Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers – Useful Tips and Tricks

Various tips and bits of advice for Ten Hammers.

Tips and Advice

Note: Credit goes to Samz

Changes from FSW1

To start off with some info that’ll save headaches later: FSW:TH makes some big changes from the original that the tutorial doesn’t make clear as well as not fully explaining some important things:

For starters, let’s go over the bad, your troops are alot worse

Going Prone if no good cover is gone, at most troops can crouch down to avoid gunfire but thankfully they still return fire automatically at enemies that can hit them.

In the original game, troops can take 1-2 bullets usually at a distance and keep fighting, in Ten Hammers, a single shot will always take them down.

While this goes both ways, angled cover is much worse, in FSW, the game was a bit forgiving with angled cover, there was a bit of an angle where cover would still protect you even if visibly, you and the enemy were exposed, that’s gone now, make sure the cover is definitely blocking the direction you’re taking fire from.

Enemy troops also seem more accurate, as a general rule of thumb, if you realized quick enough, you could quickly order to move back in FSW1 if you moved to a bad position, maybe with one soldier down, in Ten Hammers, you can easily lose an entire squad to this, make sure you do not misclick or quickly give the fallback order if you do.

The game will only mention this in the tutorial (and only if you mouse over one) but destroyed cars provide no cover, they might as well not exist and you can get shot through them so keep that in mind, I dunno if infantry gunfire can destroy cars but BMP Machine Guns certainly can.

For positives

Ammo is more forgiving, while troops carry less bullets, Frag/Smoke/M203 Grenades are all restocked when you resupply your troops, as opposed to the original game.

And as the tutorial goes over, you can split fire-teams into buddy teams, since your troops are weaker (and misclicks are punished harder), I suggest constantly having your teams split, one advantage is that you can have two down members of Alpha/Bravo team before a game over, if a single buddy fire team goes down to a bad order, it’s not game over.

Same goes for combat, you can cover 4 different directions thanks to this at once, I often found it useful even if the Buddy-Teams were close to each other, to keep them split to cover more directions at once.

While poorly explained in-game, the single soldier sent out for a “scouting” Order has “armor” and enemies will take longer to shoot him, plus he’ll instantly without delay return to his team if he sees any hostiles, (and if the area is clear, the rest of the squad will move up.) you pretty much should get used to using scouting as much if not more than the basic movement command when entering unknown territory.

While I’m really not a fan of the nerfs (especially since the AI needing a full second to respond to movement orders can and will get you killed), taking advantage of what new mechanics you have will make things much easier.

With the exception of Daniels in the last chapter, you can now lose Charlie/Delta Team without a game over.

There are other changes but I feel the tutorials/manual properly explain them in enough detail as well as the in-game Battle Drill tutorial videos accessible from the extras sections in the main menu. (You’ll be prompted to watch a random Battle Drill after a mission fail but I suggest just watching them all in this menu.).

Advice for the New Mechanics of Ten Hammers

I emphasized using buddy teams before and I’ll repeat it again, this is mainly because the Ten Hammers AI is not static like the first game, they’ll move around more in combat and can and will flank you if given the chance, always try to have at least a buddy fire-team watching your troops backs so they aren’t flanked and killed.

An new annoyance in Ten Hammers is scripted infinite reinforcements, while you can pick off troops further away with sniping from a rifleman, often the game will slowly spawn in more enemies until you get close enough to stop the spawning, be careful when killing enemies at a distance as more will likely spawn in, always move from cover to cover incase enemy reinforcements are on the way.

If you’re going for the bonus score for not killing any civilians, keep in mind that your troops will always shoot civilians if they and the enemy are in the same cone of fire from an attack order. (Yes, even if the Civilian and enemy are on opposite ends of the cone and your troops would have to intentionally shoot them realistically, they will.)

Since Grenades are now infinite, don’t be shy about using them (just remember that using the M203 makes that soldier vulnerable.).

Scout, Scout, Scout and Scout again, the “armor” and instant-retreat of the scouting soldier will save you alot of deaths if used properly, as long as there’s a possibility of an enemy being able to shoot you in the back/from somewhere you can’t see when moving, scouting is usually a good idea.