8 light rotary 20mm canon – Bradleys
8 Bradley tow upgrades
4 Sraw rocket launchers
22 NGSW-R advanced assault rifles – for foot units
4 LWMMG advanced machine guns
3 plasma shotguns
6 laser sniper rifles
1 rail cannon

The best upgrades to have for the efficient soft limit (some you won’t find more than 1 or 2):

5 of each: Abrams armor, engine, and active protection system
8 of each: Bradley armor and engine upgrades
4 humvee engine upgrades
4 M109 SPH engine upgrade

Now knowing this is nice but it is only for the last mission. During the campaign your army will look sometimes wildly different from mission to mission and it’s a good thing.

Atlanta –

The only point to learn in this map is that building come in three flavours: Strong, medium and weak. Weak buildings must never be used to put troops in.

Follow objectives till the one next to 1. Send both units in 1. Once Bradley comes defend OBJ, send engineers to 2 and infantry to 3. Once AI friendlies start pulling back, send both units to E.

Congrats on a swift first mission.

Rio Grande National Forest –

This mission is to start easing you in more complex unit placement and coordination. Do not let a single one of your men die since you cannot replenish the units before the next mission.

You start with 1 infantry squad under your command at 1. Send the squad with an attack to order to deal with the Legion drones. They won’t fight back.

With the drones dealt with the game will give you 2 more units under your command at 1. Send them to the requested places on the map and watch the cutscene.

Once the custscene is over pause immediately and get your infantry squad in the prone position. Order the humvee to attack the incoming wolfpack. And get the snipers to move towards the road so they can actually shoot at the incoming troops.

After the wolfpack comes a platform carrier that will drop a unit of homunculi armed with plasma (dangerous for the humvee). Task your infantry to destroy the platform with HEAT and have your forces destroy the Homunculi all together.

After the cutscene, your forces are all teleported to 2 and you are tasked with “securing” the path to 3. Of note, two wolfpacks will spawn at A and will patrol between it and 3. Advance your forces to 3 and dispatch the easy wolfpacks.

A bit after the combat medic starts moving, a ATGM unit will be given to you at 3. Load them into the humvee and set them up to shoot the incoming spider around B. Set your other units in support of the ATGM because more wolfpacks will be coming from C.

Watch a cutscene and send all your units to 1 taking the following defensive position. Despite the game telling you to protect the doc he has enough fire support already on 2.

Dispatch the incoming Legion troops until the striker appears on the map and is given to you. Send the striker near the ATGM squad since they will need ammo refill very soon. 2 platform carriers will soon attack. Disable the BGM on your sniper squad so they don’t aggro the platform’s fire and reactivate it once the platforms are destroyed.

Send the rangers once you have control of them to the same building as the infantry squad. Both will soon come under attack by suicide drone. They’re easy to deal with but some homunculi will aggro your troops fire at the same time. Pause the game and give attack orders on the suicide drones when visible.

With them done with it’s time to evacuate the doc and civilians. Have the doc loaded onto the humvee at 2 and send the humvee to 1, the civilians at 1 load them into the striker. Legion forces will spawn continuously from A and C but a first wave of homunculis, 2 platforms and a spider need to be dealt with before going to 3.

Once dealt with make your way carefully to 3. Take the mountain road instead of getting closer to C to avoid instant death by spawning legion forces. With everyone evacuated at least of of your unit needs to get back to B. The humvee is faster. Set the striker and other squad on the mountain road overlooking C to protect it.

Wait for the game to tell you to evacuate once again and scram ASAP.

Heaven Base –

This mission only purpose is to make you fear Legion takes. No kidding. Loosing some men is fine, but do not loose an entire unit. You can only retrieve a humvee from this mission, it’s waiting at E to be taken during evacuation so other vehicles are all expandable.

At the start, send your infantry in the building at 1 and your rangers + snipers in the turrets on both sides of 1. Send your ATGM in the turret that doubles as a supply point at 2 with your stryker. Don’t forget to activate the supply distribution. Send your humvee to the bottom of the right purple rectangle.

Soon, you will be provided with a hero tank driver. Send it to the Bradley, once he gets in you get a HEMTT fuel tanker. Send the HEMTT to refuel the bradley, don’t fill it fully, a quarter full is more than enough. Once refuelled send the Bradley to 2 to receive ammo supplies from the ATGM crewed tower.

Dismount the drivers in the HEMTT tanker and have they crew the HEMTT supply truck. Send the truck to your humvee, you’ll need the supplies there soon.

The game will task you to secure two. Keep it under control for now or it’s an instant loss.

Now the game give you control of an engineer unit, send them to mine the purple zones with Anti-tank mines. Start with the right side before legion forces starts spawning there and then do the left rectangle. This is immobilise the legion tanks that would otherwise attack A. Use the HEMTT truck to refill the engineer’s mine supplies. Here are the wanted results:

Note: You can use Anti-personnel mines in the green rectangles. Legion homunculi’s will pour by the hundreds there to attack 3. But they attack single file meaning that at best the mines will kill 1% of them. I didn’t bother.

A cutscene will warn you that a legion tank is attacking 2. Immediately pause the game upon resuming control and evacuate your forces to 1. Don’t wait for the game to tell you to do it. This is a good time to send your engineers to mine the left purple rectangle. Send your Stryker and ATGM to help your humvee on the right rectangle.

Soon some allied forces will come from the right and will need saving, your units there are enough to do the job. Once the spawned legion forces are all destroyed and the allied units saved, pull your units to 1. After the minefield are laid your defence of 1 should look like this:

You have now control of 4 new units including a tank, they’re low on ammo so bring the HEMTT truck to 1 to refill them. All current units at 1 are going to join you permanently so do not loose a single unit. The game will provide later another two driver units that will also join your permanent forces.

The next few minutes of the mission are relatively straightforward, keep defending 1 until you are ordered to pull to 3. If you need supplies, take them from the supply turrets. You can refill the HEMTT truck from supply turrets as well.

The founders will evacuate in 3 waves. Robbing you of allied units and command squads every wave. You must keep the reactor and warehouse control centre manned with a command squad or the mother-1 hero unit (currently in the abrams). The warehouse control refills turret ammo which is the only way to defend 3 without terrible losses. The repair bay and command center serves close to no purpose.

When you receive the two driver units at the repair bay, send them to crew the turrets at 3.

Your defence of 3 should look like this:

Leave a humvee and stryker to defend the entry to A. Some stray units will wander in at times.

When your units in the bunker start being too hurt, rotate them with a unit in the command command centre while they heal. Rinse and repeat until it is time to fully evacuate.

When you have a free unit, send it to the turret supply at B, it will complete an optional objective during the final evacuation.

During final evacuation, send all your units to E in waves. Keeping the bunker and turrets crewed at 3 until all other units are safely past it. The unit sent to B has to enter the building to activate the self destruct before evacuating.

Do not forget to take the humvee at E before fully evacuating.

Pro tip: There is a turret supply on E, have your troops resupply there before evacuating. It will save resources on the map.

Nothing to do at this time if you did not loose any men during the last mission. If you did loose some men, the game just provided you with 12 men in reserve. Click on your current location “Near Abiquiu” to open your forces management window and select the cross icon at the bottom left.

Do take the time to get familiar with everything on screen and the options you have access to.

Once you’re ready, select Abiquiu and order your forces there. Note that the travel time is 0 hours, meaning this movement will not cost you any supplies.

First half –

This is the first proper mission and a crucial one to set your forces for future success thanks to a plethora of vehicles that can be salvaged along with huge amounts of units and your first Abram + Stryker.

It’s also a mission that has different phases, quests and special actions the player can accomplish. Something that will happen regularly in following missions.

Here is the first codified minimap for this map and its legend.

1 – First part of Balzano’s quest line and a van salvage.
2 – Technical and light platform salvage.
3 – First part of the Mover’s quest line and tractor + trailer salvage
4 – Legion base
K – Kondo (free hero sniper)
E – Elder (free militia units)
H – Harry (free stryker)
D – Dealer
M – Movers (free technical and driver)
B – Balzano (free militia sniper)

Select your humvee driven by a founder driver unit, your 2 ranger squads and and infantry squad to spawn with.

Your spawn will soon be crawling with Legion so there’s no time to waste. Send a ranger unit to 1 and all three others to 2.

At 1, you will have a dialogue with your future snipers, when they ask if the van is yours you reply “What vehicle”. Do not claim that the van is yours or you loose the free sniper unit from Balzano. Once the conversation is done, crew the van with your rangers and repair it, there’s enough spare parts left to do so. Once repaired send it to K immediately. Do not talk to Kondo yet.

With the forces at 2, task the humvee to hitch the light platform and have your rangers wait for the technical to finish burning so you can salvage it like the van. Once both are salvaged, send your units to 3 and start the conversation with your future technical + militia technician units. When they ask you to flee from the attacking legion refuse to do so and tell them you’ll help them fight. If you tell them you’ll flee, they will refuse to join you later.

Deal with the wolfpack then send the infantry unit to the elder and the humvee and technical to the Dealer. Now talk to Kondo and exhaust all dialogue options. You have now access to live views from across the map and a radio.

Send the van to Balzano and take all dialogue options except the one where you attack him. Balzano must stay alive for future rewards in a late game mission. You now have the free sniper unit. Load it in the van and send the van to the dealer.

Once the infantry unit is at the Elder, exhaust all dialogue options then send the unit to the Dealer.

Get very close to the dealer to activate the dialogue and tell him you still want his weapons. He’ll ask you for the van in exchange. Get the van close to him and he’ll automatically ask you if it’s for him. Tell him yes and the Elder will give you two free militia units. Send one unit that can drive to retrieve the truck and trailer from 3 and bring it to the Dealer.

Now send the new RPG unit to Harry and tell him you know he has secret stuff, he’ll tell you to screw off. The main point is to have talked to him before attacking the legion base. Leave the RPG team there, it’s important for later.

Finally send all your units to the movers, tell them you’re friendly and during the next dialogue tell them that the Elder asked you to get rid of the legion base. They will agree to help you attack Legion and crucially it does not count has having sided with Balzano or the Movers. Or tell them you don’t have a target yet if you need more time to prep. Whichever, you will now receive the free technical and militia technicians.

Between the movers and the Legion base there is a ruined church with three civilians at the entry, get close to them to receive a free heavy weapons team with an amazing plasma recoiless rifle that is so handy for the Legion base assault.

Attack the Legion base before or after the Movers start doing it themselves. Have your recoiless unit and technical shoot the spiders and your other units deal with the other Legion units. Go slow and carefully, have your infantry in prone position when shooting starts and reload if you loose a unit. Also do your best to keep the movers units alive as many of them will become yours soon.

With the base dealt with, a cutscene will play and you are now on a timer to finish preparing yourself for Legion’s onslaught. Have your rpg team that waited at Harry’s tell him his sister’s safe and ask about his secret. Mount the Stryker and bring it to the movers base. Hiding at the field is a bad plan, the Movers base is so much better since it is over elevated and not too far from Legion since you will need to attack them.

Use the tractor to remove the trailers from the entry of the movers base to a safer position in the fields before the Legion base you just wiped out. The movers base will become a battlefield and you don’t want the salvage being in the way.

Accept the movers units request to join you and position your forces in the buildings like this and have them on shield behaviour.

Once Kondo tells you to attack Legion, change them back to the sword and shield behaviour and wait for Legion to go into your firing range. If too far, use the humvee to get a quick agro.

Second half

1 – Objective that will spawn a Movers army to help you once activated for 3 minutes
2 – Spawn for the rest of your forces
A – Kondo hero unit spawn along with a civilian group
B – Place the Civilian group needs to reach
E – Completed mission evacuation
T – Free abrams
V – Free Bradley and HEMTT fuel
F – Mined field with free M113 APC and humvee

Now that legion is agroed to the Movers base, the main threat will be the vehicles it throws at you. Use the buildings to break line of sight until they are close enough to be shot at by your RPG units or recoiless.

Use your HMG vehicles to protect your foot soldiers from Legion’s foot soldiers.

Notes on this image: After the heavy initial attack wave was destroyed, I placed the Heavy weapon squad in a way to be able to shoot at the odd legion’s vehicles coming from the road while HMG vehicles make sure no homunculi or wolfpack can get to them.

When the Movers base objective gets activated, take and hold it until the Movers army spawn on the map. The movers will soon provide you with another tractor, supply trailer and 2 militia technicians.

The Movers are strong enough to finish the mission on their own. So instead concentrate on salvaging the vehicles and trailers around the map. If you follow Movers forces, you may be able to steal a few vehicles while their crews repair them.

When the mission is over, after a bit of time has elapsed a few enemy Balzano units will spawn at the field. Nothing dangerous if your units salvaging the vehicles there have support.

After having salvaged as many vehicles as you can, you can take the time to refuel your forces with the fuel trailer and restock some foot soldiers at the armoured carrier trailer.

There is only one weapon system of note that can be salvaged, the plasma HMG a unit of terminators is equipped with. But the plasma recoilless rifle your heavy weapon squad has is better to keep.

Bring the trailers with the best resale value with you. The fully stocked value of each is as follow:

Here is the salvage I got and final results.

This time we start doing some real T-force management. You can click on the Elder’s head on the map to request 13 free reserve manpower. Not needed unless you had dire losses.

First things first, restore all units. Then get rid of all reserve manpower. We’ll get more soon at R2.

Now give the survivalist training to all founder units that have a free training slot except for the ATGM squads.

The journey will last 43 days minimum and the survivalist perk cost 200 goodwill or 2 000 supplies when converted. So even the sniper units will benefit from this perk now since it will save you a total of 3 440 supplies over the 43 days. Don’t train the snipers if you don’t intend to keep them.

Strip all vehicles, the heavy weapon and ATGM squads of their special weapons.

With that done, order your forces to move to the movement supply base (R2).

Sell all technicals, light platforms, M113, trailers and HEMTT fuel tanker in the “hire” tab by either double clicking or drag dropping.

Buy all supplies for 1k goodwill.

Give the minigun to the abrams and the plasma recoilless to an humvee. Give the mp5 stripped from the ATGM squads to Kondo and the sharpshooters.

For now we will not sell any squads especially the ones that can drive vehicles. Militia infantry are needed meat shields for the next mission.

Make sure to repair, refuel and resupply your forces. You can also give the extreme driver training to your tank crews and drivers if they have enough experience. Best gunner training is another great choice. but speed is just a little bit better.

Also take the time to put the best units to drive the vehicles. Give the humvees and stryker to the most experienced and trained drivers. And the truck to the technicians.

Note: there is an integrator camp in Taos. It cost 2 days supplies to visit and has a random selection of stuff you can buy. Usually it always has a bradley and tow ATGM upgrade for sale. But in realistic and hard I cannot justify the supplies wasted by visiting it.

Order your force to Albuquerque, it will be intercepted at a movement roadblock for a dialogue. After you have to re-issue the move order to Albuquerque and a hidden mission will start.

All your forces start already spawned in for the first and only time in the game.

On this map, the Abrams and Bradley will do all the heavy lifting and will move around so much they will need a refuel mid mission. Your goal is to destroy Legion convoys and save the movers who will provide you a ton of units and salvage.

Line of sight is also incredibly important on this map. Snipers in cover are hard to spot by Legion, even more with the chameleon upgrade but on realistic it is still tantamount to suicide to use them like this. Instead put your units in medium to strong buildings so they can survive being attacked.

Legion tanks will spawn in large numbers during this mission. Legion tanks have terrible view range letting your tank snipe them undetected from the flanks or back.

Also, your tank has limited ammo for its main gun. You should micromanage that. Desactivate He when you want it to shoot at vehicles since AP will go through light vehicles but not foot soldiers. And disable AP when you shoot at foot soldier. Also consider closing the hatch when being shot at to protect your crew. The HMG operator has a tendency to be easily killed.

Here is the annotated minimap and its legend.

1 – Objective to hold
2 – Objective to hold
3 – Pilot to save
C – Legion convoy spawns, they will follow to roads in red to E
A – Legion artillery spawn, you will be warned when they appear
I – Integrator camp (quest) do not go in or they turn hostile and we wanna be friends
U – Occupied hostile complex (integrator quest)
E – Map exit

Send all your forces to 1 to help the beleaguered Movers and take the objective. The road in front has a convoy passing through that will be attacked by a mover aircraft. Engage the convoy with your tank after the aircraft did its attack run.

With the convoy dealt with, attack and take 1 before the movers do it themselves. The movers units here will be given to you so you want to avoid casualties. Be mindful that Legion has two vehicles and homunculi’s in medium buildings on 1.

With 1 cleared, start putting half your forces to defend it like this and set a roadblock for a second legion convoy that is arriving shortly on the same spawn as the first.

Send your technicians, vehicle less drivers and rpg squads towards E. Use your tractors to reposition the salvage at 1 in a safer place. 1 will be attacked from the West, East and North.

With the second convoy destroyed, it is time to take care of 2.

First spawn (start):
1 IFV
1 stricker
4 LV
10 foot

Second spawn (at crater):
1 tank
2 IFV
2 strikers
3 LV
1 arty
10 foot

Third spawn (time gated?)
2 heli
2 arty
2 tanks
5 IFV
8 stricker
2 supplies
10 LV
15 foot

Fourth spawn (after 1 obj)
2 heli
2 tanks
2 arty
5 IFV
8 stricker
2 supply
10 LV
15 foot