has anyone won against Rends yet? He kicks my ass all the time, but have also learned alot from him.

Well, I thought perhaps I had been a bit tough on the game AI in offline mode, so I revisited using the DDay campaign.

No. I would describe it as 'dumb as a box of hammers'.

The level designers have clearly used map design and placement of static units (or mobile units parked in static positions) to make it hard on players - not the ability of AI to maneouvre to achieve an objective. Between you and any given objective will inevitably be a hedge, a hill and a hidden AT gun or Panther/PanzerIV/Tiger. That's not AI.

And there is a play balance issue, maybe particular to that campaign, that drove me to delete the app this time. Puma light recon vs Sherman 76mm tank. Loser at least half of the time is the Sherman. Say what?

Puma: "50mm KwK 39/1 L/60...engagement was strictly discouraged due to its thin armor."

Sherman: "76mm...The 76 mm gun could penetrate roughly 88 mm of armor at 1000 m. This was enough to reliably penetrate a PzIV's glacis. However, the 76 mm was not powerful enough against the frontal armor of a Panther."

So, the Sherman 76mm could take out a PzIV in real life, but it can't take out a light recon Puma in this game.

Yes yes, each shot is a mixture of chance to hit, chance to penetrate, wind direction, proximity to the solstice and alignment of the chakras...sorry, no. Puma light recon vehicles should not be as big a threat on the battlefield to a Sherman as a Panther tank.

In a flight sim, this would be the equivalent of a Bolton Paul Defiant knocking down a Bf109E 50% of the time, or a Mig 21 taking down an F16 half the time.

Had to get that off my chest because I just gave up on a mission in the campaign where my two Shermans managed to take down a Panzer IV, without meaningful damage to their armour or morale because they killed the Panzer IV from behind very quickly, but then both got wiped out by a lone Puma (parked behind a hedge). He took two side armour hits from the Shermans, and then returned fire and killed them both with his first shot.

Wacky play balance stuff like that just makes me "Delete APP", which I have now done.

But maybe there is a tip here for the online players - if you are playing German side, swarm your enemy with Pumas!! You can't lose.

H

Lol Magnum, no i'm not that good. I've lost a couple of matches online.
The game has it flaws unbalanced missions are one of them. But overall the pros outwheight the cons by far at least in multiplayer.
I don't know about the Puma but in one mission i could'nt destroy a Sherman with shots from a Tiger Panther and PzIV. I got him retreating but that was all after 6 shots.

Hi Pip

I figured you would reply with..."each shot is a mixture of chance to hit, chance to penetrate, wind direction, proximity to the solstice and alignment of the chakras".

My point remains, a Puma should not be a meaningful threat to two Shermans (play balance is wrong), and should definitely not stay and try to duke it out with them if it is attacked (AI is poor). On that map the player loses more Shermans to Pumas and half-tracks than he does to Panzers, and that is just plain silly. If it had been reality, Germany would never have bothered producing Panzer IVs, Panthers or Tigers!

Look, don't get me wrong. I can hear people are having a ball with Battle Academy online. Congratulations for that.

But in offline mode, Battle Academy is a simplistic WWII themed tower defense style game, where the player has to try to get past or knock out the mostly stationary enemy 'towers' (tanks, AT guns) and can call in the occasional arty or air strike.

For this, it is grossly overpriced, even for the base game.

Players looking for a real strategic turn based war game for iPad with good AI should rather look at apps like:

Great Little War Game (better AI, very challenging maps), or
Battle for Wesnoth (fantastic maps, highly varied units, challenging missions and hundreds of free add on campaign missions)

Both of these offer great gameplay, challenging AI, and well designed levels, all at 1/3 of the price of Battle Academy.

Well Pip,i can't remember the mission names and i can't check them because my MP list of completed games is empty since a week or so for unknown reasons.
But the last one i played against Airdrop is one of them. it's called "Wichtiges Dorf" in german (importand village?) and if you start as british paratroopers you got a couple of Jeeps only. If you now try to atteck the nearby german held CPs you will be blown of by german armour within a few rounds. So in the match against Airdrop i tried a different tactic and sneaked around the village and placed my paratroopers in good position at the other end of the town so i could start to attack the germans from two sides. Everything worked well this time but with ten rounds left i loosed by a dubios point rule ( germans had reached more than 50 points). I'm pretty sure Airdrop will agree that i would have won without this point rule.
So this point rule force the british to attack and capture the CPs earlier even if your paratroopers are still split in 2 small groups not even close to each other to support one of them.

Oh i'm sure that there are players out there who can win playing the british side but i'm sure they had played the map a couple of times before and know everything of the map.
But it should be winnable if you don't know everything about the map and enemy units.

PIP... just wanted to say thanks for signing up at SimHQ and answering our questions and concerns... that in itself ALMOST deserves the price of game. IMO

That said... I understand the balance issues and the poor AI statements from others, I often wonder how a certain unit can take 2 shots each from 3 panthers and nothing happen...and other incidence's like that... and my god how the British Home Guard can break so easy, almost not worth having them, lol... a number of balance issues and AI complaints... but still, a damn fine iPad game, one that I play more then anything else on my iPad, probably the only APP I use more is you tube. lol

Now I do hope those features on your forum page for the PC 2.0 beta make it to iPad... that would be great, especially the force selection for MP.

Also, pass on ability to pause or maybe even save a turn replay... please. Sometimes I like to see it again from different angles or positions.

Thx again... now give us Panzer Corp!

You say such sweet things, and then bring up that floozie Panzer Corps! It's coming is all I can say...

We've tried to add more feedback to the combat model, as we know that some of the issues people have come from not being able to necessarily see what is going on under the hood with regard to accuracy and so on. All the feedback is definitely useful, and helps us with our constant improvements to the game.

All our versions have to stay in sync, so every feature that you see on the PC and Mac (editor nonwithstanding) you'll see on the iPad. We are just in beta for 2.0 and we have people playing iPad force selection missions as we speak . If you have suggestions for 2.1 then please let us know!

Cheers

Pip