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!
Does it allow pause, and saving mid-battle?
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.
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.
Is the reduced scale really a thing? Or is this just the first early access build and larger maps are to come?
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.
Bump5
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.
LOL, that just made me feel extremely inadequate.
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.
Watching VulcanHD stream some of the early access. Looks like it should be fun.
Hope they keep the navy part out of it.
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!
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
It did look like they brought the LOS tool over from SD which is a nice improvement.
The AI seems to be better than previous games. In my last game all of my M1 Abrams tanks were destroyed with infantry RPGs. Gotta remember to clear out forests before charging with tanks!
Every time I see the thread title I think it’s a cricket game
The latest patch toned down the tank speed and increased the strength of AA. Played a game during lunch today and it felt much better. The AI is actually pretty damn good (especially compared to past Eugen games).
I’ve been watching a VulcanHDGaming commentary on a tournament match of WARNO and he keeps on talking about tank “health”. I was under the impression that in Steel Divisions the tanks didn’t have health. They had different system damage they could take (such as their tracks being knocked off, engine destroyed, or individual crew members knocked out), but not some sort of health bar. Is WARNO moving to a more unrealistic hit points/health bar system?
It’s a common misconception that vehicles in SD don’t have hit points, but they actually do. The main difference between an SD-style system and a Wargame-style system (the latter of which is what WARNO uses) is that SD has fixed amount of damage per hit with a penetration chance dicating whether that damage is dealt or completely invalidated, and WARNO has a varying amount of damage depending on the weapon versus the armor in question without the random die roll of penetration dictating if any damage is done at all.
In Steel Division, the health system is largely under-the-hood and doesn’t come into play in many situations as damage values generally outstrip entire vehicle health pools, but it is very definitely still there. The Wargame/WARNO system is far more transparent about it and generally gives units a greater chance of surviving any given engagement with a chance to retreat, repair and fight again later.