WARNO - The RTS Formerly Known As Wargame 4

Games
#1

Earlier today, Eugen Systems announced the spiritual successor to the Wargame (European Escalation, Airland Battle, Red Dragon) franchise, WARNO - Warning Order. Taking the mainland Europe setting of Wargame European Escalation, the timeframe and expanded arsenal of Wargame Airland Battle, and the Army General campaigns and quality-of-life improvements of Steel Division 2, who knows if this chimera of a game will be glorious or a dud?

Early access is due January 20, 2022, and full release is ballparked at 6-8 months from then. USA and USSR are planned to be available at first, with East & West Germany, France and the UK being added before release. Timeframe is set at 1989 with reasonable assurances they won’t powercreep anything beyond that like they did with Red Dragon. No naval combat. Hopefully this will bring back the relative glory days of the franchise before it became bloated to all hell, and will benefit from everything they’ve learned in the interim.

WARNO, huah! What is it good for?
#2

Hopefully their staff get paid this time.

#3

Does it come with the same “lovely” community? Yet another game to view solely for its single-player content. That said, the Wargame series is still pretty good single-player.

#4

Woof. Right? First thing I do in Eugen games is mute every channel I can get my hands on. Possibly one of the worst, most toxic communities ever.

Hopefully, Eugen will move back to the “glory days” of AirLand Battle, which I enjoyed very, very much. After that, the games just lost me for some reason.

#5

Starts at about 13:30.

#6

I love SD2, so I’m very hopeful on this

#7

Playing the early access for this - basically it’s Wargame but with all the updated stuff they have developed for Steel Division brought across - eg you can give group orders to seize positions and defend and the AI takes over, taking out lots of the micro.

It looks a hell of a lot better than Red Dragon as well - god that is over 7 years old now!

#8

Does it allow pause, and saving mid-battle?

#9

You can pause and save mid-battle.

There is just skirmish at the moment - it’s pretty buggy, I’ve had troops not unload when they reach their destination, names on the map don’t show up, it’s hard crashed my PC! But it looks like it could be quite good once finished.

#10

I bought this on a whim and have it a try. I’ve played the Wargames series and the first Steel Division (but not the second). It seems to be a decent evolution of those games, and it’s interesting to see them attempt to make it more manageable. The game speed is a bit too fast, but the devs have said on the Steam forums that they are going to adjust this in the future.

I like the AI “smart orders” in theory, but I’m skeptical that they will be effective at all against a player who’s micromanaging their troops. I also have mixed feels about the reduced scale — it makes the battles seem less epic than previous games but seems to be a bit more manageable and reminds me of tabletop miniature wargaming.

It goes without saying, but the Steam reviews and Steam forums have been pretty brutal to this game. Lots of Wargame: Red Dragon fans who pretty much expected it to be a content-complete remake of that game, even in early access.

#11

Is the reduced scale really a thing? Or is this just the first early access build and larger maps are to come?

#12

Yup, you’re controlling individual vehicles and infantry squads instead of whole platoons. It’s kind of nice, because it’s a bit easier to position units in good firing positions. I also read that the individual vehicle damage modeling is much better now.

#13

Bump5

#14

@schurem

Love to hear your impressions too!

#15

Just had a quick skirmish. Got my ass kicked. Old way of gaming the AI didn’t work ;-)

The scale is much smaller. Think four tanks instead of fourteen. This makes things that smash, such as an A-10 all the more decisive. I think I like it. Less helmet fire potential like this. Though… I did like how cool Red Dragon made me feel for learning to cope with the extreme task saturation.

The graphics are superb. The units and effects look shiny as fuck. The game as released is barebones. Just the bare minimum of toys needed to have a quick smash, and only two simplistic game modes.

Still, seeing where this thing will go, where Eugen have gone before, I call this 30 bucks well spent.

#16

LOL, that just made me feel extremely inadequate.

#17

Maybe I wasn’t in the right unit, but “Warning Order” was always just that. I don’t think I ever saw or heard “warno” in my time in the US Army.

#18

Watching VulcanHD stream some of the early access. Looks like it should be fun.

Hope they keep the navy part out of it.

#19

I have been playing the ‘other wargame 4’ a bit just now, Regiments, published by of all people zombie Microprose. It’s actually good! Had a good time sending little tanks all over the map to blow things up. Didn’t look as snazzy, but I actually like the UI in Regiments better, and it’s slightly larger in scale.

Have a go at the grand price of … free!

#20

Warning Orders are WNGO here in Australia - I do agree that WARNO just sounds, odd.

Had a quick go last night; I sucked. Having not played either SDs, I have no idea what the new AI/UI features are… I should probably do some research.

I didn’t use it, but I think the concept of Combat Teams will be useful for me