Amongst many other things, a lot of Forts players seem to struggle to build sturdy and properly defended bases. A lot of the online community make forts that I call "needles," or forts that barely have any front armor and usually extend up/down a large amount. Forts like these are just bound to be toppled. There are also people who build without drag building or build in inefficient ways (with a large amount of armor to repair, for example). This guide will teach you how to make a sturdy base and how to defend it, teaching you various techniques such as using Double Foundations / Double Basing, Armor, Sandbags, and Bracing to your advantage. It will also show you how different fort types can be defended more than others.

NOTE: This guide is still in development! If pictures are missing, text is half complete, or anything else seems incomplete in general, it's because this is an ongoing project!

This section will teach you all about common ways to properly defend your fort as well as the materials that can be used to do so.

Version 1 of the Defense section's video is here! Check it out:

The main material that defends against enemy fire is armor. Armor is great for armoring bases, it even says it in the name. There are many different ways to use armor. Doors are also a form of armor.


The first way to use Armor is to use armor the basic way. Armor has a lot more HP than bracing, and therefore is easily able to stop people from toppling you or piercing through the fort. There are downsides and tradeoffs to using armor, which I will highlight later on. A laser can only go through exactly 2.2 pieces of armor, which further highlights its ability to stop a topple or a coresnipe. Armor itself can be shot by normal bullets, but slanted armor can easily counter this.


The next way to use Armor is to use slanted armor. Slanted armor is more expensive (due to diagonal struts being longer), but allows you to stop basic bullets in their tracks. This includes Flak, Miniguns, Machine Guns, and Sniper (non AP) bullets. There is a trick that lets you use slanted armor without spending too much, which is where you spam tiny little diagonal struts out of a node and then back in to make them as small as possible, which still acts as slanted armor, but is a lot cheaper than extending out and then making it inside of a bracing box.


Doors are a thing that hopefully everyone who has played Forts has used. The game even automatically builds them unless you hold Control while placing a weapon. Doors are just like armor, but they can open and close to protect your weapons. Doors cost a little more per unit, but they have the same exact HP and their own special abilities. Weapons are able to eat through a single door just like armor, so many people use a technique called Double Dooring. This allows you to use the doors normally, but you open up 2 or 3 doors instead of one. This further protects your weapon if you have enough resources to do so, which you usually do.

Many people think that Armor is the only way to defend your base. If you thought that, you thought wrong. Foreground Bracing (FG) itself is another great way to defend your base, if it is used correctly. This includes some tricky techniques, but if you use it enough, you'll be doing it by instinct.


A lot of people that armor their base spam 2-3 grid square boxes of Foreground in front of their base, hoping that it will stop a laser. This ends up with a fort that has so much bracing on it, it sometimes topples itself. This not only gives you the risk of toppling yourself, but also gives the enemy an advantage, by abusing the stress to topple you if they hit the right spot.


There is a much better way of Bracing Spamming. This is by using 2-4 lengths of 1 grid square Foreground pieces. This means that you extend out using 1 grid square FG pieces, and then cross-brace them to make them even stronger. This alone will stop a ton of splash damage, and is easily repairable if a laser gets through it. I was once in a match where I delayed a Warhead spammer by spamming this, and made a backdoor swarm to kill his snipers and Armoury weapons. I delayed him for a good 3 minutes.


Of course, this is not the only way to spam bracing. There are many different ways to spam it, and even if you only use one layer, it can stop a lot, mostly early-game. Here's an example of Ximsa's own way of spamming on a basic Standing fort:



Every way of bracing spamming has its own pros and cons. This way of spamming makes it hard to select and repair the joints, so that's a downside. However, it has a lot of bracing, so it can stop early-game weapons in their tracks. Experiment and see what works for you!


Ever heard of the "Fort Inside of a Fort" or "Double-Basing" technique? If you haven't, you have now. Many players (including myself) have split beams into smaller pieces, and used that to spam 2-3 times as much bracing into a single box. And it barely costs anything. It's a great way of armoring yourself. Better yet, by using the grid and hitting a tiny little hitbox, you can actually do the same thing while keeping the original beam there and bracing it even more. This is a great way to armor yourself early game, as it stops a lot of splash damage and AP snipers trying to get an early coresnipe, especially on sideways forts. You can also put "V" shapes onto your foundation, which doubles your defense to toppling, which we'll get to now.


There is also a little cheat using the grid that allows you to not only cross-brace, but brace your foundation beams a ton. To do this, you use the grid and make a tiny little BG piece that fits into your foundation. You then brace it everywhere you can, and extend it to repeat the same thing. You can mirror this on the Y axis on 3 grid square tall foundations to get even more stability. This ensures that if someone shoots your top foundation, your fort isn't moving anywhere. Plus, you'll have your original protection, whether it be armor or bracing in front of it. You can also use variations of this on Vanilla-type forts, just experiment!

Shields are a special kind of material. They aren't direct defense, but they defend against certain projectiles. Shields deflect all the bullets that slanted armor does. They are most commonly known for deflecting lasers and firebeams. However, many people overuse shields. They'll "shield spam," or put a shield on every single part of their base. This can be somewhat helpful if you have enough turbines, although it usually rids you of all of your energy. I like to only shield my turbines (wind goes through shields just fine), but I'll also only shield my core if the enemy has a laser and I have enough resources. I usually don't end up shielding my foundation, as I have enough defense to take a laser's hit without being toppled. However, it may be a good idea if they have multiple lasers or heavy weapons, or are using explosives to pierce through your armor.

Another good reason to use shields is because of Scattershot, especially on close-quarters maps. Normally, a cannon would hit a shield and then blow up, destroying the shield and causing splash damage all around it. With Scattershot, if the opponent shoots a cannon at you and it hits a shield, it will bounce right back at them and possibly deal damage to them, not you. This doesn't make Scattershot a "must-use" commander, however, because he is not as useful on long range maps, especially with his other passive ability, a higher spread.

Another great way to defend your base is through the use of Sandbags. Many players don't use sandbags, or they just sandbag their fort a ton before they even have tech or weapons. Sandbags are definitely good, but they should usually be used in some sort of moderation or variation with other techniques.


Sandbags only have 250 HP but that means that they can fully stop a cannon with just 3 of them, plus your foreground spam. They also stop Firebeams in their tracks. Sandbags shouldn't be a total replacement for Armor or Foreground spamming, but they are really good to have, especially in situations where your enemy has explosive weapons or Firebeams.



There are usually two common ways to defend turbines: either with sandbags or with shields. Shields are a great way of defending your turbines since wind passes through them. Although, one major tradeoff is that they are very fragile to some weapons. It only takes a single swarm silo to punch into your shield and kill a turbine or a single EMP to disable your shield. Then anyone can just kill your turbines as they wish. Sandbags are a solution to this. Both ways of defending your turbines have their pros and cons, specified in their own sections. There are a couple ways to use sandbags to protect your turbines. One major tradeoff with using sandbags is that they may cut down your efficiency by a little. You can limit the efficiency cut by reducing base-lean and being careful with placement. Sandbags are generally cheap, so you may even end up using both if you need to!

One thing you should definitely remember is to armor your reactor from all angles. Vertically armoring your reactor is crucial to survival in Forts. Most pre-made forts come with firing angles that allow an opponent to hit your reactor, especially with swarms or an AP sniper. Instead of having just one piece of bracing upwards or downwards on your fort (depending on the map), a lot of people will add at least a 1-grid high cross-braced FG box (see below) on the bottom or the top of your reactor that will stop the enemy from killing it immediately.

Of course, every single form of defense has its own upsides and downsides, which is why you must use them in variation. This section explains the tradeoffs, or major downsides, for every weapon.


Armor has many tradeoffs to using it, including:

• If armor takes damage, it costs a lot to repair.
  
• Armor costs a lot of resources, especially larger pieces of slanted armor.
  
• It can make some matches on premade maps unfair by selling a ton of premade foundation.

Overall, armor is very good to use in Forts, but it has its tradeoffs, especially if you use a lot of it, or if you're on a premade map with a lot of it.


Bracing also has its own major tradeoffs, including:

• If you bracing spam too much, it can become very hard to click and repair.
  
• Bracing isn't as compressively strong as armor, and can easily snap if you use too much on standing forts.
  
• Bracing can easily ruin your resources if it gets hit by a splash-heavy weapon, like a warhead.
  
• Bracing also limits the amount of weapons that you can put on your fort, as you need to allocate it for defense instead of putting weapons on it.
  
• Foreground Bracing is directly hit unlike Background Bracing, so if you rely on only FG for your defense, especially on hanging forts, you may be toppled because of it.

Sandbags also aren't the best in every scenario, and their tradeoffs include:

• They take up a lot of space compared to other methods of defending, as they are a device.
  
• They only have so much durability before they can't repair fast enough from an incoming weapon.
  
• One box of bracing that needs to be BG because of a sandbag is a lot of defense lost.

Shields are definitely something you have to use very strategically, and have their own tradeoffs:

• Shields take up a lot of energy to run, and shield-spamming can easily ruin your economy.
  
• Shields are very brittle, and they break easily if exposed to an explosive like a cannon.*
  
• There's always the possibility that a slanted shield on your fort can end up hurting a teammate, and it can actually happen quite commonly.

* In some cases, this can actually be a good thing because a shield can tank a cannon hit so that your other defense doesn't have to. This is another great trick to use when you need it!


Of course, grid tricks such as double-basing techniques and special core armor have their own special downsides:

• They take a lot of time and focus to make, and once they're gone, you can't do much in the middle of combat to bring them back.
  
• They also need their own space, and since they usually need to be foreground unless you're doing a foundation technique, that's even more space that you can't place a sandbag or another device.

Overall, every single method of defense in Forts has its own tradeoffs. Make sure to use them wisely, and not to go overboard with one single technique. Use some variation, and use them as efficiently as possible.

With all of these options, they are many defensive measures that you can use. I recommend using a mixture of all of these, including the special techniques. You can quite cheaply make a Fort in a Fort technique at the start of the game, Foreground spam mid-game, and make more armor next to your core mid-late game. Sandbags you can either use as a backup, or just include them with the other techniques. It's all up to you, but it's best to use a mixture of all of these (or at least bracing and sandbags) for the best defensive stance in Forts.

Now that you know have an idea of how to defend in Forts, what defense should you use at what time? One of the most important aspects of mastering defense in Forts is that you need to know when to use it. This is already explained in Romerolagus and I's Surviving the Rush, but I decided to elaborate it here, as it matches this guide perfectly. Let's start by going over weapon and projectile types and their common counters.


Bullet projectiles include any projectiles that come from Machine Guns, Miniguns, Snipers, Flak, Shotguns, and 20mm Cannons. All of these weapons are stopped by a few commonly used defensive techniques. One is Slanted Armour, which was explained previously. Slanted Armour is a great defense to use against these types of weapons, especially against Shotguns and Miniguns. When you are using this against a Shotgun or Minigun rusher, it's usually best to preserve your resources and use it intelligently by making little diagonal nubs instead of large diagonal nubs of metal, especially against the more directly fatal weapons like those specified. Another great form of defense against these are shields, but it usually best to use them lightly. They are most commonly useful against 20mm cannons, since they were debuffed around the start of Tons of Guns to be reflected by them. Sandbags are also another great way to stop these, as they have enough HP to endure these types of weapons for quite a while, and soak up a lot of 20mm damage. Using straight armour is also a good idea, but slanted armour is generally used more because it doesn't take any direct damage, making straight armor much less effective.


Explosive projectiles include any projectiles that come from Mortars, Swarm Missiles, Warheads, EMP's, and Rockets. These weapons are all most commonly stopped by anti-air (AA). However, AA is not the only form of defense against these weapons that you should use. Manually fired non-AA weapons also have a chance at stopping these, such as miniguns, and manually-fired AA is usually much better if you can aim it properly and quickly. Sandbags are also a great form of defense against these, as their HP can absorb the splash damage, especially against nukes. Another thing is sacrificial, or ablative, bracing. Sacrificial bracing is a type of bracing spam that is deliberately built out from the fort to absorb the splash damage of weapons, such as Warheads, so that the rest of the fort is safe. You'll see people do this a lot to prevent splash damage victories from reactor or battery shots. One special technique that you can do to counter an explosive weapon is to fire one of your own explosive weapons to force your opponent's anti-air to shoot at their own projectiles, or to distract their anti-air for another weapon to go through, especially against flak.


Penetrating projectiles include projectiles that come from AP Snipers, Cannons, and (partially) Lasers and Firebeams. Lasers and Firebeams classify as more of a special weapon (see below), but they still have high penetration, so they are included here. Penetrating weapons are most commonly stopped by multiple layers of armour, but making too much armour can increase your repair costs against Explosive projectiles. Sandbags are also an option here, as they act as a dead end for things like Firebeams and AP snipers to go through. Sacrificial bracing can be used here as well, as it acts as a barrier that these weapons have to go through, and the projectiles end up stopping in the middle of it. The final way to stop penetrating weapons is through the use of shields, as they can deflect Lasers and Firebeams (see Special), instantly stop the piercing of a Cannon (although the splash damage still takes effect), and take a lot of the damage from an AP sniper. Overall, penetrating weapons are unique compared to other weapons, and therefore sometimes need some unique counters.


Special projectiles are projectiles that come from weapons that have a partial spot in the other categories, but have their own special counters that need their own category. Their projectiles include those that come from Lasers, Firebeams, Swarm Missiles, and Warheads. For the beam weapons, you can use a shield to reflect Lasers and Firebeams, unlike any other weapon (except for when Scattershot is active, but that's not really a pure reflection). Make sure not to shield spam, though, as explained in the shield's dedicated section. Swarm Missiles and Warheads need a sniper to shoot, so they classify as a special weapon, since they have a weakspot that no other weapon has, a separate targeter. A lot of missile rushes that you'll see will use at least 2 snipers, as if one of them dies by an AP or doorsnipe, that's 10-20 seconds (depending on your commander) that you can't shoot your missiles. This makes shooting snipers a very good counter to the missile weapons.


We've talked about toppling before in the Bracing section, but there's more to it than just making the grid-tricks. You can stop attempts to disconnect you from your foundation by using background bracing since it doesn't take direct damage, cross bracing to add more support to your foundation and overall fort, additional ground connections, or "double basing" to add even more support, ropes to stop your reactor or parts of your fort from falling, sacrificial bracing to absorb all of the damage in front of your foundation layer, some armour because of its high HP, and the removal and replacement of objects such as batteries to prevent explosions that can blow your foundations up are all the most common suitable defenses for defending against toppling. You don't have to use all of these, but it's usually best to at least double-base, cross-brace, remove batteries and other devices/weapons, and add more armour in front, whether it be an FG spam or other technique to counter these types of attacks.


There are also a few specific counters which act as a counter to nearly every strategy or weapon/projectile type. These are to use EMP's to temporarily disable every single weapon and device within its area of effect, which are useful for stopping a lot of weapons unless they have adequate anti-air, and to prevent an opponent in any way from building up the economy to build and fire their weapons. You can do this by causing damage that forces them to repair (especially against an armour spam), and destroying things like mines, turbines, and resource storages. If the opponent can't build up 1,000 metal to make a laser, for example, then they are going to be very delayed and it can act as a useful counter to buy you some time in defense and offense.

Overall, you should not only defend stagnantly and to a specifically set algorithm and build order, but also defend dynamically and adapt to what the opponent is shooting at you, whether it be by projectile type, special properties, or a general counter to stop them offensively. However, I won't go too much into offense in this guide, as this guide is mostly focused on building bases efficiently. A major element of Forts is to have at least a basic understanding of your opponent's fort, building your own fort, and defending against their offense in an efficient way, and this section should have provided a basic understanding of how to do just that.

This section of the guide will teach you all about the common ways to passively build in Forts.

We've gone over defense, but what's the best material to generically build out of? Overall, I would say Background Bracing. Foreground Bracing (FG) and Background Bracing (BG) both cost the same, but BG is unique in the way that anything can pass through it. I was once in a match where a friend of mine shot a ton of rockets at me, and by luck, 2/3 of them passed through my fort. It also makes your opponent wonder where to shoot if your entire fort is BG, due to the fact that everything is uncovered. You should still use Defensive techniques around your reactor, but I like to build primarily out of Background Bracing for everything else.

Now that you've hopefully got defense and passive building down, let's go over some common problems with weapon and device placement.


Battery Bombs are a common term for when you place a battery or other explosive near your reactor, foundation, or other easily destructible device or weapon like an oil barrel or laser. All someone has to do is hit that battery and your reactor might take some damage and result in a splash damage loss. Or, if you have a lot on your foundation, maybe your foundation will blow up and make you fall. It could also blow up a weapon that the bomb was near. There is one simple solution to this, which is to build your storages and other heavy explosives in hidden places on your fort, preferably behind a point where anyone can shoot it. An example of this for both Stalactite forts and Vanilla forts is shown below. If you're making storages next to each other, also make sure to alternate them so that the batteries aren't so close together.


Ever made the perfect base and then had an oil barrel spawn on you? You're not the only one. This is actually another tradeoff that comes with foreground spamming, oil bombing. Let's say you make two 1-grid extensions of FG bracing that you're going to defend with. Your opponent has Shockenaugh, so your teammate ends up charging it for them with damage. You're in the middle of doing a mid-game tank, when suddenly an oil barrel spawns right above your mines or in front of your reactor and gets sniped. There are ways to fix this, such as using foundation techniques with no vertical struts and making sandbags. Shockenaugh does seem like a less common commander now, so it may not be as much of a problem as it used to be.

This is not what your fort has to look like. You should experiment and see what works the best for you, and see what incorporates the best into your strategy!

In summary, your fort could look like this: you have Background Bracing that is cross-braced on your foundation, with the Fort in a Fort trick made if you have time. The front of your reactor can have the same trick, but used it to defend your core. The primary bracing of the fort used to extend is most efficient when made out of Background Bracing. You should have a layer or 2 of armor (slanted or not) in front of your core, but you can also make tiny pieces of slanted armor in front to stop Minigun spammers. You can either extend bracing out in front to make 2-3 layers of sandbags (potentially with Machine Guns in front), or you can use Foreground spamming to do the same exact thing but with bracing instead of sandbags.

Simplified, a late-game fort can look like these pictures and this video (tied with a Laser rush):


Note that Hanging forts can hold a lot more without snapping.

This final section of the guide will teach you about some advanced mechanics in Forts such as Smart Building.

The Advanced section of the guide will teach you all about advanced information about the game. Some of these things may be a little confusing at first, but you should be able to know this info by heart at the end.


One advanced trick that a lot of Forts players don't know about is the ability to use the Control key to enable Smart Building mode. While holding Control, key parts of building are disabled, such as:

• Weapons automatically placing doors in front of them when you have the resources.
  
• Weapons automatically turning FG into BG in front of them.
  
• Bracing struts connecting to other bracing nodes.
  
• And a lot more.

You may be wondering how disabling smart building helps, but it does a lot. Let's say you're building a Laser, and you want it to be covered up when you place it. You have the resources, so you decide to place temporary Foreground Bracing before you make doors in front of the placement area. The problem is that when you go to place the Laser, the Foreground automatically gets turned into Background Bracing. By holding Control when you place the Laser, you can ignore this feature and place it without any problem, which is also less suspicious to the enemy. It also allows you to stop struts from snapping into place when you use a grid trick.


This is where things get a little confusing. For a good example on conversion times, building times, and more, I would recommend checking out this guide: Surviving the Rush.
Besides that, here is some key information about Building and Conversion. Unless you have another piece of bracing holding the background paneling in place, you can see Material -> Door conversion. This means that if you place double doors and leave nothing holding that back paneling in place, the enemy can clearly see it and know a weapon is there. A lot of people don't know this, but conversion from one material to another is physical. This means that if you place straight armor in the air, you can shoot through it. However, if you place background bracing and then convert it into armor, you can't shoot through it. This is especially important when you are building doors for weapons, since the enemy can just shoot through if you build instead of converting. There is one downside, which is that straight building is a little faster than conversion. If you are placing a heavy weapon and dooring it, however, this shouldn't matter at all due to the long build and reload time.

That's the end of the guide! I really hope you learned some techniques about building, and remember, you don't need to copy these exact ways of building. Make up your own way of building using your newly acquired skills and incorporate it with your strategy!