Domination features a renewed global conflict between the Free Nations Union and the Phantom League on distant planets, including sci-fi land, sea and air warfare at a grand-strategy level. From the award winning developers of Massive Assault, Domination deepens the Massive Assault player experience through increased gameplay options and all new strategic challenges.

Features:

• An innovative Secret Allies political campaign
• 2 huge campaigns wrapped in absorbing storylines
• More than 20 non-linear scenarios, 8 planets for a World War mode
• Brand new Assault and Career modes
• All unit movement, firing and explosions are vividly animated using 3D graphics and sound
• 36 highly detailed land, air and sea units
• Instantaneous visual recreations of spectacular moves using unique camera angles
• State of the art A.I. with flexible settings
• 3 single player difficulty modes
• More than 150 hours of gameplay!

GCM:	Thank you for your time! Please get us started by introducing yourself and telling us about the team behind Domination.
Wargaming.net:	The developer is Wargaming.net, a Louisiana-based company. For the last seven years it specializes exclusively on making strategy games. Domination is being published worldwide by DreamCatcher Games, based in Toronto, Canada.

GCM:

Can you give our readers a brief synopsis of the story in Domination and how it fits into the two campaigns? Also, could you give us an idea of approximately how long each campaign is?

Wargaming.net:

Domination picks up where the original Massive Assault game ended and the Free Nations Union’s (F.N.U.) victory seemed inevitable. Only a few leagues’ territories kept resisting. Also, the league’s secret labs and factories remained untouched, producing new unprecedented powerful types of weapons, which turned the tide of war, and now the F.N.U. are retreating across the galaxy. The game’s two campaigns, one for F.N.U. and one for the Phantom League, feature the life stories of military men and women fighting for what they think is right, going through hardships of war, and political intrigues. Friendship, treachery, heroism and cowardice will come along in this epic. Each campaign will take about two days of intensive gameplay on medium level.

GCM:

Please tell us how the Career and Assault modes differ in gameplay and setup. Are you targeting two specific types of gamers?

Wargaming.net:

In Career mode you select your character and lead him or her through seven deathmatches against various enemy generals on different planets. After each step you get victory points for acquiring new skills, political and tactical bonuses, and new unit technologies. Naturally, your opponents are also growing in skills and the planets are getting bigger. It can take you about two days to complete one side’s Career. Assaults take much shorter time. It’s a sort of spec. ops. - your group of commandos are dropped from the orbit on the planet fully controlled by the enemy, and they must blow out the designated bases, which are well-defended. It’s a high-paced mode with no economy - only streamlined action. It is meant to give similar feelings as First Person Shooter’s Assault mode gives.

GCM:	What single element of Domination differentiates this game from any of the other turn-based strategy games out there including Massive Assault?
Wargaming.net:	I would put it like this: Domination has the greatest variety of gaming options, and all of them are carefully balanced to be fun in the first place.

GCM:

Can you give some details on the level of squad and enemy AI we can expect. How much micro-management will be required of the player?

Wargaming.net:

We decided to avoid economic micromanagement, as it really would slow the game down. This game is focused on various strategic levels. Besides being good at tactics and medium-range strategy, the AI perfectly handles ‘secret allies’ concept, the acknowledged jewel of the whole system. AI makes deliberate decisions on all these levels and you really feel like playing against a real person of flesh and blood. However, ‘Relaxed’ and ‘Easy’ difficulty levels are specially designed to satisfy either extremely lazy gamers, or those, who are just not in the mood for thinking, but just feel like blowing stuff up.

GCM:

Please elaborate on the game mechanics as far as resource management (if any) and unit acquisition or upgrades?

Wargaming.net:

As acknowledged by the gamers and the press, this type of game can perfectly do without resource management. Economic aspects are present, but they are purely military: you control the territory and you get revenue, plus guerrilla forces, Indemnity and ‘secret allies’. That’s enough resources to manage, and as acknowledged by the press, the strategic depth is there. As for the units, in World Wars you have all of them available, but in Career and Campaign a player is moving along a sort of technology tree, starting from basic units and ending up with those unique super-weapons.

GCM:

Were there any specific challenges in balancing the gameplay and combat between the two sides and how do the secret allies factor into the story/gameplay?

Wargaming.net:

In Domination the sides have some unique units, mostly those super-powerful ones or with special abilities. Balance was achieved by thorough adjustment of parameters for each new unique unit. The initial disposal of secret allies and consequent disclosing order are the key factors for world wars brining unlimited variety in the strategic patterns and schemes. Secret allies are also used in the campaigns and scenarios, but only when they are really needed to support the storyline.

GCM:	Ten unique planets should offer a good variety of landscapes. How will terrain and elevation factor into the combat?
Wargaming.net:	Elevation of terrain will make no great impact on units’ movement points; only mountains and cliffs are impassible, however, helicopters can fly over such obstacles if they can land in passable terrain. However, there are new terrain types in comparison with original Massive Assault, such as swamps, rivers, lava streams, and bridges.

GCM:	The solo game modes look very substantial. What can we expect as far as multiplayer warfare and will players be allowed to use the rewind feature?
Wargaming.net:	We preserved multiplayer modes such as hot-seat and Internet play (the last one is features by Massive Assault Network), and also added possibility to play over LAN which was requested by fans of LAN-party gaming. Of course, all the key gameplay features were left intact, so players will be able to use rewind/undo buttons.

GCM:	Domination features some great musical scores for the background music that really adds to the feel of the game. Who did the music for Domination?
Wargaming.net:	Thanks for the compliment. All the music was composed by two of Wargaming.net’s guys. Their talent is not yet widely acknowledged, but I guess, Domination will help :-)

GCM:	GCM found Domination to be extremely fun and addictive. How long has Domination been in the works?
Wargaming.net:	We started the planning more than a year ago, and actual development lasted for one year. Our developers are quite disciplined and work fast :-)

GCM:	As far as community support, will there be any type of level or map editor available to build upon the core product?
Wargaming.net:	All scenarios are script-based, so there’s a chance that players will be able later to create custom scenarios. All maps were carefully created by our designers, which resulted in those lovely alive landscapes. This process is not a generic and can’t be done in map editor, since we don’t even have the one in our studio!

GCM:

Thank you again for your time! Do you have any last impressions or thoughts for our readers?

Wargaming.net:

There is one thing we really want your readers to know: the last twelve months were sleepless for Wargaming.net’s team, and they were worth it. We didn’t want to just throw in a couple of obvious additions to Massive Assault and call it a sequel. Instead we thoroughly analyzed the shortcomings of the original game outlined by the players and the press and made sure that this installment of Massive Assault universe will bring utter fun and satisfaction to strategy gamers.

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