Game News Warmachine: Tactics released

[Whisky]

Tags: Steam; Warmachine: Tactics; Whitemoon Dreams



WhiteMoon Dreams's TBS game Warmachine: Tactics has been released. You can acquire it on Steam here.

 

[pakoito]

I got meself a copy, but it's 30 gigs and it won't be installing anytime soon.

 

[Misconnected]

I got meself a copy, but it's 30 gigs and it won't me installing anytime soon.

On the one hand I'm happy devs no longer feel the need to confine themselves to the size of a DVD.

On the other hand, 30GB WTF?

 

[Mangoose]

I've had it for a while (early access because I COULDN'T HELP MYSELF) but when I got it there were very very few single player missions (well, 1 tutorial). And as someone who has only read about the game but never played the game, I had no confidence playing multiplayer.

I haven't booted up the game for release or even recently, but I do have some experience from beta - around the end of July - so I'll talk about that.

Anyways, back then (beta) the issues were:

• Huge change in how squads work. A squad instead is basically solo soldier now. On one hand it is not an 100% reversal, since a squad of tabletop soldiers has to move in cohesion and stuff anyway. BUT on the other hand formation and spreading out your squad correctly is important in dealing with AOEs and junk.
  • I'm pretty sure this hasn't changed since beta.
    
  • And they said it was because of technical issues or whatever
  • My opinion is that I am neither against or for the change. Flavor-wise, it kinda sucks. But gameplay-wise, if they balance(d) everything correctly, it will still play well. On that note, though, making that kind huge change makes it quite hard to achieve balance. Leading to...
• Balance was really difficult to achieve. The above squad change is one big reason...
  • A troop unit is a lot different from a solo troop, even if you balance the attack and defense power. This is because troop units can be whittled down through attrition, and if a unit is smaller, it can do less damage.
    
    • So that basically caused a change reaction in terms of balancing units. Troops becoming solos basically made them "stronger" in a way (and nerfing them was equally not easy), so that made Warjacks have to be rebalanced, ad nauseum.
      
    • IN FACT THERE IS NO WARJACK DAMAGE SYSTEM
  • But it may be quite improved now (besides NO WARJACK DAMAGE SYSTEM). During my time in beta they were already improving it, as a lot of beta testers really pushed for changes, using calculations and junk. To the point where the developers actively acknowledged focusing on balance and I think they were starting on good changes. Unfortunately I was out of town after that so who knows.
• Apparently maps design was not that great. But three months can feasibly fix that.
  
• It was also quite buggy and the interface was very clunky and non-intuitive. But that was in August. They actually really planned to release the game in August despite not having sufficient balance and polish, but that didn't happen. More on that below...

However, it's not an XCOM clone, and there are some good things (or at least what I thought were potentially good things when I played)

• A good amount of the special abilities are still there - not just specific unit abilities but general attack options like "combined melee/ranged attacks" and stuff like that.
  
• Feats were always in, and they definitely (from what I heard lol) turned the tide just as much as on tabletop.
• You can boost attack rolls, damage rolls, hold on to your focus to use as armor, etc.
  
• So a lot of the mechanics did stay around. Really the main change was the squad change which made things very difficult for other aspects of the game. But this part of tabletop was less affected and I think they did a good job keeping it untouched.
  
• The devs (or the publisher) really really wanted to release the game in, I think, August. The testers pushed, pushed, and pushed. Let's say I reiterated at least a dozen times that I would be immensely glad if they delayed the game to balance, polish, and put in a sufficient amount of content (in a very nice constructive way, e.g. "Wow, I'm glad you're taking your time to make things better! The new changes are great and I would be so happy to see more such changes until release.")
  • Okay, bragging aside, they clearly decided to (reasonably) delay the release. Whether or not it's up to the par I would like, I dunno. But I'm sure it has improved to some extent.

You know what. I think I'll boot up the game today (since I've had it installed for a few months), play some single player missions, and give updated impressions. Be back later.

 

[hoverdog]

You know what. I think I'll boot up the game today (since I've had it installed for a few months), play some single player missions, and give updated impressions. Be back later.

 

[made]

On the other hand, 30GB WTF?

The torrent is only 3 gigs. Guess the rest was DRM/steam shit.

 

[pakoito]

On the other hand, 30GB WTF?

The torrent is only 3 gigs. Guess the rest was DRM/steam shit.

Torrenting from Germany? You like to live dangerously.

 

[Mangoose]

You know what. I think I'll boot up the game today (since I've had it installed for a few months), play some single player missions, and give updated impressions. Be back later.

Teehee

On the other hand, 30GB WTF?

The torrent is only 3 gigs. Guess the rest was DRM/steam shit.

WAT

Edit: I dunno, 28 gigs seems to be taken up by a "pak" file which I assume contains all of the content.

 

[MaskedMan]

The steam download is 3-4 gigs too, either they're really good at compressing the dl size or they're shit at compressing the game files, (or both). And it needs another 30 gigs to patch, it's easier for me to just delete and redownload the whole game when it needs to update.

 

[Mangoose]

The patch is probably the real game

Game's pretty unoptimized. I mean, definitely playable, ~30 fps with a mid-range, few years old computer.

Spoiler

But I want to run FRAPS and that's not working too well. One of the main reasons is that there is no real Fullscreen option (only windowed and borderless). I can't record in borderless windowed "full screen" because it mandatorally sets me at 1080p even if I set it at 720p and want to scale it (if I want 720p, I'm stuck with a real, unscaled, 1280x720 window) , so all I do is annoy the CPU or overrunning my HDD's write speed (and stupid me bought a WD Green).

Right now I'm partitioning my WD drive so that I have a capture partition in the beginning of the hard drive, because theoretically the first partition is the outer tracks which are theoretically faster than the later/inner parts of the disk. Which hopefully will increase the write speed of that partition letting me run record at "full screen" at 1080p instead of the stupid small 720p window.

My other drive is SSD, so while FRAPS is on that, I'm sure as hell not going to write to it).

And yes I've lately been addicted to video encoding so

It's taking forever to repartition though because I have to move the old, shrinked partition to the end of the drive. After that hopefully creating/formatting the recording partition (which I will also use for recording music ) is much quicker. I'm thinking, for that partition, disabling system restore, indexing, recycle bin, maybe chkdsk, then a format. My assumption being that if I disable all that after formatting they will have small traces that begin after the formatting. On the other hand I have no idea if they automatically restore after formatting which makes all that moot. Also I'm going with 64k clusters since the files I'm using are going to be huge.

Edit: Another question. What kind of ways can I disable spindown on the WD Green Intellipower bullshit? I've already turned Idle Time from 8 seconds to 5 minutes. But I think it still spins down based on current load, and fuck that shit.

Please clarify for me if you know that stuff.

Oh yeah, how is SATA II for capture and encoding? 3 GB/s enough? I ask because I have one lying around (that is 7200 rpm), don't feel like spending money on another HDD at this moment. (Since I also have to deal with upgrading my laptop for capturing piano videos haha)

 

[pakoito]

90% sure Unity is to blame here.

And yes I've lately been addicted to video encoding so

So you use Fraps because...

 

[Mangoose]

So.. I really have nothing to add except the game is still fucking buggy.

I'll play some more missions so I have some screenshots to add.


Edit: Okay not buggy, just weird/lack of information. I need 3 focus to blow up an oil barrel? What the fuck?

 

[sser]

Mangoose do you have an NVIDIA graphics card by any chance?

 

[Baron Dupek]

FRAPS is for top notch PCs with SSD/multiHDD in the tower. Or just start using Bandicam, best thing for old computers.

 

[Baron Dupek]

My point was that - want to use FRAPS - get best PC. Otherwise use cheaper equivalent that old machines can stand,

 

[sser]

The reason I asked if he had an Nvidia card is because I use Shadowplay. It's an Nvidia product that's free. You can record at any time, as well as record moments up to 20minutes in the past if you want to. I've personally had zero FPS issues with it, though the computer I bought recently was fairly up to date.

 

[Grunker]

If this is supposed to be released, why does it say "Warmachine ver 0.9.blablabla" in the lower left of my screen?

 

[Mangoose]

(Deleted my posts about FRAPsing to unpollute the thread.)

Impressions of the Released Game... haven't really changed much from beta, except:

• Interface much better.
• Balance seems pretty good. The issue with beta was that it was hard to compromise between gameplay balance and "realistic" power of all the units. This was, as mentioned before, because the tabletop game has basic units as squads, whereas every unit is a solo in the video game. I think they compromised well in the released game.
• I'll reiterate that there are a lot of mechanics translated from tabletop, so the game plays pretty uniquely (so far) compared to other squad tactics games. If you choose to perform actions with one character, you can't select that character again in that turn. No saving actions/action points and then alternating actions between characters.

I'll need to play more before I conclude about:

• Bugginess, but the only thing I've noticed is the 2nd mission being weird. But just gonna post the 1st mission now because it's an extensive tutorial.
• Map design, because the first few missions are more to acclimate the player to the game.

I forgot to mention that:

• Maps are square-based.

---

Now I'm gonna photodump the first mission, because it's a tutorial. It shows numbers and shit and a bunch of the mechanics and I'm too lazy to write them all.

The rest of the missions will have a lot less pics.. because they aren't tutorials (or aren't as extensive in... tutoring).

---

If you don't want to go through the photodump but are interested in the mechanics, read the Quick Start Rules here: http://privateerpress.com/warmachine/the-game

If you want to just/also see just a couple of screenies, just open this:

Spoiler

Otherwise, photo dump time:

Spoiler

Basically there are two ways to win a battle. Fulfill the rules of the scenario or assassinate the enemy Warcaster.

Spoiler

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Tutorial done! Now I get to do whatever the fuck I want.

I decide to allocate 3 focus to the Charger again.

And charge him into the Iron Fang (Pikeman) without Boosting.

Now I choose to Boost my Attack. Note the difference in chance to hit and crit.

The Trencher finishes him off. There is a Cover system both in tabletop and in this game.

Oh shit.

Spoiler

These guys are basically Khadoran (the faction you are fighting) men in Warjack armor. They're not Warjacks but they hit hard and have a shitload of health and armor.

They activate the passive ability "Shield Wall" when in base-to-base. Making them even harder to kill.

Spoiler

Fuuuuuu

Wait, what?

Wtf?

Oh, just my commander.

And his Warjack. It's an Ironclad, which is a "Heavy Warjack" whereas Allison's Charger is a "Light Warjack." The Ironclad has no ranged weapon but has more armor, HP, and does way more melee damage.

There's no such thing as character upgrades/leveling in tabletop but you get them in this game's campaigns:

 

[Gulnar]

So is this thing good? Tell me it's good, please.

 

[Ulminati]

So is this thing good? Tell me it's good, please.

It's .... average.

Not terrible, but the mediocre AI, poor UI and so-so mission design keeps it from greatness. Multiplayer is slightly better, but it looks like the player pool is too small to sustain it for long.

 

[Gulnar]

It's better or worse than, say, expedition conquistador?

 

[Ulminati]

Focus of the two games is entirely different. Is warcraft better or worse than wizardry?

 

[Gulnar]

In regard of the tactical based battles, i mean. Btw, can you like create your own army list or you're stuck with those given by the devs?

 

[Mangoose]

So is this thing good? Tell me it's good, please.

It's .... average.

Not terrible, but the mediocre AI, poor UI and so-so mission design keeps it from greatness. Multiplayer is slightly better, but it looks like the player pool is too small to sustain it for long.

Don't have much to disagree with.

Enemy AI, yeah, is mediocre.

I'm probably not as far into the game as Ulminati is, so I'm not too willing to talk about mission design. It's weak so far, three missions in, but on the other hand I can tell it is still in pseudo-tutorial mod. First mission I've actually had a squad and more than one jack to use, and I haven't encountered an enemy warjack yet. I expect it to get better but I won't be surprised if it's "so-so" as Ulmie says.

I disagree about the UI though. I think it's pretty decent. It's easy to access the action you want to do, from Charging to Power Attacks to Boosting, easy to see how much Focus you have left, etc. Some of it is even easier than tabletop, lol, because you don't have to guess ranges and lines of sight, since the movement boundaries are quite clear and it'll tell you which units you can shoot at when you hover over each square you are thinking of moving to.

I think one weakness is that it doesn't show which units have been activated (used) already. A bit annoying. AFAIK the only way you can tell that you've activated all your units is that End Turn goes from green to red lol.

I'm too intimidated to play multiplayer by the fact that the player pool is probably full of veteran Warmachine players. I know pretty well how the game mechanics work. But didn't really get into it (tabletop) because I decided to play Infinity instead. There's a learning curve with Warmachine - not so much of how to play the game, but that someone good will stomp a novice. I believe they say you should expect to lose your first dozen games loll.

I read a lot of feedback during beta. The maps available weren't too great (note that there were very few maps available back then) so I dunno how scenario play is in the final product. But with the decent translation of mechanics it looked like assassination was quite viable, and players would talk about timing Feats and junk. Beta players seemed pretty happy with multiplayer (outside of the maps), while they evaluated the game pretty critically and rather like fanboys. My educated guess is that multiplayer is pretty good... if the maps are good.

I'd be willing to play multiplayer with a Codexer though. I'm so used to getting my ass kicked by you guys that I don't feel ashamed to lose haha.

In regard of the tactical based battles, i mean. Btw, can you like create your own army list or you're stuck with those given by the devs?

Not for single player - it's a very linear set campaign, not an open ended and fleshed out game mode (I don't think single player was a huge focus for the game in general). But for multiplayer, yes, you can.

Edit: And in terms of the tactical gameplay, read the Quick Start rules nigga. It has very different mechanics than a "typical" PC squad tactics game has. Like, really, apples to oranges.

 

[Mangoose]

Okay UI sucks because I there is no info on special rules on mouseover, and there is no manual (duh these days). So I have to refer to http://warmachine.gamepedia.com/Gameplay_Mechanics since while I have the tabletop rulebooks, some of the numbers are probably different and I can't be assed to find it. I guess I'll print it out since I'd have to print out a PDF if they provided a manual anyway.

Also just had a bug in the UI that didn't show Control range. Was annoying because I had to count squares (control range is 2xFocus).

Mechanics are pretty awesome though. Modified but are still present. Charging, Assaulting, Combined Attacks, Runeshots, etc.

I'm just pissed I'm stuck with Cygnar in the campaign. Give me my Menoth Cultists instead of these damn Trenchers (though it's nice that the Trenchers are much better balanced in this game)