GWJ Chromehounds

Let me describe a Chromehounds battle for those of you who haven't gotten a chance to play this yet. We had a full night on the Wiener Bombers squad, 4-6 people for about 5 hours. The single time we faced a full human squad, they obviously had been playing since before the NA launch and killed every one of us without a single loss.

We start out in the planning room, looking at the map and talking strategy. Against AI we take all the combas towers, but against humans it just gives our position away so we're a little sneaky, and take towers as decoys. We usually set a main corridor of approach for the main body and send scouts out to the flanks (very cool as they disappear off the network for a few minutes). We are cautious until that first cry of "Contact" and then there is that frantic moment of understanding where the enemy is and how we need to approach him. The hound making first contact falls back, while the remaining elements circle in for a pincing movement. We peel off a few at a time, then chase the remenants back to their base.

We spent a lot of time in the desert against Sal Kar, throwing missles and machine gun fire across monsterous sand dunes a couple of miles apart. The open spaces meant lots of room to maneuver, but the dunes are tall and you can lose things in the valleys. Then we moved north to Morskoj as that front started to crumble for the russians, and found amoung wintery valleys where we'd lure the enemy into huge ambushes. Coordination and communication are essential, because only the commander knows where everything is. As you move towards the battle, you have a hard time figuring out who is the enemy and who is friendly, and often have to confirm a target before opening fire. Taking a cue off of real Army tanks, I put an armor plate on the rear of my hound and pasted the Tarakian flag on it as an obvious "Don't shoot" sign.

Anyone who says this game moves too slowly is, umm, an underpaid online journalist who had a deadline before the online game went live.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Anyways! I think I've found my niche. I made a new version of the heavy gunner I mentioned before...

That sounds awesome. Which parts are you using? I guess the two barrel one is the one I already have, is the other just the standard Morskoj heavy howitzer?

Regardless, definitely sounds cool. My heavy gunner is lacking some in that regard I guess. He's got more soldier-friendly weapons than he does HG Needs some work I suppose.

Also, I did the scout section of the singleplayer yesterday and kind of dug being a speedy little guy. I even took out a much heavier and well-armed hound with nothing but lots of high-speed driving, persistance, and two machine guns

Urges rising...

I am getting a very heavy Line of Contact feel.

IMAGE(http://homepage.usask.ca/jnp129/youwantit.jpg)

The game is deep deep deep. I was worried that it would only be fun against humans, but we played almost exclusively with the AI set on the lowest level last night, and had a blast.

Man, I was all ready to fight the humans and get my butt kicked when I saw "You have been disconnected from Xbox Live".

What I learned is that I need to experiment a lot with mech setups and play the training missions.

Still, LOTS of fun, the two missions I got in with you guys!

Is anyone else as impressed by the map design as I am? I mean, most look like crap, but they are very well designed and offer a great variety of play environments and strategic options. It's especially impressive to me since they have roughly 80 or so unique maps (although thanks to the overwhelming Morskoj numbers, it may be a while before we get to see a lot of them).

Edwin wrote:

Urges rising...

I am getting a very heavy Line of Contact feel.

Except without the whole "broken online play" thing.

Thin_J wrote:

That sounds awesome. Which parts are you using? I guess the two barrel one is the one I already have, is the other just the standard Morskoj heavy howitzer?

It's actually a Sal Kar heavy cannon, and the light cannon is the most powerful Morskoj offers (it has the least ammo so I fit it with expensive rounds and only use it for anti-Hound). I've done about 10 1v1's with my heavy gunner and it's never lost. It's even won some rounds with under $20k in expenses. Thing is, it's slow as hell. Sometimes it takes me 10 minutes just to locate the enemy HQ. Once I hook up with you guys it should be far more effective.

Only thing is, now I've got about all I need from Sal Kar and I'm ready to move on to Tarakia, but the war seems to be shifting against Tarakia again. Though now that I know how to make real money I'm sort of interested in going back to Morskoj to buy some stuff I passed up the first time, like super-heavy quad-leg chassis (I've got one, but it can't handle QUITE as much as one of the Morskoj ones I saw).

I made a scout last night, too. It has a flare gun mounted to fire at an extreme high angle (it's actually mounted on a front-facing surface, pointing up), some mine layers, and a ton of sensors It also looks really cool.

FYI I just changed my gamertag to ThePolypusher. See what happens when I have 2800 points in my bank and no good Live Arcade games come out?!

How fast is your new scout LobMob?

Anyone going to be playing tonight? I'm hoping to be able to (if wife doesn't pull a late veto) and could really benefit from some online mentoring.

polypusher wrote:

How fast is your new scout LobMob?

Around 200, with good acceleration (for a hovercraft).

LobsterMobster wrote:

It's actually a Sal Kar heavy cannon, and the light cannon is the most powerful Morskoj offers (it has the least ammo so I fit it with expensive rounds and only use it for anti-Hound).

I have four of every weapon that Morskoj had to offer except for the big dual barreled howitzer thing, so I'm guaranteed to have that other one. The Sal-Kar one though, not so much. Heh.

I'll have to switch to Sal-Kar at some point in the future and gank a bunch of their suff before running back to Tarakia.

IMAGE(http://home.pacbell.net/shaloop/sbcomic18.jpg)

edit: Oh snap, people still play online.

12 and 1/2 hours of overtime this weekend = No getting started on Chromehounds for me until maybe Sunday night. Damn real life!

Edwin wrote:

IMAGE(http://home.pacbell.net/shaloop/sbcomic18.jpg)

IMAGE(http://www.passthepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/potandkettle250x150.jpg)

Dude, a giant walking tank would be the first thing dead on a battlefield. I love that cartoon, though.

Since I can't get a 360 right now I ended playing SB. *sigh* If only SB was made for the 360.

Hee hee... I wish they had thicker connections too.

Thin_J wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

It's actually a Sal Kar heavy cannon, and the light cannon is the most powerful Morskoj offers (it has the least ammo so I fit it with expensive rounds and only use it for anti-Hound).

I have four of every weapon that Morskoj had to offer except for the big dual barreled howitzer thing, so I'm guaranteed to have that other one. The Sal-Kar one though, not so much. Heh.

I'll have to switch to Sal-Kar at some point in the future and gank a bunch of their suff before running back to Tarakia.

I wish I'd invested that much into Morskoj. Oh well, I'm sure I'll get another chance, seeing how defeating Tarakia appears to be part of Morskoj and Sal Kar declaring war on one another. It's really more of a formality.

anyone tried the rotors? Do you get them in the story mode?

There is some useful stuff in this manual if you want to read it for naming or just RP purposes.

I'm getting the strat guide for this if it is even slightly useful. Hey LobMob, we need you badly in the Wiener Bombers. How's the artillery going? Are you able to really lob those rounds across the map?

SwampYankee wrote:

12 and 1/2 hours of overtime this weekend = No getting started on Chromehounds for me until maybe Sunday night. Damn real life! :(

Ya, I have to work all this week till Friday also.Then to top it off I put in Chomehounds and got the red light of death on my 360. Good thing I pick up the 1 year coverage at EB. I love this game but seen lots of bad press about it?

40.00%

"But like the mech editor, it's a well implemented idea in a fairly shonky game - and not one that I can imagine Xbox 360 players sticking with for more than a handful of hours tops, no matter how starved they are for new releases at the moment." -EuroGamer

Braehole wrote:

40.00%

"But like the mech editor, it's a well implemented idea in a fairly shonky game - and not one that I can imagine Xbox 360 players sticking with for more than a handful of hours tops, no matter how starved they are for new releases at the moment." -EuroGamer

That's funny. I've already played 21 hours and that's just online.

Yeah the reviews are incredibly mixed, from 40% in Eurogamer, to 89% with an Editors Choice award from TeamXbox.

I got it Friday and I'm absolutely loving it (I was on the fence after the demo, which didnt feature or preview either of the 2 best parts of the game, building mechs and the online war). One of the major draws is simply how varied the gameplay can be based on your choices in building a mech. In most games your 'role' is defined by the weapon you pick up. If you picked up a sniper rifle, you're a sniper until you die, then you have to go find one again. In Chromehounds if you build a heavy mech capable of lobbing burning projectiles of chemical death across half the map, it totally changes you and your team's strategy than if you built a speedy little scout to extend your team's communication and detection range.

We've been having a lot of luck in the war vs both AI and human opponents. Some maps we win by zipping around to collect COMBAS towers (team with the most at the end wins) Others we've succeeded by eliminating the enemy base, and still others we won by simply going head to head with the enemy and coming out with mechs left standing.

I tend to play a scout with 4 machineguns but I'd like to build a quality heavy gunner and I NEED to build a good soldier mech because everyone probably should.

Desram wrote:

That's funny. I've already played 21 hours and that's just online.

Yeah. I'm somewhere in the high teens as far as hours played and I've really only sat down and dedicated myself to the game twice.

I think it's safe to say that reviews are generally worthless on this one. It's one of those niche games that the average person simply isn't going to like. You know, becuase it's not another Halo 2 or Ghost Recon or whatever else. It's a little different than most games these days, and that's just not going to fly with some people.

Sorry for skimming, but how many people can you take on a mission? Like if I'm the seventh guy in, will I have to wait till next round? What's the cap?

Yoyoson wrote:

Sorry for skimming, but how many people can you take on a mission? Like if I'm the seventh guy in, will I have to wait till next round? What's the cap?

6

souldaddy wrote:

I'm getting the strat guide for this if it is even slightly useful. Hey LobMob, we need you badly in the Wiener Bombers. How's the artillery going? Are you able to really lob those rounds across the map?

I'll switch to Tarakia ASAP. I really want to join you guys, but until 2 weeks is up or Sal Kar falls, I'm kind of stuck here! On the plus side I won a really cool looking experimental Sal Kar cockpit in the lottery.

Artillery is going good. I need a few shots to get my aim right, but after that I can strike an enemy base from about 1/5-1/6th of the map away. Doesn't sound too impressive, but it's far enough that the enemy AI defenders can't even detect me. They just roll around as the shells fall, looking all over, going "omg omg omg! What do I do!?" My little beauty is 12/12 in Neroimus. I even won a medal for surviving 10 rounds in a row. I'm starting to wonder as to the benefit of using heavy cannons instead of light ones though... The damage is about the same, but heavy cannons weigh twice as much. In general I've found that it's best not to fire more than one or two howitzers at once anyway, as the third and fourth shot in the volley tend to go long due to recoil.

Brizahd wrote:

anyone tried the rotors? Do you get them in the story mode?

You get a set of rotors in the Scout arc. I think they're the reward for getting an S on the final mission. They'll only get you a few feet off the ground for a second or two and you have no control while you're floating, but they're actually really useful for getting down off ledges safely.