Headquarters: World War II

[Pete Dero]

Released.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1840800/Headquarters_World_War_II/

Release Live Event : https://www.twitch.tv/slitherinetv 

[rss334]

removed

[Father Ted]

"Released", "Removed" - now I'm confused

[Gusington]

^rss334 removed his post.

[Father Ted]

^rss334 removed his post.

Sorry chap - I got it, it's just that the juxtaposition of the comments made me want to post a dad joke.  I'll get my coat...

[rss334]

No wait stay, have another    I found it entertaining.  Guessing by the lack of any other comments the game not highly recommended .

[Apocalypse 31]

I love Battle Academy but I had to refund this one.

Feels a bit janky and the camera positioning and field of view is just god awful. The editor is also really awful and clunky. Maybe Ill pick it up again but not anytime soon.

[Bardolph]

That was more or less my impression from the demo. I really liked the Battle Academy series and feel like they were somewhat overlooked, mostly due to the graphic design choice. But this game felt clunky, claustrophobic and ugly from the time I spent in the demo. I really didn't feel it had that much in common with the Battle Academy games.

[al_infierno]

I just picked this up and played through the tutorial, and I'm digging it so far.  It's definitely a little on the janky side in terms of UI, but the basic gameplay is nice, similar to Battle Academy but with much cooler graphics.  It's definitely not a hardcore tactical sim (e.g. tank crews are simulated, but you can replace them instantly with a cooldown ability)

The camera controls don't strike me as being that different from Battle Academy.  Did you guys play past the first part of the tutorial?  Because it unlocks the camera after the first few dialogue bits.  I took this screenshot where I'm zoomed mostly out and it feels plenty free to me.  Though it does do that annoying thing where the camera starts to look straight down the more you zoom out.

[Grimnirsson]

I watched a German review video and the guy said the tanks don't have armor value, penetration factors etc. but are wholly dependent on the life points of their crew, so if they got hit inside the tank gets weaker...is that correct? I mean it sounds silly...

[Pete Dero]

I watched a German review video and the guy said the tanks don't have armor value, penetration factors etc. but are wholly dependent on the life points of their crew, so if they got hit inside the tank gets weaker...is that correct? I mean it sounds silly...

Not according to the manual (p. 79-80):

ARMOR FACING - FRONT, SIDE, BACK, AND TOP ARMOR

Most armored vehicles have 4 armor values:

� Front armor (usually the strongest)
� Side armor (usually not so good)
� Back armor (usually rather weak)
� Top armor (usually the weakest)

Each value indicates how much armor the unit has if attacked exactly from that direction - front, side, or back. However, in most situations, the attack would come at a certain angle, so it would be something inbetween the front and side or side and back armor, and the exact value 80 will depend on the precise angle. The resulting value is an Adjusted armor value.

ADJUSTED ARMOR
The Adjusted armor value indicates how much armor the unit has when an enemy attack hits two or more armor values, taking into account the Attack and Elevation angles.

Example:
The unit has 100 Front armor, 60 Side armor, 40 Back armor, and 10 Top armor.
If it is attacked at an Attack angle of 45 degrees, it will use 50% of its
Front armor and 50% of its side armor, so in the end it will have 80 armor.

Example 2:
The situation is the same as above, but the attacker is situated on a hill and has an Elevation angle of 30 degrees - meaning it is firing from above.
This means that the 80 armor from the example above (a combination of Front and Side) is further adjusted by Top armor as well. So, the result will be between 10 (Top armor) and 80 (Front/Side armor) and will depend on the Elevation angle.

[al_infierno]

I watched a German review video and the guy said the tanks don't have armor value, penetration factors etc. but are wholly dependent on the life points of their crew, so if they got hit inside the tank gets weaker...is that correct? I mean it sounds silly...

Sort of.  As Pete pointed out, armor values are indeed a thing.  But yes, a tank's health is tracked by its living crewmates.  A critical penetrating shot kills everyone outright and destroys the tank, whereas a glancing blow might kill the commander, gunner, etc. and weaken the tank's ability to fight back.  You can "repair" the tank by using a cooldown ability to revive the crewmates.

It's an odd system for sure, but I think it works as an abstraction.

[Skoop]

I played the beta and the system just didn't grab me.  They should have taken the nice graphics and bolted it onto second front's gameplay, that would sound like a banger.

[Grimnirsson]

Pete and al, thanks for the reply.

It's an odd system for sure, but I think it works as an abstraction.

Very odd indeed, I mean what's the point? If you have a tank and it has the typical armor, weapon etc. values why using a crew at all - if you can magically revive them anyway? That's not an abstraction that's nonsense in the WW2 setting.

And just read this here about the terrain features, I mean what the heck???

the fact that after a while you realize everything on the map pretty much means nothing. You can move into and out from ANY kind of obstacle from any angle without much happening, but more so - you can actually shoot trough it all. In other words.. Yes. An enemy gun can absolutely sit behind 6 blocks of houses and (magically) shoot a straight shot at you. Which is reflected in a bit of retardedness like mortars shooting OUT of houses etc

I don't know if I can swallow these odd design decisions.

[al_infierno]

It would make more sense as a board game, for sure, where you have a strict economy of how to track things like tank damage. The mechanic makes a lot more sense with infantry squads if you think of the "revive" as being reinforcements. The abstractions there can be more easily explained, like a solid single sniper round destroying a whole infantry squad because it kills the leader and everybody else scatters.