Urban Assault is a 3D combined first-person shooter and real-time strategy computer game developed by the German company TerraTools and published by Microsoft in the year 1998.
It was the third strategy title that was directly published by Microsoft Game Studios. The player creates and commands groups of tanks and aircraft, and can also take direct control of one vehicle at a time. Over the course of the game one can acquire upgrades and new vehicles.
Gameplay The player is in command of a futuristic host station with plasma energy technology, allowing the player to create units and buildings, as long as the blueprints and sufficient energy are available. The player also has access to various commander assets such as an overhead map screen, where the player can monitor actions on the battlefield in the bigger picture and assess various strategic and tactical elements that are not covered by the fog of war, or Squadron Manager, which allows the player to easily check status and manage all units under control as well as set various parameters for each squadron to better suit their specializations. The Map and Squadron Manager windows are fully interactive and can be turned on/off at any time. Most importantly, these windows can be re-sized and re-positioned into anywhere on the screen, allowing players to accommodate their preferences.
The levels in Urban Assault consist of a full 3D polygonal landscape, which can be used strategically or tactically by the players or AI units to their advantages. For example, neutral buildings or structures can be used as a cover to block the enemy fire, while terrains and elevations offer a vertical depth of tactical elements. Many unit types (or even individual units) also possess varying advantages in different environments, allowing the player to carefully plan their unit compositions to effectively counter the enemy unit presences.
In the single-player campaign, the objective of each mission is to capture each key sector on the map, allowing use of the beam gate to transport the host station and any accompanying vehicles to the next field of battle. However, destroying enemy host stations provides additional space to the player's maximum room for accompanying vehicles. Combined with the fact that many key sectors are located deep in enemy territory or even right below an enemy faction's host station, the unstated goal of the game is to eliminate all enemy host stations. There is no strict need to eliminate the enemy to complete a level, but it does make the task more reliable. In multiplayer, beam gates are not present on the map and the only objective is to destroy opponents.
Urban Assault also has a completely cheat-free AI, which is bound to many same restrictions and rules as the players are. Just like the players, the AI players must peel back the fog of war by securing a line-of-sight with reconnaissance units or radar stations first in order to assess and gather information around the level before making decisions. The AI players also harvest energy from the power sources and surrounding sectors the same way as the players do. Without any power source or controlling sufficient sectors to sustain their power stations, the AI will eventually run out of energy and be unable to perform any actions, just like the players would be. The AI in Urban Assault is not only cheat-free but instead subject to various disadvantages that the players do not have in the game, such as energy upkeep mechanics or inability to quickly teleport their host stations, which helps with maintaining both the performance and difficulty levels of the game for less experienced players.
Resources Like most strategy games, the game is centered on resources. The sole resource in Urban Assault is energy, which is required to build units and buildings used to conquer other factions. Energy is gained through controlling power stations. Each power station emits energy relative to the number of white boxes attached to it on the map screen.
Power stations are also limited in power output by the number of adjacent sectors controlled by the player, referred to in-game as "efficiency". The more power stations the player controls, the more sectors are required to sustain their output. If the player controls too many power stations but too few sectors, it will weaken their energy production. This design encourages the player to gradually increase control of the map to increase their energy gathering rate by conquering surrounding sectors or taking away sectors from the enemies, in order to create more powerful forces while weakening the enemy's production capacity. Powerful units and buildings require significant amounts of energy to build.
The energy output from friendly power stations can also repair friendly units in nearby friendly sectors, while the hostile power sources can damage friendly units if they are present in enemy sectors with enemy power stations in the vicinity. Therefore, securing or constructing power stations around the level can not only help with expanding the host station's zone of influence, but also provides direct logistical benefits. The factions involved in battle will constantly fight over the sectors to increase their map control capacity while decreasing the influence of the others.
The management of energy sources is an important aspect of the game. Geographically scattered power stations provide better mobility and map control for the player since teleporting over a friendly power station is free, but often require the player to gain control of additional sectors to maintain steady energy recharge rate, and each power station still require protection from enemy factions' attempt to capture them. On the other hand, a base of closely clustered power stations provides more efficient energy absorption rates. The player should decide which tactic is appropriate or preferred for the level, and if need to, destroy excess power stations to improve energy absorption rates on other power stations.
Controls During the gameplay, the game allows completely free mouse movements that can be used to interact with command interface on the screen, or perform various actions which is a crucial feature for the RTS-style functionality. Vehicle controls in FPS mode are usually accomplished by either a keyboard or a joystick (as recommended by the developers), although the player can always choose to activate/deactivate the "Mouse Control Mode" at any time by clicking the right-mouse button while occupying a vehicle to control it with both mouse and keyboard, or mouse and joystick inputs simultaneously in the first-person control mode. This allows for more precise and reactive control of vehicles, but sacrifices some control over RTS elements since the mouse movements become directly locked to the first-person view of the vehicle. Therefore, the player should make decisions when they should activate/deactivate the mouse control mode based on the situations and tactical/strategic needs (only if they intend to use it).
Taking manual control of any vehicle directly in the first-person mode also provides significant stat boosts to the units in terms of firepower, shielding, and manoeuvrability. Most importantly, it also allows the players to override any preset AI combat behaviours assigned for individual units to handle the situations more flexibly and reactively. This design highly encourages the players to take control of vehicles and lead the battle whenever possible to gain tactical supremacy against the AI-only armies. All units in the game are designed with unique properties and different strengths, but a carefully controlled unit by the player can even turn the odds in combat.
Plot The plot of Urban Assault is set in the near future, where a set of hazardous natural and artificial disasters involving ozone depletion caused by the global industrial emissions, termed The Big Mistake, results in toxin generation and eventually destruction of the ocean's phytoplankton, causing the Earth's food chain to collapse gradually and consecutively. Scarce food supplies and adverse environmental damage results in a resource war with accelerated scientific developments, and the plasma formation technology — the ability to form solid constructions of matters using only energy — in conjunction with the futuristic state-of-the-art host station technology, allows cybernetically-linked military commanders uploaded into these mobile war machine battle-stations to create entire armies made out of fully roboticized artificial intelligence military drones under their direct command & control to wage war across the global theatres.
The technology was leaked to enemy factions, destroying fragile political alliances and launching the planet into a third world war. Citizens are forced into newly emerging domed cities and communities, which shield them from dangerous levels of solar radiation and filters the toxic air. However, most of the population had already consumed contaminated food and exposed to excessive amounts of ionising radiation, that most died within several years. Most of the planet's surface had been devastated and rendered uninhabitable. The wars have become entirely roboticized, solely involving various types of war machines and military drones with artificial intelligence modules that are directly connected to the command & control system of the host station battle network.
The surviving humans had divided into major warring factions: The Resistance, Ghorkovs, Taerkastens, and the Black Sect. The main theatre of the single-player campaign takes place in the extensive geographical networks of domed cities installed throughout the entire continent of Europe.
A group of alien invaders, the Mykonians, view humans as being unworthy of occupying such a resource-rich planet, and implant their Parasite Machine into the crust of the planet to extract energy and heat directly from the Earth's core. The Parasite Machine is causing the Earth's core to cool, weakening its magnetic field and lowering the temperature of the planet. The weakening of the magnetic field will eventually cause solar radiation levels on the planet's surface to rise and obliterate all of the planet's biomass, making it suitable for Mykonian colonization. In the campaign, Mykonian forces are usually present in Northern Europe and Scandinavia, where the optimal cooling temperatures allow for more efficient superconductive data transfer and electronics operation.
A second group of alien invaders, the plant-like Sulgogars, have invaded Northern Africa, where the relatively warm climate creates a suitable spawning ground. It has been mentioned that Sulgogars eat humans and extract minerals from the ground, and the fact that humans killed the ocean may have contributed to their animosity against the human race. The Sulgogars are also known to have migrated into the ocean body of the Earth shortly before the events of The Big Mistake, which supports this theory. In the original campaign, the Sulgogars are rarely encountered and only appeared in a few missions including the final confrontation.
In addition to the in-game mission briefing texts, a significant portion of comprehensive, in-depth background lore of the game are scattered and hidden deep inside the game's Help files. One could access these fragmented storyline materials by clicking the special glowing button that appears on numerous help pages.
Factions The Resistance