Warhammer 40K: Armaggedon - Turn-based strategy from Slitherine

[Destroid]

Tried it out, not very appealing to me, I know a lot about 40k but that doesn't seem to have any sort of relevance here. Only played a few tutorial missions so far.

 

[Agesilaus]

After reading Destroids past, I should mention that I've never played with the Warhammer toys and boardgames. This game very much reminds me of games like fantasy general, rather than any table top game. ALSO, tutorial missions are not a good measure of the game, although it is funny to laugh at your opponent talk shit and then spit the dummy. It does introduce you to the story, too, so you should play through it, but be aware that the AI is brain dead in the tutorial, it does nothing.

Right now, I'm in act one and there are a lot of missions. I am a little concerned that I won't be given any unique units; I want to use one of the commissars, and it's been hinted at in the most recent mission that my commissar will help me rather than go to the front line, but so far I haven't encountered any unique characters other than the war boss you capture in the first proper mission.

 

[noplsai]

Got it, installed it, deinstalled it. Will wait for patches/expansion. Its not buggy but meh. It's ok, nothing special. Though, as beta tester dude said, the AI is dead due to scouting, well, its not exactly due to scouting, its because units do not discover you if you shoot at them outside their LOS/range... which is retarded. Though there might be some hardcoded scenario behaviors for some unit not to move, I am fairly sure that those cases that stuck to my brain were about mobile biker orks who did not see artillery bombing them... Its a massive exploit. Its not gonna get fixed, its by design...
As predicted, frontline+bombarment. Meh.

The beta tester dude who posted said, that they got rid of damage vs hard/soft as compared to Panzer Corps but they actually have it inside in some way. Because the damage rating of weapons are not hitpoints, I think.
For example, guns can shoot 3 times at 40 "damage" or 1 time at 90. The 90 points cannon will have better odds against armored units. I believe. I have not tested it yet with proper rigor.

They target casuals with this. Or at least the neckbearded morons who actually read those moronic Warhammer books. The theme is the seller...
Lots of money was dumped into the art, as said before me, the models looks good close up. Not animation though.

Played 3 missions on the hardest difficulty. I would not call that hard. I would call it normal. Time is not a problem. Losses are a problem, mostly because early on, you dont outrange their units and you take daaaamage. This is bad because experience is a bit overpowered. XP being important makes you clingy to units. Thats shit. In PG (PC has those hero pictures but at least they are random and dont give you +3 +3 +3 to armor to make your tank unstoppable) your experience lets you overstack units. But you still lose them at the same rate (at least if you dont have massive initiative... fighter planes...) and the experience with it. In WHA your experience makes your units massively better and you dont have to buy the advantage.

The dialogue between the missions is somewhere between pathetic and cringe. Holy shit. Its also voice acted. AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH.

Disappointing.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Why are people encouraging this sort of games?

 

[A horse of course]

Why are people encouraging this sort of games?

Anoraks and grognards

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Why are people encouraging this sort of games?

Anoraks and grognards

Playing this is like tearing up ones grognard card.

 

[Destroid]

Played a couple of missions into the main game, still don't like it.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Ork choppas, aka big primitive axes, have 25% armour piercing.

Meanwhile, lascannons, the fuckhueg tank-mounted guns that are tailor-made for destroying vehicles, have 20%.

WHO THE FUCK DESIGNED THIS

EDIT: SHOOTAS ARE 25% AP TOO?!

WHAT IS THIS I DONT EVEN

 

[Agesilaus]

Finally finished act 1, and now I have a unique unit and access to space marines and mechs. The last mission in act 1 was somewhat tough, I kept getting attacked by a dinosaur called Squiggles who has a giant artillery piece on his back. The game is okay and I like the voice acting and characters, I agree that the AI is weak but I'm playing on normal; on the tutorial missions, though, the AI is literally brain-dead.

Ork choppas, aka big primitive axes, have 25% armour piercing.

Meanwhile, lascannons, the fuckhueg tank-mounted guns that are tailor-made for destroying vehicles, have 20%.

WHO THE FUCK DESIGNED THIS

I assume this is just part of warhammer, which is already pretty stupid if you examine it that closely? I have a unit of people with wolverine claws, and cavalry with hunting lances, for pete's sake.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

That would be because orkz believe their weapons to be good. All orks are slightly psychic and the reason 90% of their equipment even works is because they believe it will and that influences the warp or some shit.

Ork technology appears ramshackle and slapped-together (it often is), but is as potent as any weapons used by the Imperium or other races. Ork technology (or "teknologee") is characterised by a constant stream of poorly thought-out experimentation and attempts to constantly outdo the competition to build the biggest gun, the largest Gargant (a huge land-based combat walker), or the fastest Warbuggy, and also mainly by the fact that in many cases the only reason it works at all is because of the Orks' minor psychic powers. This means that if enough Orks think it will work, it usually will. Many a Techmarine has opened an Ork Slugga to find it to just be a box with bolts and bits of metal in it.

Listen and believe~

 

[Darth Roxor]

Yes, I am very much aware of 40k's inherent stupidity and the orks' weaponization of belief, but I am still fairly sure even with those accounted for lascannons are not supposed to be weaker than fucking shootas. What the shit.

 

[Ulminati]

Yes, I am very much aware of 40k's inherent stupidity and the orks' weaponization of belief, but I am still fairly sure even with those accounted for lascannons are not supposed to be weaker than fucking shootas. What the shit.

When was the last time you used a flashlight to melt metal?

 

[Norfleet]

Yeah, lasers are not actually very effective weapons. This factor has perpetually stymied developers of laser-based weaponry: They just don't do damage as effectively as simple kinetics. You can see this in the progression of Sci-Fi: Earlier Sci-Fi loved their rayguns, but increasingly modern Sci-Fi moves back towards kinetic weaponry. Just watch the progression from Star Trek onwards. Besides, it's not just the percentage of armor-piercing that matters, it's the actual damage that is delivered after the fact.

 

[Darth Roxor]

FFS NIGGERS

The lascannon is a formidable laser weapon, capable of piercing most vehicle armour and killing powerful and heavily armoured troops. However, its slow recharge and fire rate make it a poor anti-personnel weapon.

Also, shoota has 25% AP while big shoota has 0. The numbers in this game are all over the fucking place.


It's also making me extra butthurt that there's no clear division between soft and hard targets, which means machete rape mobs can just go ahead and rip your tanks apart. What the fuck.

 

[Ulminati]

Stuff like this is why I never D1P Slitherine games

 

[tuluse]

Yeah, lasers are not actually very effective weapons. This factor has perpetually stymied developers of laser-based weaponry: They just don't do damage as effectively as simple kinetics. You can see this in the progression of Sci-Fi: Earlier Sci-Fi loved their rayguns, but increasingly modern Sci-Fi moves back towards kinetic weaponry. Just watch the progression from Star Trek onwards. Besides, it's not just the percentage of armor-piercing that matters, it's the actual damage that is delivered after the fact.

Are you using real physics to try to explain 40k?

 

[hoverdog]

Lascannon has S9 and AP2
Shoota is IIRC S4 and AP5

:australia:

 

[Darth Roxor]

Also, I've played this for 10h so far, and to those who are wondering about getting it I can only say: wait for a sale.

 

[VonVentrue]

Also, I've played this for 10h so far, and to those who are wondering about getting it I can only say: wait for a sale.

Any specific (non-balance related, I might add) criticisms that immediately spring to your mind? It's 41% off right now, a nasty Steam glitch which Slitherine are trying to address - would you recommend it at this price?

 

[Darth Roxor]

It's 41% off right now, a nasty Steam glitch which Slitherine are trying to address - would you recommend it at this price?

Idk. Half price would be sort of acceptable, I guess, if you want to pew-pew some lasguns. As for specific criticisms, I have 6 very big ones, out of which most are probably not going to get fixed in any way.

1. The morale model is completely idiotic. Units take morale damage EACH TIME they engage in combat with something, which leads to ridiculously stupid situations like artillery or gunships chillin' 5 hexes away and bombarding grots for massive casualties and STILL TAKING MORALE DAMAGE.

2. The missions do not in any way take into account how fast you've done a mission, there are no side objectives and no special locations to seize (other than victory hexes). This means you can just grind through each mission with minimal losses by moving 2-3 hexes ahead each turn and murdering everything with artillery/snipers. And this is further enforced by...

3. The reinforcing system being retarded. With no wounded/killed distinction on your squads, you can no longer rest any unit back to better strength once it gets hit. The only way to get it back to full shape is by buying replacements, and this is a bad idea because it strains your budget AND cuts a unit's XP. One could think that would be possible to avoid if you just retreated all battered units and pressed on with the scenario to completion, but no, at the end of each mission your units get automatically reinforced like that anyway, costing you both a lot of requisition (afaik you always pay full unit cost no matter how much you reinforce) and a lot of unit xp. For units that are more frontline oriented, like tanks or infantry, it is downright impossible to get them to level above 3 or 4 because they will always suffer some casualties.

4. Melee is nothing short of a liability in the player's hands. It can only be useful either for killing off stragglers or doing kamikaze attacks, and obviously the AI cares about the consequences of the second way much less than the player. This is because melee damage is always ONLY done after ranged attacks finish first. So you can sure as hell charge your rough riders with armour-piercing exploding lances into some enemy vehicles, but they will first get utterly raped by the vehicle shooting them with its guns, and only after that will they be able to finally do the melee attack (probably at half or lower strength than initially). This also counts for infantry equipped with flamers.

5. The AI is very often braindead and ripe for exploits such as bombarding it from behind the fog of war (because it's hard-coded to never leave its post unless it can spot something).

6. And finally, what I have been raging about for this entire page, the values for armour piercing (and damage in general) are completely, absolutely, ridiculously and terminally retarded. Seeing your tanks getting overrun and torn apart by grots because soft/hard target distinction doesn't exist is not something that should be happening. Realising a tailor-made anti-tank weapon is actually worse at tank-killing than glorified cleavers and shoddy machine guns is like a whole different level of retardo. Needing to first bombard enemy shoota boyz with big shootas to hell and back with artillery because a tank would get shredded by them is idiotic.

I honestly don't know. I advise pirating it first just to make sure since it's only 1gb big.

 

[Galdred]

Actually, with the current combat model, it can be better to have high Strength low AP against armored targets than the other way around :
90 Strength AP 20 vs 50 defense is like 90 St AP 0 vs 40 def, while 40 AP 25 vs def 50 would be like 40 Ap0 vs def 37.5.
Now to Darth Roxxor specific criticism and their origin:
1. indeed. It os because they are using morale both to represent morale and organisation/readiness which gives weird results.

2.Actually, I like these changes : in Panzer Corps Xpacks, the difficulty of a mission depended mostly on how you had been doing in earlier missions. I prefet non snowballing difficulty curves. That said, glory should then serve some purpose. At least make the campaign outcome depend on it(or unlock cool sidegrades for units).

3)I never liked PzGen rest 1 hex away and get back to full strength mecanism. At the tactical scale this game is supposed to represent, it would make no sense : a wounded guy is out of the battle anyway. The xp system is bad indeed though, as you pointed out, frontline units (except super heavies and titans) stagnate at low Xp, while artillery always max Xp early.

4) I totally agree : it is the results of several factors : unlimited retaliations (attacking grants a free attack to the opponent, so lots of cheap melee units give a lot of free attacks), and low infantry count(because the game give every soldier in a squad the same weapons, so heavy weapon squads become overpowered with 1 heavy bolter or missile launcher per soldier, while assault squads don t have much higher troop counts, but have the same equipment than in the tabletop.

5)Defensive AI is stupid indeed. the worse is that it could easily be remedied by giving it more leader units with sight 3 or 4.

6)I have not checked the table for orks, but the imperial weapon table was not overly stupid from what I had seen. The combat system makes it difficult to evaluate weapons, as high strength can be better than high AP vs armored targets (very few units have def above 100).

 

[Darth Roxor]

in Panzer Corps Xpacks, the difficulty of a mission depended mostly on how you had been doing in earlier missions. I prefet non snowballing difficulty curves.

I could live without mission times mattering if the maps had side objectives or special locations to capture with goodies, like in Rites of War or Fantasy General. It even looks to me like Armageddon was supposed to have those at some time, but they ditched the idea - many maps have those stationary mobs of orks stowed away in some random places that you will never visit when you beeline for the objective. That, and a few other things, give me the impression that this game was rushed out just for it to be playable.

I never liked PzGen rest 1 hex away and get back to full strength mecanism. At the tactical scale this game is supposed to represent, it would make no sense : a wounded guy is out of the battle anyway.

And again, I could live with this if the xp system wasn't so idiotic :/

 

[noplsai]

3. The reinforcing system being retarded. With no wounded/killed distinction on your squads, you can no longer rest any unit back to better strength once it gets hit. The only way to get it back to full shape is by buying replacements, and this is a bad idea because it strains your budget AND cuts a unit's XP.

Wat?! Thats the only good thing about this game. You cant just fucking stack your advantages and exploit it to hell... Replacements costing money is a bad idea? What the fuck are you on? Also, the XP loss due to unit loss is also great. Cant get yourself some uber units if you are dumb. And its all well that way. In Panzer Corps you wasted money if you overstacked experienced tanks since they did cost extra and you would grind them down to regular 10 in the mission anyway...

at the end of each mission your units get automatically reinforced like that anyway, costing you both a lot of requisition (afaik you always pay full unit cost no matter how much you reinforce) and a lot of unit xp.

Holy shit, I smell bullshit, I played 3 missions and deinstalled it now so I am not 100 percent sure but replacements are free as in beer after the mission. Just like Panzer Corps. It makes sense not to reinforce losses mid-mission to save money.

But I agree with the rest...

I really didnt like figuring out just how much damage my units do, due to 3 fucking different weapons on a unit, with different number of attacks and different damage... Christ, I swear, I could not estimate how well my unit would do. I had to move it into attack range with 3/2/1 hexes and check...

 

[Darth Roxor]

Replacements costing money is a bad idea?

If you have to pay for them post-factum, yes.

Also, the XP loss due to unit loss is also great. Cant get yourself some uber units if you are dumb.

"If you are dumb" aka "if your entire army isn't composed of 5 spotters and 20 artilleries" because only that way can you ignore all harm to units.

replacements are free as in beer after the mission.

Nope. Get enough losses, win a mission, and you'll see your overall requisition count drop at the start of the next one.

 

[noplsai]

Man, I am tempted to reinstall just to test the forced prestige use for after-mission reinforcements... It would be idiotic design. It would even be surprising, despite other questionable design choices.
Massive waste of time though, considering that I'll still play this shit after the first expansion comes out. Or at least something what I would consider the name "expansion". Not those meh DLC maps post Africa Corps....

About XP though, I'm still pretty much ok with it. Itts good even. You lose veterans, what else do you expect.