Gunswords Beginner’s Guide

Gunswords Beginner’s Guide by Petr

What we have here is a compact guide for those who are new to GunSwords. Its purpose is to describe the game mechanics that are not obvious and guide new players to the right direction.

The Beginning

Right after the logging on you find yourself in a game lobby. It may look overwhelming at first sight.

What’s important for us now is the number to the left of the big red “FIGHT” button. It’s a weight class in which you’re going to play. It shows how many Game Points (GP) will be used to create your and your opponent’s squad. This time you only have access to 10,000 GP weight class. If you hold your mouse over the number the tooltip will appear showing all the weight classes in the game.

Let’s switch to the “Armory” tab.

To the right is the list of your items. It’s your storage, you can sell items from it. For the time of GunSwords beta you’ll get 100% of their price. In the beginning you won’t have any items in storage. To the left is the list of arsenal items categories. Pick any category and you’ll see the actual items in the central window. Here’s where you can buy items. Those that are locked or you can’t afford will be marked by red font.

Let’s switch to the “Barracks” tab.

In this tab you create and manage your squads. Your storage is still there, containing items and fighters which you’ll use to create or modify squads. In the beginning you’ll have one pre-made default squad for 10,000 GP. The barracks have two modes: overview and customization. On the screenshot above you see overview mode, which shows all the fighters and equipped items of the selected squad. Also at the bottom there are two bars: “offence” and “defence”. They show how many of the overall squad GPs are used on offensive gear, such as weapons and aggressive spells, and how many GPs are used on defensive gear, such as health points (HPs), armors, healing spells and etc.

To switch to the customization mode push “Customize” button in the botttom of the central window.

This mode is used to edit a squad.
1. To remove a fighter from a squad select him from the list at the bottom of the central window and push “Remove” button.
2. To add a fighter select a slot in the squad fighters list (the slot can be occupied, then the fighter will replace the one in the selected slot), then select a fighter in storage and push “Equip/Add” button.
3. To equip an item to the current fighter select it in a storage and push “Equip/Add” button. Remember that items can be equipped only to fighters of appropriate class, that can wear particular item. Also, items that “GPs to equip” exceeds the “Fighter’s equipment points” cannot be added. You can increase fighter’s equipment points by removing extra fighters from a squad or creating a new squad for more GPs.
4. To take off an item select a slot at the top of the central window, containing the item you want to remove, and push “Unequip” button at the bottom.
5. You can also rename fighters and view item info using buttons at the bottom of the central “Info” window.
6. To switch to the overview mode push “Exit” button at the bottom of the central window.

Remember, to make a squad valid for a fight you have to add at least 2 fighters to it.

Combat

I’ll remind that the goal in combat is to kill all the fighters of your opponent. Further is the list of important things about combat mechanics. Some of them are obvious while others are hard to discover just by playing the game.

1. To attack an enemy you need to find him first. Swordsman sees as far as 4 hexes, mage – also 4 hexes, gunner – 5 hexes.
2. Swordsman has to be near the target to attack.
3. Gunner shoots only on a straight line, or one of 6 directions. Which is why you have to position him first.
4. Mage can cast a spell on any visible fighter that is in 6 hexes range, except himself. Obstacles and trajectory doesn’t matter.
5. Attacking or casting a spell costs 4 action points (APs).
6. A swordsman has “ram attack” ability, which is activated on the control panel. Using this he can run 2 to 4 hexes to the target without spending any APs. But he needs to run on a straight line.
7. If you made your move and some APs are still left, you can spend them two ways:
a) “save” a minimum of 4 APs (hourglass button). Fighter will retaliate if attacked;
b) spend extra APs on defense (shield button), +5% armor and resistance for each, but not more that 50% total.
8. At the end of each round power-ups appear on the battlefield. You can see the specific places where each type of power-up spawns on every map.
9. Each 2 rounds a golem is spawned somewhere on the battlefield. It’s a neutral fighter, which attacks everyone on his sight. It obeys all the rules that player’s fighter obey: spends 4 AP on attack, shoots only on a straight line and etc.

Which weapon to use

There is no universal recipe for this. It’s useful to remember that the more expensive and powerful a weapon is – the less health points (HP) a fighter will have. Thus you can effectively fight a fully armed opponent having comparatively weak weapons. When buying a weapon, pay attention to it’s “GP to equip” property. If it exceeds the fighters’s equipment points (which you can see on barracks tab in customization mode), then the weapon can’t be eqipped. Next I’m going to tell about important qualities of different weapon types.

1. Cold steel. Weapons of this type have the most damage compared to others of the same price.

2. Firearms. Can be divided into two groups: 1) high falloff and high damage, 2) low falloff and medium damage. The first group is: SMGs, shotguns, machineguns, and miniguns. The second: handguns, rifles, rocket launchers, and railguns. A weapon with a low falloff will deal almost full damage at any distance, while a weapon with a high falloff will make around 50% damage at a 5 hexes distance. If you choose the latter try to shoot not further than from 2-3 hexes away.

3. Spells. There are two primary spells – “Heal” and “Lightning”, and two secondary – “Haste” and “Slow”. A mage can take only one of each primary and secondary spells. Heal ignores target’s armor and magic resistance, haste and slow can add/remove up to a maximum of 4 APs.

That’s all for now. In case you meet me in the game feel free to ask questions. I’m there to help, give advice, and play a match or two

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