Wargame [Air Force Guys!]

[Róka]

Looks interesting and better than that old F2P WarGame - plus the 150+ aircraft interest me.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/222750/

[CountBelasarius]

I was going to make a big post when the full release came out... but I might as well sing this game's praises now!

Wargame: Airland Battle is probably one of the best RTSs I've ever played.

In short it is a primarily multiplayer focused (though there will be a dynamic single player game) game that portrays a conventional escalation of the Cold War in the mid 1980s. You take command of a battalion-ish sized force on massive battlefields employing the full range of combined arms: tanks, APCs, infantry, recon, helos, MLRSs, mortars, artillery, ground strike aircraft, fighter-interceptors, and more.

WG:ALB has over 800 historically accurate units fully modeled, with detailed stats. You play as either a Warsaw Pact or NATO player, and there is a meta game where you build "decks" of these units. Basically you create your force for the battle in terms of what you are able to call in during the game. Then once the game begins you spend points to bring these units onto the battlefield.

Deck creation is a really neat mechanic as it forces players to make tradeoffs, no one deck is going to great everything, cheap everything and unlimited amounts of everything. You have to decide what you like to play with and focus on that.

***Side Note*** The beta is great because all the 800+ units are unlocked so you can really experiment with them. Once the release comes out, you will have some unlocked at the beginning but need to unlock the rest through playing multiplayer matches. This encourages to have accurate stats and you know how experienced the person you're playing is.

The maps themselves are fully to scale with the units and the largest will be approximately 150 square kilometers.

Other features:
Great line of sight system, even better than COH2's, really makes you focus on the terrain
Morale and veterancy system
New urban combat system that makes infantry in towns terrible to deal with for anything other than napalm
Supply and logistics system (units need repairs, ammo and fuel)
No base building, the focus is on the tactical employment and management of units
Easy to use system for running off-map air missions to air superiority, close air support, etc
Graphic style and UI that looks great close up but is easy to use when zoomed out.
The previous game came with 4 sets of FREE DLC including touch screen support, new maps, new missions, new modes, and constant support and patching as needed
Multiplayer from 1v1 to 10v10

Let me restate that, this game has 10v10 multiplayer and it is incredible!!! It really allows to feel like you're part of a truly massive battle, and can allow you to specialize at doing something unique and interesting for instance running special forces missions to the enemy's arty position, managing a suppression of enemy air defense campaign using special aircraft or just commanding an armored battlegroup in the middle of it all.

This going to sound preachy, but Wargame is really raising the bar for RTSs. After how disappointed I was at shitty COH2 beta, how little it had progressed, Wargame moved the bar significantly from their already spectacular Wargame:European Escalation (they also made Ruse and Act of War).

I will playing this game an enormous amount over the summer, with some RL friends. That said I also want GC to play this game too! Especially since I want to be able to play this game the way it was meant to be played... with a 10 person team on TS curbstomping pubbies. Or even better if enough GCers start playing, 10 on 10 matches. Sao and SinX already have it so ask them for their opinions too.

I seriously can't recommend this game enough.

Any questions?

[Sarantini]

I have Wargame:EE andI have to say, so many units gave me a lot of headache. Are the standard units you start with in this new game good and are further units to diversify or are units unlocked later on upgraded basic units?

[BlooDRaptoR1]

It's way too expensive for me :/

[CountBelasarius]

I have Wargame:EE andI have to say, so many units gave me a lot of headache. Are the standard units you start with in this new game good and are further units to diversify or are units unlocked later on upgraded basic units?

Is it the number of units to chose to put in the deck or the number on the battlefield that gives you a headache?

Also, I don't know what the starter decks will be for the full release. Right now everything is unlocked, and the variety is amazing. There will be a few upgraded units, but most everything is very different and fairly unique.

Fair disclosure, most all the units from EE came through for ALB, so the new additions are really the 150+ jets and 200 or so new ground units (that's a ballpark figure).

[dan1mall]

The issue I have with games like these is that they include fairly recent jets (I saw a mig-29 in the official trailer) fighting close quarter combat. In real life air to ground attacks are done at over 5-10km away, not strafing with rockets. And actual jet v jet dogfights hardly ever happen. In all of the dutch fighting over kosovo during the gulf war for example, only 1 pilot actually engaged and beat an enemy MIG. Outside of that its all 5km long fights with guided missiles.

I can appreciate its complexity though, and it surely sounds like it will be interesting. Dont think I have the patience to play such a complex game though. im more of a sc2 guy, get it over with in 20 mins ^^

[CountBelasarius]

That's a fair point, and the game does its best to model that.

While it would be cool for the maps to be large for completely real max ranges for advanced missile systems, that's a tall order. So ALB shrinks that distance a little bit. The longest range ASMs are around 5km, the longest range SAMs are around 4.5km and the longest range AAMs are around 10kms. The game includes many less modern aircraft that have much shorter ranges as well, so there's that.

Also I would say that comparing any conflict (especially any from the last two decades) to what a Cold War gone hot would look like is rather like comparing apples to an enraged bear. Jet to jet dogfights don't happen because either the people fighting each other don't have jets or the US has already mission killed the enemy air force on the ground at D+1.

And it is a complex game, not for short-attention spans. A good game will go for 30 mins, if you face stomp and if your enemy is cooperating, but a really good game will go for over an hour. There are modes with time limits, fewer units, smaller maps etc, but that's only for the weak of spirit.

[dan1mall]

It seems intersting to me for sure, and I agree that its kind of hard to guess what the war would have looked like.
I should probably just stop thinking of it as a traditional RTS, because I'll end up comparing it to my one true love starcraft <3
Im asuming its played out a lot slower than that, with the focus being more on strategy and maneuvering than APM.

I'll probably check it out at some point ^^