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[martinuzz]

Warzone2100... Man, back in the days when it came out (1999), and many years after I have enjoyed this absolute jewel in the RTS genre.
It's old.... But it's still very enjoyable. And when it came out in 1999 it was waaaaay ahead of it's time.
 And oh, that tech tree. So many upgrades to research.
Designing your own units and chosing a path are a big part of the game.

It has been open source freeware for many years now, and since february 2020, they even made a steam port (also free).
Anyone who does not know this game, TRY IT!
The single player campaign is extensive and can get pretty hard in the later missions.
Multiplayer is also much fun.

https://wz2100.net/

[MrRoboto75]

power resource

[Persus13]

I used to play this when I was on a free open source game binge. Been meaning to try the steam version again.

[Robsoie]

I'll have to try the current version one day, last time i played a couple of years ago i had to stick to version 2.3.9 as further updates were crashing on me too regularly to be any fun.

Looks like the current stable is 6 months old
https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2100/releases

It looks like you can download up to date recent dev builds from the instructions on the bottom of that page :
https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2100
if you have a github account.

[milo christiansen]

The version on Steam was put up by some random third-party, it does *not* have the blessing of the open source project team.

[Teneb]

The version on Steam was put up by some random third-party, it does *not* have the blessing of the open source project team.

Really? Damn.

I actually have this game on CD from a magazine from decades ago.

[Robsoie]

I downloaded latest dev build on github (the portable version, no need to install it , you can just extract that .exet with 7zip and play with the extracted directory, just launch the .bat file) and after quickly trying a skirmish it looks like it works very smoothly.

Though it's been such a long time i haven't played that i found it a bit odd on how so early in the skirmish units are that resistant, in the screenshot i had 4 early machineguns tanks destroying a very early enemy one that was pursuing one of my trucks that i had used as a scout.



It took nearly a minute of my 4 machineguns tank to actually destroy that enemy tank, that had all the time to explode my truck scout.

Maybe there's some settings i haven't noticed (as i didn't changed any options or skirmish settings for this quick try), i wonder how long battle will take once better armor will be researched. I'll have to try for a longer time to see if it's stable and be able to research up to better units.

[MrRoboto75]

Mostly its the basic yellow machinegun is kinda garbage.  In the main campaign you'd be using it against basic raiders using infantry and improvised jeeps/technicals.  By the time you face player-like factions you should have most the basic weapon types.  You'd have to upgrade it to the twin machinegun or the heavy machinegun to hurt project tanks.  Even so machineguns are only good vs cyborgs, hovers, and wheels.

I'm sure that the cannon line are supposed to be average vs everything, and I believe you usually get it after researching ap ammo for the machinegun.  You might also need Engineering tech.  Investing in missile tech gives you Lancer missiles, which are dedicated anti-tank missiles, and often one shot even medium tanks.

[RulerOfNothing]

IIRC the tradeoff between cannons and rockets is that cannons are high hp/high mass whereas rockets are low hp/low mass. Also I think cannons were particularly bad against bunkers, but it has been a while since I played this.

[MrRoboto75]

IIRC the tradeoff between cannons and rockets is that cannons are high hp/high mass whereas rockets are low hp/low mass. Also I think cannons were particularly bad against bunkers, but it has been a while since I played this.

I think you're supposed to use mortars/bombards vs bunkers instead of standard cannons.  Rockets have a specific "bunker buster" rocket.

[Robsoie]

From my skirmishes toying, light canons are vastly superior to heavy machineguns in the early game, it's simple i did a full machinegun (upgraded with researches of course) army in a skirmish (as you get machinegun before light canon it allowed to field a couple more tanks before the AI arrived) and the AI initial rush toward my based simply destroyed me and my reinforcements without a problem.

Other skirmirsh, i decided to go with full light canon (upgraded too obviously) army and this time completely obliterated the AI initial rush then pushed it back inside the middle of the part of his map. Yeah so early game go with light canon to kick the early AI rush, going with machineguns will get you killed.

Until the AI noticably switched its production to nearly only cyborg (i didn't remembered they even existed in that game ), cyborg being super resistant to canon and only vulnerable to machinegun, it pushed me back by atomising my big light canon tank army.

I don't know if the AI actually adapted or if it just build units randomly, but if it adapted it's a very nice AI play.

I just wish i remembered i needed to power up in energy my base as at that point i had too many things in construction (lots of defense towers actually) and not enough energy to sustain/complete them, so nearly all my builds were paused, allowing then the AI to march toward my base as no more reinforcement were built, i'm so rusty i forgot to cancel most of those useless (at the time) build

Anyways, this dev build is running vastly better than i remembered tne post-2.3.9 releases were. Definitively recommended to get a recent dev build on github

EDIT : finally got time to play to the end a little 1vs1 skirmish.
Started like previously, light canon tanks to deal with the initial AI rush, then instead of wasting ressources into building tons of towers (early game they're near useless anyways) i quickly build 2 cyborg factories and started to make machinegun cyborgs to complement my light canon tanks

upgrades after upgrades damage and armor was getting nicer so i was pushing the AI back easily to the point i started my forward operation base at a short distance of the AI main base.

There i spent time just repel AI desesperate assaults after desesperate assaults instead of doing the final attack, as my goal was to upgrade more until i started to see more varied units.
Though after +/- 10 minutes like that once i got some mortar/bombard units i had enough and stopped waiting for higher end units and just decided to move toward the AI base

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The entrance to the enemy base was well defended, bunkers, strong towers and tanks+cyborgs, but the "steamroller" army just destroyed them all and entered the enemy base now defenseless

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And victory fell in our hands

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Units are supposed to get stronger with experience, but in practice it's hard to keep them alive long enough, and spending time to retreat them and repair means you leave some time to the enemy to do the same, so in the end you just leave them die so your assault is left undisturbed by retreating troops (right click on a group of unit to give them various orders, to retreat automatically once reaching a certain level of damage, order to stand ground or pursue automatically , etc..)

[martinuzz]

Yeah, experience is really only noticable in the SP campaign, skirmishes and MP just don't last long enough to make experience matter.

[MrRoboto75]

It should be noted the skirmish mode comes with multiple AIs.  "Nexus", the default, was the AI that originally shipped with the game.

[Robsoie]

Interesting, you can even change each AI individually when there's more than 1 in a map.
By default in skirmish it's set to Nullbot "Adaptative AI with multiple personnalities"

Apparently the hardest is "BoneCrusher" that had 87% victory in their AI tournament.

[Frumple]

Yeah, experience is really only noticable in the SP campaign, skirmishes and MP just don't last long enough to make experience matter.

Eh, if you can get a good commander or two going it's still pretty noticeable, iirc. They're useful for other stuff, too, though I kinda' forget the details. They're things that were easy to overlook and able to be done without, but if you can work out how to use 'em they were quite the multiplier. Pretty sure they come in tower form or something like that for base defense, too? Been a long time since I played last...