Overthrow is built around a dynamic three-faction conflict system that creates the core revolutionary warfare experience. Understanding how these factions interact is crucial to mastering the game.
The Occupying Faction represents the military force that has taken control of the territory. This is the primary enemy you'll be fighting against.
Default Faction: USSR (Soviet forces)
Key Characteristics:
- Controls military bases, radio towers, and key infrastructure initially
- Uses AI-driven systems to respond to your resistance activities
- Deploys Quick Reaction Forces (QRF) to battles
- Manages resources dynamically based on threat levels
- Upgrades bases and deploys patrols automatically
- Becomes more aggressive as your resistance grows
What They Do:
- Garrison military bases with soldiers and vehicles
- Send patrols through towns and along roads
- Respond to attacks with reinforcements
- Build defensive positions and upgrade bases
- Learn where resistance camps and FOBs are, and send troops out towards them
- Launch counter attacks to retake bases and towns the resistance has taken
The Resistance Faction is the player-controlled faction fighting to liberate the territory from occupation.
Default Faction: FIA (Freedom and Independence Army)
Key Characteristics:
- Player-controlled faction with full agency
- Can capture enemy bases and establish FOBs
- Builds infrastructure to support the revolution
- Recruits civilian supporters and AI fighters
- Accesses special resistance equipment and vehicles
What You Can Do:
- Establish Forward Operating Bases (FOBs)
- Build resistance infrastructure (recruitment tents, workshops, etc.)
- Capture and hold military bases
- Recruit and command AI fighters
- Field High Command groups bought at a barracks
- Organize and lead the liberation effort
The Supporting Faction represents an external power that aids your resistance movement.
Default Faction: US (United States forces)
Key Characteristics (Planned Features):
- Provides strategic support to the resistance
- Does not directly engage in combat
- Offers resources, equipment, or other assistance
- Represents international backing for your cause
Support Types (Planned Features):
- Equipment drops and supplies
- Intelligence assistance
- Strategic coordination
- Resource support
At the start of each campaign, you can choose which real-world factions fill these roles:
The game includes various faction options depending on your installed content:
- USSR/Soviet Forces: Classic Cold War antagonist
- US Forces: Modern American military
- Other Faction Mods: Any properly configured faction mods (such as RHS)
- No Conflicts: The same faction cannot be both Occupying and Supporting
- Automatic Resolution: If conflicts occur, the game will adjust selections
- Mod Integration: Faction mods are automatically detected and available as long as they are configured for Overthrow (via a compatibility mod)
- Initial State: Occupying faction controls all military bases
- Contested Control: Bases can change hands through combat
- Resource Impact: Controlling faction gets base resources and strategic advantage
- Defensive Response: Losing bases triggers increased enemy activity
- Strategic Importance: Radio towers affect area communication and control
- Capturable: Either faction can control radio towers
- Automated Defenses: Towers have defending forces
- Retaken too: the occupying faction sends teams to take towers back when it can spare them
See Patrols and Garrisons for how a tower's garrison decides when it changes hands, and how the occupying faction keeps up its patrols and base defences between battles.
The occupying faction does not only walk. As a campaign turns against it, it starts putting armed vehicles on the road. Early on that means a jeep with a machine gun. Later it is a gun truck or a scout car, and late in a campaign a wheeled armoured carrier with a cannon or a heavy machine gun. Which one turns up depends on the faction's threat level and on what its budget covers at the moment.
A parked vehicle at a base is not scenery. From mid-campaign some occupying bases keep a single armed vehicle standing in the compound, unmanned, until fighting reaches that base. A crew then mounts it and takes it to a firing position short of the fighting.
A checkpoint on the road into a contested town is deliberate too. While the faction is working against a town or base, it can park an armed vehicle on an approach road. The riders spread out around it and keep the gun manned. It moves to a different approach every few minutes rather than holding one road all campaign, and you can destroy it like anything else.
When a base or town is under attack, the faction can send up to two armed vehicles by road from a holding of its own. They take the time the drive takes, arrive behind the infantry, and can be ambushed on the way. Killing the vehicle does not end the force it carried: the men get out and keep going on foot.
A vehicle destroyed in the open marks that ground. The faction may send another armed vehicle to search the area for a while before it leaves. Anti-tank weapons start earning their weight from around the middle of a campaign, once the stronger vehicles start turning up. See Threat for what raises and lowers that pressure.
The Occupying Faction uses sophisticated AI to counter your activities:
- Threat Assessment: AI calculates threat levels based on your actions
- Resource Allocation: More resources deployed to high-threat areas
- QRF Deployment: Quick Reaction Forces are despatched to battles for town/base control
- Target List: bases, towers, camps and FOBs the resistance holds are added to the occupying faction's list of known targets, and troops are sent against them once there are resources to spare
Overthrow maintains official missions for:
- All Bohemia Interactive official maps (including DLC)
- Popular large faction mods (such as RHS)
- Vanilla Arma Reforger factions
For unsupported faction mods:
- Create an Overthrow "compatibility mod"
- Configure faction settings and equipment specific to Overthrow
- Add to EntityCatalog if needed
- Distribute on Workshop freely
See: Customizing Overthrow for detailed instructions.
Throughout this wiki, you'll see these abbreviations:
- OF: Occupying Faction (the enemy)
- RF: Resistance Faction (you, the player)
- SF: Supporting Faction (your external allies)
- QRF: Quick Reaction Force (enemy reinforcements)
- FOB: Forward Operating Base (resistance outpost)
Understanding the faction system helps you:
- Plan Operations: Know how the enemy will respond
- Manage Resources: Understand faction-based costs and benefits
- Build Support: Use faction interactions to gain civilian backing
- Choose Battles: Pick conflicts that advance your faction's goals
- Long-term Strategy: Plan the progression from resistance to liberation
The dynamic faction system ensures that no two Overthrow campaigns play the same way - the AI adapts, towns change allegiance, and the balance of power constantly shifts based on your actions and decisions.