If you ever dreamed of squashing the big bugs from the Starship Troopers movie, then Starship Troopers: Extermination is the game for you. While this is, at its core, a horde shooter, there is a level of strategy to the way you plan to claim victory and level up your classes. We’ve got some Starship Troopers: Extermination tips and tricks to help you win next!
Personally, I am having a great time playing this game and as long as you follow my advice below, you will get along very well with your teammates and have smooth deployments!
Starship Troopers: Initial Tips for Extermination
The core of the game is simple: advance with your team of 15 other players and complete objectives until you can extract, in two current game modes:
- AAS Game Mode – Complete some marked objectives and then build and defend your base. You will collect resources to spawn new mobile bases, until you head into the compound to defend an ARC scanner. You will have maximum resources to use, and this mode is shorter to play and requires less team coordination than ARC.
- ARC game mode: This mode is like AAS but you go straight to building the base. You will collect gas to power up the ARC scanner and ore to build your base. This requires strong team coordination to ensure no one turns on the ARC scanner before you’ve built a base around it.
choose your class
There are 3 classes available in the game to choose from: Hunter, Bastion, and Operator, each with their own focus on gameplay:
- Hunter: Built for fast movement and to eliminate insects. With a wide arsenal of weapons and the ability to drop ammo resupplies for your teammates, this class is excellent for pushing towards objectives or taking down groups of bugs.
- Bastion – Designed for defense, allowing you to drop a shield around yourself for additional weapon stability and protection from bugs, allowing you to break through from bugs assaulting targets or compounds.
- Operator – The main support for the team, able to heal nearby teammates, quickly revive in an area, and add a buff that speeds up build times. At level 20, you will also get a mobile healing station that you can leave for your teammates.
Tips for leveling
To unlock more class loadouts, you will need to level up your class(es) by playing through the game modes described above. You will earn points for:
- Killing Bugs (the bigger, the more points)
- Complete secondary objectives
- Supporting your team (Heal, Revive, Supply)
- win the game
Starship Troopers: Extermination Building Tips
Building an effective base is the key to surviving waves of bugs that want to take out your ARC scanner, and there are some key tips for building an effective base without wasting resources or time.
- Keep the base small – Creating a sprawling base is harder to defend than a well-designed base with a few layers around the ARC scanner.
- Bunkers are extremely strong and are excellent for plugging holes in corners and driveways. You CAN climb on them. You only get 4 so use them effectively.
- The location of the machine guns is critical: don’t put them on the outside wall, in case it gets invaded, and don’t put them all in one place.
- You can deconstruct using Place + Right Click.
- Make sure to build electrified walls around the ARC scanner – if the bugs get close, this will help prevent them from pushing through too quickly while you take them out.
- Between waves, be sure to repair walls and turrets; you can repair the ARC scanner if it takes damage.
- Coordinate with your teammates – don’t build just for the sake of building and don’t waste resources.
Starship Troopers: Extermination Tips For Victory In ARC Mode
The ARC game mode is much more challenging than the AAS base mode – the game doesn’t guide you through gathering resources, and timing is CRITICAL for victory. There are 4 phases in this game mode:
- Phase 1: Initialization of the Base
- Phase 2: Gathering Resources
- Tip: Wait to collect all 8 gas canisters
- Phase 3: Base Defense
- Tip: Check out the base building tips above
- Phase 4: Extraction
Tips for gathering resources
Harvesting ore from refineries is critical to building an effective base. There are two locations where you can collect minerals, and both can collect 8,000 total minerals before they go on cooldown for 5 minutes. Some advices:
- Move with a team to build, start and collect the boats. STAY TOGETHER.
- You must restart the refinery with each canister that fills up and repair it if it is damaged.
- Wait until all 4 have been completed before picking them up, then move as a group.
- Operators can carry two canisters at once, allowing 2 Operators to carry all 4. Operators can simply switch weapons after picking one up to place in the rear slot of the canister.
At the very least, you’ll want to collect around 40-60,000 ores to build a strong enough base with 4 bunkers, 4 turrets, and enough walls to plug holes. If you put all 8 gas canisters on the ARC scanner too early, you’ll exit Phase 3 before your base is ready to be defensible.
Secondary objectives make it easier to win
As you progress through Phase 2, some additional quests will periodically open up to help your team get a little easier.
- Bonus Resource Quests: Periodically some “bonus resources” will be found, which can be ore canisters or gas canisters. It’s worth checking out, because if it’s ore, it’s easy to get 4000 back for your base.
- High Priority Target Missions – When spider target missions appear, you will need to head out and clear groups of bugs. Doing so will reduce the overall threat of the arachnids, which will help reduce the lethality of swarms attacking your base.
- Field Objectives – Completing Field Objectives will earn your team 2 Rocket Launchers that can be equipped and used. You can get more ammo for them at ammo stations, and you’ll keep it until you die, so make sure you equip it in your secondary slot.
defending the base
Once you have built the base and delivered all 8 boats, the arachnids will attack. Your goal is to survive until the ARC scanner finishes scanning, so a strong foundation combined with good teamwork is necessary to win.
- If a wall falls down, fix it quickly, you don’t have to put it back up.
- Stagger the ammo stations around the base for easy access.
- If grenadiers appear and start shelling the base, take them out immediately; once they are “opened”, a single rocket can shoot them down.
- Focus on Tiger Bugs before anything else.
- Pick up as many teammates as you can if they fall, but don’t sacrifice yourself to pick them up.
- Communicate where the insects are attacking or where you see a grenadier coming from.
If you played your cards right and survived the attack, it’s time to draw.
Extraction and completion of the mission
With the scan complete, you’ll want to rush to the extraction point and get off the planet. While this is just one race, the number of people you mine affects your XP gain.
Everyone must move together, and the operators must have their AoE Revive handy.
- To extract, everyone must be INSIDE the ship; the ramp does not count.
- While you’re waiting for people to get to the ship, it’s a good time to rack up a little more XP.
- Only 1 person has to draw to win – if your team is knocked out, you only need 1!
With all of the above Starship Troopers: Extermination tips, you should be ready to squash the bugs and complete your mission. If there are any tips I missed, please leave them in the comments below.