AW, the force that keeps you moving

As many of you probably already know from looking at the recent patch of pics on MOD DB the Tenzan ships have changed rolls in the game. Originally a way for you to deploy and support Gundams now the Tenzans are the premeire piece for deploying non-gundam AW units. They come in many different variations based off of the Daughtress units that they deploy but what it comes down to are these land bases are mobile, front line outposts with troops. Many of them can detect stealth, and they can put up a decent fight on their own. Add in multipble Tenzans at once and you have a military convoy that can deal a great ammount of punishment out as well as take quite a beating.

There is a downside to this of course. There has to be, otherwise it would be unbalanced. First is cost, these things are expensive and take awhile to build. Second is the lack of direct control of the units on the ships. Instead of you direceting the mobile suits you simply tell the orders to the Tenzans and the Tenzans then relay the orders to the mobile suits under their command. Also once a Tenzan loses it's mobile suits it takes a minute for another suit to deploy to replace the lost one. Finally the Tenzans themselves typically only have a single unit that says on the ship to defend it so they lose offensive ability as they lose units. A tenzan may have a ton of HP but if there is a single Command Daughtress on board it's not going to do much damage vrs a group of avatars or titan tanks.

The idea here is quite simple really. We plan for each of the 3 forces to work differently for UC, each with a common backdrop of the EF. UC and SEED are looking to be like 2 different sides of the same coin. AW however isn't even playing the same game as the other two! When it comes to AW there will be a lot of, lets say, "animosity" comming from other outside forces that are not even involved in the current battle. To say that the AW forces have made enemies in space against Zeon will be an understatment. This will really boil down to 2 things on the global scale of things.

Every section of UC will obviously work better against certain opponents. If I'm going against Scrin for example I'd probably have an easier time of it playing as SEED than UC or AW. Not to say UC and AW can't win, it's just SEED is looking to be a better match against Scrin. Against GDI or NOD I'm seeing UC as the way to go as its the most tradional force of the 3. AW will be where I turn vrs Zeon or another EF player. So the idea of Zeon not liking AW will also play into the fact that AW as a force is more tailored to deal with other armies designed around the "Mobile Suit" idea.

The second part of that idea is that AW is primarily a space force. As such they are not really designed around the idea of ground battles and taking land. This doesn't mean all the suits fly as thats definatly not the case but what it does mean is that the main part of your force does in fact have many ways of additional movemnt.

Take your 3 gundams for example. The Leopard is already a fast moving mobile suit over land thanks to the wheels in it's legs. The Airmaster is fast because it can transform into a freaking jet. And the Gundam x and Double X will have the option to be built with the G-Falcon already attached giving them flight/mobility. So all 3 of your MAIN gundam force units can be seen as fast responce units. And following that up the slow AW units are hitching a ride on these giant armored carrier Tenzans, so if they arn't fast they are definatly well protected.

In other words UC would be seen as a defensive, turtle creap army that slowly expands forward taking land. The more Land the UC player has the stronger they are and the harder they are to deal with. AW doesn't really need as much space to deploy a large force and they can move many units by only giving a few "orders". I'm really looking forward to getting this done so I can play with them and see how it gos!