Artillery Pak • V.02 Review

[Frumius]

Those were really fun games with some of the Artillery Pak • V.02 tags. Great splosions! It was an incomplete night as far as thorough testing, since hardly any one showed up, and not all at once at that. But we did end up with enough player overlap that we had 4 people at once for a bit.

So here are a few near-incoherent first thoughts.

Dirigibles are slow-flying wights in essence. They're harder for arty to pop than a wight. I don't think they have a larger blast, but I'd have to take another look. Not sure if they'd float OVER the walls in Venice, or go through the doors (the Griffin flies, too, but goes THROUGH those doors).

Dwarf Airships are similar to the Leggo Airship in that they are made to look like lighter-than-air craft. Very different look, though. Kinda funky-looking, but really neat. These you truly do have to think of as a dwarf on a pole. Like Leggo Airships and dwarves, they throw their own unique bomb. There is no special attack. They have no real air-to-air combat ability, though they can eventually hurt one another: if two enemy airships do air-to-air battle they will bump and grind on each other until one eventually hurts the other. I think it may be that one will eventually have it's "lob mechanism" (my term) activated and it will lob its bomb at the other Airship... unfortunately, the range at this point is such that both can get hurt at once, and I even saw more than one die at one time in a threesome battle. They fall slowly in death, then blow up. Not sure if that secondary explosion causes damage. A couple times I sure wanted it to, but it didn't seem to! I think it might be neat to incorporate a better air-to-air attack, mb a mana-based arrow volley, dragon flame, or Leggo Airship missiles even. Dogfights are great, so I'd like to see that capability added to them.

HexoDragons are crazy cool flying beasts. I love them. They scream like the Nazgul when you order them around. They shoot a jet of mana-based flame in both air-to-air and air-to-ground attacks. No special. They can be killed by HexoGriffins, ground-based arty, and other HexoDragons. The Leggo Airship (as opposed to Dwarf Airship) can kill them every time with its missiles, and the Leggo Airship is unhurt by their fire, which unfortunately makes Leggo Airships invincible against HexoDragons. The Dwarf Airship, however, is hurt by their flame and will die. Since Dwarf Airships don't do air-to-air well, HexoDragons are all but invincible to them. [Duffiek just showed me (he's playing Stair of Grief with HexoDragons) that the HexoDragon will not move from its start spot on that map. It shows a red circle on the ground when he tells it to move. When he clicks on surrounding mountain terrain, he gets the yellow circle but cannot move to it because the HexoDragon won't move across the snowy landscape to get there. They worked fine on Into the Breach, even able to attack the units on the defending walls (he had Sak Cannons up there!) Maybe snowy terrain screws them up. We should test them on a snowy multi-player map.]

HexoGriffins. Griffins are mythological creatures with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. HexoGriffins are neat flying melee units that can attack both ground and air targets by swooping in and using their fearsome talons to inflict pain and suffering. Maybe they use their beaks, too, but I didn't notice. Strangely, while I think they do fly high enough to fly over the walls on Venice, they have to go through the doors to get into the middle! They can do battle with HexoDragons, but they seem to have the exact same speed, so a chase is often pointless.

SakCannon... we all know and love the Sak Cannon. SakCannons are wonderful units. They're long, dark, and hard with a blast that'll cream enemy units. (I know what you're thinking. Don't.) It has a greater range than an archer, but is very inaccurate, making its powerful explosion hard to place exactly where you want it. It's s lower than a Trebuchet -- hell, it's slower than 3-legged toddler -- but does more damage. It's taunt is great. We OoHers love this thing.

TremorCannons are pretty dang neat. They look like a pretty normal Dwarf with two wheels and a cannon barrel out front. I'm not sure whether the wheels are part of them physically (as their own legs) or they're pushing a cannon/cart. They move at about Dwarf speed and have a range similar to an archer. They throw a unique projectile. It's a polygonal disk that they sort of frisbee out at the target. It might blow up on impact or skip along the ground, seemingly analogously to a bouncing dwarf cocktail. Their explosion is bigger than a dwarf cocktail's explosion. I don't think the TremorCannons have a special. I like them.

VCatapult and VFix Catapult This is the least exciting unit to me. The "VFix Catapult" is a stationary VCatapult. VCatapults look neat, but I don't like their behavior. I think the mobile one is faster than Trebuchets. What I don't like is that it is too easy to target with it and it's too powerful: It shoots a mortar round very far and can shoot again too quickly, much more quickly than a Treb can recharge. These attacks aren't mana-based. To aim, you target your enemy directly -- click enemy or control click where you want to shoot; using them is way too easy for such a powerful weapon. You can just target the enemy and then go do something else, whereas with a Trebuchet you need to pay attention each time you fire. The Treb also has a powerful attack, but it's balanced because you can't shoot rapidly and aiming takes patience and skill. VCatapults require neither. Also, the VCatapult is much harder to blow up than a Treb. Its one saving grace is that Melee units seem to be able to hurt it more quickly than they can hurt Trebs. These units need to be more easily blown up, slowed down in both firing and movement, and perhaps given a weaker attack. They don't shoot as far as a treb, but at least twice as far as an archer. I think these units need a lot of help to tone them down.


Here's the complete list from the Artillery Pak V.02:

~~ Dirigible (archers) ap02
~~ Dirigible (barons) ap02
~~ Dirigible (dwarves) ap02
~~ Dirigible (fetch) ap02
~~ Dirigible (ghols) ap02
~~ Dirigible (giants) ap02
~~ Dirigible (healers) ap02
~~ Dirigible (warlocks) ap02
~~ Dirigible (wights) ap02
~~ DwarfAirship (archers) ap02
~~ DwarfAirship (barons) ap02
~~ DwarfAirship (dwarves) ap02
~~ DwarfAirship (fetch) ap02
~~ DwarfAirship (ghols) ap02
~~ DwarfAirship (giants) ap02
~~ DwarfAirship (healers) ap02
~~ DwarfAirship (warlocks) ap02
~~ DwarfAirship (wights) ap02
~~ HexoDragon (archers) ap02
~~ HexoDragon (barons) ap02
~~ HexoDragon (dwarves) ap02
~~ HexoDragon (fetch) ap02
~~ HexoDragon (ghols) ap02
~~ HexoDragon (giants) ap02
~~ HexoDragon (healers) ap02
~~ HexoDragon (warlocks) ap02
~~ HexoDragon (wights) ap02
~~ HexoGriffin (fetch) ap02
~~ HexoGriffin (healers) ap02
~~ HexoGriffin (wights) ap02
~~ SakCannon (archers) ap02
~~ SakCannon (barons) ap02
~~ SakCannon (dwarves) ap02
~~ SakCannon (fetch) ap02
~~ SakCannon (ghols) ap02
~~ SakCannon (giants) ap02
~~ SakCannon (healers) ap02
~~ SakCannon (warlocks) ap02
~~ SakCannon (wights) ap02
~~ TremorCannon (archers) ap02
~~ TremorCannon (barons) ap02
~~ TremorCannon (dwarves) ap02
~~ TremorCannon (fetch) ap02
~~ TremorCannon (ghols) ap02
~~ TremorCannon (giants) ap02
~~ TremorCannon (healers) ap02
~~ TremorCannon (warlocks) ap02
~~ TremorCannon (wights) ap02
~~ VCatapult (barons) ap02
~~ VCatapult (dwarves) ap02
~~ VCatapult (giants) ap02
~~ VFixCatapult (barons) ap02
~~ VFixCatapult (giants) ap02
~~ VFixCatapult (healers) ap02

[Baak]

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