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Most of the combat inDune: Spice Warstakes place on the ground, with units skirmishing for position while avoiding the maw of a sandworm. If you’re willing to spend a lot of time and resources, however, you can deploy air units as well. Flying units are immune to melee attacks and can’t be eaten by worms.
Related:Dune: Spice Wars - Complete Guide To Combat
If your arsenal could use some air power, you’ll need to get started early. This guide includes everything you need to know about deploying a squadron of fighters, or a powerful frigate to enforce your will across Arrakis.
How To Get Guild Favors
Nothing goes to or from Arrakis' orbit without the approval of the Spacing Guild. Even the Emperor himself needs the Guild on his side for fighters and frigates to enter the atmosphere from space and wage war.Guild Favors accrue very, very slowly, so you’ll need to carefully decide when to spend and when to save.
Your main source of Guild Favors is theSpacing Guild Branch, an expensive Statecraft Building that can be constructed in any Village with an open slot. Once it’s built, you can click on it toselect a resource to donate to the Guild as tribute.You can give eitherthirty Spice or five Influence per day. Each donation earns a single Guild Favor, so your base rate of accrual will beone Favor per day.
You can change your daily donation, or cancel it entirely, at any time by revisiting the Guild Branch.
There are also two ways to gain Guild Favors directly from the map;fighting Renegadesandfinding the crashed cruiser.Renegades start appearing midway through the game, and willtake over neutral Villages. Renegade bases haveten units garrisoned,will frequently send raids, and prevent their VIllage from being conquered until they are destroyed. Destroying a Marauder unit provides a few Favors, and taking out a base gives a larger reward.
The crashed cruiser is a Special Region that will appear somewhere on the map. Controlling it providesan additional Guild Favor each day. Furthermore, it periodically spawns discoveries that give a small amount of Guild Favors when investigated. Note that you can investigate these discoveries even if the cruiser is controlled by someone else!
The Fremen use Ship Parts instead of Guild Favors, but the two resources are identical for all intents and purposes. Instead of a Guild Branch, the Fremen base their aircraft out of aRecycling Plant.
Related:Dune: Why Is Spice So Important?
How To Build Ships
As long as your Guild Branch or Recycling Plant is intact, you canbuild aircraft the same way you recruit any other unit.They typically have a long build time, so be sure to construct ships before you actually need them! All non-Fremen aircraft requireFuel Cellsfor their upkeep. These can only be gotten by building aFuel Cell Factoryin a region with Energy Sources - you may’t trade for them or get them by any other means!
Fremen aircraft aremore expensive to buildas a trade-off for not needing Fuel Cells.
Fighters cost amoderate number of Favors and Fuel Cells, and provide excellent air support for ground units. They areextremely vulnerable to missile batteries, though! Frigates, on the other hand, are very slow but powerful and difficult to destroy. Frigatesdo not take up any Command Points, but each faction can only have one in play at a time, even if they could afford to build another.
