Playing

Towers and tower codes

The tall towers inside the Control Zone are more than sniper perches. Holding one gives your team part of a code, and a complete code lets you drag the Hot Zone, the part of the zone that counts double, to where you are already dug in.

Soldiers wading across a shallow river toward a tall concrete tower on a hill, with a helicopter flying near it. — Soldiers cross a shallow river toward a tall concrete tower with a large 3 painted on it; a helicopter flies near the tower. Screenshot: BULKHEAD / Team17, via the Steam store page.

What the studio has said

One sentence, from a developer describing how they like to play, in the Tactical Depth video: “Drop down on the top of a tower, try and sweep the tower, get in and out, get the code, and then move on to the next one. Get that tower code, and then they can call the hot zone to that tower.” Said in the video posted with Steam announcement — WARDOGS: Tactical Depth & Teamplay

That confirms the loop: towers hold codes, codes move the Hot Zone. No written rules for towers have been published, so the step-by-step below comes from guides written after launch, and it is marked where they differ.

Why moving the Hot Zone is worth a tower fight

Inside the Hot Zone each player counts as two toward the head count that scores the round, and cash earned there is doubled. Set out in Steam announcement — TOP QUESTIONS Pulling it onto a tower your team already holds means the double count lands where you are hardest to remove. How rounds are scored is on the Control Zone page, and what the doubled cash is worth on the cash page.

The loop, where the guides agree

Get into a tower inside the Control Zone and find its terminal in the control room.
Interact with the terminal to hack it. The tower switches to your team.
Each tower your team captures reveals one part of a code.
With the code complete, enter it on the tower’s keypad to pull the Hot Zone to that tower.

PCGamesN adds a practical note: with three digits of four, the last one can be guessed. The code’s length is not something the studio has stated, so treat four as that guide’s count.

Where the guides differ

Detail	What each guide says
Where the terminal is	IGN: A computer room on the first floor PCGamesN: The control room on the mid-level, computer to the left of a keypad Game Rant: The second floor, a computer near the staircase
When you can hack	Game Rant: Every tower starts the match on a 10-minute cooldown PCGamesN: A cooldown at the start of a match and again whenever a tower changes hands IGN: No cooldown mentioned; the hack itself takes time, shown as a meter
What the full code does	IGN: Brings the Hot Zone to that tower for a brief period PCGamesN: Activates a magnet that pulls the Hot Zone toward the tower Game Rant: Activates the tower's drill rig to pull the Hot Zone toward you

One possible reading of the floor disagreement: in British usage the first floor is the one above the ground floor, which American usage calls the second, so those two guides may describe the same room. None of them says so. The cooldown and how long the pull lasts are unconfirmed.

Towers and building

The store page pitches fortifying key locations and building a forward operating base at a chokepoint, and PCGamesN describes towers as a focal point for bases. Building needs a hammer bought from the vendor, and PCGamesN's mortar guide says a mortar needs the Large Hammer plus supplies; the mortar page has how to range one onto a tower. Both Large Hammer prices, and the Support level that unlocks one, are on the planner. Where towers sit in the wider terrain is on the map page, and the base you would build beside one is on the FOB page.