So far I've been pretty silent about the games many flaws, mostly so that I can have stuff to
bitch about fill up later updates. That doesn't mean that I won't be complaining at all this update, oh god no. For example, when you start a battle it puts you into the troops screen, where you select which troops you want to fight. The problem is that before you pick any troops you really need to go to the deployment screen and see the conditions you're fighting in, so that you can create the most efficient squad for the battle. It takes only a few additional clicks to switch between the two screens and back, but it's one of the first signs that the game isn't streamlined at all. And since it takes several battles to get anywhere in this game, the extra clicks get tedious pretty quickly.
Anyways, the deployment screen lists everything we'll need to know about the battle before we start. The terrain we'll be fighting in, the temperature and how it'll affect our troops, but most importantly the visibility. I'll talk about how visibility affects combat later, and how utterly stupid it is. The deployment screen also tells us what mission type we'll be doing. 90% of the time it's clear the map of enemies, but sometimes we'll get a defend or capture the
control point flag mission instead. Those are extremely rare though, so I'll talk about them when we actually get one.
Now that we finally know what the mission will be like, we can choose what troops to bring. If we had any veterans they would appear on the left side of the screen, but we don't so we'll just draft some militia instead. Militia are pretty much identical to the basic recruits from XCOM. They have poor stats and are extremely expendable, but if they survive and do something important, like kill an enemy, then they level up, gain a class and can join our pool of veterans. I want to say that militia are cheap too, but that implies that they cost something. You see, normally deploying troops cost some money depending on their rank. Militia are completely free to bring along on a mission, which makes them even more expendable.
The equipment screen does exactly what you expect, and allows us to outfit our brave militia with weaponry. Since we just started the game, we only have access to the basic equipment. A bolt-action rifle, pistol, grenade, first-aid kit, and ammo for our guns.
Instead of managing stores of weapons and ammo, you just purchase them before you head into battle. Each piece of equipment has a cost, but this early in the game it's mostly negligible. I've equipped my militia with what you see here, a rifle, grenade, and two clips of ammo for the gun. Just like in other games each piece of equipment has an encumbrance value, which can never exceed a unit's strength score. Notice that I'm well under everyone's strength stat, so I could give our militia more equipment if I desired. Such as first-aid kits to heal their wounds. But then again they're only militia and we're facing one defender. We could probably win this battle with just a rifle and five bullets .
Having outfitted our troops, there's nothing left to do but start the battle. Apparently we're fighting the Chinese Dynasty on this map, as shown by the opposing flag. Let's get to it.
Before your turn starts you get a splash screen with information about the enemy spawn location, the turn number and how many enemies our troops can currently see. Since the enemy spawn location is always on the opposite side of the map and no new enemies spawn in once battle starts, two out of these three things are completely pointless to know. Yay.
Speaking of spawning, since I didn't fiddle with their deployment locations, our four brave militiamen all started in the same place. Before the battle starts you have the opportunity to pick one of three locations for your troops to start in, creatively called left, center and right and corresponding to different locations on your side of the battlefield. Since we only have four grunts, I've decided to keep them all together in the center spawn. In later missions with more troops I might spread them around.
Or not.
Since I'm sure that you don't want to hear a basic tutorial, I'll just start the battle... After talking about the possible stances.
You see, three different stances exist in the game, though you can't change stances on the fly or anything intelligent like that. You have to pick which one you want to be in before you move or shoot. The Standard stance is... well the standard stance. I have nothing clever or imaginative to say about it.
Setting your troops to the Cautious stance basically makes them crouch. And like in every other video game ever, crouching makes them more accurate and a smaller target at the cost of moving much slower. So generally you only use the cautious stance when you can fire at an enemy at the start of your turn and want the accuracy boost, since you move too slowly otherwise.
Finally your have the Charge stance. Oh god the charge stance. It's basically the exact opposite of the cautious stance, in that your aim becomes horribly inaccurate, but you can really haul ass.
And I do mean haul ass. It's unfortunate that screenshots can't really convey how much ass is being hauled here.
But I assure you that it's a lot. Like, a metric fuckton of ass hauling. That much.
If you look two screenshots up, you'll notice a rock just barely cresting the hill to Dingiswayo's right. That's the same rock behind him in this shot, on the left side of the screen. The game claims that the battlefields are 500 meters square. Spending all of your action points
hauling ass charging moves you at least 150 meters, which is absolutely insane.
Anyways, that's enough blabbering about game mechanics for now. The rest of the militia move up to join Dingiswayo and I end the turn. Since the enemies always spawn on the exact opposite side of the map from your troops you don't have to worry about rushing ahead and being shot at. At least in the first turn.
In Airship Dragoon, if you can't see the enemy troops moving about, you don't get a boring splash screen but some random shots of the battlefield. If you're lucky you can get some cool views of your troops standing around looking badass. I was not lucky this update. Oh well.
Unfortunately the enemy didn't wander into our sights this turn, so we're going to have to look around for him on our turn.
I get lucky and spot the Chinese trooper with the very first guy I moved. I'm pretty sure that a worse feeling than moving your very last unit and encountering an enemy does not exist.
So all we have to do is move Nathi into range, kill the soldier, and win the battle, right?
Well, except for the part where he misses both of his shots. Honestly I'd be more surprised if he managed to hit, militia have poor stats and are rather inaccurate when they aren't crouching. And even when they crouch they still aren't the best shots.
I would have made Nathi crouch before he took his shots, but you can't do that in this game, remember?
Because I wanted to hit, I make Bongani crouch before he can see the enemy. Thus wasting all of his actions shuffling over to get a clear shot. Crouching makes you move really, really slowly.
Thankfully Mageba can both crouch and fire upon the enemy. The normal rifle takes 12 actions to fire, so he has three shots to nail him.
So of course he misses with all of them.
You know, I'd be more concerned about my troop's safety if they weren't fighting another militiaman. We're only favoured to win because have four more men. Eventually someone will hit, and chances are it'll be us.
Just to spite me, Nathi nails the enemy with the very first shot of third turn, and kills him instantly. Which is a bit less impressive than it sounds, since the rifle is fairly deadly.
Anyways, we are victorious and win this little skirmish.
We even earn an achievement for the battle, which is less impressive than it sounds. My previous run throughs of the campaign were mostly on the Easy difficulty, so I wasn't eligible to achieve any.
If you're curious, the only other ones I've earned have been the 'Nice Day Out Victory' and 'Jaws of Defeat' achievements. Crushing the enemy with overwhelming force (at least 8 vs. 2) while suffering no causalities yourself earns you the 'Nice Day Out Victory'. Losing two of my men in a 4v1 battle like the above one earned me the 'Jaws of Defeat' achievement. Hopefully I don't suffer a repeat of that battle for the LP...
After the battle you get an overview of your troops and whether they survived or not. Since Nathi is the only militia who actually did something important in the battle, he gets a promotion.
Instead of sinking back into obscurity, a militiaman who earns himself a promotion gets a class change and the chance to be placed in our veteran roster. Since our veteran roster is completely empty and I'm not stupid, Nathi becomes our very first true soldier, as a Grenadier. I'll go over the different classes at the end of the update if you're curious as to what they do. For now all you need to know is that Grenadiers are supposed to be heavy shock troops, but it'll be a while time before they settle into that role.
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Topic: Let's be Imperialistic Bastards: Maybe I'm Better at the Game Than I think (Read 4497 times)