History VideoGame / UrbanAssault

** The game not only encourages the player to take control of their vehicles on the battlefield by providing increased shielding, firepower, and maneuverability to any unit that player directly controls in first-person perspective, but also granting the freedom to change unit's desired flight altitude or even overriding preset AI attack pattern behaviors for each unit. Making any player-controlled units much more effective and powerful than they would be under the AI-control in nearly all situations.

* InformedAbility: In the single-player mission briefings, the [[AliensAreBastards Mykonians]] are regularly touted as major threats to the human factions. In the actual overall gameplay there is actually not a single faction that feels extremely overwhelming to every other faction. In fact, the Taerkastens and the Black Sect are relatively tougher A.I opponents as compared to that of the Mykonians (which is a faction that excels when controlled by the players rather than AI). But this is simply a result of faction designs and their unique characteristics inside the gameplay model.

* NextTierPowerUp: Perhaps unintentional. In the original Resistance Campaign, the Falcon is a "medium" plane that is usually outclassed by the more powerful (and more expensive) Warhammer in one-on-one comparison. A tech upgrade in the late mission "Sibuna" will upgrade the Falcon to fire two missiles at once, effectively doubling its firepower. Before the upgrade a Falcon ZergRush was considered pretty ineffective against host stations. Its doubled firepower makes the Falcon ZergRush tactic a lot more viable albeit still a little expensive - You need around 30 or sometimes even more Falcons to pose a threat to an enemy host station. Many players would actually see more general use for the fully-upgraded Falcon and instead relegate the Warhammer to a dogfight specialized role instead.

* RememberTheNewGuy: The Black Sect and Sulgogars seems to be a somewhat afterthought added to the original Resistance campaign in order to add variety and increase the difficulty levels - These two factions only appeared in the later levels, the Sulgogars only had a grand total of 4 units with the Slime Lord and Sulgogar Queen sharing virtually the same design, the Black Sect only uses the other factions' units, and both factions are not available in the multiplayer. Additionally, the Black Sect was not even mentioned in the physical manual that arrived with the Game CD's Jewel Case. However, this absence of information might be intentional as well since Black Sect is supposed to be shrouded in a mystery in the main storyline.

** Averted or inverted completely. Surprisingly, the AI (both individual units and AI "players") in this game does NOT benefit from ANY kind of built-in programmed or cheating advantages over the players. In fact, combined with the fact that the AI needs to scout the map first to gather information, or conquer sectors to increase their energy efficiency and map control just like the players, BUT without the obvious benefits of exploiting huge advantages gained through player-controlled vehicles, teleporting ability of host stations, or even the fact that they can only create one vehicles at a time, put the AI enemies at a terribly one-sided disadvantageous position compared to the player.
*** This, however is largely compensated by the fact that in the singleplayer campaigns, AI enemies usually start with superior forces and more territories compared to the player in nearly all missions, as well as the energy recharge rates of AI host stations are set much higher than those of the player's.

* BlackAndGrayMorality: The Mykonians, the Sulgogars, and the Black Sect were consistently portrayed as the bad guys, while for the terran factions (the Resistance, the Kyternesians/Ghorkovs and the Taerkastens), it was somewhat ambiguous. The Resistance's mission briefings includes a guilty admission that they did try to sell out the Ghorkovs to the Mykonians. Also, depending on which campaign you are playing (Resistance, Ghorkovs or Taerkastens), the terran faction you are playing for will frequently demonize the other two terran factions. The one thing both Resistance and Ghorkovs can agree on is that they both hate the Taerkastens, as they're trying to [[KillEmAll kill everyone else]].

** The Weasel, Speedy, and Metropolis Dawn-exclusive Ostwind are anti-air tanks notably excellent at pushing back air units. Multiple of them together can fire a huge barrage of missiles with such combined force that can push an air unit nearly a sector away - assuming that air unit doesn't get destroyed in the process.

** [[spoiler: It has been explained further in the game's in-depth (otherwise hidden) lore, that the Taerkasten Order was looking for their own child prodigy as well, going as far as some of their key priest members were secretly working out there as double agents in the arcades operated by the Resistance government. While they couldn't recruit Leather Jacket, they managed to bring in and escape with another child prodigy into their cause, who would later play a major role in the Taerkasten's struggle against the subsequent invasion of the Resistance and other factions into their territory, which takes place right after the destruction of the first Parasite machine.]]

** The most versatile and arguably the most dangerous faction is the Black Sect. In every mission that the Black Sect appears in, it can create selected units from the factions that are in the particular region, including that of the player's faction. Making it worse for the player is that the Black Sect cannot be seen on the map, hence the player's Real Time Strategy skills will be greatly hampered.
** Completely averted in multiplayer, where Black Sect is not available at all and each player can be only assigned with one unique faction per each matchup, and therefore cannot play as the same factions against each other.

** This is in fact the best way to complete a level quickly. Seasoned players familiar with the layout of the level's map and the position of the enemies will often resort to tactics that go straight for the enemy host station.

** Heavy tanks (Tiger, Leonid) and Falcon may be candidates for sniper roles, but their weapons range is around one and a half sector wide. Given specific scenarios (E.g.: flak stations), they can actually take out some enemy units while avoiding the enemy's immediate response radar range.

** In particular the Resistance heavy-duty helicopter Dragonfly, when controlled by the human player, can obliterate squads of heavy tanks, destroy enemy host stations, take on other helicopters, or even fast planes (although not without getting severe damage during the altercation) if the player is particularly good at First Person Shooter skills. And while this is an apples-and-oranges comparison, a fully upgraded Dragonfly's damage output per second exceeds that of a weapon-upgraded Rhino - Justifiable in that the Dragonfly is a CloseRangeCombatant with poor mobility and hence poor evasion, making it much more likely to be killed charging an enemy host station head on.

** From a faction-perspective, the Taerkastens fall into this category. The Taerkasten Leonid tank is only one example. The Leonid tank not only hits hard, but of all standard heavy tanks it has the strongest armor (86% versus non-upgraded Resistance Tiger's 75%) and has the highest hit points too (280 versus non-upgraded Resistance Tiger's 220). Using math, the Leonid can survive more than **TWICE** the punishment the Tiger can take. In the unreleased Metropolis Dawn campaign, where you get to play as the Taerkastens, a fully upgraded Leonid at full-health is even capable of surviving a shot from a standard Resistance Rhino.

** The Mykonians' X01 Quadda is the faction's most durable aircraft with 58% armor and fires rapid powerful energy blasts. At a first glance this seems balanced out with the X01 Quadda's poor speed and maneuverability especially considering its an aircraft. However, the poor speed and maneuverability seems to be an intentional design to further aid the X01 Quadda in being more adept at attacking slower aircraft - Faster aircraft risk exposing more vulnerability when they had to spend time circling their target in order to find a good shot. Overall, this makes the X01 Quadda deadly against both Host Stations and slow aircraft which is why the X01 Quadda overshadows all other Mykonian units in terms of both threat level and frequency of appearances.

* VillainForgotToLevelGrind: This trope is completely played straight if you attempted the late (and tougher) levels on one path and returned to an earlier path where you have yet to tackle the easier levels. The opponents' choice of vehicles and starting energy remained the same as the level was designed for. However in general cases, it is downplayed in the original Resistance Campaign, and mostly averted for the Ghorkov and Taerkasten Campaigns in Metropolis Dawn, as the Resistance will also upgrade their vehicles as you advance through the missions, remaining a threat throught out the whole campaign.
** The trope is downplayed for the original Resistance Campaign because the Ghorkovs, Taerkasts, and Mykonian foes will also become stronger in the tougher levels when it comes to energy reserves and choice of vehicles for creation - What remains true to the trope is the fact the Resistance keeps their vehicle upgrades they get from previous levels while the foes usually don't maintain any upgrades they get (If they even had any at all).
** In Metropolis Dawn, perhaps as a CallBack to the original Resistance Campaign, the Resistance faction (Who are now the foes) will also upgrade their vehicles in the later levels.
** In the original Resistance Campaign, if you are aware of the vehicles' various stats it becomes noticeable when comparing between the upgraded Resistance vehicle and the enemy counterpart. The Resistance Tiger is probably one of the better examples, where it starts out with only half the durability of the Taerkasten Leonid with slightly inferior firepower but when fully upgraded it matches the Leonid in durability, with better firepower, and at lower creation cost too!

* VictoryByEndurance: Being the game's MightyGlacier faction representative, this is the Taerkastens' main strategy. It takes a lot of effort to fight the Taerkastens head on, and opponents that focus efforts on fighting off heavily armored, heavily armed Taerkasten vehicles will often exhaust their resources, only to face yet another wave of heavily armored, heavily armed Taerkasten vehicles. Efforts are better spent on getting rid of the Taerkastens' power stations or better still, bypass its slow-moving armies and kill the Taerkasten host station directly. Incidentally, for various reasons this is arguably the most AI-friendly and easiest faction to play as in single-player - assuming time is not a factor.
** Partly averted in multiplayer, where the general gameplay and strategy encourages players to not safely turtle, and Taerkastens have the significant weakness in the form of having the least map control potential. It is not uncommon for the opponents to take away all Taerkasten-controlled sectors to greatly undermine their energy harvesting potential and effectively preventing them from creating a large army of powerful units.

* AwesomeButImpractical:
** The Taerkasten Bomber Zeppelin. It has the most powerful bomb in the game, is the most durable vehicle in the game (It takes multiple hits from a Resistance Rhino to kill it at full-health), and peels back the fog of war better than a regular scout vehicle does. However, it is also one of the slowest air units, so slow that some heavy tanks - a vehicle class the Zeppelin is designed to defeat, actually outmaneuver it. It is also too slow, too big, and too expensive to play the role of an exploring scout.
** The Taerkasten Thor's Hammer, a heavy tank/artillery hybrid only available in the unreleased Metropolis Dawn expansion. It is arguably an equivalent of the Resistance Rhino, but with much heavier armor and a faster weapon reload rate. It all sounds excellent until its downsides are mentioned: It is too slow to reach and attack a host station located far away, and its projectile has a significantly shorter flight distance. It is also a bit too expensive to take the role of an anti-tank ground unit, something which Eisenhans or Leonid tanks would be more cost-efficient at.

** Completely averted in multiplayer, where each player can be only assigned with one unique faction per each matchup, and therefore cannot play as the same factions against each other.

* SelfImposedChallenge:
** There is no strict need to destroy all enemy host stations in a level. Technically speaking, you only need to control all key sectors required to open the beam gate - just long enough for you to teleport to the next level. The act of destroying enemy host stations only serves makes this task more reliable, but is often undertaken by players since that's still part of the fun.
** On missions involving the Stoudson Bomb, some players will instead opt to destroy the enemy the old-fashioned way. This is not a completely fruitless endeavor, because direct destruction of an enemy host station increases the beam gates' space for the player's units to bring over for the next mission.

* NextTierPowerUp: Perhaps unintentional. In the original Resistance Campaign, the Falcon is a "medium" plane intended to be outclassed by the more powerful (and more expensive) Warhammer. A tech upgrade in the late mission "Sibuna" will upgrade the Falcon to fire two missiles at once, effectively doubling its firepower. Before the upgrade a Falcon ZergRush was considered pretty ineffective against host stations. Its doubled firepower makes the Falcon ZergRush tactic a lot more viable albeit still a little expensive - You need around 30 or sometimes even more Falcons to pose a threat to an enemy host station. Many players would actually see more general use for the fully-upgraded Falcon and instead relegate the Warhammer to a dogfight specialized role instead.

* NextTierPowerUp: Perhaps unintentional. In the original Resistance Campaign, the Falcon is a "medium" plane intended to be outclassed by the more powerful (and more expensive) Warhammer. A tech upgrade in the late mission "Sibuna" will upgrade the Falcon to fire two missiles at once, effectively doubling its firepower. Before the upgrade a Falcon ZergRush was considered pretty ineffective against host stations. Its doubled firepower makes the Falcon ZergRush tactic a lot more viable albeit still quite expensive. This relegates the Warhammer to become more specialized at dogfights instead.

* OneSceneWonder:
** The Stonehenge Power Station, not available for building by any faction and is also the most efficient power station in the entire game. It only appears in the "New Stonehenge" mission of the original Resistance Campaign, nothing much is mentioned about it and isn't even relevant to the mission itself.
*** However, the Stonehenge Power Station makes a 2nd appearance in another mission within the unreleased Metropolis Dawn, where the player representing the Taerkastens would actually gain a significant tactical advantage by capturing it.
** The Mykonian Ground Cube only appears in one mission in the original Resistance Campaign. Quite possibly the rarest encountered unit across the entire game for single player feature.

** The Resistance Rhino is a very peculiar case in that the unit is, in fact, deliberately designed by the developers to be completely ineffective under AI control, except when attacking a sector target. This is not a bug. Each unit in the game possesses unique AI attack pattern variables as well as set AI flight altitudes above the terrain by design. In the case of Rhino, its AI attack pattern variables make the unit to constantly stray away from the target without firing at it properly. Which makes it almost completely pointless to use under AI-control. This fact clearly demonstrates that even the developers intended the unit to be exclusively used by the player-control only.

** As a general rule of thumb, medium tanks/helicopters/planes across all factions have the definite advantage of having both firepower and mobility to a certain degree. Making them an excellent candidate for forming the backbone of a versatile main fighting force. They can provide significantly substantial firepower when compared to the light units, while not as cost-intensive or slow as the most heavy units. Additionally, some light units can provide a decent firepower with even more speed than medium units for rapid deployments and reactions on large levels.

*** The fully upgraded Resistance Hornet is a lesser version of the Dragonfly. It has the same armor (75%), slightly more manoeuvrable (but not faster) with less hit points, and hits ridiculously hard with its upgraded missiles (450 damage per shot).

** From a faction-perspective, the Sulgogars somewhat fulfills this too, but their weakness is not so much physical but rather in terms of overall capability. The Sulgogars has one of the strongest attacks in the game, eclipsing even the Mykonians in many cases. However, they are heavily crippled by their lack of versatility: They cannot create their own power source, they only had a total of 3 different attacking units with their 2 heavy hitters (Slime Lord, Mean Green) easily defeated by anti-air tanks. The only other attacking Sulgogarian unit is the Blue Spore, whose anti-tank capabilities mitigate that glaring weakness to some extent. However, the Blue Spore is in turn completely useless against air units - Even with the powerful machine gun particle as its support, the Blue Spore barely scratches the Resistance Dragonfly. With the right tactics and units the Sulgogars are not too difficult to kill, in fact a seasoned player might arguably find them the easiest faction to beat.

** Completely averted in multiplayer, where each player can be only assigned with one unique faction per each matchup.

** The Resistance owns the heavy-duty helicopter Dragonfly. Its the slowest helicopter in the game, rendering it highly vulnerable to anti-air planes. However, it makes up for that with sheer rapid-firing rockets, ridiculous machine gun damage output, good armor at 75%, and high health at 400. The player-controlled Dragonfly in particular makes the slow speed and poor evasion almost irrelevant since the player would have better accuracy at mowing down its opposition while still enduring hits better than an average helicopter could. A fully upgraded Dragonfly's damage output per second exceeds that of a weapon-upgraded Rhino, which theoretically mean it can take down an enemy host station faster than a Rhino could, assuming it can survive an enemy host station's self-defense weapons (In practice, most host stations' self-defense weapons are strong enough to obliterate even a player-controlled Dragonfly before it can score a host station kill, unless the host station in question is low on health).

*** The Rhino and the Rock Sled can be acquired in the later levels and it made the game a lot easier. In the case of the Rhino, the player only had to create 1 Rhino and some chaff units to distract the enemy while the player controls the Rhino to kill the enemy host station from a safe distance. In the case of the Rock Sled, its speed and firepower allows the player to directly approach and kill the enemy host station (mostly) smoothly. Seemingly recognizing how gamebreaking the Rhino and Rock Sled can be, most of the preliminary final levels and the final level itself (Parasite City) features big maps with the enemy host stations located far away, surrounded by lots of obstacles and/or located in hills which made it difficult for the player to create land units (the Rhino and Rock Sled are land units) to attack the enemy host stations. Not only that, some of the enemy host stations had a higher floating height, which greatly hampered the Rock Sled's destructive capability - The 15,000 damage only occurs right at the center of the suicide blast zone, and the damage dissipates rapidly when the target is located further away from the center.

* Old-SchoolDogfight: The majority of units in the game consists of various types of aircraft and flying vehicles. Feel free to jump into your own helicopters, fighter jets, or bombers at any time and blast out the other enemy aircrafts during a high-altitude dogfight.

*** The weakness of the Specials seems to depend on whether its an airborne or land unit. If its an airborne unit, anti-air tanks and/or planes would be effective against it. If its a land unit, bombers and helicopters would be effective instead.

** The Taerkasten Zeppelin in practice is mostly useful as a predeployed scout or a strong defence unit holding a bottleneck terrain and not so much an attacker even though it is the toughest vehicle (Other than host stations) to destroy and has the strongest bomber attack in the game.

* EasyLogistics: Your vehicles create their ammo from their reserved energy stores. The host station creates said vehicles the same way. Thus, the only thing that matters is having enough energy.

** The Resistance Wasp, Falcon, Warhammer, Weasel, Marauder, Rhino, and Rock Sled had above average speed but pretty weak armor, especially the Rhino which starts out with the lowest possible 1% armor. The Resistance Firefly kind of sets itself apart from the other Resistance examples, in that when fully upgraded it would get pretty good armor (77%), but its low hit points means that most vehicles can still take it down in 1-2 hits.

* InformedAbility: In the single-player mission briefings, the [[AliensAreBastards Mykonians]] are regularly touted as major threats to the human factions. In the actual overall gameplay there is actually not a single faction that feels extremely overwhelming to every other faction. In fact, the Taerkastens and the Black Sect are relatively tougher A.I opponents as compared to that of the Mykonians. But this is simply a result of faction characteristics and designs in the actual gameplay.

** Units such as Weasel or Ying have longer reach than the other weapons even when not locked on. However, their weak firepower makes it rather a situational tactic to employ as them.

* MasterOfNone: Some of the vehicles unlocked early in the game tend to be outclassed by their better or more specialized counterparts that are unlocked later in the game. This is especially true for the original Resistance campaign given that the Resistance has the greatest variety of war machines to chose from. However, it is important to note that such notion is entirely subjective and may depend heavily on individual player's style or tactical preferences.
** As a general rule of thumb, medium tanks/helicopters/planes across all factions have the advantage of having both firepower and mobility to a certain degree. Making them an excellent candidate for forming the backbone of a versatile main fighting force. They can provide significantly higher firepower when compared to the light units, while not as cost-intensive and slow as heavy units. Additionally, some light units can provide a decent firepower with even more speed for rapid deployment around the large levels.
** On multiplayer, where energy management is even more important, it is common for seasoned players to utilise numerous light/medium units productively to gain zone of control advantages, as well as containing enemy movements around the level. While heavy units are usually reserved for player-control in a decisive battle.

** From a faction-perspective, the Taerkastens fall into this category. The Taerkasten Leonid tank is only one example. The Leonid tank not only hits hard, but of all standard heavy tanks it has the strongest armor (86% versus non-upgraded Resistance Tiger's 75%) and has the highest hit points too (280 versus non-upgraded Resistance Tiger's 220). Using math, the Leonid can survive more **TWICE** the punishment the Tiger can take. In the unreleased Metropolis Dawn campaign, where you get to play as the Taerkastens, a fully upgraded Leonid at full-health is even capable of surviving a shot from a standard Resistance Rhino.

** The only true LightningBruiser in the whole game is the Taerkasten Phantom: It is the most durable airplane with 80% armor, but yet still possessing above average speed AND strong firepower. However, it has several drawbacks that prevented it from unbalancing the game - Compared to other "heavy aircraft" such as the Resistance Warhammer and Mykonian Air Stick, it is significantly slower, has poorer maneuverability, and its missiles had relatively weaker homing capability. The drawbacks makes it more or less "equals" with its counterparts in other factions, and its overall capability remained solely that of anti-aircraft and nothing else. Therefore both the A.I and the human player utilizes the Phantom sparingly.

*** When given the capability to create radar stations, the AI will occasionally instruct the enemy host station to move to a less visible territory and create a radar station to peel back the [[FogOfWar fog of war]]. The problem is that this often renders the enemy host station vulnerable to its opponents. The AI having primitive path-finding algorithms doesn't make things better - It can venture stupidly into enemy territory where its enemies are lying in ambush. This problem is likely why many level designs removed the enemy host stations' ability to create radar stations, this prevents them from excessively moving around and ensure they stay in their stronghold, where its definitely tougher to kill them.

** In Metropolis Dawn:
*** By the time the developers worked on Metropolis Dawn, it is evident that the Resistance vehicles are pretty pathetic when on their own - After all, the game was designed such that the Resistance only excels when controlled by the player directly. Hence when the Resistance become an AI-controlled opponent for the player, the level designers deliberately gave the Resistance more pre-deployed troops/flak/power stations, and upgraded the vehicle stats. The Rock Sled isn't deployed at all (the suicide mechanism is hard-coded to be player controlled). An artifact still remains where occasionally the [[LongRangeFighter Rhino]] is deployed as a CloseRangeCombatant, with laughable results.

** Invoked in the mission "Command and Taerkast". In this level, the Taerkastens were said to be experimenting with their new Bronsteijn helicopter, and you have a chance to create some for yourself - but only in this level itself. Notably, this Bronsteijn had a higher creation cost and higher hit points as compared to the regular Bronsteijn used in the later missions.

* VictoryByEndurance: Being the game's MightyGlacier faction representative, this is the Taerkastens' main strategy. It takes a lot of effort to fight the Taerkastens head on, and opponents that focus efforts on fighting off heavily armored, heavily armed Taerkasten vehicles will often exhaust their resources, only to face yet another wave of heavily armored, heavily armed Taerkasten vehicles. Efforts are better spent on getting rid of the Taerkastens' power stations or better still, bypass its slow-moving armies and kill the Taerkasten host station directly. If it had not been for the KeystoneArmy rule and the fact that the AI often makes the opponent's host stations a target priority, the Taerkastens would easily be the most powerful faction. Incidentally, for various reasons this is arguably the most AI-friendly and easiest faction to play as in single-player - assuming time is not a factor.

** The Taerkasten Thor's Hammer, a heavy tank/artillery hybrid only available in the unreleased Metropolis Dawn expansion. It is arguably an equivalent of the Resistance Rhino, but with much heavier armor and a faster weapon reload rate. It all sounds excellent until its downsides are mentioned: It is too slow to reach and attack a host station located far away, and its projectile has a significantly shorter flight distance. It is also a bit too expensive to take the role of an anti-tank ground unit, something which Leonid tanks would be more cost-efficient at.

** Specialists are effective against Host Stations.
*** The weakness of the Specialists seems to depend on whether its an airborne or land unit. If its an airborne unit, anti-air tanks and/or planes would be effective against it. If its a land unit, bombers and helicopters would be effective instead.

* MasterOfNone: Some of the vehicles unlocked early in the game were gradually outclassed by their better or more specialized counterparts that are unlocked later in the game, making these early vehicles mostly obsolete outside of very situational tactics. This is especially true for the original Resistance campaign given that the Resistance has the greatest variety of war machines to chose from.
** The Fox is the first Resistance vehicle in the game available from the very first level. It is a relatively fast anti-air tank which can also be used to fight off lighter tanks, or in [[ZergRush greater numbers overwhelm]] medium tanks. However when other units are unlocked... Want to fight air units while on the ground? Deploy the smaller, cheaper and faster Weasels whose anti-air missiles repel air units better than the Fox does. Want to fight tanks? Deploy Tigers to fight on the spot, or deploy Marauders or Hornets or Dragonflies to intercept and mow them down.
** On a similar note, across all the factions the "medium" tanks/helicopters/planes are often outclassed by their "heavy" counterparts almost as soon as they are available.
*** The Resistance Jaguar is mostly outclassed by the Tiger and the Weasel. If you want tanks with better speed, there's the Weasel to serve you. If you want a more durable and more powerful tank, there's the Tiger.
*** The Resistance Hornet (Medium Heli) and Wasp (Light Heli) also had a similar predicament. The Wasp would likely see less use with the Hornet unlocked, and became even more irrelevant with the Firefly unlocked. The Hornet serves as the new Tank-destroyer while the Firefly serves as more cost-effective chaff. The Hornet itself also became less relevant with the Dragonfly unlocked, which has superior hit points and a much more powerful machine gun to supplement its rapid fire rockets.

*** The upside is that the AI can be outwitted this way via a "sniper" attack. The downside is this method will only work if the human player is in direct control of a long-range attacker. For example, an AI-controlled Rhino will usually get slaughtered before scoring a successful shot because it would venture within the firing range of the enemy.

** The mission briefings talk about humans living in the war zone area. There are no humans seen in the actual gameplay - Although it is plausible that most of humanity lives underground.

** The Resistance Tiger and Falcon may be bad candidates for sniper roles, but their weapons range is around one and a half sector wide. Given specific scenarios (E.g.: flak stations), they can actually take out some enemy units while avoiding the enemy's immediate response radar range.

*** The Taerkastens took this to a ridiculous extreme with the Zeppelin. It is the game's strongest bomber in terms of armor, hit points, AND firepower. In fact it has the game's strongest armor at 95% such that not even an upgraded Rhino can take down in a single hit. It is also the game's slowest bomber, so slow that the Ghorkovian Tekh-Traks (the fastest heavy tank in the game) can outspeed it.

*** The fully upgraded Resistance Hornet is a lesser version of the Dragonfly. It has the same armor (75%), slightly faster with less hit points, and hits ridiculously hard with its upgraded rockets (900 damage per shot). Like with most helicopters in the game, its mobility and evasion is pretty bad which is why it arguably still applies for this trope.

** The Taerkasten Thor's Hammer, a heavy tank/artillery hybrid only available in the unreleased Metropolis Dawn expansion. It is arguably an equivalent of the Resistance Rhino, but with much heavier armor and a faster weapon reload rate. It all sounds excellent until you hear the rest: Too slow to attack a host station located far away, weaker firepower, and shorter range of projectile. It is also a bit too expensive to take the role of an anti-tank ground unit, something which Leonid tanks would be more cost-efficient at.
** This may have been due to a lack of effort in the developers' play-testing: In the Metropolis Dawn campaign (where you can play as either the Ghorkovs or Taerkastens), the Resistance and Black Sect AI sometimes send out Rhinos to attack an opponent's host stations. The Rhino is for all intents and purposes a very fragile sniper unit with massive firepower, meant to be controlled by a human player and should be kept a safe distance from enemy fire while sniping an enemy host station. The game's AI design is such that all AI-controlled vehicles will [[CloseRangeCombatant engage in close range battles]], and considering a Rhino's weapon reload rate is several seconds, this makes an AI-controlled Rhino next to useless and will often laughably get slaughtered before it can score a devastating blow.

* InformedAbility: In the single-player mission briefings, the [[AliensAreBastards Mykonians]] are regularly touted as major threats to the human factions. In the actual overall gameplay there is actually not a single faction that feels extremely overwhelming to every other faction. In fact, the Taerkastens and the Black Sect are relatively tougher A.I opponents as compared to that of the Mykonians. Perhaps this lore was an artifact left over from early stages of game design and writing, and a plausible albeit head-canon explanation is that by the time [=SDU7=] began the Resistance campaign, the Mykonians had already expended most of its resources fighting the human factions, thus leaving it vastly weaker than before.

* SuperPrototype: The Anvil Host Station, which was supposed to be yours, has an energy flak cannon, and the abilities to cloak all drones under its command and copy the drones of the enemy forces in the battlefield it's in. Unfortunately for you, the Black Sect [[NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup stole it]] and mass-produced it.

* ObviousRulePatch: In the Resistance Campaign:
** The Rhino and the Rock Sled can be acquired in the later levels and it made the game a lot easier. In the case of the Rhino, the player only had to create 1 Rhino and some chaff units to distract the enemy while the player controls the Rhino to kill the enemy host station from a safe distance. In the case of the Rock Sled, its speed and firepower allows the player to directly approach and kill the enemy host station (mostly) smoothly. Seemingly recognizing how gamebreaking the Rhino and Rock Sled can be, most of the preliminary final levels and the final level itself (Parasite City) features big maps with the enemy host stations located far away, surrounded by lots of obstacles and/or located in hills which made it difficult for the player to create land units (the Rhino and Rock Sled are land units) to attack the enemy host stations. Not only that, some of the enemy host stations had a higher floating height, which greatly hampered the Rock Sled's destructive capability - The 15,000 damage only occurs right at the center of the suicide blast zone, and the damage dissipates rapidly when the target is located further away from the center.
** When given the capability to create radar stations, the AI will occasionally instruct the enemy host station to move to a less visible territory and create a radar station to peel back the [[FogOfWar fog of war]]. The problem is that this often renders the enemy host station vulnerable to its opponents. The AI having primitive path-finding algorithms doesn't make things better - It can venture stupidly into enemy territory where its enemies are lying in ambush. This problem is likely why many level designs removed the enemy host stations' ability to create radar stations, this prevents them from excessively moving around and ensure they stay in their stronghold, where its definitely tougher to kill them.
** Some of the vehicles when player-controlled actually have slower firing rates compared to that of their AI-controlled ones. Namely, the Dragonfly, X01 Quadda, Gigant, Ghargoil 3, and Bronsteijn. These vehicles also happen to be relatively popular choices for the players, so it is very clear that the vehicles had been play-tested by the developers and it has been determined that giving these player-controlled vehicles better firing rates will likely push them into overcentralizing usage status.

* ObviousRulePatch: In the Resistance Campaign, the Rhino and the Rock Sled can be acquired in the later levels and it made the game a lot easier. In the case of the Rhino, the player only had to create 1 Rhino and some chaff units to distract the enemy while the player controls the Rhino to kill the enemy host station from a safe distance. In the case of the Rock Sled, its speed and firepower allows the player to directly approach and kill the enemy host station (mostly) smoothly. Seemingly recognizing how gamebreaking the Rhino and Rock Sled can be, most of the preliminary final levels and the final level itself (Parasite City) features big maps with the enemy host stations located far away, surrounded by lots of obstacles and/or located in hills which made it difficult for the player to create land units (the Rhino and Rock Sled are land units) to attack the enemy host stations. Not only that, some of the enemy host stations had a higher floating height, which greatly hampered the Rock Sled's destructive capability - The 15,000 damage only occurs right at the center of the suicide blast zone, and the damage dissipates rapidly when the target is located further away from the center.

* ObviousRulePatch: In the Resistance Campaign, the Rhino and the Rock Sled can be acquired in the later levels and it made the game a lot easier. In the case of the Rhino, the player only had to create 1 Rhino and some chaff units to distract the enemy while the player controls the Rhino to kill the enemy host station from a safe distance. In the case of the Rock Sled, its speed and firepower allows the player to directly approach and kill the enemy host station (mostly) smoothly. Seemingly recognizing how gamebreaking the Rhino and Rock Sled can be, most of the preliminary final levels and the final level itself (Parasite City) features the enemy host stations surrounded by lots of obstacles and/or located in hills which made it difficult for the player to create land units (the Rhino and Rock Sled are land units) to attack the enemy host stations. Not only that, some of the enemy host stations had a higher floating height, which greatly hampered the Rock Sled's destructive capability - The 15,000 damage only occurs right at the center of the suicide blast zone, and the damage dissipates rapidly when the target is located further away from the center.

* DifficultySpike:
** Original Resistance campaign: The game starts out relatively easy and the difficulty level goes progressively and naturally higher. However, a huge spike in difficulty occurs towards and during the middle of the campaign, due to a combination of a lack of the means to create a good power source and the lack of powerful units required for smooth completion. "Dark Valley" marks the start of these tough levels. "Moonlight City" (Acquiring the Dragonfly) and "Wide Field" (Acquiring the Falcon and Power Station 1+) arguably marks the peak of the difficulty curve for the player to overcome and yet are among the most important missions to complete, because of the aforementioned key tech upgrades. The game becomes a lot easier after you acquired most of the vehicles along with a good power station.
** The Ghorkov campaign of the unreleased Metropolis Dawn expansion has a higher difficulty level than the original Resistance campaign due to the disadvantage of the early units that the Ghorkovs had against the Resistance and Mykonians, and Ghorkovian units in general lack the versatility of the Resistance units.