Ok
Disclaimers
- I played the beta version only, and most of the time I played, it was with a build earlier than the RC (Release Candidate).
- My judgement may have been clouded by the suggestions I made that were followed and the ones that were rejected.
- I was offered the game for my spamming their beta forum
- I was an epic40K player, and have a soft spot for everything 40K that manages not to be completely retarded (ie Storm of Vengeance), so I roughly know how each weapon in the game is supposed to work.
- I played PanzerCorps and liked it.
With that out of the way, let's go to the impression parts
Scale and representation :
As I saide earlier, this game is built on the Panzer Corps foundations. As Rites of War, it tries to represent a very different scale than the scale the game was initially built for.
Panzer Corps (and its ancestor, Panzer General) were abstract operational level games. This game tries to be much less abstract, and plays at the grand tactical level :
The scale of the game would be closer from Talonsoft's John Tiller's Campaign series (1 unit = 1 platoon or squadron, 20 Imperial guards, or 5-7 tanks, or 2 super heavies, or 1 Titan).
One point of strength (the number displayed on the screenshots on the units) represents one vehicle, and a number of soldiers between 1 and 5(infantry is represented in a less consistent way than vehicles, but I think the intent is to have about 5 soldiers/strength).
Each unit is represented by the following stats :
- Strength (number of vehicles or infantry squads in the unit).
- Hitpoints (hitpoints of a single vehicle or squad in the unit)
- Defense = Armor (how hard it is for a single shot to damage the unit)
- Accuracy (base accuracy of the unit)
- movement (how far can the unit move) : 3-4 for most infantry units, 3 for super heavy tanks, 4-5 for tanks, and up to 6 for fast vehicles
- movement type (infantry, vehicle, tank, titan...)
- Spotting Range (how far it sees) : usually 2. 3 for some infantry units (most Space Marines and command squads), 4 for scouts
- Initiative (who shoots first or assault first when the unit engage or is engaged)
Each of the weapon of a vehicle is represented(up to 4 weapon systems). For instance, an upgraded Shadowsword will have :
1 volcano cannon
4 lascannons
8 heavy bolters
Unlike PanzerCorps, it does not result in an abstract attack or defence value. Each weapon fires independantly(but at the same target), if it is in range, and each has its own stats :
- Strength (basically, how good it is at piercing armor). Close combat weapons have a range of 0.
- Armor Penetration (% of armor ignored)
- minimum and maximum range (minimum range is mostly for artillery, max range is usually 2 for infantry, 3 for support weapons, 4 for most tank main guns, 5-7 for artillery)
- accuracy
-accuracy fallof per hex (usually -10%/hex)
- number of shots (= 8 for a Vulcan mega Bolter, 1 for a lascannon)
What happened during the beta :
- At the beginning, the game crashed a lot, but all of the crashes were solved at beta 2.
- Act 2 and 3 were too easy, but difficulty modes were added, and the former default difficulty became easy
- Many imbalances were corrected (artillery and Titans being very weak, tanks with multiple weapon upgrades being too cost effective).
So basically, I think almost all they changes they made during beta (the one I don't like at all was making cover weaker overall, as it makes infantry die too quickly) were for the best. That said, there are a few issues left to address (mostly balance, the way transports and flying units work; and infantry. AI is still bad at scouting, and thus remain passive if it does not spot you).
Gameplay :
Each unit has one movement and one attack. You must use all of your movement allowance at all, but you can attack then move or do it the other way around. You cannot stack units.
Infantry can use transports (the unit is converted to a transport unit when doing so) if they were purchased.
Instead of performing its move and attack actions, an unit can refit ( increase morale and recover 1 hitpoint) or reinforce (pay requisition to replace casualties).
The game tries to be less abstract than its ancestors. The clear scale for instance makes it much easier to follow what happens ( and is very different from the scale in Rites of War). I said in an earlier post that the game played more like Battle Isle than Panzer Corps. It is mostly because most weapons are ranged, but attacking allows the dedender to retaliate against the attacker. As in Battle Isle, many units have a firing range that is greater than their shooting range, so scouting is primordial, as is killing opposing scouts(and as in Battle Isle, the free retaliation makes cannon fodder utterly useless : shoots at target for little damage, take lots of damage in the return fire, give free experience to your target...).
It is a bit easier to maneuver than in Panzer Corps (because you can fire from afar, so traffic jam isa bit less of an issue. If playing at a high difficulty level, you should not fill al of your troop slots anyway, as weaker units suffer more from return fire).
Some units are support units, and can retaliate against someone attacking a nearby unit if the support unit is in range.
Some other gameplay issues come from the retaliation mechanism : as I said in the beginning, it really cripples cheap low tiers units; but it also makes unit size an arbitrary strength, as a Strength 50 unit will retaliate 5 times harder than 5 * strength 10 units. It also makes unit strength too important a stat (while in Steel Panthers for instance, a 12 men squad has no inherent advantage against 2 6 men ones).
It also makes top tier units too strong (have fun hitting a titan for 0-1 with your Leman Russ squadron while it mows them down in retaliation), and makes AI too afraid of engaging titans and super heavy tanks with anything else than artillery and other superheavies and titans (which makes sense as it would be a losing exchange, but it is a bit weird to have ork boyz charge at your Shadowlords (anti infantry super heavy tank), and do nothing because they have no other target in range, and would be devastated by the return fire of the Shadowlords. The result is the AI piling on your weaker units (mostly infantry, flyers and scouting vehicles), in order to destroy them without much retaliation.
In order to make up for this, AI has been given more superheavy tanks and gargants.
Another problematic issue is the way infantry and anti infantry weapons are modelled : The weapons are counted by unit of strength, so for instance, Space Marine devastator are each considered wielding a heavy bolter(in Steel Panthers for instance, you could have a squad of 10 have 1 machine gun, 9 rifles, and 10 hand grenades. Here, you need to have either 10 heavy bolters, or 0). It would indicate that 1 point of strength = 2-5 soldiers (as are the transport rules; because one transport can carry 2 strength of infantry), but at the same time, a single shot weapon can destroy up to one strength max, so it makes strong one shot weapons(like lascannons) too effective against infantry, and it makes it hard to balance infantry offence and defence(currently, I think infantry dies too easily and hits too hard). Artillery also is a bit wonky (there is no blast effect, so it is given several shots to compensate, but they plan to add blast at a later time).
That said, it is an issue they are aware of, and were thinking about ways to make infantry more resilient to anti tank weapons.
The missions are more varied than in Panzer Corps/Panzer General : You usually have more time to complete the objectives (there are no longer decisive victories, so you don't need to replay in harder difficulties to make sure you get the max reward to make next missions still doable), and not all missions are take X objectives before N turns. Many still are, but some missions require you to assassinate a specific unit, to bring one unit to a specific location, to defend one or several locations, or to kill a given number of opponents.
These are all very welcome changes to the monotony of missions in Rites of War.
The campaign is split into 3 acts. It is mostly linear, but there are a few mission choices (where you pick one of 2 missions).
Act 1 is the initial defense of Armageddon. You don't have access to super heavies, Titans, or Space Marines during this one. It is the longest one, and .
Act 2 is the early counter attack. You unlock most units there (but not the most potents super heavy tank variants, or Space Marine units). The final unlocks are pretty different from the build I played.
Act 3 unlocks all units, and is the final mop up phase.
I cannot comment on the campaign difficulty much, as the build I played the most was much easier than the latest(there are 5 difficulty modes, but only normal was unlocked earlier in beta, and then, I didn't have enough time to go through the campaign again), but back in beta 3, Act 1 was much tougher than 2 and 3(they increased the number of opponents, and cut down the available requisition brutally for act 2 and 3 for the latest build, so it is probably the other way around now), and from what other testers have said, it is adequate now(harder difficulties in Panzer Corps Grand Campaign were really very hard).
One major change compared to Panzer General is that you are refunded for your killed, upgraded, and scrapped units at the end of the battle, so whatever you are doing only influence glory(score), and your units experience(obivously, replacing casualties lowers experience, and scrapping an unit makes you lose all of its experience, but you will have the same total requisition for a given battle however you peformed before (I find it a good change, as it makes the difficulty more consistent, but the result is that you are less attached to your units, and except for XP loss, you don't really mind sacrificing them).
Something that is missing from Rites of War and Panzer Corps is the traits on level up (mostly because experience can go down as well as up, there with veterans being replaced by rookies).
Missing WH40K items :
The most notable omissions are the deep striking (aka sending Space Marines in drop pods or Thunderhawk gunships behind enemy lines), and heavy transports (Land Raiders can only act as tanks, they cannot transport units. Thunderhawk gunships are not in either), because transport and infantry units are not separate entities (infantry is converted to transports when embarking. You cannot load an unit into another one).
Jet packs and air units are a bit disappointing too, as they are not able to pass impassable terrain (rivers, cliffs).
AI :
The AI can be quite aggressive when attacking, but it doesn't scout very well, making defense harder than offense (because when you attack, if you manage to stay out of the spotting range of the units you don't kill, the AI will usually remain on its defensive positions). Here too, the AI seems to have improved much in the latest build(it is still weak in scouting, though), so you are strongly incentivized to fire from long range at a few targets at the same time, both to avoid return fire, and to avoid getting spotted.
AI passivity on defense was my biggest complain in the game (during beta 3). If it does not spot you, you can pound it from range 3+ without it doing anything during its turn (but you sometimes need to expose yourself to finish the mission within the time limit, and you cannot spot all the ork spotters yourself btw, unless you never advance any unit further than your scouts).
Modding :
Changing units stats is trivial. I could mod unit strength (ie size), and every other characteristics using either the scenario editor or directly editing the text file, so making them closer to the way you think they should work in 40K is no problem at all. But some hard limitations are still in place : ranges cannot exceed 4 for direct fire weapons (they will probably push it further. This was because their LoS algorithm does not consider tiles beyond 4, which is the max spotting range currently), and you cannot mod traits easily (so adding units with special rules might be difficult).
I have not tried the scenario editor much, but it seems potent, if unwieldly.
Impressions :
It is a bit like watching super giant robot movies : If you accept the premise of the movie (that super giant robots are ultimate weapons, and not an utterly stupid concept), you can enjoy the movie, if not, the giant robot will make the whole movie look stupid to you.
If you accept the remaining abstractions inherited from Panzer Corps (mostly that an unit you fire 4 times at will attack 5 times in the same amount of time an unit that will not be fired at would do), and the relative ranges of firing, spotting and moving ( most units have a move range greater than their firing range, so good luck avoiding close combat... On the other hand, firing without being spotted, and avoiding retaliation offer huge advantages), then the game is very solid, and is the best 40k game from this generation (ok, that is not saying much give...).
But if you really want a simulation of 40k warfare (like Final Liberation almost was), then you might be disappointed by the system.
I think it is a worthy successor to Rites of War, and manages to extends its scope, and it "feels" more like a proper 40K representation thanks to the "simulation" elements (shooting distances were even shorter in Rites of War). The game is halfway between its puzzly origins, and a system like Steel Panthers 3 or John Tiller's Campaign series. I would have prefered them just keeping the graphic engine and make the Steel Panthers 40K I wished Final Liberation would be (too much dumbing down in this one, but I still love it too) but it manages to do so pretty wel IMOl.
TLDR : If you are allergic to Panzer Corps variants (or Battle Isle), then it is probable that this game won't win your heart, but oherwise, I think it is one of the better variants built around these core mechanisms, and I like the changes they made to Rites of War and Panzer Corps: They managed to remove some layers of abstraction and still have the game play well if you don't hate the underlying system.
+ Nice variety of units
+ Less abstract than Panzer Corps (plays more like Battle Isle)
+ The game remains enjoyable even after you exploit the hell of the AI scouting issues (cf AI)
+ It's 40K, and it is not a cash grab designed for mobiles
+ The combat model gives results that would not be too different from a game of Epic
+ Good mission variety
+ Good moddability
- The tutorial did a poor job of explaining anything(it is not a problem if you played any iteration of Panzer General, and are familiar with Warhammer 40K).
- The retaliation mechanism causes a lot of imbalances(because it makes 1 unit of 50 Space Marines much stronger than 5 units of 10)
- AI too passive in defence (and still bad at scouting)
Missing features :
- Cannot play as orks (except in multiplayer)
- Where are my thunderhawks and drop pods?
- Why do Assault Marines need a bridge to cross
- No meteo
game like this makes me slightly unhappy 
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