What is AOW: 4025? AOW is a massively multiplayer web-based (online) strategy and combat game also known as a PBBG. Players build and manage a faction or state, doing everything from building housing, to researching, and fighting. What makes AOW different from many, is the fact that players are not playing as one against the world. Players in AOW pick from one of three governments, and they build and fight as a part of that team. The team that cooperates the most, and plans the best will be the victors. AOW: 4025 is a totally persistent game, with no resets. It takes time to build your faction up into a powerhouse, but you will not lose it to server resets. Time rolls by steadily at one game hour equals 5 real life minutes, and daychanges happen every two real life hours. Managing Your Faction: The heart of the game is centered around building up and managing your faction. Growing larger provides you with more money, which in turn gives you access to better vehicles, research, and combat ability. The main screen provides a quick summary of all of the important areas of your faction. Growth is accomplished by building residential housing. When housing is in place, people will slowly move in and fill up any available space that you have. They will then create their owns jobs and internal economy. You just sit back and watch the tax money roll in. You can't just build housing, though. Your people require various support services in order to thrive. While you can get away with not having enough services such as power, utilities, or police, the impact on your economy will be significant, and people will eventually start leaving. Some services, such as education, provide you with increases in income and morale. Research: Research is completely open ended in AOW:4025. The base technology can be endlessly upgraded and improved. Your weapons can get more powerful, your armor thicker, and you can add new upgraded versions of any vehicles, or create a completely new variant. Even the efficiency of your faction can be improved. Research is not just for the big boys, though, and it is not strictly a solo project. Factions within a government must specialize in one area. So design teams working together will be able to produce new technology much faster than factions trying to research everything alone. The Base Technology: AOW already has a base collection of weapon technology and vehicles. They were all built using the same system that researching players will use, so eventually player designed vehicles will replace them all entirely on the AOW battlefields. Types of units include Infantry, Armored Vehicles (wheeled, tracked, and hover), Mechs, and Aircraft (VTOL, and winged). Armies: Combat is based around companies. Each individual unit represents a company of that vehicle type. So to organize and train your units, you place them into armies. Commanders: Each army must be led by a Commander. Commanders bring an RPG element into AOW. Each commander has a set of attributes that improve with experience. Commanders collect this experience and can increase attributes with them. These attributes will effect how effectively units under that commander will train, repair, fight, and other aspects. Be careful, though, your commanders can die. Assault Ships: Getting armies moved across and dropped into combat requires the use of these space-going behemoths. They're expensive, but vital for factions to respond quickly to changing battle lines. Known Space: Known space currently consists of 75 planets encompassing all known developed settlements. The three major governments all own their bit, but they want all of it. Possession of planets will greatly affect your income and production, not to mention bragging rights. This is where combat comes in. Move your Assault Ships and armies across the map to both attack and defend other planets. Combat: Combat is multiplayer and turn based. Move and then attack with your units against your enemies alongside and against other player's armies. The side that can hold on to both of the map's strategic hotzones wins the planet. Winning will require teamwork, a good mix of units, and knowledge of how to use them. If the enemy is bringing along heavy bombers, you had better have some anti-aircraft capabilities, because those big lumbering anti-tank guns can't hit fast moving aircraft.