Dust Front RTS Panzerung: Gerichtete Trefferzonen erklärt

Facing is the first thing Dust Front RTS asks you to think about in a fight. Rather than a single pool of hit points per vehicle, the game ships a differentiated armour system built from hit zones, which means where a unit points is a decision rather than an accident. This page covers how the zones work, which units are exempt, how movement types change your ability to hold a facing, and how the Empire toughens its vehicles.

The two conical hit zones

The developer's own description of the vehicle model is a differentiated armor system represented by two conical shapes: one for the front arc, one combined for "sides and rear". That is the entire model. There is no separate rear plate, no turret-versus-hull split, and no per-weapon penetration table that has been published.

Two consequences follow immediately. First, the front arc is the one you want pointed at the enemy, because it is the only zone that is protected on its own. Second, flanking is disproportionately effective, because once you are outside the front cone you are hitting a zone that covers roughly three-quarters of the hull with no further distinction between a side shot and a shot from directly behind.

In practical terms this turns positioning into damage prevention. A tank line that advances nose-first and retreats nose-first will absorb far more punishment than the same line that turns its flank while repositioning. It also means encirclement is a genuine tactic rather than a cosmetic one, particularly against the Bandit and Rebel factions whose vehicles are described as outward-looking and lightly defended.

No armour values, damage multipliers, penetration figures or health pools have been published for any unit or faction. Everything on this page is structural: which zone exists, which units use it, and how to keep the strong arc facing the threat. Any specific number quoted in a community table is player-derived and unconfirmed.

Which units do not use the model

The armour model is not universal. The developer has stated that not all vehicles have it, and that some heavy mutant units have all-round armour — they take no extra damage from side or rear hits.

That exception matters most in the demo, where the Mutant Faction is one of your two opponents. The Mutants are described as an enemy that inspires horror: heavy units, worms and flies, lots of heavy armour, forcing close-quarters combat. If your answer to a heavy push has been to wrap around and hit the back of the column, that habit fails against the units that ignore facing entirely.

The inverse is also useful. Against the Bandit Faction — the starting faction of the gray zones, with light and fast units and lower defence than the Empire — flanking is close to free, because light vehicles have the armour model and the front arc is the only thing keeping them alive.

Reverse move: holding G

Reverse move is the tool the model is built around. Tracked, wheeled and some other vehicles can reverse by holding G, and the developer lists two reasons to use it: presenting stronger frontal armour, and manoeuvring or retreating.

The retreat case is the one that wins fights. Backing out of contact with your front arc still facing the enemy means the pursuit takes your best-protected angle while you disengage. Turning around to run does the opposite — it exposes the combined side/rear zone for the entire length of the turn, which is exactly when a hover chassis or a drifting light vehicle will punish you.

Reverse move also pairs naturally with tactical pause. Freezing the battle on Space, ordering a reverse, and checking the resulting facing is far easier than trying to judge angles at speed. See tactical pause on Space and Esc for the binding detail.

Tracked, wheeled and hover handling

Movement types differ enough that facing is easier to hold with some chassis than others.

• Tracked vehicles mostly turn in place, which makes them the best at holding a facing under pressure — they can pivot without giving up ground.
• Wheeled vehicles have a wider turning radius, so a wheeled column needs room to re-face and will expose a flank while it swings.
• Hover units move smoothly and "drift fluidly into the desired direction", which reads well but means the hull slides rather than pivots.
• Light wheeled vehicles can drift while turning and carry inertia, so they overshoot — the facing you end up with is not always the facing you ordered.

Tanks turn on the spot when the limit angle exceeds a certain value. That threshold has not been published, so treat it as a behavioural rule rather than a number: small corrections are handled by driving, large ones by pivoting.

Making vehicles tougher: the Foundry

Armour in Dust Front RTS is not only about facing. Each faction has three macro buildings that unlock technologies and upgrade all units on the battlefield, deliberately merging quantitative upgrades with tech-tree unlocks into the building so that base building matters more and the interface has fewer buttons.

For the Fourth Industrial Empire, the player faction, the relevant one is the Foundry, which upgrades vehicle toughness. The other two are the Arsenal, which upgrades unit damage, and the Complector, which provides free infantry in the form of Brutes.

Armour versus hit points on infantry and wrecks

Squads work differently from vehicles. Each squad on screen is one unit, and the soldiers in it visually show the squad's health — they die in strict sequence as it drops. The important rule is that the number of remaining soldiers does not affect damage output; a squad on its last man fights at full damage. The exception is a unique soldier with personal weapons, such as the rocket man in a rocket squad, who is the last to die so the unit keeps firing. Refilling a squad is done by healing it.

Vehicles have their own endgame. Large destroyed units leave wrecks that can be restored: for the Industrial Empire, destroyed super-heavy vehicles can be rebuilt with a special repair unit, which is why the Dreadnought is classified as an ultra-large unit at all. A bug that could produce negative supply when repairing a ruined vehicle was fixed in D-30, so reclaiming no longer costs population.

Related pages

• Dust Front RTS combat systems
• Tactical pause on Space and Esc
• Dreadnought: ultra-large unit and wreck recovery
• Factions: Empire, Mutants, Robots and Rebels
• Parts, economy and reclaiming wrecks
• Official Dust Front RTS store page