Panda with issues...
Well-Known Member
So, I bought this last week, and having had a week to kick the tyres on it a bit, I thought I'd post some comments.
This game is unforgiving. It can't even be arsed to provide a proper tutorial.
Which is a massive pain, because some of the things it tries to do, and wants you to do are very very less than obvious.
It's taken me the entirety of the first campaign to even come close to grasping the basics of what I'm supposed to be doing, but I feel like it's starting to click a little bit.
If you like micromanaging and controlling individual units, this really isn't a game for you. I'm normally not a fan of having to micromanage stuff to a significant degree, but even I feel like there really isn't enough options available here, particularly in terms of units.
The game appears to want you to play with individual units all containing the same type of piece, making it incredibly annoying to use the interface to break up units, it also won't allow you to group units of different types together.
I.E. I cannot by a unit of 4 Leopard tanks, 4 Advanced leopard tanks and 2 anti air vehicles, break them down into subgroups, then group them back up again into a mix, so I have anti air vehicles protecting my tanks as part of the same unit.
You can get around this to an extent by assigning groups of pieces out of units a ctrl+number, but even this isn't obvious, considering there is no indication that you've assigned them a number at all, or recognition or anything.
Subsequently, pieces grouped together in this manner , if you tell them to move somewhere, will not all move at the same speed, nor is there any option to tell them to, resulting in your painstakingly pieced together take-on-all-comers task force moving at different rates, exposing each other's vulnerabilities. I'd also have liked some ability to chose formations for my units other than a line. Additionally, there's no sort of 'quick bar' for recording what units are still alive and selecting them quickly.
Most criminally, in a game which has extreme emphasis (for an RTS) on armour values in different facings of vehicles and lines of sight caused by terrain, there is no option to change a unit's facing. Utterly ridiculous in this day and age. - Everything is context sensitive, but not particularly well implemented, so you might want your tanks to retreat, but sometimes they'll just pull back, other times they'll turn around and expose their weak rear armour to heavy fire for no reason. (To be fair, this is an issue in most RTS games).
Also annoying for me is the controlling of zones. - To do this you require a command vehicle, but it has to be standing still. - Squid forbid you have to use a radio WHILE MOVING. These are extremely important vehicles, as they allow you to requisition new units, but they always start the missions with their arses hanging in the wind, in the middle of some field or on a road with no cover. This means if you want to hide them somewhere safer (AND YOU WILL) you have to move them, meaning you give up control of the zone, stopping you from controlling the point, consequently stopping you from calling in more units, or ticking up more points to acquire units. - Possibly less annoying in the multiplayer game, if it allows you to position your units at the start where you choose? But in single player missions where I've had that option, It HASN"T been possible to choose where the command vehicle starts.
Interface wise, well, its not great. There's a huge part of the game dedicated to different units and their different stats, but you cannot directly compare one unit's stats against another's - Stupid.
Requisitioning units requires 3 things: Points, which tick upwards for controlling zones (money in effect), a map EDGE control zone controlled by you (for the units to appear from) and units to requisition. - There is a cap on how many units of each type you can requisition, but this isn't like your normal RTS pop cap or unit cap or whatever (I.E. you can have 200 population total, but infantry are one each, light tanks are 5, heavy tanks are ten; or no more than two heavy tanks at any one time), think about it as a pool, in terms of you have 8 heavy tanks, and you can call them in now, but if you lose them, well, there aren't any more.
Overall, I THINK I like this, and I think it causes you to be more careful with your units (not sure how it works in multiplayer) but what WASN'T explained AT ALL, was that these units carry over between missions in the campaign. Accidentally lose all your tanks in mission 3? Well, ha ha, fuck you, you'll have to try and finish the campaign without any (probably impossible). If this had been explained, even a little, I probably wouldn't have been having so many issues in the first campaign.
This leads me to the unlocking of new units mechanic, which is interesting. I haven't played multiplayer, so I don't know how it will work there, but primary and secondary mission objectives are worth command stars in the SP. - Achieve them, and get stars which can go towards different units. - The way to overcome losing all your tanks in the SP campaign is apparently to use your stars to unlock a new kind of tank, which then has a number added to your pool (until you lose all those too). THis wasn't made clear in any way, nor was the distinction between unlocking units, and unlocking units available in the single player - You could lose all your tanks, spend all your stars on unlocking more, then find that the ones you unlocked weren't available in the SP campaign, and YOU STILL HAVE NO TANKS, and now no stars either.
I'd just like to point out, I have NO ISSUES with this as a mechanic, in fact I rather like it, but it would have been nice, nay, CRITICAL, to have it explained before hand. Fuckers.
OK, so bad points, and some explanation aside, lets move on to some of the reasons I like the game (and I do, I'm really starting to enjoy it, after finally breaking the brick wall by repeatedly smashing my head against it).
This is a game of reconnaissance and mobility. It rewards daring manoeuvres and flank attacks, circling the enemy, drawing them in by looking weak, then flattening them with the helicopter gunships he didn't know you had.
The maps are HUGE, realistic in size, and as such, turtling really isn't an option - The enemy AI will constantly hunt out your kitten weak command unit, and when it's dead, well, thats it basically, you can't requisition new units, and have to try and complete the mission with what you have on the board. It's making me play in a way that often I don't in RTS games, and I'm enjoying it, even though I suck, and am legitimately getting my arse handed to me by the AI on a regular basis
You need to use recce units to keep yourself 'clean', or you'll walk into a trap. Does that farm over their have anti armour infantry in it? Shit, better check it out before I pass with my armoured column, or my tanks are going to be scrapped on this open road with no cover.
Supply is dealt with in a slightly unrealistic, but interesting manner. - Your units will frequently run out of rockets (particularly helicopter gunships) and tanks in particular will run out of fuel, especially if you've taken them off road. - You then need to bring up supply trucks (each of which are only holding a limited amount of new supplies) to offload fuel and ammo, as well as perform repairs. This creates some interesting conundrums for helicopters, as they need to be on the ground to refuel/rearm. - Do I land them now, that will lose me my sight range (as helo recce is a prime function), it takes them a little while to spool up, and they're very vulnerable on the ground.
Your supply trucks (and your opponent's) are easily captured, and turned over to the enemy. - There's nothing worse than watching your supply trucks trundling towards your stranded out of fuel tanks, and seeing an enemy recce vehicle steal them, while you impotently rage half a map away - Protecting supply is critical, as is securing other control zones with new command vehicles. - Ones in the centre of the map give you more supply, but critically DON'T allow you to requisition units, whereas ones on the map edge do. - It's worth (in the single player missions I've played anyway) making a diverted attack to capture a board edge zone further up quickly - Not only does this mean you can bring on units closer to the action, it also means that you won't basically lose the game by default when a roaming enemy task force slips through your (weak, always too weak) net and butchers your stupid little impotent command vehicle in your original zone, if you take this board edge zone from the enemy, it reduces your chances of being outflanked.
Ultimately, I'm really enjoying this game now I've finally worked out what it wants from me. It's shaping up to be the best RTS since WiC, though in a different way. Hopefully this post will be useful to stop anybody else having the initially brutal experience of 'hey, you're a new player? Bend over and prepare for sand as lube' that I did.
This game is unforgiving. It can't even be arsed to provide a proper tutorial.
Which is a massive pain, because some of the things it tries to do, and wants you to do are very very less than obvious.
It's taken me the entirety of the first campaign to even come close to grasping the basics of what I'm supposed to be doing, but I feel like it's starting to click a little bit.
If you like micromanaging and controlling individual units, this really isn't a game for you. I'm normally not a fan of having to micromanage stuff to a significant degree, but even I feel like there really isn't enough options available here, particularly in terms of units.
The game appears to want you to play with individual units all containing the same type of piece, making it incredibly annoying to use the interface to break up units, it also won't allow you to group units of different types together.
I.E. I cannot by a unit of 4 Leopard tanks, 4 Advanced leopard tanks and 2 anti air vehicles, break them down into subgroups, then group them back up again into a mix, so I have anti air vehicles protecting my tanks as part of the same unit.
You can get around this to an extent by assigning groups of pieces out of units a ctrl+number, but even this isn't obvious, considering there is no indication that you've assigned them a number at all, or recognition or anything.
Subsequently, pieces grouped together in this manner , if you tell them to move somewhere, will not all move at the same speed, nor is there any option to tell them to, resulting in your painstakingly pieced together take-on-all-comers task force moving at different rates, exposing each other's vulnerabilities. I'd also have liked some ability to chose formations for my units other than a line. Additionally, there's no sort of 'quick bar' for recording what units are still alive and selecting them quickly.
Most criminally, in a game which has extreme emphasis (for an RTS) on armour values in different facings of vehicles and lines of sight caused by terrain, there is no option to change a unit's facing. Utterly ridiculous in this day and age. - Everything is context sensitive, but not particularly well implemented, so you might want your tanks to retreat, but sometimes they'll just pull back, other times they'll turn around and expose their weak rear armour to heavy fire for no reason. (To be fair, this is an issue in most RTS games).
Also annoying for me is the controlling of zones. - To do this you require a command vehicle, but it has to be standing still. - Squid forbid you have to use a radio WHILE MOVING. These are extremely important vehicles, as they allow you to requisition new units, but they always start the missions with their arses hanging in the wind, in the middle of some field or on a road with no cover. This means if you want to hide them somewhere safer (AND YOU WILL) you have to move them, meaning you give up control of the zone, stopping you from controlling the point, consequently stopping you from calling in more units, or ticking up more points to acquire units. - Possibly less annoying in the multiplayer game, if it allows you to position your units at the start where you choose? But in single player missions where I've had that option, It HASN"T been possible to choose where the command vehicle starts.
Interface wise, well, its not great. There's a huge part of the game dedicated to different units and their different stats, but you cannot directly compare one unit's stats against another's - Stupid.
Requisitioning units requires 3 things: Points, which tick upwards for controlling zones (money in effect), a map EDGE control zone controlled by you (for the units to appear from) and units to requisition. - There is a cap on how many units of each type you can requisition, but this isn't like your normal RTS pop cap or unit cap or whatever (I.E. you can have 200 population total, but infantry are one each, light tanks are 5, heavy tanks are ten; or no more than two heavy tanks at any one time), think about it as a pool, in terms of you have 8 heavy tanks, and you can call them in now, but if you lose them, well, there aren't any more.
Overall, I THINK I like this, and I think it causes you to be more careful with your units (not sure how it works in multiplayer) but what WASN'T explained AT ALL, was that these units carry over between missions in the campaign. Accidentally lose all your tanks in mission 3? Well, ha ha, fuck you, you'll have to try and finish the campaign without any (probably impossible). If this had been explained, even a little, I probably wouldn't have been having so many issues in the first campaign.
This leads me to the unlocking of new units mechanic, which is interesting. I haven't played multiplayer, so I don't know how it will work there, but primary and secondary mission objectives are worth command stars in the SP. - Achieve them, and get stars which can go towards different units. - The way to overcome losing all your tanks in the SP campaign is apparently to use your stars to unlock a new kind of tank, which then has a number added to your pool (until you lose all those too). THis wasn't made clear in any way, nor was the distinction between unlocking units, and unlocking units available in the single player - You could lose all your tanks, spend all your stars on unlocking more, then find that the ones you unlocked weren't available in the SP campaign, and YOU STILL HAVE NO TANKS, and now no stars either.
I'd just like to point out, I have NO ISSUES with this as a mechanic, in fact I rather like it, but it would have been nice, nay, CRITICAL, to have it explained before hand. Fuckers.
OK, so bad points, and some explanation aside, lets move on to some of the reasons I like the game (and I do, I'm really starting to enjoy it, after finally breaking the brick wall by repeatedly smashing my head against it).
This is a game of reconnaissance and mobility. It rewards daring manoeuvres and flank attacks, circling the enemy, drawing them in by looking weak, then flattening them with the helicopter gunships he didn't know you had.
The maps are HUGE, realistic in size, and as such, turtling really isn't an option - The enemy AI will constantly hunt out your kitten weak command unit, and when it's dead, well, thats it basically, you can't requisition new units, and have to try and complete the mission with what you have on the board. It's making me play in a way that often I don't in RTS games, and I'm enjoying it, even though I suck, and am legitimately getting my arse handed to me by the AI on a regular basis
You need to use recce units to keep yourself 'clean', or you'll walk into a trap. Does that farm over their have anti armour infantry in it? Shit, better check it out before I pass with my armoured column, or my tanks are going to be scrapped on this open road with no cover.
Supply is dealt with in a slightly unrealistic, but interesting manner. - Your units will frequently run out of rockets (particularly helicopter gunships) and tanks in particular will run out of fuel, especially if you've taken them off road. - You then need to bring up supply trucks (each of which are only holding a limited amount of new supplies) to offload fuel and ammo, as well as perform repairs. This creates some interesting conundrums for helicopters, as they need to be on the ground to refuel/rearm. - Do I land them now, that will lose me my sight range (as helo recce is a prime function), it takes them a little while to spool up, and they're very vulnerable on the ground.
Your supply trucks (and your opponent's) are easily captured, and turned over to the enemy. - There's nothing worse than watching your supply trucks trundling towards your stranded out of fuel tanks, and seeing an enemy recce vehicle steal them, while you impotently rage half a map away - Protecting supply is critical, as is securing other control zones with new command vehicles. - Ones in the centre of the map give you more supply, but critically DON'T allow you to requisition units, whereas ones on the map edge do. - It's worth (in the single player missions I've played anyway) making a diverted attack to capture a board edge zone further up quickly - Not only does this mean you can bring on units closer to the action, it also means that you won't basically lose the game by default when a roaming enemy task force slips through your (weak, always too weak) net and butchers your stupid little impotent command vehicle in your original zone, if you take this board edge zone from the enemy, it reduces your chances of being outflanked.
Ultimately, I'm really enjoying this game now I've finally worked out what it wants from me. It's shaping up to be the best RTS since WiC, though in a different way. Hopefully this post will be useful to stop anybody else having the initially brutal experience of 'hey, you're a new player? Bend over and prepare for sand as lube' that I did.
