Cyclopean tech tree!
For those of us who like the satisfaction of progressing through a deep and involved tech tree in our RTS games, I can really recommend Warzone 2100 which is also freeware. It's insanely deep and insanely wide. It has to be seen.
It's not just mark one, two and three of stuff, it's marks of paradigms of various aspects of things like armor, guns and ammo. You can't even compare a late game heavy machinegun with the same gun in the early game, because now it will have ultra servos, super cooling, enhanced bullet rotation, a targeting computer using sixteen different modes of target aquisition and identification, and it will fire superheated durastrontium-tipped, fin-stabilised, rocket-propelled HDMPLIF-ASLBBQ discarding sabot bullets that speak eighteen different languages and cure cancer.
Not to mention the later game weapons where you simply will the enemy to death.
Okay, I exaggerated a bit, but it was actually just a bit.
As if this avenue of awesome wasn't enough, there are a bunch of other things that blow me completely away.
The first is that you design your own vehicles by putting together different parts. It's been done in a lot of other games too, but that doesn't make it any less neat. Killing enemies with a flying death container is a lot more satisfactory when you decided what parts go into it, and actually got to name it "flying death container" or "aerial killcrate" or whatever.
The second is the advanced fire control systems you can use for your artillery units. Your static (building based) artillery guns will automatically interface with all your base sensor units. This means they can target things far beyond their own visual range. Your mobile artillery units can be similarly slaved to any spotter as well, meaning that you can have a single spotter vehicle controlling dozens of rocket artillery units that will faithfully follow it around at a safe distance, and shoot at whatever it points at, at a much greater range than if you target them manually.
Not only that, but there are different kinds of sensors too. There's not just the standard "see further" sensor, but also the counter-artillery sensor. It automatically tracks any incoming artillery fire, calculates the origin of it, and fires any artillery batteries it has slaved to it. All automatically. What it amounts to is that if the enemy sneaks up on your base and starts shelling the walls, they will have rockets hammering their position after just a few shells have been fired.
There is also the radar detector, which detects active sensors. The enemy has a radar vehicle tucked away somewhere, watching your base? It will show up as a blip, and be targeted with whatever artillery this sensor has slaved to it.
Boom.
The single player campaign has two kinds of missions - home and away. During the home missions you build your base, send out units and do the normal RTS stuff you're used to doing. The away missions are a fairly new thing to me though.
During the away missions you're away from your base (obviously) but you still have access to it in a way. You can still order your labs to do research of anything you come across in the field, you can design new types of units as normal, and you can order your factories to build anything you have designed. Furthermore, you have a dropship that you can order around. Any unit in the base can be loaded into the dropship and sent to your location. It will take a while of course, depending on how far away from base you are.
I am yet to progress far enough to get planes. I wonder if they fly to the new location on their own volition?
Speaking of planes... just like artillery, they can operate on their own just like any unit, but they can also be controlled by spotter units just like artillery can. So as if wasn't enough to have your artillery automatically counterattack against any incoming artillery fire, you can now also have your base automatically call in airstrikes against those pesky attackers!
Ordinary, non-air or artillery units can also be slaved to a kind of unit called a commander. The commander is a vehicle that instead of a weapon turret has upgraded targeting and communications gear that enhance the efficiency of the units slaved to them. Any units attached to a commander will follow it around, go wherever it goes and attack whatever it designates as a target, and they will do so more effectively than if they were just a mere group of units.
Did I mention the game can be modded, too?
It's refreshing to see a game designer actually get it right. My faith in the industry is renewed.
It's not just mark one, two and three of stuff, it's marks of paradigms of various aspects of things like armor, guns and ammo. You can't even compare a late game heavy machinegun with the same gun in the early game, because now it will have ultra servos, super cooling, enhanced bullet rotation, a targeting computer using sixteen different modes of target aquisition and identification, and it will fire superheated durastrontium-tipped, fin-stabilised, rocket-propelled HDMPLIF-ASLBBQ discarding sabot bullets that speak eighteen different languages and cure cancer.
Not to mention the later game weapons where you simply will the enemy to death.
Okay, I exaggerated a bit, but it was actually just a bit.
As if this avenue of awesome wasn't enough, there are a bunch of other things that blow me completely away.
The first is that you design your own vehicles by putting together different parts. It's been done in a lot of other games too, but that doesn't make it any less neat. Killing enemies with a flying death container is a lot more satisfactory when you decided what parts go into it, and actually got to name it "flying death container" or "aerial killcrate" or whatever.
The second is the advanced fire control systems you can use for your artillery units. Your static (building based) artillery guns will automatically interface with all your base sensor units. This means they can target things far beyond their own visual range. Your mobile artillery units can be similarly slaved to any spotter as well, meaning that you can have a single spotter vehicle controlling dozens of rocket artillery units that will faithfully follow it around at a safe distance, and shoot at whatever it points at, at a much greater range than if you target them manually.
Not only that, but there are different kinds of sensors too. There's not just the standard "see further" sensor, but also the counter-artillery sensor. It automatically tracks any incoming artillery fire, calculates the origin of it, and fires any artillery batteries it has slaved to it. All automatically. What it amounts to is that if the enemy sneaks up on your base and starts shelling the walls, they will have rockets hammering their position after just a few shells have been fired.
There is also the radar detector, which detects active sensors. The enemy has a radar vehicle tucked away somewhere, watching your base? It will show up as a blip, and be targeted with whatever artillery this sensor has slaved to it.
Boom.
The single player campaign has two kinds of missions - home and away. During the home missions you build your base, send out units and do the normal RTS stuff you're used to doing. The away missions are a fairly new thing to me though.
During the away missions you're away from your base (obviously) but you still have access to it in a way. You can still order your labs to do research of anything you come across in the field, you can design new types of units as normal, and you can order your factories to build anything you have designed. Furthermore, you have a dropship that you can order around. Any unit in the base can be loaded into the dropship and sent to your location. It will take a while of course, depending on how far away from base you are.
I am yet to progress far enough to get planes. I wonder if they fly to the new location on their own volition?
Speaking of planes... just like artillery, they can operate on their own just like any unit, but they can also be controlled by spotter units just like artillery can. So as if wasn't enough to have your artillery automatically counterattack against any incoming artillery fire, you can now also have your base automatically call in airstrikes against those pesky attackers!
Ordinary, non-air or artillery units can also be slaved to a kind of unit called a commander. The commander is a vehicle that instead of a weapon turret has upgraded targeting and communications gear that enhance the efficiency of the units slaved to them. Any units attached to a commander will follow it around, go wherever it goes and attack whatever it designates as a target, and they will do so more effectively than if they were just a mere group of units.
Did I mention the game can be modded, too?
It's refreshing to see a game designer actually get it right. My faith in the industry is renewed.