My take on Airship Dragoons

[W8taminute]

As a boy of 8 years I enjoyed playing with plastic army men just like any other boy my age at the time.  Most kids would setup their army guys on the lawn and proceed to throw rocks at them while making 'pew pew' sounds.  I played a little differently. 

My brother and I would spend time setting up our shoebox full of soldiers in squad formations all about the playroom floor.  We'd use measuring tape and 2d6 to regulate movement and fire and proceed to wage war against each other.  We also had a system in place to generate income based on the amount of territory your men occupied.  We'd use Monopoly and The Game of Life money to keep track of current funds.  Those funds could be used to purchase more soldiers or buy defensive structures.  It was a fairly complex system that we worked out.  Today the hobby of miniatures, like WH40K for example, is making a comeback but in more ways than one.

Enter the PC game 'Airship Dragoon'.  The game is a turned based strategy game in which the player may choose to fight an individual battle designed around chosen parameters or one of two grand campaigns to conquer territory and fight turn based squad battles.  Airship Dragoon is not unlike wargaming with miniatures but in a PC game.  The basic premise of the campaign is capture territory to generate income and fight squad battles in turn based style.  The player performs these actions over and over again until the game is won or lost. 

Campaign overview as of turn 18 in my current game


My finances and overall battle summary


The main campaign map takes place on a giant hexagon that is subdivided into smaller hexagons.  I have one airship as you can see in the screen shot above.  Airships come in different sizes with different speeds and troop capacities.  The airships are used to capture territory by entering hexes.  You may capture some or all of the surrounding hexes due to the zone of control exerted by the airship.  Some hexes are occupied by either factionless pirates or by enemy faction troops.  Entering such a hex initiates battle. 

Turn one of a battle.  Here you can see that I have a force of 15 militia conscripts.


Our objective is to defend that flag in the near distance on the hill from the enemy.


Tactical battles are a turn based affair.  Each soldier has an encumbrance, moral, accuracy, and health factor among other parameters.  So for example when a soldiers moral drops below a certain number he is either going to flee the battle in terror or panic and fire shots wildly thus using up all his action points for the turn.  Keep in mind that a conscript soldier is not going to be able to hit targets consistently at great range.  If at the end of the battle if you have soldiers who survived and performed well you can add them to your veteran pool and give them more advanced equipment for use in future battles.  Advanced equipment blueprints must be bought first however with your available funds before they will be available for use.  As the game progresses you can kit your veterans with a variety of firearms and support equipment.  The game does not simulate melee or hand to hand fighting.  All combat is done with projectile or thrown weapons. 

Airship Dragoons is a game that will appeal to a small niche market.  There are no scripted story missions nor any diplomacy options.  Players seeking this kind of variety should probably stay away from Airship Dragoons.  If however you enjoy the simple pleasure of capturing territory and pushing little army guys around on a map over and over again this game is for you.  It may not offer much in back story or features one would find in a game like Total War let's say but if you like miniatures gaming Airship Dragoons satisfies.

I payed $20 for this game on Gamersgate and am quite pleased with my purchase.  If however you have your doubts about this game I highly recommend waiting for the price to be $10 or less before buying.  At the very least you will be entertained for a few hours before either becoming bored with the game or liking it a lot and recognizing it for what it's worth.

[Sir Slash]

Thanks for the review W8. I paid no attention to this one but now I'm interested. Any bugs? More screenies please.

[Queeg]

Great review, W8!  I'm having a great time with this game.  With so many overly-complicated games out there, it's nice to find something easy to play but with a decent challenge.  And I think your comparison to toy soldiers is perfect - while moving your guys can be a bit slow, the payoff when your guy works his way over a hill and through some trees for a flanking shot on a bad guy is well worth the wait. 

[Jarhead0331]

Interesting...I had read some extremely negative reviews on this one so I never took a deeper look.

[W8taminute]

Thanks for the kind words guys.  I'll definitely provide some more screenies after I play some more tonight.  I'm having a blast with this game because it caters to my naked TBS tastes. 

Hi Sir Slash. 

There was a bit of a video problem I experienced when I first tried to play the game.  It turned out though that my graphics card drivers were out of date and once I updated them I never experienced any video related crashes.  The game now is stable on my platform (Vista quad core 2.3GHZ with 1GB ATI Radeon HD 56XX series graphics card).  No other bugs to report so far!

Hi Queeg,

You're right.  I was so thrilled the first time one of my conscripts managed to sneak his away around a two man enemy group he was stalking.  Once my guy closed the distance a bit, it was around 64 meters IIRC, he was able to kill one bad guy and force the other to 'bottle it up and flee'.   :)

Hi Jarhead,

Yes you should check it out.  I'll provide some more action shots later on tonight when I return to the battle I'm currently fighting.  I'm still on turn 1 which was shown in the last two screenshots of my original post.

[Queeg]

A few more thoughts:

This game gives you a reason to care about your guys.  Once you have a guy move up the ladder from conscript to lieutenant, so that he's now highly skilled with the best weapons and motivated to stay put and use them, you really, really hate to lose him.  You find yourself wanting to use your best guys to get them even more experience but scared to use them for fear of losing them. 

The game also has a very thoughtful ammo system.  You can't just load up Rambo-style with everything you can lay your hands on.  In fact, it's not at all uncommon to have guys run out of ammo and have to scrounge through the packs of dead comrades just to stay in the fight.  And reloading itself takes away action points - so do you empty your clip and end your turn, hoping you can get the bad guy before his turn, or do you save a couple of rounds for reaction fire? 

Finally, the AI is good in a variety of ways.  It uses terrain well and will pop up in unexpected places.  And perhaps even more important, it selects and uses weapons and range wisely.  You won't see armies of 10 guys all armed with pistols  Or mortar guys who insist on closing to shotgun range before firing.  Stand-off weapons use range and close-in weapons use cover. 

As I've been playing a bit more over the last few days, I've found myself recalling when I first played the first Take Command game - not so much that they play alike, but rather how refreshing it is to see a one-man designer come up with such a unique but simply fun game.  And one that works in so many basic areas where so many big name, big budget games fall flat.  (Remember the old Rome Total War AI armies composed of nothing but wolves?)

The game definitely isn't perfect.  But it's been awhile since I've played something that was so refreshing that the flaws don't bug me.

[mkivcs]

Anyone tempted over this one. (And I certain include myself) might like to note that its currently available for less than £3.00 in a bundle.
http://www.indieroyale.com/

[bob48]

I admit to getting interested.

[Queeg]

Anyone tempted over this one. (And I certain include myself) might like to note that its currently available for less than £3.00 in a bundle.
http://www.indieroyale.com/

There's also a demo:  http://www.yorkshirerifles.com/webpages/games.html#demo

[W8taminute]

I finished my battle and have some screenies for you of that fight.  It did not end well for me as we were facing the British Empire and their well armed troops.  A few of them had some sort of energy shield and our little popguns couldn't kill those troopers.  I made lot's of mistakes in this battle chief of which was to rush in and not attempt any flanking maneuvers but I was a bit rushed to finish this fight though.

Our objective



Ok so all we had to do was defend our flag.  How hard could that be?  For this battle I did not bother to bring in any veterans thinking that the fight should be an easy one.  I was wrong however as you'll soon see.


Beginning of turn two



As you can see I've started to position my men on the high ground overlooking the valley that surrounds 3/4 of the approach to our flag.  It would take one more turn to get the rest of my men in place but we had plenty of over watch so I figured I'd be just fine.  The right flank however had several hills that could offer the enemy a chance to sneak up on me.  There were about 4 of my men covering that approach hidden behind trees and boulders.  Again I thought I'd be fine.

Most of the men were equipped thusly:



Some of them also had med kits in case anyone needed wounds tended to.  Their 5 round magazine rifles have a range of 150m but since all these guys are conscripts they really need to be shooting at targets less than 70m away to have a decent chance to hit.  The soldiers can be setup to reserve action points for opportunity fire during the enemies turn. 

Turn 3


I've got guys covering that valley over to the left pretty good as you can see.  That area should make a nice kill zone!


The first shots are fired in defense by my men!


I counted 4 enemy soldiers trying to sneak through and I had 5 guys open fire on them during the enemy turn.  Much to my disappointment none of my men hit the enemy.  A golden opportunity wasted because I neglected to bring some veterans with their greater accuracy in shooting.  No problem I think to myself.  I just mow down these idiots when it's my turn.  Well that didn't happen either because after the ai took a few pot shots at me they hid themselves behind some of those trees you see in the above screenshot.  No way was I going to attempt to go after them so I staid put on this side of the front.

On the beginning of the next turn the enemy sent some men over the hilly area to the right of my positions just as I had suspected.  One of my men took some fire and was slightly wounded.  When it was my turn again that particular soldier lost his cool as shown below:



He emptied his clip and used up all his action points firing wildly and not hitting anything.  Well after that performance the rest of my right flank line crumbled because everyone panicked for some reason.  Things were not looking good now.   :(

More screenshots to follow soon.  Hopefully you get the idea of how battles are fought. 

[Sir Slash]

I'm glad they didn't decide to call this one "Balloon Dragoon". ;D Great screenies! More, more, more.

[steve58]

Airship Dragoon can be had now for as little as $1.  Its part of a new Steampunk bundle made up of games, comics, music and ebooks.

http://groupees.com/steampunk2?source=indiegamebundles

Anybody recognize any of the other games/items in the bundle?

[W8taminute]

Excellent link steve.  For $1 Airship Dragoon is totally worth buying for those that are curious.  You'll get at least 7 to 10 hours of gaming before getting bored.  My honey moon phase with the game is over and I have not been playing it much lately.  I will still play this game off and on when I'm in the mood for it. 

[Queeg]

My honey moon phase with the game is over and I have not been playing it much lately.  I will still play this game off and on when I'm in the mood for it.

Same here.  The campaign gets old fast - really just an excuse to string battles together.  But individual battles still can be quite fun.  I'll keep it on my HD just to play an occasional quick battle.  They're interesting and unique enough to make the game worthwhile. 

[Jarhead0331]

I bought it for a dollar...but I will probably never play it.