Revisiting WZ2100

[Skrim]

Hi.

I used to play this game back in v2.0.10, then left it when v2.1 came out, mainly because the graphics didn't work on my laptop. Recently, I've revisited this game, and got v2.3, and am using a new laptop, on which the graphics work fine.

I've been playing through the campaign, and have so far reached the end of Beta 3. I've noticed, so far, one major change from my v2.0.10 experience (apart from the FMVs, which are awesome) - now anti-tank rockets seem to be much more powerful. Back in 2.0, it was possible, mostly, to tank-push your way through all the Alpha and Beta missions and at least some of the Gamma missions, and never lose any units as long as you retreated on medium and didn't have any serious bottlenecks or pathfinding-idiocy issues. There was nothing that brought heavy tanks down really quickly, and battles would involve gradually wearing away at enemy defenses while your units took damage, retreated, repaired and returned.

And things were going like that pretty well up until Alpha 11 when the Paradigm got Lancers. I had noticed Paradigm tanks going down pretty quickly over the last few missions, in which I had Lancers mixed into my own forces, but had thought that it was just because they were all rookies with fragile Paradigm bodies. Then I got a pretty nasty surprise when I was trying to bring down the Paradigm LZ in Alpha 11, using Pythons. I didn't lose any units, but got over half of my force sitting around at the Repair Fac in the red by the time I got the LZ down. Then in Alpha 12, I got my initial base fortifications and a few tanks blown up by the early hover-lancer attack, and also realized that my own Lancers were instakilling any Paradigm vehicles lighter than Scorpion Tracks. At that point I began giving the things the respect they deserved, and didn't lose anything else to them until Beta 3 (when I lost 2 tanks when a group of Panther-Lancers and Tiger-HCs stormed out of the Collective's main base on to my main battle group while I was away directing some artillery attacks).

This is a refreshing improvement - heavy tank armies aren't the almighty rolling fortresses of doom that they used to be, and you have to stay on your toes to keep your experienced units alive. Though I shudder at the thought of what NEXUS Scourge Missiles will be like now - they were damned annoying back then, they must be extremely dangerous now.

Thanks to the dev team for keeping this game alive and continuing to improve it. One thing though - cyborgs are still as useless as ever, at least in the campaign. They're not durable enough for you to want to give them any experience, they take up as much space on board transports as tanks do, and tanks are not so easily killed by rockets that massed 'borgs can be accepted as a substitute. And they'd probably get murdered en masse by enemy artillery anyway. I haven't got VTOLs yet, so I don't know well or not they perform now. So far Collective aircraft haven't really presented any noteworthy threat, though I'd expect rocket/missile-armed fighters to be a pretty deadly, though fragile, threat.

[JDW]

Hi.

One thing though - cyborgs are still as useless as ever, at least in the campaign. They're not durable enough for you to want to give them any experience, they take up as much space on board transports as tanks do, and tanks are not so easily killed by rockets that massed 'borgs can be accepted as a substitute. And they'd probably get murdered en masse by enemy artillery anyway.

They have good speed though, atleast the lighter ones

[themousemaster]

Holy crap it's Skrim.

Cybrogs are a much bigger threat in the Skirmish/MP scene, but as you noticed, still pretty useless in a campaign.

And the Nexus Scourge missiles have actually been "downgraded". fully-researched TKs tend to outdamage them until the very end of the Scourge research cycle... though trading your TKs for Scourge ASAP is still a good idea, due to the homing factor and increased range. IMO anyway.

(note: due to something technical about the "internal sensors" of Nexus units that I only semi-understand, their Scourge still fly farther than yours. But at least your heavy tanks can take a couple shots now).

[JDW]

Holy crap it's Skrim.

Cybrogs are a much bigger threat in the Skirmish/MP scene, but as you noticed, still pretty useless in a campaign.

I always enjoy talking a huge batallion of cyborgs, almost every type available at the time in my tech tree, and enough mechanics. Then I shout ATTACK!!! and sit back and enjoy the raid... Not another click till it's all over...

They have the advantage of being faster than tanks, and how would you feel if 50 or so guns were trained on you? scary right?!!

[Christheturtle]

One thing though - cyborgs are still as useless as ever, at least in the campaign. They're not durable enough for you to want to give them any experience, they take up as much space on board transports as tanks do, and tanks are not so easily killed by rockets that massed 'borgs can be accepted as a substitute. And they'd probably get murdered en masse by enemy artillery anyway. I haven't got VTOLs yet, so I don't know well or not they perform now. So far Collective aircraft haven't really presented any noteworthy threat, though I'd expect rocket/missile-armed fighters to be a pretty deadly, though fragile, threat.

Welcome back, Skrim.

I actually beg to differ. If you spend the time to research all the available cyborg units, they are fast-ish to make in the masses and once you've got 20 odd scourge missile cyborgs you can dominate. I personally think they are brilliant, and you don't get that sense of utter loss when you loose a lot of them because you haven't waited ages for like 5 of them to be produced.

But at first though, I wasn't very keen on cyborgs. They are only useful if you actually are willing to spend a lot of time concentrating on making all the units available. Otherwise they are just matchstick men ready to be shot down. Anyhow, It's good to see a returning member.

Chris.

[Zarel]

SKIRM! DUDE, I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU IN AGES! WB!

The AT rocket changes happened before my time. They weren't actually "changes"; we basically just fixed a bug that made rocket upgrades upgrade Mini-Pod instead of Lancer/TK. As you may or may not know, a fully upgraded Warzone weapon is 3x to 10x as powerful as a Warzone weapon with no upgrades, so this makes a pretty big difference.

Over in MP, we dealt with it by rebalancing the whole tech tree - lancer's been pushed back, AT rockets now do very little damage to cyborgs and hardpoints, cannons and flamers are more powerful... In campaign, though, we just kind of left it the way it is. We're open to balance suggestions.

As for Nexus Scourges, they're missiles and not rockets, so I believe their damage is unchanged.

[Skrim]

Thanks for the welcome.

Welcome back, Skrim.

I actually beg to differ. If you spend the time to research all the available cyborg units, they are fast-ish to make in the masses and once you've got 20 odd scourge missile cyborgs you can dominate. I personally think they are brilliant, and you don't get that sense of utter loss when you loose a lot of them because you haven't waited ages for like 5 of them to be produced.

But at first though, I wasn't very keen on cyborgs. They are only useful if you actually are willing to spend a lot of time concentrating on making all the units available. Otherwise they are just matchstick men ready to be shot down. Anyhow, It's good to see a returning member.

Chris.

I haven't played very far in the campaign since that last post, but now that the Collective are using Tank Killers (which I've seen as being able to one-hit-kill my Python Hover-Lancers on Beta 4), I think I'll try out the 'borgs.

Lancer borgs so far have been the most threatening enemy cyborgs (well, they ought to be, given my purely heavy tank army), with a huge horde of them in Alpha 12 actually forcing my MBG to pull back and take cover behind an artillery barrage. So I think I'll try these guys as a spearhead force, with machinegunners or something for dealing with enemy 'borgs.

The advantages I see in massed borgs in the campaign are, well, that they'd be easier to move around with their speed and small size, and that their loss doesn't hurt as much as the loss of an experienced heavy tank. But that doesn't change the fact that they don't gel with commanders as well as tanks do, and that they take up as much transport space as a heavy tank. And also get turned into popcorn by enemy artillery.
So basically, I'd only use them for base missions, not feed them XP(and upgrade any of them that does get a good bit of XP to a tank), and have to find a way to distract enemy artillery. I think I'll give it a shot, actually.

Sad thing is that the Grenadier 'borg doesn't seem to available in the campaign as far as I've seen, despite apparently being based on old Mortar tech. Massed cheap artillery would be kind of fun.

SKIRM! DUDE, I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU IN AGES! WB!

The AT rocket changes happened before my time. They weren't actually "changes"; we basically just fixed a bug that made rocket upgrades upgrade Mini-Pod instead of Lancer/TK. As you may or may not know, a fully upgraded Warzone weapon is 3x to 10x as powerful as a Warzone weapon with no upgrades, so this makes a pretty big difference.

Over in MP, we dealt with it by rebalancing the whole tech tree - lancer's been pushed back, AT rockets now do very little damage to cyborgs and hardpoints, cannons and flamers are more powerful... In campaign, though, we just kind of left it the way it is. We're open to balance suggestions.

As for Nexus Scourges, they're missiles and not rockets, so I believe their damage is unchanged.

Well, I did play Wesnoth for a time after I left WZ, and still do, just haven't gone to the forums in a while.

Yeah, I was aware of the dramatic emphasis on upgrades this game had, but wasn't aware that the old AT rocket were bugged. No wonder that Heavy Cannons seemed to be out-damaging TKs back in 2.0.10.

The WZ2100 MP scene sounds neat. I'll try some skirmishing with the AI and then some MP after I finish the campaign.

And the Nexus Scourge missiles have actually been "downgraded". fully-researched TKs tend to outdamage them until the very end of the Scourge research cycle... though trading your TKs for Scourge ASAP is still a good idea, due to the homing factor and increased range. IMO anyway.

(note: due to something technical about the "internal sensors" of Nexus units that I only semi-understand, their Scourge still fly farther than yours. But at least your heavy tanks can take a couple shots now).

The Scourge doing less damage than a maxed TK kinda makes sense in fluff at least, with the warhead size reduced to make space for the guidance systems. Of course, I'm nowhere near the point where you get Scourges yet.

[Christheturtle]

Oh, darn. I just realised a mistake. When I said Tank Killers, I actually meant Lancers.

[Skrim]

Oh, darn. I just realised a mistake. When I said Tank Killers, I actually meant Lancers.

You never said Tank Killer. You said Scourge.

Anyway, I tried the Cyborgs in Beta 5, making a horde of 41 or so 'borgs, mainly Lancer with some MGs.
They stand absolutely no chance when operating within range of the Collective's howitzers - each blast takes out several of them. My high-XP heavy tank MBG with a Commander still works much better than the 'borg horde.

The Ripple Rockets actually proved themselves to be pretty impressive, having also got the buff that Lancers and TKs got - they're capable of very nearly killing a Veteran HC-Python Tracks if a barrage strikes true. Still, they aren't as deadly to tanks as howies are to 'borgs, so I think I'll stick with conventional tank tactics for the moment.

[Christheturtle]

Urgh. The same mistake twice. I apologize, I'm currently working down in London trying to fix a recent scandal in administration, looking through new applicants, etcetera. I'm really tired.

Yes, howitzers and ground-shakers are very effective at destroying mass clumps of cyborgs. Anything that gives a large area of effect basically. But when it comes to the destruction of structures and tanks I find them fantastic. What I tend to do though is select all at once, and storm a base destroying units/structures one at a time with mass concentrated fire. The outer cyborgs take damage but the group all focusing on taking things out one by one usually leaves you with enough surviving after the attack to establish some sort of security while you move the trucks in and steal their resources.

[Skrim]

Just finished Beta 5 and 6. Got another surprise, this time a more pleasant one.

Beta 5 was simple enough, just a lot of tank maneuvers with my MBG, gradually grinding enemy defenses to dust and overrunning the airbase. It was simple enough until I reached the bottleneck just east of the base entrance. I tried about 3 times and had to save-load because I couldn't crack it and pull back without losing 1 or 2 units. The Ripple Rockets added another challenge, since a barrage of rockets could almost kill a Veteran HC-Python Tracks (another result of the rocket upgrades getting fixed). But then I checked mousemaster's brilliant guide and did as it said: flanked south and west, set up a new repair fac, and pounded the entrance from the south until it cracked. Then I got VTOLs an heavy arty, and then used said VTOLs to own the side-quest, since the Collective had no air defenses whatsoever on this stage.

I designed the VTOLs based on what I remembered about the strength of AA back in the 2.0.10 days - anything less than a heavy body would get cut up pretty quickly if it stayed within AA range for too long. So I built a few Professional-grade Lancer Pythons and Veteran-grade BB-Mantises, designs which were based on heavies but still hit speeds >600, with the BBs being Wild Weasels to take out AA emplacements and the Lancers handling dangerous vehicles. And then built a fleet of rookie Phosphor Bomb Leopards, the 'clean-up' planes that would finish off a base once the defenses were down.

Turns out, in Beta 6, AA seems to have been nerfed or something. My Mantises were taking almost no damage on their wild weasel runs, so I threw some Leopards into a patrol over AA-covered territory to see how they fared. And they were perfectly fine, usually being able to drop all their bombs before hitting medium damage and retreating. So I didn't even send in my MBG or newly-minted heavy artillery, just stormed the area with VTOLs and sent in the MBG only to grab the artifacts at the end. The only loss I took was an MG-Bug VTOL scout which I suicided at the beginning to scout out the enemy base, and by the end of the mission, most of the Leopards were Regulars. And this is despite the fact that the AA shells seem to be homing in on their targets. They just didn't do enough damage to deny the airspace they were trying to defend, plain and simple.

Which is weird, given that I had never had any serious problems handling the Collective's VTOLs in earlier missions, though that may be explained by the fact that my AA tends to be in spam-groups of 5 or 6 at least, that the Collective deploys small and/or slow groups of planes, and that they don't retreat at medium damage.

So that means that I'll try VTOL-storming through the next few missions, at least until SAMs appear.

[themousemaster]

If the last time you played was 2.0.10...

Then AA was "da bomb". Due to hit-calculation, AA would generally have like a 95% chance to hit, determined at the time of it's firing. The shot itself could land in Detroit, but if the roll of the dice said "hit" as it left the barrel, then it hit.

2.1 changed how all projectile hits worked; this was great for ground combat (you could actually screen weaker units with huge-hp tanks, for example), but had an unfortunate side-effect that AA would now miss 99% of the time, only causing the splash damage to it's target, and even then only if the target wasn't using evasive maneuvers. In the air war, you either had SAMs, interceptor-style VTOLs, or large craters in your ex-base.

2.2 changed it around again, to the state you are now seeing.




And if you are just finishing beta6... well, I'm sure you are familiar with how BETA: EVACUATE works, but if you were used to how it worked only since 2.0.10, you are going to need a tad more AA all around the map to handle it now ;p

[Skrim]

Finished Beta and played the first 5 minutes or so of Gamma 1.

While the Hurricanes in Beta 6 had proven to be largely ineffective, Beta 7 had enough AA, in the form of Cyclone turrets, to deny airspace to my lighter VTOLs. But the heavy ones could still shrug it off without much trouble, and so I used BB-Pythons to destroy enough of them that my Phosphor-bomb Leopards could finish off the Collective's base. Beta 8 seemed to revert back to Hurricanes, that too, in clusters which were just asking to get bombed out. I went ahead and cleared the entire map of Collective presence, for the XP and for the lulz. Beta 9 and 10 had SAMs, which were also strong enough to stop light VTOLs, but, again, weren't really that deadly against heavies. So I either pounded them with artillery or wild-weaseled them with BB-Pythons and cleared the map again in these two missions.

My MBG didn't get to see much action besides the opening battles defending the LZ; the VTOLs and my artillery group stole most of the glory during the actual attack. In Beta 9 and 10, I even had to use all-truck opening groups, since that was the only way to fend off the extremely aggressive rocket-armed VTOL and hover attacks without losing any experienced units (sure, I lost a couple of trucks, but big deal).

Evacuate was simple; I had already got all my experienced units upgraded to Tigers with new weapons during the milking stage of Beta 10, and just had to keep loading them and shipping them off while my overkill defenses kept the Collective from interfering. I had 2 Commanders(a Hero and a Special), some 16 or so Vet/Pro level tanks armed with AGs, HCs and TKs, an Elite CB Radar unit(which had started out as a Sensor tank back in Alpha 5), 7 Elite/Vet artillery units mixed between Shakers and Rockets, 8 Elite/Vet Tiger VTOLs(2 BBs, 4 Phosphors, 2 HEAPs), a pair of Trained HEAP-Tiger VTOLs, and a couple of trucks.

My opener group included my Hero commander, 5 AGs, 2 HCs, 1 TK and a single Python hovertruck. The initial battle against NEXUS cyborgs and the hovertank patrol squad were surprisingly easy - the hovertanks' Scourge Missiles did less damage to my Tigers than the Collective's Lancers(to say nothing of TKs) were doing to my Pythons back in Beta! Which was sort of amusing. Looking forward to fighting the v2.3 NEXUS, and especially to seeing how my VTOL gunships perform against their Vindicators.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Edit: Finished Gamma 1. The Scourges may not do that much damage, but their sheer range still makes them annoying. And it turns out the SAMs on G1 were Avengers; they didn't put up much fight against my elite heavy birds, and I bombed out the whole map again. And this was without MG-bug suicide drones; though I did do some microing. The one-off choice of bringing along a CB Radar unit payed off as well; by attracting enemy arty fire on itself, it gave my arty the first strike in the crossfire, for an easy win. Again, the Angels don't seem to be doing as much damage as the Ripples did back in Beta. It seems NEXUS isn't using upgraded weapons, or at the very least, not fully-upgraded weapons.

[themousemaster]

G1 was definitely easier than it was back in 2.0, as you noticed. G2 will be slightly easier as well, though Nexus still has a huge concentration of SAMs to the north, so I don't recommend sending VTOLs to it.

But if you REALLY like VTOL warfare, you are going to love G3. The whole stage is asking to be bombed... and will be, once I throw my G3 guide up on (hopefully) Thursday.

Yes, I could *technically* load my images to a USB drive and do the guide from work, but... I doubt my bosses would look kindly on that (whereas just single forum posts that take 2 minutes I can usually throw in between coding of webpages ;p)

[Skrim]

Finished G2 and G3. G2 was, as you said, a good deal easier than it used to be in v2.0. NEXUS was still using Avengers, so my VTOL aces were able to rule the map yet again, without MG-Bug support (4 SAM hits on a elite BB-Tiger merely puts it into the yellow, and it doesn't give the SAMs much of a firing window either). NEXUS' forward defenses and mobile units were handled by my MBG and their artillery was CB'd to death. I finished the mission with some 3 losses, all of which were trucks, and got all my experienced units out; tanks, artillery, command, VTOLs, everything. Saving the VTOLs was simply a matter of pounding out that huge SAM concentration in the north with tanks and arty, then wild-weaseling the two or three that happened to survive the bombardment.

I won G3 using trucks and rookie VTOLs; my defenses and arty were in place already. There wasn't much to do really; the artillery and AA operations were automated and only the planes actually needed to be controlled. The lack of XP on these new birds was making itself felt though; 4 SAM hits could down a rookie BB-Tiger, which meant that I had to use suicide drones against the SAM sites. Still, the BB-Tigers stood up pretty well against Gamma base's conventional AA, and once those were down, it was a free-for-all bombing fest.

I have no clue as to how to do the rescue mission with just trucks and planes though; by what I remember, the map had lots of SAMs, possibly Vindicators, annoying cyborgs just about everywhere, and VTOLs incessantly making runs on your LZ and your units. There's nothing preventing me from just sending in a batch of rookie tanks, but if there were a way to do this mission with just trucks and planes, that'd be pretty interesting.