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Field Training Missions 1 to 3 (or "No use crying over spilt blood") So okay, Field Training. This is going to be a side thing to the main campaign run. I do want to show it off because although this is all very much back-to-basics for us AW veterans, it's interesting to show off just how in-depth this tutorial is. There's also a bit of plot we'd miss otherwise, and besides, Nell's theme is awesome. I'll keep things snappy though by posting the missions in groups of three.  Sounds good.   We're in this large nation here, Orange Star. The country to the east is Blue Moon. The two countries have been bitter rivals for years. Border skirmishes had died down recently... until that madman Olaf... Oh, excuse me. I mean, uhm... The Blue Moon CO, Olaf, suddenly ordered an invasion of Orange Star. Eesh. Doesn't sound like there's much love lost between Nell and Olaf here. Probably ties into the fact that he apparently used to work for Orange Star. So, the Alara region is now held by Blue Moon forces. Candidate Paul, you have been given a mission. You are to drive Olaf from Alara and secure it for Orange Star. I will be your support. Let's move out! Oh wow, the nostalgia rush. The graphics, the musical sting... Day 1 ... the reams and reams of tutorial text:  That's why Olaf hasn't deployed many troops to the area. You yourself have two infantry units under your command.   Defeat the enemy forces to complete this mission successfully. The + Control Pad moves the cursor. First, let's command this infantry unit. Would you place the cursor on the infantry unit, please?No attempts to hide the fact this is a game. Straight-up + Control Pad, A Button, R Button and so on here.  You'll see this term often, so do your best to remember it. When you select a unit, the area around it will become highlighted. This area represents the selected unit's range of movement. First, let's approach the enemy with this unit. Try moving the unit to this space. Move the cursor here and press the A Button. Roger that.  Select Wait, and then press the A button to confirm the command. This indicates that the unit can't receive any more orders this turn. Don't worry -- you'll be able to use it again on your next turn. OK, now use the same controls to move this infantry unit. Move it as close as possible to the enemy. Now we know the ropes of moving units around, it makes sense for Nell to let us handle this one. When you've finished giving orders to your units, you must End your turn. Press the A button on an empty space to display the Map Menu. Do your worst, Olaf!   Hah! They won't last long. My troops there will make short work of them!  You know what's really weird about the first couple of missions of Field Training? They show Olaf going through his moves exactly the way that a human would. I'd guess to reinforce the procedure behind unit movement in the player's mind. Thankfully by the third mission they stop doing that. It'd take forever to get anything done if they kept doing it. Day 2  His infantry units are heading this way. Stay calm. If we proceed with caution, we'll be fine. Now it's time to order this infantry unit to Fire on the enemy. Please select this unit. Move your unit here. Please select this command. There is only one unit you can engage now, so press the A Button to Fire. This is the first battle screen someone would see playing the game for the first time. From the cute, crisp pixel art, through the unique designs of each army's units to the clear presentation of information, I think it's a masterpiece. Some people like playing Advance Wars games with the battle screens turned off, because it saves time. That's understandable, but I don't think I could ever do it myself. Battle screens are also useful in Fog of War levels for pinpointing the location of enemy indirects.  Do you see the numbers on the units? This indicates the units' HP (hit points). All units begin with ten HP. But, as they take damage in battle, their HP will decrease. When a unit reaches zero HP, it will vanish from the screen. Notice that your unit has more HP than the enemy unit. This is because the unit that attacks first generally has the advantage. Waiting to be attacked is not a good strategy. You should pick your battles and always Fire first. If you Fire on this unit again, you should defeat it. So, now order your remaining infantry unit to engage the enemy.Nell talks and talks here, and given I know all this stuff already (after all, it's literally the stuff you learn the very first time you play the game) it's a bit frustrating, but back in 2002 I was genuinely fascinated. I was getting to learn all this really in-depth information while fun music played in the background. Anyway, Nell talks less as Field Training progresses and you get used to the basics.  Anyway, let's do as she said and finish this infantry off.  Whoosh.  There is only one enemy unit left to deal with. If you stick to your battle plan, you can finish it off, too. Select End from the menu and continue on your next turn. If I were in the field, they wouldn't be suffering such humiliation!Don't kid yourself, Olaf. Cursed Orange Star Army! I will defeat it! I will!Day 3 It's your turn again. You have a two-to-one advantage. This battle is yours to win! But, wait a minute. Units lose some of their firepower when damaged. So it's better to Fire on the enemy with an undamaged unit. Go ahead and order your undamaged unit to attack.  Sound advice there from Nell. Units do damage proportional to their hit points: an 8HP unit will only do 80% of the damage of a 10HP unit, and so take a bigger counterattack in return. So it's definitely a good idea to hit with your strongest unit first, and have your weaker units do cleanup. So let's do that. This is how the A button is used to select units and issue commands. If you make a mistake and want to change orders, use the B button. It's key that you remember this.No real idea where that came from, but oh well.  Move in and Fire on it!  You know, that was a pretty lucky shot. But then, lucky shots are kind of Nell's forte... Paul.Power's CO Notes: Nell  Nell's Theme  Nell's special ability is that she is luckier than most COs: to explain what I mean by that, I'm going to look at health meters in more detail. The 10HP scale is actually a simplification of a 100HP scale (which is represented by the bar you see during battle screens). So the expected damage percentage (41% in the above screenshot) really means it'll knock off that many (41) hit points, plus a luck bonus between 0 at 10 extra hit points. For Nell, this luck bonus ranges from 0 to 15 instead. Pretty handy quality for a tutorial CO to have, makes everything run just that little bit smoother. Her CO Power Lucky Star, which we don't get to see during the course of Field Training, can increase that luck bonus to ludicrous levels. Background/Personality: In this game, Nell isn't yet the commander in chief of Orange Star - she still has superiors, although who these superiors are we never actually learn. She definitely seems to be in charge of the other Orange Star COs, at least. Nell is very fond of teaching, and will rarely pass up an opportunity to tell you things about the game. Which might annoy you after a while. All right, that's that sorted. Time to reap the spoils of victory!  Your mission is a success! Keep up the good work! That land was mine! How did they lose it so easily? Grrr... Next time, victory will be mine!Get the plates, Olaf, 'cause you just got s- oh wait, wrong game. Can't really tell Andy off for that any more.  ... true power of the Dark Side - wait, no... rank that your strategy has earned you! Speed is based on how quickly you won, while Power is based on how well you concentrated your attacks and overcame your enemies. Technique is based on how many of your own troops were lost. You'll earn a rank for each map you clear, so you can compare your scores to your friends'! Good luck on your next campaign!Specifically, Speed is a measure of how many days you finish in, and varies depending on the length of the mission. To get a maximum Power score, you have to defeat 10% or more of total enemy forces on any particular day, and to get a maximum Technique score you can only lose 20% of your total forces over the entire mission. For some reason, in Field Training the highest rank you can get is an A. As you saw, in Campaign proper we can get S's. But yeah, let's move on to the second part of this triple bill:   Their HQ is in another area, so we believe this is a covert attack. A covert attack... that sounds like something Olaf would try.Does it? You could have fooled me. Your goal is to take out these units. You've been given four infantry units to carry out this operation. Let's go!  Yeah, I know they're not proper mechanised infantry. It's basically just what the games call anti-tank infantry. This could be trouble... Mech units have more firepower than your standard infantry do. You won't be able to defeat mech units in direct combat. So you'll have to use the terrain to give you some defensive cover. I'll explain about terrain features as we go. Select this infantry unit, please. Order this infantry unit to Fire.  On it, coach! Excellent! OK, select this infantry unit next, please. Up 'til now, the highlighted movement are for infantry was three spaces. Well, in the mountains, it's less. Movement cost is double here. This means your movement rate will be half of that on the plains. Do you think that means you should avoid mountains? That would be a very serious tactical error. Mountains offer advantages that compensate for movement cost. You'll understand once you Fire on the enemy. Go ahead. Engage the enemy and Fire!  It's over Anaki... no. Just... no.  The last unit took less damage than the first unit, didn't it? This is because of another terrain feature called defensive cover. You attacked the enemy from the mountains, right? Defensive cover in the mountains is this number here... a four. The defensive cover on the plains is a one. The higher the defensive cover rating is, the less damage you'll take. Is that clear? Good! I knew you were a quick study. Go ahead and Fire on the remaining infantry units. Select End when you're finished.The specific formula for defensive cover is basically (star rating of terrain)*(HP of unit)/100. So a healthy infantry unit in the mountains will block 40% of the damage incoming, meaning attacks will only do 60% damage to it. An 8HP unit in the mountains would only block 32%, and take 68% damage.  And we've already destroyed half of Olaf's troops and now have a 2 to 1 advantage. Orange/Red Star, exploiting first turn advantage since 1988.  But this time... heh heh heh... things will be different! You'll learn what it means to face mech units!Olaf, you are not Sami. You certainly wouldn't fit into her uniform. I'll just keep watch from back here. No needfor me to actually be in the field. I'm still in charge, though! Bravely directing operations from the rear. Not that I can complain, I'm sitting on the other side of a computer screen, can't get much more distant than that.   Eep. Although it's pretty clever the way it's all set up: you're encouraged to bring your infantry in to finish off Olaf's damaged infantry, which of course places them in range of his mechs. You even have one of your infantry on mountains and the other on plains to showcase the damage difference. Day 2  Nell loves that phrase. Look out for it in future installments of Field Training. Mech units really pack a punch, don't they? But if you'll notice, one infantry unit took less damage than the other. Do you know why? It's because of superior defensive cover. Remembering this is vital. You should also keep in mind that movement cost differs between units. For example, mech and infantry units have different movement types. So, their respective movement costs in mountains are two and one. When you need intel like this, place the cursor on a space and press the R Button. This works for terrain features, as well as for all unit types. So, for intel on unit movement type, cost, etc., remember the R Button. Well, I'll leave the rest of this battle to you. They may have mech units, but you have superior numbers! Focus on what you've learned: use it well, and victory will be yours! Finally, a bit of space to think for myself.  Three of my infantry get attacks in, but I'm worried about the fourth. He's down to 4HP, and he'd be attacking a 5HP mech. That doesn't sound like a recipe for good things.   So I'm going to do something that Nell hasn't taught me about yet: joining units. If you've got damaged units, you can join them together and combine their hitpoint totals (if the result is more than 10HP, don't worry, it's not wasted: it gets converted into funds. Not that we've really covered funds here yet, but there's plenty about them in the AW2 LP if you want a recap). Having one less unit on the field might make this take a bit longer to finish up, but at least I won't suffer the ignominy of losing a unit.  Still might come back to bite me though. But oh well, let's keep going. Day 3  Nell just talks about saving the game here. I'll spare you the details.  Dammit. Couldn't quite finish off that northern mech - looks like joining those units has come back to bite me.  Oh well, no use crying over spilt blood. Day 4   Mopping up.  These units really were on a covert operation. Thanks to your planning, our troops took minimal damage. Keep up the good work! Aargh! Another failure! After all of my careful planning, another botched mission! Grrr... Next time, I will prevail! Yeah, cost me a little bit on my speed score. Still good enough for an A, though, which as I say is the best rank we can get in Field Training.  Let's move on.  If successful, we should be able to drive that pompous, old... I mean, we should be able to force the Blue Moon forces to withdraw. If you remember, we faced two mech units in the last battle, right? In response, you've been given command of two mech units, yourself.This starts a particular theme in Field Training: most of the time, Olaf gets new toys a mission or so before we do. It's a nice touch: not only do you get to see stuff in action before you try it out yourself, but it adds to the tension and gives you a nice buzz when you actually do get to try out the cool stuff.  Day 1  This explains the four enemy tank units deployed and waiting for us. Fortunately for us, those tanks can't cross the mountains. So let's take care of business here first and deal with them later. Let's secure some bases by capturing the local cities. Select this infantry unit, please. Would you move it here?Alrighty then.  Please select this command. Yep, in Advance Wars you capture cities by jumping on them. That city started out with 20 capture points: my 10HP infantry just took off ten of them. Or as Nell puts it... This city is now half-captured! It takes at least two days to Capture a city. Order this unit to Capture again next turn to secure an allied base. Oh, I almost forgot... Don't move a unit that's in the process of capturing a city. If you do, you'll have to begin capturing it all over again. The same is true if the capturing unit loses all of its HP. Do your best to protect units trying to secure new bases. Go ahead and select it, please. Only infantry and mech units can capture new bases. Remember this when deploying into unsecured areas. Now, go ahead and move the rest of your units close to the cities. Select End when you've finished moving. Righto then. Let's see what Olaf has to say about all this.  Enemy forces have appeared again? Those cowards! Attacking my most remote units... How typical!Pots, kettles, #000000, etc. But wait... I have some tank units deployed there. Ha ha ha... Crushing those infantry and mech units will be a piece of cake! Fight on, my loyal troops! This time, you shall be victorious!I guess those tanks do look a bit scary. But there's kind of a problem with them (Have you spotted it?) Day 2  Told you. First, you should always start by completing the Capture of cities. Please select this infantry unit and press the A Button.  All righty, then.  It's the same color as your troops, right? You can now use it as a base. So, now you can see that these cities are under enemy control. By the way, gray cities are neutral. Let's get back to discussing bases. If you put a damaged unit in a base, it will recover some HP each turn. You will also receive 1000 G per day from each city you Capture. These funds are crucial for restoring HP to your units. Funds are also used for other purposes, but I'll explain those later.Well, building things, basically. OK, now use this mech unit to Capture a new base. Would you please select this unit? Oh goodie, problems. Two cities are within your movement range. One is neutral and one is hostile. Which one should you Capture first? Erm... I'm going to go for... this one. May as well try and clear Blue Moon out of here.  Vindication! Of course, capturing either one of these cities is a plus for you. But if you secure the enemy city, you also reduce your foe's funds. Oh, yes. There's one more thing you need to know. Look here to see how long it will take to secure the city. The Capture Number is now ten. When this number is reduced to zero, the city is secure! An infantry unit has ten HP, so it takes two days to Capture a city with a Capture Number of twenty. A damaged unit has less HP, so it'll take longer for it to Capture a city. So now you know how to Capture cities, right? I'm going to let you make all of the command decisions from now on.  Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound. Yes. At least this way we can get some strategic advice from Nell rather than just straight-up instructions. Naturally, you can win this battle by defeating all of the enemy units. However, the enemy tank units are extremely powerful. Fighting them head-on is not an advisable strategy. I suggest waiting by your bases and taking out the infantry and mech units first. Avoid the tank units as you try to Capture the enemy HQ. The weakness of tank units is that their treads won't allow them to move through mountains. Place the cursor on a unit or terrain and press the R Button for more valuable intel. One last thing... Don't let the enemy Capture your HQ. You will lose if this happens. That's all. Good luck!For reference, Blue Moon's HQ is the St. Basil's Cathedral type thing over on the right of the map. Our HQ is the skyscraper thing on the left. For some reason, Nell doesn't point that out. Other than that, she's got pretty sound advice for us. I don't fancy taking on those tanks with only two mechs and four infantry at my disposal. And the beauty of it is, I don't have to.  Still gotta deal with Olaf's infantry and mechs, though. Capturing these cities won't hurt there. Day 3  Olaf's getting closer.  For now we can just grab these cities though.  And try and make sure that everyone's ready to give those troops a big, warm welcome to Orange Star. Bullets are warm, right? Day 4  Huh. Come on guys, at least try to attack me.  Oh well, if they're going to hand me the initiative I may as well take it.  One infantry down, another reduced to 3HP.  And I'm going to start moving an infantry to capture Olaf's HQ. Day 5  ... Olaf still isn't attacking me.  I mean, I know this is Field Training but come on man, put your back into it.  Oh well, whatever. Mechs take down mech, infantry continues its grand journey.  And it's a similar story in the north as I reduce Olaf's footsoldiers down to one measly hit point. Day 6  Bit late to try retreating now, dude.  Mountains aren't going to save you now.  My southern infantry reaches the bridge. The tanks all sit there like the proverbial. Between the mountains and the river, there's no way they can reach me, or their own HQ.  So let's just leave them sitting there. Day 7  Dum de dum. Day 8  So, Olaf, have you read any good books lately? Day 9   Squishy HQ capturing. Day 10   And there we have it!  You've reclaimed the area and forced Blue Moon to withdraw! There's one more thing I have to tell you. You receive funds by capturing cities, right? Well, once you clear a map, you lose those funds. Sorry! Good luck on the next battle!Aw man... but... but I was saving to buy a battleship  Unbelievable! We've been forced to withdraw? What's going on? What were the tank units doing? Those useless fools! I'll take direct command next time. Grrr... I'll show you! I'll show you all! Just a tiny bit slow again, but an A-Rank is an A-Rank. Anyway, that's enough mucking about in Field Training for now, let's return to Campaign proper. Where were we?  Looks like we're going up against... well, given the way Olaf's shouting his head off here, I think his name's probably Grit. Well, here's hoping he puts up a better fight than Olaf. Paul.Power fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Apr 14, 2012 |
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Feb 17, 2012 10:20
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Paul.Power posted:Olaf, you are not Sami. You certainly wouldn't fit into her uniform.  That said, Field Training is something that probably should have been reused in the other games, if only to remove the tutorial stuff from the main campaign.
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Feb 17, 2012 13:27
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Allan Assiduity posted:There's probably fanart of this If there is, I can't find it thankfully. I think Field Training is what it is in Advance Wars 1 just because no-one had seen these units before or what they did. I agree if would've been nice to have it as an option in later games just for new players to the series, with the exception of Dark Conflict since that replaced/renamed most of the units. That way Campaign could focus purely on introducing the new units to each game, though the story it tells in AW1 of you as a candidate advisor learning the ropes and getting combat experience would kinda be lost since they dumped the whole advisor thing.
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Feb 17, 2012 14:00
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Great LP so far. AW1 is a blast from the past for me since Days of Ruin has been camping in my DS for months. AW 1 and 2 were great, but I found 3 to be a huge let-down. Days of Ruin fixed that, although it sacrifices that child-like charm for a good, gritty plot. I'm going to enjoy looking back on that weird kiddiness mixed with war. As a buddy of mine summed up Advance Wars: "It looks like war... TO THE BALL PIT!"
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Feb 17, 2012 14:59
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oldskool posted:Why is the medium tank medium if there's nothing stronger than it? There's no Large Tank and even "small" Tank isn't referred to as such. Railing Kill posted:Great LP so far. AW1 is a blast from the past for me since Days of Ruin has been camping in my DS for months. AW 1 and 2 were great, but I found 3 to be a huge let-down. Days of Ruin fixed that, although it sacrifices that child-like charm for a good, gritty plot. I'm going to enjoy looking back on that weird kiddiness mixed with war. As a buddy of mine summed up Advance Wars: 
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Feb 17, 2012 16:04
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Ah, Field Training. As a kid, I was reaally familiar with it, since I was too inept to even make it past the first level of the campaign. Looking forward to seeing the rest of it, it's been years since I even touched my copy of AW1.
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Feb 17, 2012 16:10
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I have to second the opinion of this game introducing you to the basics better than the later ones. It means the campaign isn't bogged down with trying to introduce the mechanics for 1/4 of the missions. I look forward to seeing you do some of the harder missions this game has. Oh and yeah, I wish there was a way to combine AW1s graphical style with AW2.
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Feb 17, 2012 16:22
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SkySteak posted:I have to second the opinion of this game introducing you to the basics better than the later ones. It means the campaign isn't bogged down with trying to introduce the mechanics for 1/4 of the missions. I look forward to seeing you do some of the harder missions this game has. Thirding the opinion of Field Training. It would really make the later games bog down less. SupSuper posted:I've gotten used in strategy games that units are only allowed to come in three shapes: Light, Medium and Heavy. Ah, but in the English-translated game you get a total of five tanks! There's Light and Md., but there's also Neo (AW2, DS), Mega (DS), and War (DoR, similar stats to the Neo but is nice and slow like a big wall of metal should be). Alkydere fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Feb 17, 2012 |
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Feb 17, 2012 16:44
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This game really does get brutally hard in a way none of the later games do. Later games have missions be hard because of crazy gimmicks like cannons and death rays and tag powers and tank-eating blobs of goo; this one just grinds you brutally beneath its heel the old-fashioned way. I distinctly remember one later mission where the objective is to stop one specific Missile unit (y'know, the lovely anti-air long-range unit) from dying, and I beat it by loading it in a lander and hiding it in a reef (fog of war) until the mission ran out because I couldn't figure out how not to have my ground forces get utterly destroyed.
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Feb 17, 2012 16:57
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oldskool posted:Why is the medium tank medium if there's nothing stronger than it? There's no Large Tank and even "small" Tank isn't referred to as such. Come to think of, I should probably go and replace "small tank" with "light tank" because that's what they would be called. Speaking of medium tanks, just played through Field Training 4 to 6 Routed the medium tank on Tank Ops. Fun times!
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Feb 17, 2012 17:02
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I need to find my GBA and see how close I got to my goal of turning the entire menu shiny gold. It's been about ten years, but I'm pretty sure I only beat the advance campaign by printing out a walkthrough to take with me whenever I knew I would be playing.
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Feb 17, 2012 17:26
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Alkydere posted:Thirding the opinion of Field Training. It would really make the later games bog down less. Paul.Power posted:Mmm. Although saying that, one really weird thing about the AW art is the COs' faces. There's something really... odd about some of them. Drake is practically nightmare-inducing. AW2's art improved on that at least.  
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Feb 17, 2012 17:27
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I remember years ago playing this against my friend in the single cart mode. At one point, I remember trying the campaign, and I didn't do so well. I've always been crap at turn based strategy games, but I feel like I should try playing this again to see if I've improved at all.
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Feb 17, 2012 17:50
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SupSuper posted:Look, Andy is just REALLY excited about airports, okay? Sheesh, cut the poor man a break, he's never even seen a plane before. 
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Feb 17, 2012 17:53
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Sorry but the Sturm victory animation is still a thing of beauty. 
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Feb 17, 2012 20:17
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President Ark posted:This game really does get brutally hard in a way none of the later games do. Later games have missions be hard because of crazy gimmicks like cannons and death rays and tag powers and tank-eating blobs of goo; this one just grinds you brutally beneath its heel the old-fashioned way. Days of Ruin gets some of those, though it also gets hard gimmick fights. I recall one against Weylon that was basically a brutal war over every square of turf, because he was farting out planes/AA like nobody's business.
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Feb 17, 2012 20:18
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Bruceski posted:Days of Ruin gets some of those, though it also gets hard gimmick fights. I recall one against Weylon that was basically a brutal war over every square of turf, because he was farting out planes/AA like nobody's business. Ugh, that missions is horrible. He starts with a massive airforce and most of your AA units are wildly out of position. Eventually you can out produce him, but not until he shoots down half your army.
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Feb 17, 2012 20:38
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Bruceski posted:Days of Ruin gets some of those, though it also gets hard gimmick fights. I recall one against Weylon that was basically a brutal war over every square of turf, because he was farting out planes/AA like nobody's business. God don't remind me, I replayed DoR recently and that was absolutely brutal. I don't mind the gimmick maps because I always just cheese those with bombers, but maps like that one?  Anyways, I'm enjoying the LP. I like advance wars although I'm terrible at it, and I've never actually played the original so I'm looking forward to seeing more of it.
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Feb 17, 2012 21:00
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Soldiers actually aim at different heights.  Gotta love this attention to detail.
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Feb 17, 2012 21:15
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Banemaster posted:
 They really thought things out, and then punched you in the face with the difficulty.
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Feb 17, 2012 21:55
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Paul.Power posted:Probably a historical thing? I think heavy tanks were fairly rare in WW2, so for many armies medium was the heaviest it got. It's possible that the creators think that only like a Maus is a heavy tank, in which case they technically exist but not in enough numbers to matter. In Hearts of Iron 2 (a good WWII grand strat game), heavy tanks don't exist as independent units, only as attachments to other units, so they could have that sort of thought process.
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Feb 18, 2012 00:22
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"Ok folks, this here's your light tank and this one's a medium tank." "Why medium?" "'Cause we don't know what you're gonna see in the enemy lines and if they got some big honkin' thing you don't wanna waste time figurin' out what to call it."
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Feb 18, 2012 00:28
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I'd never even heard about heavy tanks until this thread even with all the military/history channel that I watch, so I suppose that should say something for how few there were. v v
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Feb 18, 2012 00:30
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In the European version of the second DS Advance Wars, the "War Tank" was actually a Heavy Tank, thus finally filling that niche 
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Feb 18, 2012 00:51
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Paul.Power posted:I think I'd vaguely heard of that, but I've never tried it out and wouldn't really want to now. Maybe if I get hopelessly stuck attempting AC. I'd send this in a PM, but I don't have Platinum, so this will have to do. Spoiler references a later Field Training mission. For the Design Maps glitch, play the Field Training mission "Naval Forces" and then lose the T. Copter on purpose. Then, go to Design Maps, plop down an infantry, then delete it and watch the game flip out. You're in the normal mode AND Design Maps mode at the same time! Load your Campaign/War Room/whatever and edit to your heart's content! You can clear maps on the first turn, spawn a ton of Bombers and even save Campaign maps to a Design Maps slot. It's a bit finicky to control, but totally worth trying at least once. It doesn't corrupt the game or anything like that, so feel free to use it however you want. Can't wait to see you handle some of the later missions!
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Feb 18, 2012 01:29
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Malachite_Dragon posted:I'd never even heard about heavy tanks until this thread even with all the military/history channel that I watch, so I suppose that should say something for how few there were. v It's not like there's a formal classification system. There's a sense that like a BT would be a "light" tank and a T-34 would be a "medium" tank and an IS-2 would be a "heavy" tank, but there isn't some sort of International Institute of Measuring Tanks. If your sense is that IS-2s and Tigers are "heavy" tanks, then there were plenty but they tended to operate with other tanks in support, but if your sense is that a Maus is a heavy tank, there was only one completed ever.
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Feb 18, 2012 01:45
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Some interesting/weird stuff: The Japanese versions of some of the COs are slightly different. Olaf is basically Evil Santa Claus: Arm fetishists will be disappointed to know that the Japanese got to have sleeveless Nell.  Also, Japanese Nell's skirt is about 3 pixels shorter than the international version. 
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Feb 18, 2012 02:05
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Zen Guy posted:Some interesting/weird stuff: The Japanese versions of some of the COs are slightly different. Olaf is basically Evil Santa Claus: Olaf's always had a bit of a "Santa" vibe even without the elf-hat. Especially if you use the design room to give him an Orange Star pallet in AW2 or DS. Also, apparently COs are called Shoguns in the Japanese games. Makes sense, just something of interest to note is all and probably would have been silly to call any CO (besides maybe Javier) a Baron or something when translated to English.
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Feb 18, 2012 02:45
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Now I want to see arts of Baron Andy. Not sure if that's a good thing or not.
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Feb 18, 2012 02:49
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It's weird to hear Nell talk about the Alara region, as it doesn't involve either "Land" or "War." It's almost as if they had some grand world with normal names in mind before opting to call it all Wars World.
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Feb 18, 2012 03:21
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For the curious, there is a full list of the JP/US sprite differences here, and an explanation for the changes here. Unsurprisingly, they all looked a lot more stereotypical/anime in the Japanese version.
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Feb 18, 2012 03:48
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Interesting about the sprites. I still have this game somewhere. I bought a DS second-hand and this was the only thing that came with it. It was the biggest change from "What, not even a DS game?" to "Bloody hell this is a bit brilliant!". I have always been behind the curve with gaming, due to money, but good things come to those who wait. I've been following this thread since last night, and am glad I found it so early on. It's much better to be following these things as they go along rather than spending several days catching up. Moreso when it's a game that has a lot of memories for me like this one.
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Feb 18, 2012 04:15
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Alkydere posted:Olaf's always had a bit of a "Santa" vibe even without the elf-hat. Especially if you use the design room to give him an Orange Star pallet in AW2 or DS. Shogun is 将軍, which is "commander/general" and "army," so "Commanding Officer" is pretty close to a literal translation. It's used in modern times to refer to certain powerful politicians like Ichiro Ozawa. Also i am not a fan of the Japanese version of Nell. I always thought it was positive that she was wearing a fairly believable professional uniform. The Japanese version just seems weird.
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Feb 18, 2012 04:23
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Mission 2: Gunfighter! (or "Time for some ACTION") Grit! Grit! Where's Grit? I think I like this guy already. Bearded one? Why you... A slip of the tongue. My apologies, commander. Enough! Just get ready to move out! Now, listen. Orange Star forces have been deployed where I anticipated. Their commanding officer is an untested youngster, but he's not alone. He's working with an advisor, Paul. So don't let your guard down! Our contingent in the area has some indirect combat units for you to use. Now get going, Mr. Sharpshooter! What? You want me to go personally? Like, in person? Why you lazy, no-good... What do you think a commanding officer does? If you don't get moving... All right. Keep your beard on. I don't much like the idea, but I'm going. Gone at last... He's an impudent rogue, but he's also the best marksman I've ever seen. Those Orange Star fools will never know what hit them. Perfect! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!Anything that makes Olaf that happy has me worried.  Oh well, it's probably nothing.  Advance Wars 1, wherein the COs are engaged in a "who has the scariest face?" competition. Day 1  Can you hear me? What's up, Nell? You've been given the authority to use bases to deploy new units onto the field. Paul hasn't received instruction on how to do this, but you're up to speed, right, Andy? Well, um... Oh, my. Well, let's go through it again. First, place the cursor on a base and press the A Button. A list of units will then be displayed. Use the + Control Pad to scroll through the list, and press the A Button to select the unit you want to deploy. Units that you can't afford will appear in gray. Don't forget that. Each day, you'll receive funds from all of the bases you hold. You'll have to make do with that amount. Remember, you can't deploy new units and move them on the same turn. Hope you got all of that. Good luck!Don't worry if you didn't get all of that, I'll be showing it off in a sec.  Again a fairly straightforward map. As Nell noted, we get bases to use, but it looks like Grit doesn't. That gives us a huge advantage, because if the worst comes to the worst, we can simply swamp him with units.  Fairly straightforward. My tanks head east to the bridge before going north to approach Grit's HQ area. There are a lot of threats around there in terms of rockets and medium tanks, circled in red. Meanwhile, my infantry cross directly over the river and fight Grit's infantry for the cities up there.  My tank snuggles up into a nice chokepoint between two mountains, and my artillery sets up behind it. Meanwhile, I get to capturing a nearby city.  My APC picks up a passenger and deposits them in the river by these other neutral cities. Bit damp over there, but what can you do.  So, buying units. Selecting a base (one of the little factory-looking things) lets us choose from a list of units to buy. We have 8000G funds to spend right now, which is just enough to buy us an infantry unit and a small tank.  So let's do that, and end turn.  Blue Moon is just plain greedy. That's what it is. Fightin' for these folks just don't sit well with me. Well, I'll guess I'll just mosey on out and see what happens.Day 2  Pick up now! Yeah, Nell. We're here. What's going on? We've learned that Grit is the opposing CO! Grit is an indirect-fire expert whose attack range is larger than normal. Plus, his range gets even bigger when he uses his CO Power! Make sure you check Grit's attack range throughout the battle. Understood. Hey, Nell... How do you know so much about this guy? Well... we used to be... friends. Um, that's all I had to tell you. Nell out. Huh? Nell was sure in a hurry. I wonder what was wrong?Good question, Andy. So Nell and Grit used to be dot dot dot friends, huh? Interesting. Wonder what kind of impact that's going to have.  Interpersonal shenanigans aside, Nell told us that Grit was an expert with long-range units. Let's check that out.   Whoa, nelly. Paul.Power's CO Notes: Grit  Grit's ThemeGrit's the long range expert in Advance Wars: his indirects can hit one square further away. Artillery that normally hit 2-3 squares away from them get upgraded to 2-4 squares, Rockets that normally hit 3-5 squares away from them get upgraded to 3-6 squares, and so on. Interestingly, in the first Advance Wars he doesn't get an attack bonus on his indirects. What he does get though is a whopping 20% attack penalty on his direct combat units. Since the majority of the game's units are direct combat, this is a problem. That range boost is a big enough bonus that he can hold his own, though. His CO Power, Snipe Attack, makes it even crazier, adding another two squares of range and a massive attack bonus to his indirects. Background/Personality: A brilliant marksman, at one point Grit used to work for Orange Star, but he defected to Blue Moon for some unknown reason. He's laid-back to a fault, and can be a bit of a jerk sometimes, but he's dependable enough and a good person underneath it all. Isn't very fond of Olaf's invasion of Orange Star.  Well, Grit isn't the only person around here who knows how to use indirects. Let's take care of this tank.  And do some more capturing.  A little trick: you can load a unit into an APC and unload it on the same turn, provided the APC hasn't moved when you load it. Here this can help speed up the process of getting infantry over the river. Thanks to Sockerbagarn for pointing out this trick.  Pumping out another infantry/tank combo. Day 3  Grit strolled a suicidal recon up to my front lines, while a mech attempts to cross the river. Note that I get 9000G this turn due to the extra city I captured.  Artillery and 6HP tank deal with the recon, while my full health tank cripples the river mech.  Not going to try finishing that mech off with my infantry, though. Not with Grit's rocket launcher waiting to pounce. The area denial effects of that extra square of range can be pretty nasty.  Infantry continue to advance over the river (not going to pick a fight with Grit's infantry just yet though), and my third tank moves up.  Just going to build infantry this turn: I want to save some money up. Day 4  Not too much to report here: Grit's mech crossed the river, making my life easier.  Infantry kills mech, my damaged tank retreats and the healthy tanks plug up the gap.  Now then, about this battle for the northwestern cities...  Two of my infantry kill one of Grit's, and I get an attack in on one of his other ones.  More infantry follow up to reinforce that battle line.  Now then, the reason I saved that money up: it's time to get some heavy ordnance on the board.  While small tanks can deal with rocket launchers just fine, a few medium tanks aren't going to hurt. Especially for dealing with Grit's middie. Day 5  Grit's been moving his artillery around in a kind of knight's-move pattern, making sure they're covering each other's blind spots.  Two can play at that game.  Meanwhile in the north we've got a territory struggle to finish off.  So let's do that.  My infantry pile on to the remainder of Grit's footsoldiers. Only one 1HP mech left up there now.  More infantry shuffling.  And moving up my damaged tank so it's a little closer to the action, given it heals up next turn. Day 6  Okay, enough pussyfooting around. Time to attack.  It's risky, but one does not win wars by sitting around on the sofa eating crisps.  I send in two tanks to destroy an artillery. Leaves them in range of the other artillery, but what can you do?  Capturing in the north. That 1HP mech died somewhere in the fracas.  And just generally moving up other units, trying to stay out the range of those rockets as much as possible.   Owch. Still, that's the risk you take. Day 7  Alas, poor tank.  You shall be avenged.  Medium tank cripples small tank while my own small tanks pile on to Grit's artillery.  Of course, doing all that means that Snipe Attack is now charged up and ready to go. Time to prepare.  Doing some capturing, and making sure that my APC drops off its passenger. Naturally that APC is going to get targetted by Snipe Attack (but of course! What else could possibly present as great a threat to Grit?), and the last thing I want is for it to get destroyed with an infantry unit inside it. That way I'd lose two units instead of one, and I've got enough blood on my hands already (plus it's bad for my technique score).  I've been forgetting to build units the last few turns. Let's remedy that by using the saved-up funds to crank out another medium tank.   Faffing about moving a couple more units around.   Here goes...  Owch.  Eesh. Day 8  But in some ways, that didn't go too badly. Snipe Attack packs a punch, reducing units to 1HP there despite them having a three-star defence bonus from the cities. But the combination of that city defence bonus and a bit of luck meant that neither unit died. And at least Grit didn't target my medium tank.   Okay, time to fix up some of the damage with Andy's own CO Power.  It's not perfect, but it'll do.  Hahaha holy balls look at that range. The good news is, that's already been and gone, because by his next turn the power will have stopped affecting Grit. But still, Snipe Attack is quite something.  My crippled tank retreats while my infantry move into rocket range. A bit of the old "target saturation" here: give Grit so many things to shoot at that it doesn't matter what he attacks, I still have plenty of backup. Kind of callous, but at least all the infantry are standing in mountains: they should be able to survive a hit.  Medium tank, small tank and arty move to what would be just outside of Grit's range on a normal day.  I built a couple of recons. I'm not exactly sure why. Recons are fast, so they'll be able to get up to the front quickly and slip into Grit's range shadow, and they do good damage to rockets and artillery. But they aren't up to much against tanks, even Grit's tanks.  More infantry moving.  One of the mountain infantry takes a hit for the team. Day 9  Moving up reinforcements.  Cycling out the infantry that got damaged for a fresh one, while also retreating my 3HP tank to a city and bringing those recons up.  But enough logistics. Time for some ACTION.    Hell yeah. So yeah. We need to get a move on if we want a half-decent speed score, so again I rush some units into a risky position. Small tank cripples one rocket launcher while a medium tank finishes off Grit's 4HP small tank.  Getting another middie out the doors.   Grit responds with some action of his own, destroying my attacking small tank...  ... and damaging my medium tank. Day 10  Well, at least I can hit back. Artillery, medium tank and small tank all combine to take down Grit's middie.  Or, if you prefer that without ACTION-O-Vision, we have this.  Bunch of infantry moving.  And it's time to start spamming units for technique. Technique is calculated as a fraction of units lost/total units produced: the more units you produce, the "better" your technique (This can catch people out in Advance Wars: Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict, where they change the way technique is calculated to penalise spamming like this).  Uh-oh, Grit's got another Snipe Attack. He could still do some damage to me with those rocket launchers...  Day 11  ... or maybe he could only attack with his tank and not actually use his rocket launchers at all.  AIs v v Moving everyone in for the kill.  Every little counts, as this infantry chips a couple of hit points off the rocket launcher (and you wondered why I was bringing all those infantry over here!)  That 4HP Infantry's pretty exposed, might get killed by Grit's tank... Day 12  ... well, unless the tank decides to attack a recon instead. Yeah, I don't even know any more.  Arty attacks tank, tank destroys rocket launcher.   Last stop, everyone off.  And what was your partner's name again? Paul? Stop calling me Junior! I have a name! It's Andy!Andy, Grit's only called you "Junior" once so far. Of course, now he knows it winds you up... Well now! That's the spirit! Y'all are new to the Orange Star Army, right? Yeah, so? Hey! How'd you know that? Well now, that's 'cause I'm Grit! I was beholden to Orange Star not too long ago, myself. So, I'm pretty familiar with most of the military types.So Olaf and Grit both used to work for Orange Star. That's a pretty serious brain drain. Blue Moon'll probably be after me next... Well, y'all beat me this time. Who knows, maybe we'll see each other on the flip side. So long, Paul! You too, Junior! .... Too late now, Andy.   And I got a rank up for my troubles! From Grey Rat to Opal Rat. Heady heights.  Anyway, back to Field Training for now. The next three FT missions contains one of my favourites, which caused me no end of trouble back when I first got the game. We'll get to see if I've improved any. Oh, and one last thing:  
Paul.Power fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Feb 18, 2012 |
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Feb 18, 2012 17:24
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Paul.Power posted:
(and one other occasion). I think you forgot to run your find/replace on the game script to insert your name where it says "Advisor". Ilanin fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Feb 18, 2012 |
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Feb 18, 2012 18:21
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Ilanin posted:(and one other occasion). I think you forgot to run your find/replace on the game script to insert your name where it says "Advisor".
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Feb 18, 2012 19:41
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Paul.Power posted:
Hey there Juuunior.
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Feb 18, 2012 19:49
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I don't think Notepad's find and replace function would keep case in mind, so it might replace lowercase "advisor" with "Paul", which might make for some awkward conversations.
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Feb 18, 2012 19:49
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Allan Assiduity posted:I don't think Notepad's find and replace function would keep case in mind, so it might replace lowercase "advisor" with "Paul", which might make for some awkward conversations. You can use something better than notepad, such as Notepad++ which can do case-sensitive find and replace. And syntax highlighting. And various other things which are great. (That said, standard Notepad will do case sensitivity if you check the "Match case" checkbox)
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Feb 18, 2012 20:22
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What's the deal with the rank system anyways? If I recall, AW1 is the only one to use it. I'm actually kind of fond of superfluous rank systems like that, so it's something of a shame that it isn't in later games where there's more substance.
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Feb 18, 2012 20:44
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