Headquarters

The Headquarters is your command center: it produces Engineers and generates a little power. It also defends itself: a twin heavy machine gun on the roof, a shade stronger than a Gatling Turret and reaching 7 tiles, so a buggy, a light tank, a gunship or a turret stood at the wall pays, while a howitzer or a rocket launcher standing off still outranges it. Losing it is not the end: you are only out of the game once nothing you own can rebuild a base: no Headquarters, no production building and no Engineer. Turrets, extractors and unfinished blueprints do not count, and an army with no way to rebuild gets ninety seconds of last stand before it is eliminated. If the HQ falls, a surviving Engineer can rebuild it.

The ground around it is yours, and it is the only ground you build on. Everything but an extractor, offshore rig or mine must stand within a ring around one of your side's Headquarters: yours, or an ally's. The ring is the map's usable ground shared out among the players still in the game: the land a base can stand on plus the shore water a Naval Yard can, so an island seat is not short-changed by the sea around it. Each living Headquarters holds an equal share of that ground as a disk, a team of two holds two rings, and the ring grows when a player is eliminated or surrenders, while a side that loses an ally loses that ally's ring. The placement ghost draws your side's rings and turns red beyond them. An Engineer flown into the enemy's base cannot stand a turret line at their gate, and theirs cannot at yours: extractors, offshore rigs and mines may be built outside the ring. If your side has no Headquarters standing at all, nothing holds you: a surviving Engineer can lay a new one where it stands, and the ring returns around it.

It is also what pays for your production. Each standing Headquarters gives you three production slots by default. Game config’s Production slots per HQ setting changes this from 1 to 10, and every War Factory, Airbase and Naval Yard takes one, in any mix, at any tier, from the moment its blueprint is placed. When those slots are full, another Headquarters adds the configured number of slots. Upgrading a line keeps its slot; selling one frees it; and if the HQ falls, the lines you have keep working but no new one can be placed until it stands again. On a team, one player's lines can be the air force while another's are the fleet.

How to use

Each completed HQ produces a base rate of 0.5 metal per second, with the same income, health and power modifiers as extractors. If every extractor is lost and your metal reaches zero, this trickle can fund another one.

Start every match by queuing two or three Engineers and sending them to deposits and power. Spend your production slots deliberately, and when the economy outgrows them, another Headquarters provides more. The HQ's own power covers only the first extractor or so, so a Power Plant comes early. Ring it with turrets facing the enemy's approach, and keep a Radar or drone watching for bombers, which love an unguarded HQ.

A Radar Station and any completed Lv.3 production line unlock the 15,000-metal, 180-second upgrade to Headquarters Lv.2. While it survives, your team sees the whole map, your units gain damage and movement bonuses, and Engineers can build new Lv.3 production lines directly at their full cumulative price.