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Advance Wars: We don't talk about Battalion Wars

Sushi said:
Isn't being air portable a fairly big difference? Between this and anti-tank there's the same difference as is between bike and recon, not being able to capture.
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The big advantage transportable gives you is sneaky early island/remote captures via T-Copter for extra income. But you want the cheapest possible combo for that. Same for APC rapid captures, if you even think about those with Bikes around now.

Let's look at what the unit does now.
  • Capture
  • Transport Capable
  • Direct Fire after moving. Anti-Tank can't.
  • Range 2 Indirect fire after moving. Anti-Tank can't. Only B-ship can, I think.
  • Good vs Inf, Light Vehicles?
  • Good Defensive matchups
  • Lower cost, due to Inf. nature?
  • What's the move speed? 2 and it's capture is useless, 3 and it make Mechs weak.
How do you price something like this? Too high and it really won't be built over Artillery and Anti-tank, too low and it either displaces Infantry entirely due to range advantage or the damage is too low and it's really not built. It does too much and making it decent intrudes on to the roles of too many other units.

Advance Wars doesn't have the tile resolution to do infantry support weapons. Just think of it as Inf. are the guys with just guns, while Mechs are the guys with support weapons.
 
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wootius said:
The big advantage transportable gives you is sneaky early island captures via T-Copter for extra income. But you want the cheapest possible combo for that. Same for APC rapid captures, if you even think about those with Bikes around now.

Let's look at what the unit does now.
  • Capture
  • Transport Capable
  • Direct Fire after moving. Anti-Tank can't.
  • Range 2 Indirect fire after moving. Anti-Tank can't. Only B-ship can, I think.
  • Good vs Inf, Light Vehicles?
  • Good Defensive matchups
  • Lower cost, due to Inf. nature?
  • What's the move speed? 2 and it's capture is useless, 3 and it make Mechs weak.
How do you price something like this? Too high and it really won't be built over Artillery and Anti-tank, too low and it either displaces Infantry entirely due to range advantage or the damage is too low and it's really not built. It does too much and making it decent intrudes on to the roles of too many other units.

Advance Wars doesn't have the tile resolution to do infantry support weapons. Just think of it as Inf. are the guys with just guns, while Mechs are the guys with support weapons.
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How about we give everything a range bracket? MGs -for example- have a range of two or something but for direct-fire units, the more distance, more damage gets bled off, thus giving indirect fire a use as their weapons don't get a damage bleed over distance.
 
Aaron Fox said:
How about we give everything a range bracket? MGs -for example- have a range of two or something but for direct-fire units, the more distance, more damage gets bled off, thus giving indirect fire a use as their weapons don't get a damage bleed over distance.
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That would likely require a lot of rebalancing the ranges of indirect units and a lot of basic gameplay assumptions.
 
Aaron Fox said:
How about we give everything a range bracket? MGs -for example- have a range of two or something but for direct-fire units, the more distance, more damage gets bled off, thus giving indirect fire a use as their weapons don't get a damage bleed over distance.
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Now you're making the game too complicated. Advance Wars is fun because of it's simplicity to most Strategy games. Now you have to remember the damage table for every range value of a weapon, for every unit if you plan at all ahead.
 
wootius said:
Now you're making the game too complicated. Advance Wars is fun because of it's simplicity to most Strategy games. Now you have to remember the damage table for every range value of a weapon, for every unit if you plan at all ahead.
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Yeaaaah Advance Wars isn't Panzer General nor should it try to be.
 
wootius said:
Now you're making the game too complicated. Advance Wars is fun because of it's simplicity to most Strategy games. Now you have to remember the damage table for every range value of a weapon, for every unit if you plan at all ahead.
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Yeah.. that is true.

However, how is the series going to evolve then? Each game has something that makes it different from the last. AW 1 had a basic CO power, AW2 gave super CO powers, DS gave a whole bunch of stuff, and DoR went to basics essentially.
 
Aaron Fox said:
However, how is the series going to evolve then? Each game has something that makes it different from the last. AW 1 had a basic CO power, AW2 gave super CO powers, DS gave a whole bunch of stuff, and DoR went to basics essentially.
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Well the question is what to expand on, what to simplify, and what to make optional. I commented on several avenues, from logistics and weather to infantry to the nature of COs. Let's take a look at units:

AW1 original unit set
Capt[2]=Infantry, Mech
Land[8]=Recon, Tank, H-Tank, AA, Artillery, Rockets, Missile, APC
Sea[4]=Lander, Submarine, Cruiser, Battleship
Air[4]=T-Copter, B-Copter, Fighter, Bomber

AW DoR (exactly +50% units interestingly enough)
Capt[3]=Infantry, Mech, Bike
Land[12]=Recon, Flare, Tank, M-Tank, H-Tank, AA, AT, Artillery, Rockets, AA, Missile, APC
Sea[6]=Lander, Gunboat, Sub, Cruiser, Battleship, Aircraft Carrier
Air[6]=T-Copter, B-Copter, Duster, Fighter, Bomber, Sea Plane

One thing I was thinking would be interesting is tech levels. Something like, say:
LVL1 Factory=Infantry, Mech, Recon, APC
LVL2 Factory=Tank, AA, Artillery
LVL3 Factory=H-Tank, Rockets, Missile

LVL1 Port=Lander, Gunboat
LVL2 Port=Cruiser, Sub
LVL3 Port=Battleship, Aircraft Carrier

LVL1 Airport=T-Copter, B-Copter
LVL2 Airport=Duster
LVL3 Airport=Fighter, Bomber

Depending on the scenario settings, buildings are either stuck at the level they're at, can be upgraded up to a certain level, can be auto-set to a certain level, or even be upgradable to from cities. This allows you to do everything from regular AW style games where all units are allowed, to only simple units, to setups where some can make simple units but some can make advanced, to a more evolutionary play wherein upgrading is itself a key strategic choice.
 
Waitwaitwait - what's wrong with Battalion Wars?

I fucking loved that game. Needed a PC skirmish mode a la Battlefront.

EDIT: Also Advanced Wars is amazing.
 
firefossil said:
*snip*
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I don't know whether I like the idea of hard set tiers for factories/air bases. I feel that's already pretty well done with the differences with price, though I can see how it does make some of the cheaper units useless late game when your income is crazy and you have only a few production buildings. Perhaps make it so the temp airport/ports the apc's built in DOR act as tier one factories (and give the apcs a way to build temp factories)?

Also I was thinking about trying to make infantry more useful/less an afterthought without just adding more units. One idea would be to combined mech/inf, but make it so that the rpg can only be used on the attack. This makes infantry more firepower so they don't feel like a waste of a tile, but weak on the defensive which prevents the silliness that occurs from a mech carpet. Would also open up the way for manpad squads running on the same principle, which would give you a cheap way of getting aa without removing air due to it's low mobility and inability to counterattack.

I would also like to see a IFV type unit. Something that has firepower to destroy infantry, recon and indirect units but dies to tanks.
 
I don't think it needs too much really. A new campaign every two years, a few more new COs, and some new units could be cool with me.

If the dual screen stays, Air maps being standard would be cool. It takes bombers/fighters/dusters off the land map. Let the two maps interact of course.

If want want ideas of how more COs and units could be made, the ill fated but so close to being finished that I still get sad thinking about it Custom Wars project page is still up. I miss working on it.
 
wootius said:
I don't think it needs too much really. A new campaign every two years, a few more new COs, and some new units could be cool with me.

If the dual screen stays, Air maps being standard would be cool. It takes bombers/fighters/dusters off the land map. Let the two maps interact of course.

If want want ideas of how more COs and units could be made, the ill fated but so close to being finished that I still get sad thinking about it Custom Wars project page is still up. I miss working on it.
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Actually, me and some friends on skype created a ton of new COs (largely self inserts based on the RA3 paradox community's personas of interest), I can get you the google drive stuff if you want.
 
eraserman said:
I don't know whether I like the idea of hard set tiers for factories/air bases. I feel that's already pretty well done with the differences with price, though I can see how it does make some of the cheaper units useless late game when your income is crazy and you have only a few production buildings. Perhaps make it so the temp airport/ports the apc's built in DOR act as tier one factories (and give the apcs a way to build temp factories)?
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Well the idea is for it to be flexible, allowing you do everything from Classic (all Tier 3) to Simple (all Tier 1) to Strategic (start with nothing, must upgrade Cities to production buildings) to Tactical (variable Tier factories, but can't upgrade any of them).

eraserman said:
Also I was thinking about trying to make infantry more useful/less an afterthought without just adding more units. One idea would be to combined mech/inf, but make it so that the rpg can only be used on the attack. This makes infantry more firepower so they don't feel like a waste of a tile, but weak on the defensive which prevents the silliness that occurs from a mech carpet. Would also open up the way for manpad squads running on the same principle, which would give you a cheap way of getting aa without removing air due to it's low mobility and inability to counterattack.
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I'd been thinking on similar lines. Get rid of the Mech unit entirely, then give the Infantry a single shot attack that deals B-Copter level damage to both vehicles AND aircraft, which it has to choose to use. This obviously means it can't use it when retaliating. It also makes Infantry a huge pain in friendly cities or when supplied by APCs, but much more limited elsewhere.

eraserman said:
I would also like to see a IFV type unit. Something that has firepower to destroy infantry, recon and indirect units but dies to tanks.
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They used to have one back in the Game Boy Wars days. In the simplest sense, one can argue that the basic Tank is really an IFV, and the Med/Neo/Mega Tanks are the true Tank. You could also make a Bradley-esque IFV that has 3 anti-vehicle shots a la the Mech or even just one shot a la the Gunboat.
 
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of victory.




 
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AWBW is a bit... buggy and still on a AW2+ basically. It has problems basically.

The key thing is AWBW tries to mix two different games together and does it poorly.

Also, the AW community is still fun of assholes. Gods.
 
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Still playing Advanced Wars II and Days of Ruin to this day.

When I play with my friends sometimes we have house rules with max population caps dependent on the number of cities each of us had.
Had some fun games semi-role-playing 'month' long wars (each turn of all 4 players was a day in both games I believe).
 
I wish I hadn't lost my SP, or had someone throw my DS into a wall. I am craving Advance Wars :[
 
ForeverShogo said:
Yeah. The Langrisser setup was pretty cool.

for those unfamiliar . . .

Each character could have a number of cannon fodder units following them around, depending on their class. While characters still fought as individuals, the cannon fodder following them around usually represented 10 soldiers.

So all your characters played like badass officers that were actually leading a small army into battle.
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I just found out today that after some 15 year Langrisser is getting a new game (release date July 23 2015) so I suppose that there is still hope that AW to shall get a new game.
 
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