Angels Fall First Loadout & Budget System Explained (1.0)

Angels Fall First does not have classes. Every soldier, ground vehicle and space fighter is built by you, from parts, against a points budget. Understanding this system is the single biggest difference between a confused first hour and a good one — and it is the system the in-game tutorial explains least.

The core idea: three budgets, not one

Open the loadout screen (SETUP from the main menu) and look at the bottom-right corner. You have three separate point pools:

Track	Colour	Starting budget	Gain per rank	Earned by
Combat	Red	100	+10	Damage and kills, on foot or in vehicles
Support	Blue	50	+5	Healing, resupplying, repairing, reviving, turret kills
Command	Yellow	50	+5	Following orders, and issuing orders that get completed

Every piece of equipment — weapons, ammunition types, armour modules, deployables, vehicle upgrades — costs points from one of these pools. Aggressive gear generally draws from Combat, utility gear from Support, and certain tactical equipment from Command.

This is why a brand-new player cannot spawn with a tricked-out heavy machine gun, full armour mods, two deployable turrets and a grenade belt: the total build exceeds one or more of the three budgets. The game is not hiding items from you. Nearly everything is visible from rank one — you just cannot afford all of it at once.

How ranks work

Experience in each track accumulates over your whole career, and it persists across servers and offline play. Kills award roughly 5 XP, with hard-hitting weapon kills granting up to about 15. Reviving, repairing capital-ship subsystems and resupplying teammates feed the Support track. The Command track fills when you follow your squad leader’s orders or, as a leader, set objectives your people actually complete.

Each time a track ranks up you receive a medal and a permanent budget increase — +10 Combat or +5 Support/Command per rank. There is no respec and no wrong choice: play the way you enjoy and all three tracks grow.

Two practical consequences:

1. Offline grinding is legitimate. Hosting a bot match awards the same experience. If you want a bigger budget before facing veterans, run a few Territories matches against bots and top up all three tracks.
2. Support is the fastest early track for most players. One Multitool and the habit of repairing occupied vehicles and reviving teammates fills the blue bar quickly — and it happens to be exactly what wins matches.

Reading a loadout

An infantry loadout has seven weapon slots plus armour:

1. Melee — currently the Sonic Knife.
2. Sidearm — pistols, SMGs, or the KMD Multitool.
3. Primary and 4. Secondary — interchangeable; two full-size weapon slots.
4. Explosives — the N8D grenade system or CH8D charges.
5. Kit and 7. Kit — deployables: medpacks, munitions packs, motion sensors, shield bubbles, autosentries.

Armour comes in Light, Medium and Heavy, each with a different layout of helmet and body module slots (light: 3 helmet/2 body; heavy: 2 helmet/3 body; medium: 2/2). Heavy armour slows you slightly. Modules stack — two armour mods give twice the effect.

Weapons themselves take modifications: scopes from 2x to 7x, ammunition variants (armour-piercing hardpoint, incendiary, corrosive, EMP), reload and cooling specs, and underslung attachments. Every mod costs budget. A “free” rifle becomes expensive fast once you dress it up.

Budgeting strategy for new players

Always equip the Multitool. This is the closest thing AFF has to a rule. It revives incapacitated teammates, repairs vehicles and ship subsystems, and restores armour. It earns Support XP constantly and costs little.

Carry one primary, loot the second. Weapons can be picked up from fallen players. Spawning with a single primary frees a large chunk of budget for kit and armour, and you will usually find a second weapon within a minute of fighting. This is the most common veteran economy trick.

Don’t over-mod. Attachments are situational. A 4x scope on an assault rifle helps on Plains and does nothing indoors on Irega. Veterans build several cheap, specialised loadouts rather than one expensive generalist — the loadout screen lets you save multiple builds, so make one for urban maps, one for vehicle maps, one for boarding actions.

Respect the new-player damage reduction. Fresh accounts receive a scaling damage reduction (starting around 50%) that fades as you rank up. You are tougher than you think in your first matches — use them to learn maps aggressively rather than hiding.

Example starter builds

Within the default 100/50/50 budget, these are proven community patterns:

General rifleman (any map):

• Taldis A420 carbine, single primary
• KMD Multitool sidearm
• N8D frags
• Medpack + munitions pack in the kit slots
• Medium armour, armour helmet mod

Anti-vehicle (vehicle maps like Plains, Yin Tao Shan):

• Falken RID (ULA) or Kaller MLI (AIA)
• SMG in the sidearm slot for self-defence
• Multitool — you still want it
• Light armour to stay mobile

Boarding/CQB (space maps, Irega):

• Aeger ASG10 (ULA) or Salier P4 (AIA)
• Multitool
• Frag + smoke grenades
• Motion sensor kit — interiors are ambush country

As your ranks climb, the same builds absorb upgrades: better scopes, a second primary, doubled armour mods, an autosentry in the second kit slot.

Vehicles and fighters use the same system

Ground vehicles and space fighters have their own customisable loadouts — electronics (scrambler, motion sensor, self-repair), hull/chassis upgrades (armour, boost, insulation, ammo), countermeasures and swappable weapons. Capital ships and dropships are fixed. The same three budgets apply, which is one more reason to rank up all tracks: your tank and your fighter get better along with your infantry kit.

One more budget interaction worth knowing: when the game offers you a vehicle mid-match (based on your score), you can be blocked from accepting it if the vehicle’s configured loadout exceeds your current budget. If that happens, open SETUP and strip the vehicle build down.

Related guides

• Best loadouts for every role
• Complete weapons guide
• Beginner’s guide to AFF 1.0