Game Breaker/Video Games/Turn-Based Strategy: Difference between revisions

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Examples of [[{{TOPLEVELPAGE}}]]s in [[{{SUBPAGENAME}}]] games include:
[[Game Breaker|Game Breakers]] in turn-based strategy games. There are pages for ''[[Game Breaker/Nintendo Wars|Nintendo Wars]]'', ''[[Game Breaker/Fire Emblem|Fire Emblem]]'', and ''[[Game Breaker/Super Robot Wars|Super Robot Wars]]''.
 
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== Subpages ==
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== Other Examples ==
* The ''[[Disgaea]]'' games, (and in fact most [[Turn-Based Strategy]] games by [[Nippon Ichi]]) actively encourage you to try to break the games by creating ridiculous multi-character chain [[Combos]] and creating your own [[Infinity+1 Sword|Infinity Plus One Swords]], as well as gaining [[Over Nine Thousand]] levels.
** In the third game, Adell is an extremely broken DLC character. Evility that does 30% more damage in one on one combat plus a S ranked innate attack plus loads of enemies (including story mode boss fights) that are weak against fire equals pain.
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** Also in ''Civilization II'': The UN was a crucial Wonder. Not because it was particularly useful (you could force other civilizations to make peace with you, but that was rather pointless since they'd then just break the treaty a few turns later), but because if another civilization gets it, having them constantly force you to make peace is a hassle.
** In Civilization Revolution, the simplified mechanics provides a number of opportunities to completely dominate the AI even on the most difficult setting. And the Leonardo's Workshop wonder is so overpowered, since it upgrades all your existing units. Given the right circumstances, you can destroy any AI. First, always produce as many cheap, weak units as possible. As you're doing this, follow the path on your technology tree to discover the internal combustion engine. Time the building of Leonardo's Workshop so that it occurs right after you discover the engine and gain the ability to build a tank. All those cheap warriors you've been building since the beginning? They're now tanks. The game is over in 2 or 3 rounds max.
** ''Civilization V'' gives us Bushido, the Japanese special ability, which causes units to maintain full defense and attack stats even while wounded. If this wasn't overpowered enough, it's possible to combine this with the Populism social policy, which grants a 25% damage bonus to wounded units. In other words, damaging Japanese units in these conditions ''actually [[Turns Red|makes them stronger]]''<ref>Like in anime. xD</ref>.
** In ''Civilization III'' the Persians are considered by many to be the most powerful civilization in the game because they possess the Industrious and Scientific traits, which grants them bonuses to both production and research. Additionally, their unique unit, the Immortals, are the single most powerful ancient age offensive unit (it isn't until knights come along that a unit possesses more offensive power). The sheer power of the Immortals makes it easy for the Persians to conquer other civilizations during the ancient age and even well into the middle ages.
* In ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'' the supply crawler unit, which the computer never uses, gives the player a major advantage by itself. What makes it a game breaker is when you upgrade cheap crawlers and contribute them to builder wonders, because the cost of upgrading units is about 8 times cheaper than trying to pay for buildings. This makes it possible to build wonders, even the late game ones, in a single turn. Even at the highest difficulty, you civ score should skyrocket right after getting the tech for crawlers.
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** In addition there was a starship component called a Structural Analyzer, which doubled all damage that struck the target's bare hull. Not a [[Game Breaker]] on it's own, but there was also a component called the Achilles Targeting Unit, which caused all attacks to ignore the target's armor. Combine these with weapons capable of bypassing shields and season with some more general damage/accuracy boosting components and you had a warship who could wipe-out 10-20 ships by itself in a single round (a more 'conventionally' equipped ship takes 2-3 rounds just to destroy a single ship of similar size).
** The Guardian of Orion can be defeated very early on with large numbers of MIRVed Merculite missiles. The battleship you get as a reward for this will, at this early stage, be so powerful that the other races can't touch it, allowing you to wipe the floor with them. Gyro destabilizers can also be used for a game-breakingly early Guardian kill because they do completely plain structural damage and ignore defenses.
** There's also the extremely annoying ship build that combines Tractor Beam and Repulsor Beam. Thus, it can pull an enemy ship up close, fire the rest of its weapons at maximum efficiency, and push the ship back away before it can retaliate.
** Ditto Stasis Field Generator. It can be used rapidly incapacitate most of the enemy fleet and then tear them to pieces one by one.
** The Custom Race option can be used to achieve a [[Game Breaker]] effect: simply slap both the "subterranean" and "aquatic" bonuses on your custom race. (Never mind that it makes no biological sense whatsoever.) The result: a race that can out-breed any other, given a planet with water. And since most of the easily colonizable planets are "terran" or "aquatic" by default... And more people means more production and science. Plus the subterranean bonus gives a big boost to ground combat when defending against invaders.
*** For blitz, "UniTol" (Unification + Tolerant). It costs a lot of points, but you have worker production bonus (all-important before you get enhancements and still quite nice later), don't care about morale and environment (either may be less of a problem in late game, but early on holds you back), can use Toxic planets, and will not care ''much'' about spies when you'll meet others. Start expanding early.
** The Creative racial trait borders on game-breaker, requiring only 6 of your 10 available points to buy but allowing you to research all of the technologies available, not just one out of every two to four options given. Like, say, the various technologies referenced in this section.
** In version 1.2, the Plasma Cannon (specifically, the Heavy Plasma Cannon) was this. Whoever decided to make it that small apparently failed to realize that Enveloping doesn't just mean four times the shield penalty - it means ''four times the damage''. And the Heavy mod largely negates the weapon's worse-than-usual range dissipation. It was entirely possible to lose a late-game battle solely by researching Disruptors and [[Artificial Stupidity|having all your bases "upgrade" automatically]]. (In version 1.31, they [[Obvious Rule Patch|made the thing 2.5 times as big]], and it was ''still'' approximately tied with a fully tricked-out Phasor as the best beam weapon in the game.)
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** [http://ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Smoke_Grenade Smoke grenades] are remarkably effective at decreasing the aliens' initial advantage; just drop it at the foot of the transport's ramp, before leaving, and the chances of the aliens' reaction fire hitting the redshirts drops drastically. [http://ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Proximity_Grenade Proximity grenades] are sworn by for many players to mine UFO exits and buildings aliens might be hiding in. Both together are a potent combination, especially if you've mined a Zombie that turns into a Chrysalid.
* Not to mention ''X-Com Apocalypse'''s Toxigun. An insanely powerful weapon that costs just a pair of APs per shot to fire and completely surpasses the aliens' Disruptor Shields. After researching this and the Personal Teleporter, the game pretty much turns into administering point-blank euthanasia shots to the aliens. Even more ridiculously overpowered Alien Gas Grenades and Alien Gas Rockets are available late in the game, provided you manage to {{spoiler|capture the Alien Queen live}}. The [[Teleporters and Transporters|Personal Teleporter]] allows you to instantly teleport your soldiers anywhere on the map, and it is not uncommon to [[Single-Stroke Battle|win the mission on the first turn]] considering that your soldiers are likely [[Person of Mass Destruction|people of mass destruction]] by the time you research this item.
** [[Spiritual Successor|Spiritual Successors]] ''[[UFO: AfterblankAfter Blank|UFO: Aftermath]]'' and ''Aftershock'' had warp weapons. Subverting the previously established player knowledge of armor=longevity, warp weapons inflict ''greater'' damage if the target is wearing armor. Devastating when first encountered, when the weapons are reverse-engineered by the player, they become the single most devastating weapon in the game, capable of one-shot killing ''anything'', as enemies are ''always'' wearing heavy armor at that point. Greatly toned down in ''UFO: Afterlight'', as the player only gets two warp weapons, with six shots each that can't be recharged during a mission and low base accuracy.
*** ''UFO: Aftershock'' has psionics with level 3 sniper, using the .50 calibre rifle with accuracy add-on and accuracy boosting psi-gear has a 1.1 - 110% chance of a torso hit. A headshot is merely 100% chance of instantly killing the standard mutant or [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|Wargot]]. Also you can field a whole team of these girls, and depending on the status of your install the accuracy aura buffs may stack. Gets more insane if you give them Katanas against [[Butt Monkey|Wargots]] in room-to-room combat...
*** Even against enemies that could take multiple headshots and survive, a called shot to the head is considered a critical hit and topples the target over (there are enemies with "knock back resistance" ability but they are not common). Guess how much time it takes to stand up? Approximately same amount as making another called shot. If there is another enemy between sniper and target, then there is chance of hitting the enemy blocking vision, and if this happens, that enemy will be critically hit as if it was intended target of called shot, even if it is impossible to make called shot on that enemy. Very effective against mutants and Starghost combat drones.
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** The PSP Remake removes the Retissue tactic, but some characters still manage to be overpowered, such as Canopus, who is a winged human who has high movement, is unrestricted by height and can be turned into one of the strongest archers in the game provided you have a class mark for it...which is 300 Goth...when an average battle rewards you with several thousand. Canopus can also be kept as a Vartan, allowing him to use a bow and axe, but they both need to be one handed and they don't do as much damage...but give him an absolutely amazing movement range. Did I mention you receive Canopus on the 4th mission of the game? The first 3 missions are all automatically performed, you can't lose.
** ''Knight Of Lodis'' had that any class could equip any weapon. Simple, right? Yeah, but then you've got a ghost that teleports to the target, floats, and uses a hammer. Or you can just use two insanely powerful spears (The second-most powerful weapon (after [[Infinity+1 Sword|the four Snapdragons]]) in the game, the Spear of Longinus, is [[Captain Obvious|a spear]].) and have your spear-using characters fight each other, hitting the target in the middle twice. (Does not work on Shaher, who stays in the corner.) And then there's [[Summon Magic]]...
*** A few more for KoL: [[Infinity+1 Sword|The four Snapdragons]] are on a completely different plane of existence compared to all your other weapons. You'd be very happy with a weapon of attack 60. Snapdragons: attack 75 right off that bat, and then you can improve that AND give your character stat boosts and special abilities by 'snapping' specific classes and characters. The Ninja and Swordmaster classes are both stupidly overpowered: Ninjas move three times faster than any other character, [[Disk One Nuke|are available at the beginning of the game]] and have an insane evasion score. Swordmasters are the same as Ninjas, but trade a tiny bit of speed for the ability to equip any sword in the game, and are cast buffs or status spells. Including Time Stop ([[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Stops time for the enemy team]]) or Teleport ([[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|teleport]]), which are already [[Game BreakersBreaker]]s of themselves. Then you have sword techniques that cost a tiny bit of HP to use, but easily allow you to hit the damage cap if you have a Snapdragon... by the end you can beat the last boss with your main character and another (to use the Lance of Longinus to break the last boss's invulnerability field). In three turns (one turn to get there and break the field, two turns using of the time-stop special technique combo).
* ''[[Odium]]'' has the Attracting Device. When you deploy it on the ground during battle, monsters become hypnotized and won't attack you, instead trying to reach the device as fast as possible, thus earning you several turns of blasting them to bits without fear of retaliation. Some monsters are immune, but most aren't (including, ridiculously enough, {{spoiler|human enemies}}, making several potentially tough fights a doozy.) A fun thing to try is surrounding the device with your men to keep enemies from ever reaching it...
* Milanor from [[Yggdra Union]] gets very strong by the half of the game. Enough that his attack can top any kind of enemy even though he has a disadvantage in [[Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors|a weapon triangle rule.]] And he's one of the main characters you need to use in every battle.
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*** Speaking of which, Unleash All can also be a potent [[Game Breaker]] by itself seeing as party members who are down to 25% of their HP will have an ''obscene'' raise of all their stats.
* Due to the game's rather primitive and sometimes crippling AI it is possible to win ''every single'' game in [[Hogs of War]] by poisoning the enemy using a gas grenade and then using the Scout/Commando/Hero technique ''Hide'' to simply wait out the clock. Using this technique you can even defeat the otherwise ridiculously strong Legend class without sustaining hardly any damage whatsoever. Coming in at a close second on the ''crappy game mechanics you can exploit'' bandwagon comes the Spy class ''Pickpocket'' ability. Steal the bazooka or sniper rifle off an enemy Hog and they become near enough completely harmless.
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[[Category:Game Breaker/Video Games]]
[[Category:Turn-Based Strategy]]