History VideoGame / UrbanAssault

* NintendoHard:
** A player in the original Resistance campaign would likely experience a huge difficulty spike in 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. "Moonlight City" (Getting the Dragonfly helicopter) and "Wide Field" (Getting the Falcon and Power Station 1+) are amongst the most important missions to complete in order to overcome the steep difficulty curve.
** 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.

** Bombers are effective against Tanks.

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

** 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 faction counterparts, 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.

** 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 - significantly slower, has poorer maneuverability, and its missiles had relatively weaker homing capability when comparing with that of other "heavy aircraft" such as the Resistance Warhammer and the Mykonian Air Stick. Its overall capability remained solely that of anti-aircraft and nothing else, therefore both A.I and the human player utilizes the Phantom sparingly.

** 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 can also more than make up for its slow speed and poor evasion by accurately mowing down its opposition while 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 Resistance has 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-fire, good armor at 75%, and high health at 400. The human-controlled Dragonfly can also more than make up for its slow speed and poor evasion by mowing down its opposition with better accuracy while enduring hits.
** 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.

** In particular the Resistance heavy 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.

** 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, 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.

** 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 unit is the Blue Spore, whose anti-tank capabilities make up for the Sulgogars' glaring weakness to anti-air tanks but outside of that it is practically limited in its usage, despite it possessing a very powerful machine gun particle to support it as well. With the right tactics and units the Sulgogars are not too difficult to kill, making them the least versatile faction.

** The mission briefings talk about humans living in the war zone area. There are no humans seen in the actual gameplay.
*** Although that's usually explained as most of humanity lives underground.

*** In a specific instance, the mission Dark Zone requests for you to bring in any surviving Gigants (Which were stolen for your purpose) over to the next mission. Whether you do it or not is of no consequence to the storyline. It is recommendable however, as the Gigants are very effective at killing Host Stations.

** The Taerkasten Bronsteijn's ion cannon burst not only does 1200 damage in one shot with a big blast radius, its projectile also travels more than a sector wide. While its range is below that of the Rhino, its still barely enough for the Bronsteijn to play the role of a sniper.
** 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, they can actually take out some enemy units while avoiding their immediate response radar range.

** 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 non-upgraded shot from the Resistance Rhino.
** 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.

** In the original Resistance Campaign, your first level "Hyde Park" will face off against just one Tarantul I (Arguably one of the weakest host stations in the game) possessing 3000 energy and only able to create one basic unit. Likewise you only start out with 3 reservoirs of 750 energy each and one basic unit. The intended final level "Parasite City" will have you facing off against SIX enemy host stations (4 possessing 10,000 energy each, and 2 possessing 15,000 energy each) and each faction will have almost all their units unlocked. By that time you should be more or less ready to take them on, where you will have 3 reservoirs of 2500 energy each and all units unlocked with all upgrades applied (Best case).

* 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 stole it and mass-produced it.

* LongRangeFighter:
** The human-controlled Resistance Rhino is the best example of this trope in the game. Its rockets can travel several sectors. This means that the Rhino can snipe an enemy while the latter is unable to directly attack it from that long distance.
** The Bronsteijn's ion cannon burst not only has a deadly firepower to destroy many vehicles in one shot, but its projectile also travels over a long distance.

** However, there are a few exceptions to the firepower aspect: As an example, the player controlled Resistance Dragonfly, Mykonian X01 Quadda, Ghorkovian Gigant and Ghargoil 3, and Taerkasten Bronsteijn actually have *slower* firing rates compared to that of the AI. These vehicles are already relatively dangerous on their own, so this nerf is a deliberate decision by the game designers to prevent their usage in the hands of the human player from becoming overcentralizing. Besides, the remaining improved attributes including better flexibility and improvisation with a human in control more than makes up for the firing rate nerf.
** Incidentally, some other units such as the Resistance Jaguar/Marauder, Ghorkovian Ying/Tien-Ying 7/Yang, Taerkasten Phantom/Hetzel/Mnosjetz/Ostwind, and Mykonian Hourglass/5P0 Air Prism/Air Stick/Crusher share the identical firing rates between AI and players for balance and design reasons.

** 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 (Both positives). Negatives? Everything else. Too slow to attack a host station in far locations, 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 the opponent's host stations. The Rhino is for all intents and purposes a very fragile sniper unit, 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.

** In the original Resistance campaign, the Mykonians are presented as the BigBad in that they operate the world-threatening Parasite machine in the final level. Not only that, every faction showed up in the final level with one host station each but the Mykonians came with two host stations!
** In the unreleased Metropolis expansion pack:
*** For the Ghorkovian campaign it seemed that the BigBad role is rather ambiguous. The Mykonians are still presented as the BigBad in some of the later Ghorkov campaign levels, but the Black Sect is the only faction that operates two host stations in the final level, as well as being consistently remaining powerful throughout the later levels.
*** For the Taerkasten campaign the BigBad role seems to be given to the Resistance faction: Of all the factions that appear in the final level, the Resistance is the mightiest and the only faction that controls two Resistance host stations. Not only that, the Resistance occupies and heavily guards the key sector with a colossal Taerkasten castle structure, preventing easy capture.

** 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. This however, compensates otherwise overpowered Rhino's potentials under player-control mode. The AI also have a tendency to GangUpOnTheHuman, focusing their efforts on trying to kill the human-controlled drones, if there's any nearby, regardless if they're the nearest enemy.

** 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 the opponent's host stations. The Rhino is for all intents and purposes a very fragile sniper unit, 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]], so this means the AI-controlled Rhino is next to worthless and would often laughably get slaughtered before it can even fire off a shot.

** From a faction-perspective, the Mykonians fall into this category. Mykonian units generally have the strongest attacks in the game, but had extremely weak armor. An attack squad of Myko X01 Quaddas is capable of obliterating a full-health Resistance Host Station in seconds. On the other hand, a non-upgraded Resistance Falcon can take down practically any Mykonian air unit in 1-2 hits.
** Individual units are notably the Resistance's Rhino and Rock Sled, along with the Taerkasten's Bronsteijn. All three units had high hit points but their armor is underwhelming, especially that of the Rhino. Any standard heavy tank easily destroys either the Rhino or Rock Sled with just two hits. The Bronsteijn is an exception to the general rule that Taerkasten units are heavily armored. In terms of firepower: The Rhino is also meant for destroying enemy host stations with its long-ranged rocket attacks, and its rocket can one-hit-kill almost any vehicle that isn't a host station. The Rock Sled is a suicide unit built to destroy squads of tanks or enemy host stations when triggered. The Bronsteijn has arguably one of the strongest weaponry of all Helicopter units and with a pretty good range too.

** 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. However, they can soak up great amounts of damage and are extremely hard to shoot down in general, thanks to their extremely heavy shielding and large energy reservoir.
** 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 (Both positives). Negatives? Everything else. Too slow to attack a host station in far locations, 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. Still, the unit has an extremely high shielding and its combined role as both tank buster and close range artillery can be quite useful under right circumstances.

* 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.

** However, there are a few exceptions to the firepower aspect: As an example, the player controlled Resistance Dragonfly, Mykonian X01 Quadda, Ghorkovian Gigant and Ghargoil 3, and Taerkasten Bronsteijn actually have *slower* firing rates compared to that of the AI. Whilst some other units such as the Resistance Jaguar/Marauder, Ghorkovian Ying/Tien-Ying 7/Yang, Taerkasten Phantom/Hetzel/Mnosjetz/Ostwind, and Mykonian Hourglass/5P0 Air Prism/Air Stick/Crusher share the identical firing rates between AI and players. These vehicles are already relatively dangerous on their own, so this nerf is a deliberate decision by the game designers to prevent their usage in the hands of the human player from becoming overcentralizing. Besides, the remaining improved attributes including better flexibility and improvisation with a human in control more than makes up for the firing rate nerf.

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Host Stations are piloted by commanders, and are the strongest units on the field. Also, almost every vehicle the player takes control of gains improvements in attack power and shielding.
** There are a few exceptions: The player controlled Resistance Dragonfly, Mykonian X01 Quadda and Ghorkovian Gigant actually had *slower* firing rates compared to that of the AI. These vehicles are already relatively dangerous on their own, so this nerf is most likely a deliberate decision by the game designers to prevent their usage in the hands of the human player from becoming overcentralizing. Besides, the remaining improved attributes including better flexibility and improvisation with a human in control more than makes up for the firing rate nerf.

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Host Stations are piloted by commanders, and are the strongest units on the field. Also, any vehicle the player takes control of gains improvements in attack power and shielding.

** The Black Sect is a group of cultish cabal shrouded in a mystery, and their true objective remains unknown. But they still fiercely engage in this post-apocalyptic global war. It has been directly mentioned in the game's lore that "the Black Sect's origin could be traced back to the earliest European secret societies, with all the requisite branches into the royal families. But few would dare trace it back".

** While not completely unintended by the developers, sometimes AI units can effectively perform many tasks outside of their intended roles, such as bomber aircrafts taking down the other helicopters and planes with deadly accuracy and efficiency. AI tanks may also shoot down circling jet fighters nearby when they are turning to the opposite direction of their rotation, which the game uses interpolation algorithm to predict and pre-fire at the location where the pesky plane might be.

** 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 outspeed it. It is also too slow, too big, and too expensive to play the role of an exploring scout. However, they can soak up great amounts of damage and are extremely hard to shoot down in general, thanks to their extremely heavy shielding and large energy reservoir.

* BlownAcrossTheRoom: It's a major gameplay mechanic, no less. The main advantage of anti-air units is that they knock back aircraft with each impact. This disorients their vectors and stops them from reaching their original target, as well as makeing them easier prey for vehicles with slower weapons.
* CallBack: In the unreleased Metropolis Dawn expansion, there is a mission named Dejavu in the Taerkasten campaign, that allows you to revisit the region from Pedestal Mountain of the original Resistance campaign.
* CastFromHitPoints: Vehicles are made of energy, which is used up when they fire. However, the process is so slow that units are rarely lost in this fashion, unless they're close to an enemy Power Station, which will slowly drain them.

** While every single unit in the game are technically ranged units (except bomber aircrafts, who need to approach close to their targets first to drop bombs), all AI-controlled drones will engage in a relatively close-range combat, due to how the AI is programmed. This usually includes units armed with very long-range weapons.

** Create a swarm of either Fireflies (If you are the Resistance) or Yings (If you are the Ghorkovs), and let them harrass an enemy host station. While the enemy is occupied with taking down these chaff, you can proceed with your intended plans (Destroy power stations / Attack enemy host stations). The Resistance acknowleges this tactic ingame in the mission descriptions, and it's referred to as the "Rhino Gambit", as it can distract a strong enemy emplacememt long enough for the Rhino to take a shot and obliterate it without opposition.
* CripplingOverspecialization: The worst hit are heavy tanks and bombers. Most heavy tanks are so slow to maneuver that a single well-controlled helicopter can dismantle an entire formation. Bombers are specialized for attacking tanks and structures but aren't very effective against anything else. Also averted in some cases, such as when the AI defeats your aircrafts with bombers by flying above them.
** 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 unit is the Blue Spore, whose anti-tank capabilities make up for the Sulgogars' glaring weakness to anti-air tanks but outside of that it is practically useless. With the right tactics and units the Sulgogars are not too difficult to kill, making them the least versatile faction.

** The Taerkasten Zeppelin in practice is mostly useful as a predeployed scout or a tanking 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.

* FakeUltimateMook: When the Taerkasten Zeppelin is deployed as an anti-tank attacker. Unlike other examples of this trope, its reputation does match its capability - Namely that it **IS** the toughest vehicle to destroy in the entire game and that its weapon has among the highest destructive potential. However, it is so slow that a squad of anti-air vehicles can be deployed to run circles around it, and will often wear it down over time before it can wipe out its attackers.

* FogofWar: Like many other RTS games, the information available on the map to the player are limited by the fog of war. Scout satellites and radar stations with their extensive sensory sights are the most common way to peel back the fog of war and to gather intelligence around the level.

** Many Mykonian units fall into this category as well. As an exmaple, the Myko Air Stick is one of fastest planes in the game, but has one of the worst shielding too. The same applies for the Myko Bomber.

but also making units

* Old-SchoolDogfight: The majority of units in the game consists of various types of aircrafts 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.

* RankUp: During the singleplayer campaigns of the original game and Metropolis Dawn expansion, the player can read occasional messages about their increased standings in the briefing. On top of that, as the player progresses further into later levels, their host stations' total energy reservoirs and shielding capabilities increase gradually.

*** For the Ghorkovian campaign it seemed that the BigBad role is ambiguous. The Mykonians are still presented as the BigBad in some of Ghorkov campaign levels, but the Black Sect is the only faction that operates two host stations in the final level.
*** For the Taerkasten campaign the BigBad role seems to be given to the Resistance faction: Of all the factions that appear in the level, the Resistance is the only one that had two Resistance host stations. Not only that, the Resistance guards a key sector with a castle structure, preventing easy capture.
* 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 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]].

There were originally plans to release a expansion pack named Metropolis Dawn, allowing the player to take the role of either the Ghorkovs or the Taerkastens (Existing game data seems to point out that a campaign for the Mykonians was in the plans too). A contract issue between its new publisher prevented it getting an official release. However, a complete version was leaked to the internet community around a few years after the game was originally released.

The game could be considered a CultClassic these days, with more and more people discovering its uniqueness. The largest community can be found at the Stoudson Corporation forums, named after the Resistance's main weaponry designers.

* AfterTheEnd: The Big Mistake did quite a number on Earth: In the Toxic Age, most of the oceans have dried away, sea life is extinct, it's nearly impossible to live on the surface due to the ozone layer's destruction, the largest surviving human groups are too busy killing each other, there's biomechanical plant-like monsters eating everything and everyone they come across, parts of the planet are slowly being encroached by organic "bio-veins" that feast on whatever life remains on the soil, and to top it all off, there's a giant alien device where Mesopotamia used to be that's draining the heat of Earth's core, and will eventually leave the planet completely uninhabitable for humans if not stopped.

* GameMod: The game is very mod-friendly, and the MD community made several of them, like [=MarioSDUX=]' Intense mod series, which expands the base game and Metropolis Dawn's campaigns and makes them even harder.

* MercyInvincibility: If the unit you're controlling is destroyed and there's still a surviving squadmate you can transfer to, they will become immune to damage for a couple of seconds. This can make quite a difference if it was a wing of strong yet flimsy units like the Falcon.

* OrganicTechnology: Both the Sulgogars and the Mykonians make extensive use of it. The Sulgogar units are literally individual living creatures, while the Mykonians build everything with cable-like tentacles known as "Bio-Veins", which drain the life out of everything they touch.

** The Taerkaten units are so well-armoured that they are virtually mobile shield walls, and with weapons. The fully upgraded Leonid and the Zeppelin take it to its conclusion, ignoring 93% and 95% of all the damage they take.

** Create a swarm of either Fireflies (If you are the Resistance) or Yings (If you are the Ghorkovs), and let them harrass an enemy host station. While the enemy is occupied with taking down these chaff, you can proceed with your intended plans (Destroy power stations / Attack enemy host stations).

** Partly averted with Multiplayer, where there do exist a unit cap for balance and performance reasons.

** Partly averted with Multiplayer, where there do exist a unit cap for balance and performance reasons.