impero

Graatz

Arm, lvl1 adv. Ranger

Buildpic: The unit itself looks good, although placed in a utterly bad angle (somehow, it feels that it should either be raised to about 70 degrees or lowered to 30 or even less), but I wonder where that light comes from. Originally it gives the unit a more action-like look, but since it is not connected to any of the avaible weapon, it looks pretty stupid [2]. The background is so utterly monotone it only can be. Yeah, it's a bit shaded, but so what, like the shading gives away any kind of pattern that gives away any kind of information how the sea is bent, so I naturally assume that it is flat as a pancake [0]. The only thing in sight that can be acknowledged as merging (for the only shading existing is built in the textures in the very front and back) is the wakes, that looks semi-good. It really bothers me that they do not continue behind the ship as the physics law of liquid movements suggest, but spontaniously end within the picture [0.5].

Buildpic: 2.5

Model: Major alert: Unlike other models that I use to jump on and sacrifice to the gods because of trashed face account and imminent ammount of useless faces, this model actually lacks faces on certain places. The underside of the rocket launcher arm is empty and it makes the ship look very foolish when missiles are launched straight from nowhere when seen from the front (when seen from behind, everything is ok, thou). The ship is way too long for TA (especially the nose), is rounded up way too much for an Arm ship, yet being too sharp for the Core and the nose should under no circumstances be turned down into the water - besides submarines, there are no functioning naval serial models with this construction, maybe that's a clue? The radar is too large, the cannon is too small to emit such powerful shell bombardement (I'd rather seen a multibarreled turret on this one as well). The bridge is too squarish and placed too far in front, pushing forward the cannon to sit on the very tip of the ship, while there is lots of space on the rear parts [2]. The texturing lacks Cavedog 3D completely, just as it mostly lacks spontane shading alltogether with the launchers as only exceptions (thy actually look very good, especially with the lighter thing in between the doors). The cannon is awfully textured and is also hard to distinguish beside the major fact that black barrels are ugly. The pitch black section in the front is very annoying and disturbs me quite alot when playing. Further, this ship is far undepowered when it gomes to logo colors. The only texture that tells the player whom the ship belongs to is placed on a slope and under occasions completely obstructed from the view [1]. The corpse is lacking completely, which sometimes make my game crash [0].

Model: 3

Script: Unacceptable. The bay door unfolding is catually not unfolding since the whole thing is elevated a bit and closed even more. The missiles never reload and once the two initial - seen - missiles are fired off, the carrying arm that use to dive down under protection on the OTA Ranger - only to jump back a pair seconds later, reloaded and ready for more battle while the impero doesen't show the slightest care about the problem and continues to fire off rocket after rocket from an empty space. Futher, the cannon lacks flare animation despite the fact that a flare is avaible and the fire rate seem to bee just too fast to animate any kind of recoil.

Script: 3

Balance: First of all... Why the fark is a 5K ship placed in the lvl1 shipyard? Get it therefrom fast... really fast... The serial-weapon brother of this unit, the Ranger cost a bit less than half metal ammount and one third energy costs. For this recource bump, the impero packs four times as much armor, doubled speed and 50+ Energy rate. Then, the most important upgrade is the exchange of the small anti-air missile of the Ranger to a big fucking gun that deals four times as much damage as the main weapon, thus being much more accurate, due to the higher speed and skipped "go-up-and-fly-for-a-bit-and-then-smack" procedure. Cut the cannon to one third range or the damage/shot to 10 and you are in.

Balance: 0

My score: Personally, I consider the buildpic being very ugly due to the text message that serves no purpose at all besides being disturbing. People should know, even very briefly, what side they play on and since the bar shows the name of the unit anyway when you are about to click on the pic, I don't see the purpose of placing the name there. This unit might fit in the World Domination TC mostly because of the more today-alike design, the buildpic style and the great lenght, but what it does not is being a part of Original TA. And a rule of thimb that I use is that if it does not fit the OTA theme, it will not even reach my backup folder. I have also problems understanding why the name does not start with a capital letter. Not even on the buildpic...

My score: 0