Covert

Insane Systems

Arm, lvl2 stealth tank

Buildpic: What does bother me in this picture, beside the lack of illumination on the unit is the shadow that is placed very wrong and interfere with the dark tracks, so you can\'t really tell where the tracks end and shadow start (it is also wrong if you look on the mountains in the background). The background pattern is also too flat, as many of the OTA pics. This is about the best result you can get from buildpics made in 3DO Builder. (Unit 3, BG 3, Merging 1)

Buildpic: 7

Model: The unit looks rather good when folded out with the turred and everything, but the closed version gives me headache as it looks very empty and I can not figure out anything to place there instead. I don't like the basic design of this unit, as there is very little in common with most OTA models and it is slightly too large in my opinion (stealth units tend to be smaller). There are four excess faces on the underside of the barrels, totally eight on the outer locks and four on the underside of the tracks (where everyone leaves things), that you should investigate. There is a problem in the game that the inner locks disappear sometimes, since the TA engine is very unskilled to display textures placed above each other unless they are part of the same piece. My advice in this area is to make the black texture that you currently use as a lock into a box that goes down [2]. The texturing can be a bit better... Although I see signs of CD:3D on the outer parts of the tracks, the hull lacks it more or less. You might make the logo textures in front slightly lighter and put dark textures on the rear part on the tracks to balance the heavy logo ammount in the front (when the unit is folded in, it looks really ugly) up a bit. The textures on both barrels and the inner locks should be turned upside down (they look better then, beleive me). The turret also got a bit too repetive on the edge around it [2]. The corpse is good [1].

Model: 5

Script: The locks on the unit open, the turred is hissed up and expands to reveal the folded in barrel. The whole sequence is done very good, but too slow. The animation is not locked into a protective if-argument either and the engine have to scroll through all the orders before the unit can reaim everytime the opponent moves (or the units moves comparing to the target), meaning that this unit is a real bitch to fire at mobile units. The aiming itself is waay too slow too.

Script: 0

Balance: Let us compare it to it's serial weapon brother, the Arm Triton. The costs are almost identic (with LO costing about 8% more than Triton) and where amphibious abilites are equal to stealth appearance (even though I personally value and can think of more situations where stealth beats amphibious talents). Triton is a bit more agile while LO got an impressive armor in comparison (and when it is folded in, it is granted with triple ammount by the damagemodifier tag), but is compensated by brutal combat ineffiency. As stated before, the unit is almost obsolete in mobile to mobile combat and must stand still to have a chance against stationary targets. I find it balanced, but at what costs... No one will use it due to the brutal slow aiming.

Balance: 9

My score: This is sad... I actually want to like this unit, since it brings forth a very strategic chapter into the game where you won't only fear stealth assults from the air (Hawk/Vamp) but also from land. Instead of mixing in Jammers that you have to surveil all the time (if they screw up for a second and one of your unit flashes up on your enemy's minimap, he will get suspicious), you have a unit that you can scatter, gather and race in forests to attack that lone Punisher or minor base or whatever you want, but I can't because it is large, slow unfolding and aiming and with a flawed script that takes eons to fire off on an enemy.

My score: 0

Review by Storm | Others by same