I havent found a thread for this game using search, so here we go:
Tinywarz/Dropshock is a browser-based strategy game which is sort of a mix between RTS and RPG (Mostly RTS, but there is xp gained for your crews and you can customize your war machines, which is more RPG).
Basically, you buy/build units ranging from fast scout buggies to large tanks to huge mekas with lazors for arms, modify them with various additions including more powerful engines, faster-regenerating shields, or just bigger guns, and deploy them to various planets with different rules (some PvP, some PvE, some similar to capture-the-flag...), and fight it off in turn based combat (each turn has a 1 minute limit).
That's the short version. There's alot of possible strategies to adopt, and the different advantages and disadvantages of units and mods must be weighed depending on your goal . Should I take some cloaking glass-cannon units and hope they get close enough to destroy the enemy before they shoot back, or should I get some slow missle-launching platforms and bombard the enemy from afar, or do I get a giant hivemind meka that swarms the enemy with tiny drones, etc...
The vast majority of units and mods (equipment) in the game are player crafted, with some specific ones that need to be salvaged from PvE enemies. Also, crafted units are not necessarily all similar, even before being outfitted with mods, as more skilled or lucky players can manage to craft units with more slots for mods and some special variants of units with enhanced or different abilities.
Your command crew, which commands one of your units, gets experience and levels as you kill enemies, and level points can buy various abilities ranging from better aim to better mining yields to abilities that temporarily boost you speed or recharge your energy weapons or gets you more ammo, etc... Your non-command crews crewing your remaining units also get xp for kills, and as they level, they get better at aiming, better at driving more complex units, and gain merits that give various bonuses too.
I'm not really good at describing this any more than that, so here are some screenshots to give you more of an idea:
(Argh, I cant find any good pics, and I dont have time to take some myself ATM, tell me if you really need more pics and I'll work on it in the following days)
Deployed units fighting:
A player's units (red circles under units) attacking a bandit base (orange)
Bad-resolution pic of the "Modify Units" screen were you assign mods and crews to your units.
Bad-resolution pic of a player (green) attacking another bandit base (orange) with unit stats and command menus on the right
Now, for downsides (IMO):
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The interface can be a little clunky and take some time to get used to. (I've never found a browser based game that didnt have this sort of problem though)
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I feel the game is sort of dying, with few new players comming in. This can be annoying, because a large part of the player base are snobbish elites (anyone who's played an online game knows what I'm talking about). And even though there are non-snobbish advanced players that are willing to help newbs, it still means there are few people to play with at the same level of ability and power when you are still starting out.
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Its a bit heavy on the "real life money = power" aspect. Even though its wholly possible to get everything ingame for free, seeing other players just pay real money to get game money feels too cheaty.
So, if anyone feels like trying this out,
http://www.drop-shock.com/(Or, for those who dont mind referral links, here )Though I doubt a Bay12 faction is feasible, seeing how skewered towards high-level the current playerbase we'd be facing is, who knows, maybe we can try such a thing. Otherwise, join some training faction (I'm in PGF_auXiliary) to see if you enjoy the game enough to later try something more ambitious.
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Topic: Dropshock (Previously known as Tinywarz) (Read 1961 times)