Line #20 VideoGame/AirshipsConquerTheSkies


1	''Airships: Conquer the Skies'' is an RTS created by indie developer [[http://zarkonnen.com/ David Stark/Zarkonnen]].
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3	The game is set in a world where [[CoolAirship airships]] have proliferated thanks to [[AppliedPhlebotinum "Suspendium"]], a teal-colored crystal with physics-defying properties. Players can design both air and land ships, as well as static fortifications, using modules that perform a variety of different functions. These modules are in turn operated by individual crew members who walk about delivering artillery shells, repairing damaged compartments, putting out fires, and heroically giving their lives in the line of duty.
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5	The available game modes are:
6	* Conquest, a lite 4X where you command a nation on a global conquest. In this mode your funding is limited by your cities' income, thus limiting the design of your airships and requiring you to create efficient designs that perform well in combat and don't wreck your budget.
7	* Design & Battle, a more open sandbox mode where you can design and edit vehicles and buildings, then pit them against each other. In combat mode, you can even have AI take over the control of your ships if you just want to sit back and watch the battle. Ships designed here are available in Conquest mode, as long you have the required parts unlocked.
8	* Multiplayer, both LAN and online.
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10	Available on [[http://store.steampowered.com/app/342560 Steam]] and [[https://zarkonnen.itch.io/airships itch.io]].
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13	!!The following tropes can be found in this game:
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15	* AdventureFriendlyWorld: Suspendium destroys agriculture due to its toxic properties, leading to the few fertile area in the world being hotly contested by the various nations, justifying the game's warlike setting. The world is also infested with giant flying monsters, cults, pirates, and mad scientists providing various challenges to the players and endless grief to in-universe people.
16	* AppliedPhlebotinum: Suspendium. It is ever-present in the world of Airships; in the land, in the air, and it even bio-accumulates within all life in the world. Its property is that it repels each other when charged like magnets, but it does not attract. This allows objects (like the airships or the myriad floating islands) and animals with natural suspendium-bearing organs to fly by the way of being repelled by the underground suspendium deposits.
17	* {{Arcadia}}: The combat generally takes place on a vast green grassland with rolling hills and a few trees scattered about. Sometimes small villages and cities can be seen in the distance.
18	* ArtificialBrilliance: The AI will try to flank your ship, move into their blind spots, or (if possible) even ram your ship at every opportunity. In some situations, the AI can will even ram your ship ''horizontally'' in order to detach fragile parts of your ship that stick off the main fuselage.
19	* BuildingSwing: Air grenadier and arachnids can do this if the targeted ship is far away, or if there are floating islands or ships (both friendly or hostile) between them and their target.
20	* BoardingParty: The air marine, arachnid, and air grenadier's primary purpose is to take over enemy ships and buildings by force. Air marines get to their target by jumping, thus you have to position your ship close to and slightly above the target. Meanwhile, arachnid and air grenadiers are equipped with grappling hooks, which allows them to swing onto their targets from a distance.
21	* CannonFodder: Air marines and arachnid, in comparison to air grenadier.
22	* ChickenWalker: Smaller legs available for your landships have reversed joints.
23	* ClockworkCreature: They were created by the mad scientists for unclear nefarious reasons:
24	** The mechspider. Unlike other troop types, they can't defend the ship they're stationed on, and can only board enemy ships. They are quite vicious, and their strength allows them to easily overpower the ship's crew. However, they can't operate ships, so once they capture one, it will probably plummet to the ground immediately once the lift engine runs out of fuel.
25	** Clockwork Wasps. Unleashed to the world from an unknown source, they scavenge machinery and metals to make more of themselves. They're practically hostile to everyone and defeating them is a worthwhile venture as they're made from valuable high-quality metals.
26	** [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Fleshcrackers]]. Giant mechs created by a particularly sadistic mad scientist with the sole purpose of killing things. They crush people to bloody pulp with their mouth and have combat tentacles that only serves to strike fears into its enemies.
27	* ComputersAreFast: The AI can immediately place orders as soon the command cooldown finishes, allowing them to easily outmaneuver slow players.
28	* CoolAirship: The main appeal of the game. With the editor you can build all sort of things, from [[ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld gasbag airship]], literal flying boats, to [[SchizoTech flying wooden box with guns]].
29	* CrapsackWorld: Much of the world is barren from suspendium toxicity leading to endless wars over food between the nations and criminals thriving in their peripheries. On top of that necromantic cult worshipping the [[EldritchAbomination Worm Eye]] is trying to conquer the world one nation at a time, evil mad scientists releases arbitrary killing machines to the world, and giant monsters like the dragons or air krakens flies freely across the world.
30	* EliteMook: Air grenadiers. They're tougher than arachnids and air marines, and carry grappling hooks that allows them to swing from ship-to-ship and onto their target, rather than just suicidally jumping at enemy ships like air marines. Naturally, they also come in smaller numbers.
31	* FloatingContinent: Suspendium veins repelled by other suspendiums sometimes floats out of the ground, taking some landmass with them. In game, they blocks your airship movement (but not your shots), can be used by arachnids and grenadiers to swing with their hooks to enemy ships, and can be perched on by ships running dangerously low on coal.
32	* FragileSpeedster: Either you have a fast and maneuverable airship with paper-thin armor, or big and bulky airship that is only a few meter above the ground from being classified a building. This is because lift modules, such as suspendium chambers or gasbags, can only carry so much weight. Heavier ship can only fly at lower altitude and speed, but to create lighter ships you either have to shave away some modules or armor, reducing the combat effectiveness of your ship. The latter results in this trope.
33	* GreyGoo: They're not microscopic but the Clockwork Wasps fits the bill as robotic being that endlessly gathers and consumes resources to replicate themselves. Should be noted that it's still unclear if they're manufactured by a singular source or have went rouge and expanding on their own.
34	* HumongousMecha: Landships can be equipped with legs instead of tracks and fitting into this trope. The Fleshcrackers are a more straightforward example, being giant man-eating humanoid robots.
35	* RammingAlwaysWorks: A viable tactic, and one of the greatest weakness of blimps because of their fragile gasbag. You can attach a very durable ram module, and if your ship is able to reach full speed before impacting the enemy, look out.
36	* TankGoodness: Landships, basically fortresses on tracks (or legs). Because they stick to the ground, it's practical to give them more weapons or heavier armor, making them generally hardier than airships of the same weight and price. However, their primary weakness is their gun elevation: an agile airship can easily outmaneuver them and attack from outside the firing arc of their weapons.
37	* ToxicPhlebotinum: Suspendium is toxic to all life as microsuspendiums within the cells still repels each other and exerts mechanical stress to it, leading to various illness and cancer. As the result vast areas of the world are barren due to severe suspendium poisoning, leading to frequent conflict over the few fertile lands.
38	* ThoseMagnificentFlyingMachines: Other than gasbag-lifted airships, the design of airships generally follows no real life physics, mostly thanks to suspendium. Thus, many ship designs are basically giant flying boxes with flapping sails or propellers to move them around.
39	* SchizoTech: We have levitation machines, clockwork automata, and primitive targeting computers. But the ships carrying them are usually made of wood, the cannons are still muzzle-loaded, and ramming is still practical in combat. This is likely caused by the constant warfare over the scant few food sources leading to focus on military over civilian technology. Likewise the world is also filled with mad scientists creating weird destructive creations, some which have been reverse-engineered by saner minds.
40	* SkyPirate: Naturally. They thrives in the wastelands between the nations and regularly raids cities within their ships' striking radius.
41	* {{Steampunk}}: Gloriously so.
42	* WalkingTank: Installing legs instead of tracks on your landship pretty much turns it into one.
43	* WoodenShipsAndIronMen: Takes some inspiration from the trope. Early or cheaper ship designs are generally armored with wood, and the weapons mounted on your ships are showed to be muzzle-loaded cannons similar to those of wooden ships. Finally, your crewmen are sailors in striped shirts who brave all manner of dangers in order to keep their beloved ships afloat.

Context VideoGame / AirshipsConquerTheSkies