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So i've been playing the free RUSE beta for a couple of days and im honestly impressed somewhat by it. When I had first seen it I was pretty unmoved by what I saw. Order of War seemed much more interesting at the time. Irony's a bleeding cunt though, and it turned out OoW was a pretty shitty game while RUSE had a lot more in store than I thought it would. I've actually got a lot more good things to say about it than bad. What i've picked up on it so far...

What I like-
-The game gives a shit about LOS. It's very important for units to be well placed on the map. Cover for light units like infantry and deploy-able guns is also really important.

-The game gives a shit about roads and supply lines. It's even more important for supply lines to be not only protected, but well planned. Even if you cap a supply depot on the other side of the map, it's got to be convenient for your HQ. The supply convoys really start to stretch themselves in time if they're traveling too far. That's awesome.

-The game has different playable periods of the war. Which was the first thing that really stood out to me that RUSE might indeed not end up being shit. The war can be played in 1939, 1942, and 1945. It's awesome because the game not only pays respect to the units of each period but the logistics and planning too. For instance, constructable HQs aren't available for most sides in the early war. So armies can run out run their supply lines and engineers pretty easily in 1939.

-All of the sides are unique. This was really special to me. ALL of the sides have real, individual character and are far from copy/paste models of one another.

-France is a playable side!

-Italy is a playable side!

-The radio and comms are relevant and actually say things that are important to the player.

What I did NOT like-
-Flanking doesn't seem to matter. Tanks take the same damage from every point regardless of where they're facing.

-The single player AI is retarded. I'm betting the campaign will be utter shit too. It's clearly designed for multi.

-The units seem to move almost too fast. It's pretty funny to zoom all the way down and see a Maus cruising the countryside at airplane speeds. This might be just a personal thing with me though. I would honestly like the option to dial down the game speed a bit.

-RUSE cards are ironically pretty underused. Their aren't many of them and other than a few of them they don't have much impact on the gameplay. Things like fake offensives and fake bases seem pretty useless so far. Terror and Radio Silence are great but they're pretty much the only RUSE cards i've had a use for.

General Notes-
-Their is more attention to detail than you'd expect. A lot of units for each side and I gaurantee you some you've never heard of. The devs actually cracked open a couple of textbooks this time. Not only that, but applied what they learned in a manner that fit the gameplay.

-It's a unique command perspective. Most RTS games are designed to play from a Platoon/Company level. RUSE seems to designed to play from a Regiment/Division level.

Does it have that new Ubisoft DRM?

My download speed has tanked at 90%. Anyone up for a multi game later?

At first blush, I agree with Hawx. It's surprisingly fun and quite high level. Is the map in the demo a regular one, a small one, a large one, etc? And yeah, the ruses are pretty lame (and hte AI is so dumb it doesn't really make a difference anyway).

Stark wrote:My download speed has tanked at 90%. Anyone up for a multi game later?

Sure, just PM me about what "later" means (since we have nine hours of time difference).

And the map you can play against the AI is "very small" - the difference is really notable on the other maps, which you can only play in MP.

Either way, i already tested a bit of MP and the ruses are much more usefull there - mostly because players can be reliably fooled.
Example:
You are in a 2vs2 game. Your team can either attack the one or the other opponent.
You construct some factories close to the enemy on your side and then you use "fake assault" to produce a lot of fake units. It now appears that you are gathering your forces to assault enemy #1.
Meanwhile, your ally used "radio silence" to cover the gathering of your and his forces close to enemy #2. Once you have gathered a nice assault force, you use the "blitz" ruse while your ally spends another ruse to extend "radio silence".

If everything went well, your enemies will have concentrated on countering the "fake assault" force and your real one will arrive invisible to radar and with a 50% speed bonus.

Another example:
I was about to loose a game to my enemies rush of superheavy tanks (i should have build some AT-guns) - but i won because i had camouflaged barracks on the other side of the map, relatively close to his base (we played a 3-player map 1vs1). This, in combination with radio silence, allowed me to completely surpise him with infantry and capture nearly his whole base, including his HQ.
He had more units and points at this point, but he had just lost his entire support base - so he wisely decided to surrender.

I really, really, really like this system. The idea to make most units&buildings visible without revealing exactly what they are is brilliant. Well-used ruses can really play with that system.

Infantry cap swarms are hilariously overpowered at the moment; even without ruses you can just drop a dozen airbournes and cap their shit which they then waste time blowing up.

I'm sure Hawx agrees that while ground combat's pace is ok, AAA is far too effective. A few 20mm placed in woods will make any >6 plane group disappear in seconds.

Yeah. I'm happy that the AA isn't useless to say the least. It's cool how the AA guns in the game are good at making aircraft turn around but you need fighters or your own to really inflict casualties.

But all of the AA guns in general are a bit ridiculous. One well placed gun can literally ruin a whole squadron's shit. It's also pretty stupid that heavy AA guns like the 88 (cool as they are showing off their dual-purposeness) can snipe planes out of the sky with ease. Instead, i'd favor them being pretty useless against fighters (because they zoom around too much) and more useful against bombers, which fly straight and are big targets. Overall though, the AA does need a tonedown.

Infantry swarms are indeed overpowered, but i'd rather they kept infantry as cheap as it is, and found another way to balance them. To be honest, i'd make them take casualties out in the open way faster.

Infantry swarms can easily be beaten by artillery and kiting - just let your tanks move backwards.
Oh, and use medium or light tanks - they are much faster than heavy or superheavy ones and thus much better for this role.
Even a single piece of artillery can inflict huge casualties on the infantry so that it will retreat without a "fanatiscm"-ruse.
Multiple artillery pieces can easily wipe out multiple infantry squads and damage the rest enough that a few defending infanterists can beat them.

Stark wrote:At first blush, I agree with Hawx. It's surprisingly fun and quite high level. Is the map in the demo a regular one, a small one, a large one, etc? And yeah, the ruses are pretty lame (and hte AI is so dumb it doesn't really make a difference anyway).

The map is a small one. Both the maps in the closed beta were larger.

Serafina wrote:Infantry swarms can easily be beaten by artillery and kiting - just let your tanks move backwards.
Oh, and use medium or light tanks - they are much faster than heavy or superheavy ones and thus much better for this role.
Even a single piece of artillery can inflict huge casualties on the infantry so that it will retreat without a "fanatiscm"-ruse.
Multiple artillery pieces can easily wipe out multiple infantry squads and damage the rest enough that a few defending infanterists can beat them.

It's also worth pointing out that some sides, like the US, have tanks which are really good at killing infantry because of their design. IE: The Sherman and Lee both had low velocity guns firing HE shells. They're pretty mediocre at tank killing, but the Americans can make up for that with their Aircraft and Tank Destroyers. All of the sides have different applications even for the same unit types.

Kiting? That doesn't really help when a unit has to be in contact with a building for 2 seconds to take it (and then the structure itself draws fire). Doubtless the map is sosmall it makes this plausible as you can't spread out too much, but I'm not impressed with the way the game handles buildings of any sort.

Hawx, it's pretty absurd to see a fighter shot down by a single shot from an Italian 90mm. The ground combat looks good with plenty of missing, so it's disappointing. They don't even use altitude to vary units vulberabilty, which is a shame.

Oh, the bigger maps are much bigger (doh^^) - just roll out to meet the enemy infantry and then move backwards while you are still shooting at them.

And not every nation has heavy anti-air - e.g. the Soviet Union only has light AA guns and mobile AA with the same firepower.

Uh, what? I'm talking about air-dropped infantry (or rused truck infantry) seizing bases. There won't even be any tanks around, and if there are they'll immediately start shooting at the base you just captured.

I don't give a fuck about 'heavy' and 'light' and shit, the idea an AA gun can kill a fighter on it's first shot is totally absurd. That said the dot system they use for power is totally worthless; the German 20mm AA is horrid and requires dozens of shots, whereas most factions heavy AA simply kill in one shot even on fighters or recon.

If they'd divided the air units by altitude (or manouvrability, or something) it wouldn't be so absurd. It's just a bandaid so that bombers can't get through (ps they always get through) because the bombers are ludicrously accurate. Is there even a way to set an aircraft's approach direction? Why does a bomber drop a chain of bombs such that the first one or two hit and the other dozen miss?

If tac bombers were harder to hit and heavy bombers were as accurate as heavy arty (ie not very), the AA as it is would probably work fine.

Don't be a smarmy cunt about map sizes. No shit it's small; it says 'very small'. I want to know HOW SMALL it is in context of the game; is a large map twice the edge length? Four times? I can see the game becoming incredibly annoying on large maps, given the very high lethality (and thus constant need to micro factories).

Stark wrote:Uh, what? I'm talking about air-dropped infantry (or rused truck infantry) seizing bases. There won't even be any tanks around, and if there are they'll immediately start shooting at the base you just captured.

I don't give a fuck about 'heavy' and 'light' and shit, the idea an AA gun can kill a fighter on it's first shot is totally absurd. That said the dot system they use for power is totally worthless; the German 20mm AA is horrid and requires dozens of shots, whereas most factions heavy AA simply kill in one shot even on fighters or recon.

If they'd divided the air units by altitude (or manouvrability, or something) it wouldn't be so absurd. It's just a bandaid so that bombers can't get through (ps they always get through) because the bombers are ludicrously accurate. Is there even a way to set an aircraft's approach direction? Why does a bomber drop a chain of bombs such that the first one or two hit and the other dozen miss?

If tac bombers were harder to hit and heavy bombers were as accurate as heavy arty (ie not very), the AA as it is would probably work fine.

Don't be a smarmy cunt about map sizes. No shit it's small; it says 'very small'. I want to know HOW SMALL it is in context of the game; is a large map twice the edge length? Four times? I can see the game becoming incredibly annoying on large maps, given the very high lethality (and thus constant need to micro factories).

Large maps are about eight times the edge-lengt, IIRC.
Just host a multiplayer game and you can view the different maps.

By the way, air-dropped infantry can be shot down by anti-air - having one or two AA-units in your base is sufficient to keep away 4-5 paratroopers (depending on the AA and angle of approach).
If you have infantry around, re-capturing them is also no problem.
Paratroopers are best for harrasing supply-lines - any properly defended postion will require too huge a number of them to do any real damage.

Even with the absurd inability to pick approach vectors, it's still trivial to use airdrops and ruses to get infantry in close. I guess on bigger maps you'd have second-line units around, but seizing airfields is a game-turner. It's ridiculous against AI to watch a few air ruses tie up AA so you can seize the whole base.

Not that you appear to be able to manage airfields, but hey.

Note:
If you see a fully stacked airfield, get artillery into range - one or two hits, and you destroy all the aircraft on it - lot's of points

Turns out attacking gets you further than hiding ten-stacks of infantry in forests for no reason? Stretching a five minute game to twenty is quite the skill.

Of course 'no reason' = the game doesn't let you force fire or destroy bridges. It'd probably be too exciting.

Why doesn't the game have filters? It's impossible to select (say) your infantry if you're zoomed out far enough for them to stack with artillery for no reason. If they didn't make the stacks incredibly huge when you're zoomed out you might even be able to see what's happening without drilling down.

Actually, is the game really as primitive as it looks? You can't even choose the factory your units come out of (it's just 'closest to deploy point) and you can't re-home supply bases to different headquarters OR choose the route your engineers will take (or change it).

Together with the lack of basic commands like 'blow up that place over there' I'm starting to wonder if they missed the point of making a 'high level' game. Yes, sometimes the shortest route to HQ will be dangerous. So why the fuck will trucks keep going that way when there are totally safe alternate routes? Being 'high level' means reducing micro, not reducing functionality.

Stark wrote:Turns out attacking gets you further than hiding ten-stacks of infantry in forests for no reason? Stretching a five minute game to twenty is quite the skill.

Of course 'no reason' = the game doesn't let you force fire or destroy bridges. It'd probably be too exciting.

Why doesn't the game have filters? It's impossible to select (say) your infantry if you're zoomed out far enough for them to stack with artillery for no reason. If they didn't make the stacks incredibly huge when you're zoomed out you might even be able to see what's happening without drilling down.

Oh, stop whinning because you lost
You should have put up a solid defense (especially since you were playing french). I suspected you did, since you had the right terrain for it. An early attack would have given you significant points and the opportunity for a counterattack from a secured position.
That's why i secured my territorial gains and waited for an opportunity to bring my superior artillery forces to bear.
That way, i could hurt you without significant risk and support the eventual attacks.
Of course, i got lucky with destroying your airfield and all the planes on it.

Either way, force firing would make cover, radio silence and camouflage nets nearly useless.
Just fire where the infantry/at-guns hide in the woods or where the artillery is firing from.
Likewise, destroying bridges would make it way to easy to block land assaults.

As to supply lines, the depots just send out convoys every few seconds, regardless of how many convoys from that very depot are already on the road. If they had made it so only one convoy could be on the road, then changing their route would be more interesting.

It would be cool if they had put a traffic-jam mechanic in, so rerouting all you convoys (and reinforcements) to a single (safe!) road would net hilarious results.

As to blowing bridges, just allow people to rebuild bridges, and infantry to cross rivers.

Stark wrote:Actually, is the game really as primitive as it looks? You can't even choose the factory your units come out of (it's just 'closest to deploy point) and you can't re-home supply bases to different headquarters OR choose the route your engineers will take (or change it).

Together with the lack of basic commands like 'blow up that place over there' I'm starting to wonder if they missed the point of making a 'high level' game. Yes, sometimes the shortest route to HQ will be dangerous. So why the fuck will trucks keep going that way when there are totally safe alternate routes? Being 'high level' means reducing micro, not reducing functionality.

Um - you DO choose what factory your units come from, just the way you described it.
Some sort of visual aid to show which way they will take to the target location would be nice, tough.
Also, you can change the route of your engineering trucks by redeploying the building (say, if the truck would run into an ambush, just deploy the building somewhere else).

Not being able to controll supply trucks is actually a feature.
Why?
Well, simple - if you could, raiding supply lines would be much, much easier to counter just by re-routing the supply trucks.
You have to do the right macro-managment and place your secondary headquarters the right way - et voila, you controll the way your convoys take.

Serafina wrote:Oh, stop whinning because you lost
You should have put up a solid defense (especially since you were playing french). I suspected you did, since you had the right terrain for it. An early attack would have given you significant points and the opportunity for a counterattack from a secured position.
That's why i secured my territorial gains and waited for an opportunity to bring my superior artillery forces to bear.
That way, i could hurt you without significant risk and support the eventual attacks.
Of course, i got lucky with destroying your airfield and all the planes on it.

You mean, you took fucking ages to eventually get around to playing the game? Seriously, turtling doesn't win, you have to attack. 'Waiting for an opporunity' when the opponent has no defence and 2 units is fucking laughable. Secured your gains from who? The mystery third player? If you think destroying an airfield was 'lucky' when you had won the game TEN MINUTES AGO, you need to play more RTS games. I'm sitting there reading a book launching the odd plane and you're SLOOOOOOOWLY crawling across the giant map spawing $50 worth of infanty at random for no reason.

Serafina wrote:Either way, force firing would make cover, radio silence and camouflage nets nearly useless.
Just fire where the infantry/at-guns hide in the woods or where the artillery is firing from.
Likewise, destroying bridges would make it way to easy to block land assaults.

Uh, camo nets ARE useless unless you're using other ruses too or people aren't paying attention. The inability to force fire is totally retarded, because THAT IS HOW YOU FIGHT PEOPLE YOU CAN'T SEE. Do you honestly think it makes sense to be unable to blow up a tiny forest when you know there's a ten stack of guys in there? You can't even force fire to lead targets, and your artillery can't lead targets and thus ALWAYS MISSES MOVING TARGETS.

Of course, WiC has cover and cover destruction and works fine; but it's nowhere near boring enough to be played by the Ruse target market.

Artemas, the way convoys work sitting a single infantry unit in a corner means they'll keep blowing up trucks FOREVER until someone drives a recon unit over and then blows them up. It's retarded; you can't even say 'stop sending out trucks'. The routes only change when you build HQs, so looking at the map for 10s means you knwo where you drop paras to instantly cripple your opponent and there's nothing he can do about it. Hilarious.

Uh oh, it's a feature to have to do things annoying ways! Of course you can't control things; it's working as intended! LOL. The fact that factories work in typical RTS fashion by reducing build times is pretty asinine itself in a game like this, but the inability to actually manage anything is just awesome.

The game is ok because forcing players to build a structure to say 'don't go this way you cretins its' through the enemy's base' is totally normal and acceptable.

Next we'll hear that not being able to build supply bases by clicking ont he supply base itself makes sense.

Artemas wrote:As to blowing bridges, just allow people to rebuild bridges, and infantry to cross rivers.

OH SHIT YOU JUST BLEW MY MIND!

I love it when people complain something is impossible for reasons that have been irrelevant for nearly a decade. I was blown away when I couldn't use heavy artillery to clear cover or destroy bridges; you can't even cut a path through woods for vehicles.

Seriously, turtling doesn't win, you have to attack.

It can.
Defending units are quite strong (AT-guns, AA, superheavy tanks, artilley, most defensive buildings) for their costs - if your enemy tries to attack your strong defense, you will gain significant points.
Since points are the victory condition, even if you loose your complete base, that can easily win you the game even if you are at a resource disadvantage.

Uhhhhhhhhhhh.

Do you recongnise the difference between 1v1 and all other matches? In 1v1 there is no risk; there's nobody else around to shift the 'who has more econ' balance of victory. And defensive structures are basically useless outside of the first five minutes since they're the only thing in the fucking game you can blindfire at. While conceivably ylou can win with no base, it's hardly something to aim at and without a serious investment in units (like filling every forest with 10 infantry) your base is ludicrously vulnerable given how weak the buildings are.

What interests me about the larger maps is that they scale the 'sector' size and the supply dumps are just further apart. Unless the larger maps get larger while maintianing the same resource density, all they do is make the game FUCKING SLOW. I had no idea how big that map was until I noticed how dead slow the tanks were moving; it's still only 5 sectors/3 supply points wide.

EDIT - Actually, does the game even have effective diplomacy? No ruses refer to other teams or allies, and the maps seem to be locked teams. It'd be a shame if they missed the chance for Defcon-esque diplomacy in their rush to be totally bog-standard.