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Galactic Assault: Prisoner of Power

Taking turns

Galactic Assault includes four campaigns consisting of about thirty missions, ten additional scenarios and a handful of "deathmatch" maps without any goals, beyond "kill the enemy".

Each mission is pre-set with a number of units on both sides, and while there is the ability to repair and build new units on most maps, there is no RTS-style resource gathering. Turns are divided into two phases - first, you both move and fire with your units in any order, and then you enter the recruitment phase; this is where you can construct new factories around your central base, recruit new units and repair existing units returned to the base. Each factory can build or repair just one unit per turn. Repairing is considerably cheaper than building new units, so a sound tactic is to withdraw demoralized units before they are lost.

Turn-based mayhem with animated units and effects.

Base for recruiting and repairing units with some tough defenses covering it.

Most missions appear to offer the ability to build just a few extra units, and the initial units mostly define how the battle goes - and in this regard Galactic Assault is a bit of a let-down. It seems that most missions have a clear designed way to beat them, and with pre-positioned units and very small maps the main challenge comes from solving the chess-like problem of reaching your objective within the given parameters. Requirements vary - there may be a turn limit and a specific unit that have to reach certain point in the map, or you must capture certain hex, or you have to destroy or rout all enemy units.

Rules lawyering

Many missions are pretty hard and require careful understanding of the rules - mostly how pieces can move and fire. Each unit type has its own movement and attack ranges, and only infantry units may capture bases. Soldiers and artillery can move just a few hexes per turn (with the exception of Recon Infantry, which can zoom across half the map in one turn), and to get them around quicker you can use fragile but reasonably fast trucks or transport choppers. This also ties to the movement system - loading the unit to a truck is not an actual move, so it's possible to move a truck to an unit, load it up, move the truck again to the destination, unload unit and immediately fire with it, all within the same turn.

Infantry boarding a truck at night.

Using expendable infantry as blockers to hold off heavy tank assault.

Combat also includes some fairly advanced concepts such as return fire, digging in, cover and height differences. Each unit is capable of returning fire up to two hexes away, so in addition to matching a proper unit type for attack, you have to be careful of any nearby opposing units firing back. As most units have an attack range of at least two hexes, at times it's just smart play to leave an empty hex between you and your target to limit the return fire. Artillery also gets extra range from the height of their position on the map, so the strategic placement of the slow-moving artillery is very crucial, as is line of sight and proper scouting with recon units. Terrain also adjusts movement rates and defines the cover given to units, and units can "dig in" to a defensive position - with the drawback that it will take a full turn to "dig out" before you can move that unit again.

You are also limited to placing just one unit to each hex, and together with movement and firing range limitations and modifiers from terrain, juggling all the units around takes a bit of practice. Damaged units lose morale, and once the morale bar hits red, unit refuses to attack any more. It can still move and it will still block movement to the hex it occupies until it's completely destroyed, so in some cases it may be worth sacrificing demoralized units as a blockers, so that your enemy has to waste time destroying them.

Engineer units can build pontoon bridges to cross rivers and swamps.

Hypno Field is a nice tool to keep the troop morale up.

Understanding all the little nuances of the rules - some of them slightly counterintuitive - is absolutely essential for the completion of some of the missions as victory conditions and turn limitations can be very tight. The mission ends at the very moment the objective is reached, so while it may seem suicidal to quickly move a truck up next to the enemy base and unload one unit of defenseless soldiers into the hex, if the goal was just to capture that base, it's the right way to win. It doesn't matter if the enemy has four units armed to teeth right next to the base as they won't get a turn to attempt to blow your unit away. In a sense the game feels a lot like a board game with slightly abstract rules, that, at times, have little to do with actual warfare.

Page 1: Introduction & VideoPage 2: Turn-Based GameplayPage 3: Graphics and PerformancePage 4: Summary and Scoring

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