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Duaneski

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Hi all. One of the newer uniwarriors lamented today at the lack of a rule book. The tutorial takes players through the basics of the game. The forums and chat provide means for people to reach out for answers as well. Of course, some players may want to sit back and read through a rule book. Given that Xavi has so many pokers in the fire right now, plus our collective knowledge base being so extensive, I think it makes sense for the players to write up this rule book.

Below I have included headers for topics I believe merit inclusion. This is NOT an all inclusive list, and perhaps some of the things on this list do not even belong ! This list is not in order, yet. But it should be a good start.

please feel free to take a section below, write up some material for it, and submit it back for review here. We will conduct peer review on all submitted sections for accuracy, grammar, and ensuring material is as concise as possible. I think it would be a benefit for more than one person to write about a subject, and be able to pull the strongest points from multiple posts. So don't worry about "claiming" a subject as we will likely be able to use any material you are able to produce.

Thank you for your participation in this project. I'm sure it will be a great benefit to all future uniwarriors!
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Duaneski

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Uniwar Comprehensive Rulebook

Income - start of game, turn income. Please note that naval bases do not produce income. Please try to answer any FAQs about this subject - including whether a base being captured produces credits.

Unit creation

Movement

Attacking and defending - basics of how the + and - numbers are determined. Please note specifically when a unit will or will not defend (I.e marine artacked at range of 2 by swarmer will not defend. Same thing with a walker at range of 2. Versus a battery at a range of 2, or a Wyrm. Basically try to explain the interaction between attacking, range, and defense I guess. Man I hope someone can make that make sense :p

Why attacking is a good thing (mention gang up bonus, ranged units not taking defense damage, etc - should be basic strategy though nothing too in depth here. Note advanced sections if referencing something such as gang up please)

Basic strategy - marines on forests and mountains , GH units NOT on forests and mountains. Use gang up bonus.

Buried underling rules. Include stomping and movement speed reduction. Include attack bonus for resurface.

Teleportation. Cooldown length + Units can't attack. Maybe basic strategy and considerations for the ability ?

Converting units. How to. Benefits ?

Movement after attack. Specifically the distance in tiles a unit can move would probably be good. Usually this is 6 , right ?

Veterancy
Benefits, how to get it. (Formula for it. )

Gang up bonus (the picture from the gang up thread is a must)

ZoC .. What it is, why it is maybe ?

Engineer in depth (details on EMP, plus converted mecha) strategy advice if possible.

Assimilator in depth (details on UV, plus converted underling) strategy if possible.

Infector in depth (details on plague, and converted marine) strategy if possible.

Turn redo - how to for free. Explanation of what it is. Explanation of paid feature and why it exists as a paid feature.

Unicoins. IAP store options. Archived games. Game slots. FAQs on the subject.

Map editor. Map tokens. What they are. Basics only here.

UI - including extra button in team games. Including the war report button. Mention specifically credits killed and lost?

Health tiles - exact bonus they give

Advanced strategy - race specific strategies which fall in line with the current meta. Specific notation that these are general strategies only, and ultimately success will come only by proper placement and intuitive and creative decisions. Or something of that sort. There are no cookie cutter answers, I want that to be clear, but also give people some 'advanced' strategies to try. Maybe talk about 2-3 speeders and a teleporting mecha for a base capture. Base captures as an essential skill in general. I'm hoping the vets have some stuff they feel okay about sharing no deep dark secrets here, just something to give new players some ideas please

Unit by unit breakdown:
(Every unit in the game) - purpose as a standalone piece in a vacuum, specific role within that race, role in race to race match ups, and a 1 to 5 star rating for the unit's overall functionality (just because I think it'll be fun to grade out the units, and give new players an idea of where we imagine units to stand.. I acknowledge that there is a time and place for all of the units! But hopefully we can agree that a marauder is going to see a lot more play than a battery, for instance. I'm flexible on this tho - if you don't want to rate the units then don't. We can scrap that idea too!). (Please note the extra movement required for aerial units over base tiles.?)

Attack formula - also include link / name for good attack calculators please

Tournament rules. What are mirrored games. How do the tie breakers work?

Ranked games versus unranked games. What is ranked, points lost / gained etc. note that team ranked isn't yet available please.

Advanced map editor. This might be a good thing to not address until the new map editor comes out though tbh.

A player's history of Uniwar. CALLING all vets! I would like to include a history of the following:
Inception of the online community. Month or year.. Who were some of the best players year to year? If possible, who won the most championships or had the highest rank, year by year?
(Cheating. Maybe include, only)Reading the boards it sounds like this game had some of it. Hacking and whatnot. A quick summary of how people were abusing these hacks, what the player base went through during that time to make sure they got an honest game. --if this is included, please note specifically that each cheat mentioned has been fixed, and that currently the player base has no such thing to contend with!!
The rise and fall of Runiwar. This is an interesting story, and I think new players would find it interesting how one of the great players eventually was banned from the game completely. I think this should be written both as vaguely as possible, and as objectively as possible. But I think it should be written about.
And of course, anything from the past that was an interesting story, would be great.
I'm very curious to hear about the evolution of the units balancing wise too. I hope someone can talk about how the game has evolved from a balance perspective.

Sparky the Garuda
A personal tale from me about my beloved Sparky, taken from us too soon.

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Duaneski

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Reserved.
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And one extra reserved because you never know
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Section 1: The title screen:
Warning! Boring passage ahead! If you are an aspiring uniwarrior, you have my permission to skip to section 2. (Pats back) You've earned it.
Only if Your reeeaaalllyy stuck, then you read this passage. Maybe read the section about bots, but other than that, everything here is self-explainatory
After clicking on uniwar, you'll see a title screen with these four subtitles

It basically says this;
Online

Offline play

Settings

Help

So here's what each does;
Online play
Upon clicking on online play, you'll be greeted by 2 boxes, one that says name and another that says password. If you don't have an account, click "register" and make one. Now that you do, sign in with your accounts name and password from now on. If you don't want to have to do this every time you log on, than click the small box that says "Automatic login upon launch". You will see a check go through the box. Now when you open uniwar, you'll automatically start in online play, and you'll already be logged into your account. No need to put in your password and name anymore!

Note: I suggest you pick your name carefully, because you will not get a chance to change it.

Below the register box, you should see a forgot your username and a forgot your password box. Should you do either, click on the boxes. They will ask to send you an email with your password information on it. Click the check box if you want them to do that.

There's also a FAQ, and a terms of service. I suggest you read through both, the terms of service was kindly shorted by xavi.

Once you have been logged into the game, you will see the main lobby. It looks like this

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Anyways, the little play button is the button you press's when you want a new game. If it's your first time playing, you have to beat the bots five times before you can fight other players. Afterwards, you can fight real players.
uni-term: bots
They are AIs that can fill player spots instead of normal players. They all have "normal" female sounding names like Eva and Helen and sarah. If the player has a computer by their name, they are not a real player, but a bot instead.
Simply put, bots aren't very bright, and are easily beaten

So, when you click the play button, you'll see three options
Start random game
Click on this, and on the top of the screen, you should see something that says game mode. You can't change the game mode yet, so dont try to. Below the game mode, you'll see a check mark on a box that says random race. This means you'll start with a random race- you will not get to choice what race you are. However, if you want to choose what race you start as, you can uncheck the box and choose a specific race. However, you cannot choice what race the opponent is,which is why the game mode is called RANDOM games. More on races later.
You cannot choose the map either, the system randomly choices from selection of player made maps. More on maps later.

Setup custom game
This one gives you a lot more options to customize and set up your games, which is why it's called customize and setup your games!

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These games will give you the following options
Name: You can name the game to whatever suits your fancy. I'm naming mine salami

The mouse, heart and eye icons on the map: click the eye icon to look at the map. Click the mouse icon go choose a map. Click the heart icon go favortie a map. When choosing a map. You can be specific about what kind of map you want, and even search for names. More on maps later

Ranked: depending on what map you choose, you can sometimes make games ranked. To do this, tap the ranked box. A check will appear in the ranked box. To make the game unranked, make sure the box is unchecked

Fog of war: if you really want to, you can turn off the fog of war, but I don't recommend it. More on what fog of war is later

Turn limit: You can set the turn limit from 3 minutes to 1 week. This tells you how long players have to take their turns. If they take too longer to play than the turn limit says, than you can skip them. They also can skip you if you take longer than the turn limit says.

Team game: By clicking this, you will turn the game into a team game. More on this later. Team games are only available to games with an even number of players and a number of players greater than 4. The number of players depends on the map.

Available races: If you don't want someone to enter the game as a certain race, than you can opt out races you don't want by unchecking their boxes. Similarly, you will not be able to enter the game as this race. If you leave all the boxes open, the player/bot you invite will be able to pick what race they want.

Score requirement: you can opt out players who don't have a high enough score and/or have a too high score. So if you leave a slot open, players who don't fit the score requirement will not be able to join the game

Player slots: you'll see something that says player 1, and player 2, and more players if you made a map with more people. You have the option to a) leave the other player slots open (which means anyone can join). B) invite a friend from your friends list (more on that later) C) invite a bot.

Join existing game
When someone leaves a game open, you can join it using this option. Like customizing, you can limit the amount of games that you see to the games that you would like to see, based on score. You can limit the games to team games too.

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Duaneski

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Dude. You're a rock star. I love the style and very nice to start at the beginning!
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Offline play
I'd suggest you start Offline before you start online. Seriously. The campaign mode is extremely self-explainatory. Click on a mission to start it. When you beat a mission (e.g 1) than you can get to the next mission (e.g 2). The missions can go from easy to hard. If your having trouble with any of the missions, ask the experts about it. Later on in this rulebook, we will go over stragety with our stragetist (obviously not me), so that will help significantly. Anyways, the first mission starts with a general guy telling you to move tanks to fight pinzers. We uni-players find it funny that a general brought tanks to a battle against khraleans, for reasons that Will be obvious later on in the game. As you progress, you'll fight as Titans and khraleans, along with sapiens. To beat missions, just complete the objectives

The campaign mode is very helpful in learning how to play. It will not teach you everything, of course (e.g swarmer spam), but it's useful for learning the basics.

Playing solo will bring you to a selection of maps, all of which you can play against a bot. Like campaign mode, you will get an option of easy to hard, but unlike campaign mode, you don't get an objective or mission briefing by a general. You just play.

Playing with a friend is useful for if you want to play Offline with someone. When your turn is over, the game will tell you to give the device to your friend so he can take his turn, and when his turn is over, he will give the device back to you. And so on.

As the names suggest, everything on Offline mode is offline, and everything on online mode is online.

Settings and help
Settings gives you the options to
Change your language
Turn off/on music
Turn off/on vibration (when units die, they will vibrate if this is on)
Turn off/on Animate replay (when units fight, you will see a quick gif off them fighting)
Turn off/on Chat: merge messages ( if someone says multiple messages in a row, the system will automatically merge them into one message if this is on)
Lock screen: it can stop the rotation of the screen if you rotate the device, and lock it to a specific viewing mode (portrait or landscape)

Help will show you a link to the FAQ, a how to play (gives you a short description of the game), and an about (tells you who made the game and about the moderators, not to mention the fact that there a link to uniwar support).

And that concludes section 1!

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Section 2: the in-game menu's and the Unit descriptions

Well this outta be more interesting than section 1.

Remember when I patted your back and you skipped section 1?

Well, don't skip this section.

So, once you enter a game, you see this


Well, idk how I'm going to explain this without the image, so I'll just act like I'm the only one who can't see it.
To make sense of all of this you have to remember that this is a turn based game. You get a turn, and when your turn is over, your opponent gets his turn. And when his turn's over, its your turn.
Anyways,
A is the credits
Credits are the universal term for the currency and material that your nation has available.
For the rest of this section, we are going to pretend that you're fighting 2 other opponents ONLINE. You see, you can have match's with as little as one other person and as many as 7 others, but for now, you only need 2.
Anyways, every turn, each of your bases gives you credits. The more bases you have, the more credits you get. And every turn, you have the opportunity to spend credits to buy units.
The goal of online play is to destroy the enemy, and the only way to do that is to get bases, so its to your advantage to get as much credits as possible.

B is the info, I'll come back to that

C is for chat! In team games (which simverd will go over in map making) you can chat privately with your team mates, or you can do it publicly in global. Team chat is only view able by your team mates, and global chat is viewable by everyone. I'm not giving you a step-by-step guide on how to text, its really self-explanatory. If you really need help, invite Apercent to a game.
Note: there is currently a glitch in team chat. For more on this, visit the glitches Section of the forum)

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D is for the war report: here's what all of the things mean
Mapname: this shows the name you gave the game (as explained in section 1)
Map: this shows the original map name
Author: this shows who made the map
Rounds: this shows the number of rounds that the game has had so far
Bases: this shows how many bases you have
Credits/base: this shows how many credits each base gives you every turn
Credits/turn: this shows how much credits all of the bases when all of they're credits per base are combined and all together will give you. Remember, credits/base only shows you how much credits each base will give you, where as credits per turn shows you how much credits your getting
All together, or how much credits your getting per turn. So. I conclusion, credits per turn is dependent on how many bases you have and your Credits/base.

E is for the in-game menu. It's options depend on the circumstances. You will always have the option to go to the main lobby.
• if its your turn, you can end your turn (which ends your turn)
• if its your turn, you can undo your turn, which gives you the chance to start off as you did right after the opponents turn ended (only usable if it's your turn)
• if its your turn or the opponent's turn, you can offer peace ( offering peace will make the game ask the opponent if they accept the peace. If they say yes, the round will end in a draw instead of a victory or defeat.
Similarly, if the opponent offers you peace, you have a chance to accept it.)
• if its your turn or the opponent's turn, you can surrender (which will end make yourself become defeated and the opponent(s) will win)
• if it's the opponent's turn, and they are over the time limit, than the menu will only show two options; skip the opponent's turn (which does exactly what it says) or go back to the main lobby

Anyways, back to B. B is more interesting than any of the other letters. B leads to unit info.

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2 pictures below. Their actually both just 2 pics of the same thing. This is the wyrm. I will explain what his stats mean



So, anyways, the wyrm is a perfect unit to explain everything with because of its widespread stats.
So now here's an explanation of each stat
Cost: remember how I told you earlier that you use bases to get credits and bases to make units? Well, this is how many credits you lose when you make a unit. You cannot go into debt, so you must always have enough credits to manufacture a unit, other wise you will not be able to build it. For the wyrm, cost =550

Mobility: this is explained more in-depth down below. Remember, wyrms have 6 mobility.

Vision: in games, there is sometimes something called FOW
uni-term=FOW
Short for fog of war

Fog of war is a dark highlight that covers over all tiles. You cannot see enemy units that are in fog of war. However, any unit with vision breaks fog of war within the tiles that are in its vision range, allowing them to see enemies.

For wyrms, they have a vision of 3, so all units that can see within 3 spaces can be seen by the wyrm. Of course, vision isn't permanent. Every time the wyrm moves, the vision moves with him. If the wyrm dies, so does the vision. But, for the most part, vision will not expire (unless the unit with the vision does).

It's important to note that bases have a vision of 1.

Type: a unit can be 4 types; ground heavy, ground light, aerial, and aquatic. Unit type determines mobility costs on certain terrain, and also the amount of damage that units take from getting hit. Different types are effected differently.

Note: unit type always refers to this. Don't confuse it with unit names (marine plasma tanks)

Attack and defense strength;
OK so this one forces an explanation of the attack formula. I'll explain attack strength and defense strength in the same breath. Attack strength is the variable that goes into the attack formula as attack. The higher this variable is, the more damage you will do to a unit that you attack. As the attack strength shows units do different attacks to different unit types. For example, the wyrm does 9 to ground heavy units, but 12 to aerial.

Defense determines how much you survive attacks. The higher your defense is, the less damage you will receive. With a defense of 4, wyrms wouldn't survive direct attacks well.

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The general rule of thumb is that (((attack +terrain bonus)-(defense+defense bonus)+other attack bonuses (e.g gangup))*0.05 +.5)*10= damage done. It's not hard to do in your head. For example, marine fighting marine. Marine has an attack of 6, and the enemy has a defense of 5, so (6+5)*.05+.5=.55. .55 *10= 5.5, so I'll typically do 5 or 6. Or a maruader versus a wyrm (wyrms are great for examples) on a forest. (4-(4-3(there's a -3 debonus on forests))*.05+.5=.65 . .55*10= 5.5 So, 6 or 7 is the amount of damage I should expect a maruader to do.

Kepp in mind that you cannot have any attack less than 0. The drawback of the rule thumb is that it will only work if the attacking unit has 10 health.


Here's the fancy formula. It's got some variables that will be explained below, but for the most part, attack and defense are the important parts, alongside health.
  simsverd wrote: First, the variables:

A = Attack strength of the attacking unit
Ta = Terrain modifier for the attacking unit
D = Defense strength of the defending unit
Td = Terrain modifer for the defending unit
B = Gang up, re-surface, veteran bonus
H = The attacking unit's health points.

Next, the formula:
p = 0.05 * (((A + Ta) - (D + Td)) + B) + 0.5
if p < 0 then p = 0
if p > 1 then p = 1

This is how to figure out the damage:
1. Pick one unit to be the attacker and the other to be the defender.
2. Use the formula above to obtain p.
3. Take H and multiply by 6. This is the number of random numbers (r) generated between 0 and 1. For every r < p a hit is counted.
4. The total number of hits divided by 6 is the number of damage the defending unit will receive.
5. Switch roles between the units (attacker becomes the defender and vice versa).
6. Use the same formula above.
7. Once both units have attacked the damage points are calculated into their health points.

I will use a quick example:
Underling vs Marauder both on Plains
If you use the formula you see that the Underling has a 30% probability of dealing damage for each of its health points whereas the Marauder has a 75% probability of dealing damage for each of its health points.

If the Underling were on a Mountain though, the numbers change to 40% for the Underling and 55% for the Marauder.

That's it!


Notice how the rule of thumb is just the top half of the actaul formula? Anyways, with either formula, you can expect to get an estimate of how much damage you'll do.

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Counter attack; You remember how you can only attack units in your range? Well, in case you didn't, now you do. Also, attacking a unit in its range results in a counter attack. Basically, it just attacks you for attacking it. It's sort of getting revenge. If I hit a wyrm with another wyrm, they'll both attack each other because they both are in range of each other. But if I attack a maruader with a wyrm from a distance of 3, the maruader will not counter attack because I'm not in its range. However, if I got into its range, it would attack me back, because that's the rules of counterattack. You got that?

Basically, units will always take revenge when they can.

Can capture bases: this is basically a rhetorical question. "Can YOU take over alien cities in one turn?" Says the marine. "No? That's what I thought." He finishes, wearing a proud smile. All ground light units and only ground light units can take over bases.

Basically, capturing a base turns into your base, wether it is neutral or an enemy base. You can only capture bases if you have a ground light unit standing on one. If you do, you'll see the option to capture the base. Again, ground heavy, aerial, and aquatic units cannot capture bases (so the wyrm can't. That's why it says no on his).

Units that can capture bases can also capture ports.

Attack after move: This one is really important. All units that can attack after move can attack after they have moved already. This is important because units without this CANNOT do this, and can either move or attack every turn (not both). Most high range g h units cannot move after attack, but the wyrm can.

For units with this, a move doesn't consume an action point, although attacks and special forces do. For units without this, a move consumes an action point as well as an attack and special force.

When a unit consumes his action points he cannot do anything else on that turn. Action points automatically reset every turn.

Repair: Here's another action you can do (that will consume your action point). Repair will bring up your health by the amount indicated. For the wyrm, repair will bring up his health by 1. All units have a maximum health of 10. To increase the maximum, gain veterinary by killing enough units. Veterinary allows for units to increase their health up to 12.

Anyway, you cannot heal past the maximum level. Upon reaching zero or less in health your unit dies and is removed from the field.

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Actions per turn:. This is the amount of actions you get per turn. Every unit except one (the maruader) has only 1 action point. The maruader gets 2, and in this, he can spend them as if he has two turns in one. He can move, spend an action point, and drive again, and spend another action point. He cannot move, spend a action point, another action point, and then move, or do this in any pattern other than the one I just described .

If you don't do anything than the unit will automatically just heal. If it cannot heal (it's health bar is full) than it will do nothing

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