Andy (Advance Wars) Discussion

"I haven't even cranked the engine yet!"



Wars is a Nintendo series dating back to the Famicom (known as Famicom Wars), and even moved on to be Game Boy Wars before finally becoming Advance Wars (and kept that name on the DS). It plays similarly to Fire Emblem - you move your troops accross a battlefield to combat the enemy. The key difference is that you can continually build more troops with money earned each turn on certain tiles (land units on Bases, air units on Airports, sea units on Ports). You can capture more buildings with infantry units to increase your income. Generally, the goal of the game is to capture the enemy's HQ. The character controlling the units is the commanding officer, or the CO. You can generally choose between a few COs to command your troops, which can give them certain advantages. Andy is the first CO you get to use within the GBA titles.

For such a prevalent Nintendo series, it seems odd that the only mention it gets in Smash Bros is an assist trophy. For Crusade, Andy will play a bit differently from other characters - his whole playstyle focuses summoning troops and battlefield control. He doesn't like to get close to the action, but he does have his trusty wrench to hit anyone who gets near him. His stats are all around fairly average, similar to Mario.


Passive: Income
Over time, Andy will automatically increase a stat near his stamina bar known as Funds. This is related to all of his special moves.

Neutral Special: Unit Selection
A quick menu appears above Andy, scrolling to the next available unit. This changes both ground and air units at the same time, so he can select which unit he wants to deploy.
Infantry - Transport Copter
Mech - Battle Copter
Tank - Bomber
Artillery - Fighter
Med Tank - Stealth Fighter

Down Special: Deploy
Andy deploys a ground unit, selected from his neutral special.
Infantry - The cheapest unit, he can always afford one of these even if he has 0 Funds. They slowly walk forward and fire weak, rapid shots from a rifle. They are relatively easy to take out.
Mech - The second chapest unit. They are infantry units with a rocket launcher instead of a rifle - a large increase in power, but the same stamina as Infantry.
Tank - An actual vehicle, these fire semi-powerful shots and are tough to take down.
Artillery - These units fire semi-powerful shots that travel a far distance in an arc.
Med Tank - A bigger, tougher, and stronger (too) version of the Tank.

Up Special: Air Support
Andy radios in an air vehicle to aid him get back to the battlefield. If used on the ground, the vehicle will move on its own in the air. If used in the air, Andy will grab hold and can jump off at any time. Unfortunately, this costs funds, so he'll have to manage how much he builds on the ground so he has enough to get him back as a recovery. The unit summoned is selected from his neutral special.
Transport Copter - Andy can always afford this, it's a simple slow helicopter with no offensive capabilities. Easily gimped.
Battle Copter - A transport copter that can attack back if someone attempts to gimp it. It only has machine guns, but it's better than nothing.
Bomber - Slightly faster than the Battle Copter, it attacks by dropping bombs.
Fighter - A fast jet that's great for recovery, but it's much more expensive than a Battle Copter. It can even attack with rockets!
Stealth Fighter - If you somehow have enough funds for this, you're most likely getting back. It's faster and stronger than the Fighter, plus you're invisible during the recovery, making it difficult to find you until it fires a rocket.

Side Special: Repair
Andy is a mechanic, after all! He attempts to find a unit in front of him that needs repair. If he does, he'll spend some funds to repair it. It is a necessary tool to help keep his battlefield control up.

Final Smash: Hyper Upgrade
Andy's super CO power! All units and buildings you control will be repaired, and all units you control will gain an increase in firepower, speed, and defenses for a short time. You'll get an instant supply of funds as well, to help you take advantage of the situation.

Normal Attacks: Wrench
Most of his normal attacks will consist of normal wrench hits. They're nothing special, but have a bit more range than a normal punch and he can spin them around.



Overall, Andy brings a completely unique playstyle to the game as well as representing an important Nintendo franchise.



Supporters: 5
Roy
Smash King
OegaSteve777
Lego Shaq
MarioStrikerMurphy1994

Interesting.

It's very similar to what I'd have done. And, unfortunately, I don't like what I'd have done. Either the stage ends up extremely cluttered, or the units have to be absolutely tiny, detracting from the seriousness of the game. You don't want to imply to any fans that Advance Wars is just a bunch of kids playing with toy-like units. At the same time, going full Pikmin 1 and lagging the game to extremes isn't an option either.

The other problem is that you have to use your income in one fell swoop, because you can't choose which unit you build. This makes his playstyle more reliant on timing than on careful choice, which is hugely different from his intended playstyle.

I don't really have solutions to these problems either. The best I can think of is this:
- Proper size units, but only one can be realistically onstage at once.
- Income increases passively, as you imagined, but there's no way to increase the rate.
- Neutral Special is Repair. Works as you imagined.
- Up Special and Down Special form a "pair" of moves. Up Special builds an air unit, Down Special builds a ground unit.
- Side Special is a "scroll", similar to what I put in my Steve moveset for that attempted competition. Using it, you can get a very quick menu above Andy's head that exists only as long as the special button is held. The direction you use side special in affects the move differently than for most: here it's just which way the cursor scrolls through the menu. This should come out in 1 frame, end in 1 frame, and each tap to the left or right should take 1 frame. So it's a very quick way to select which unit you currently have on. The menu should take the form of two "strips", which resemble film reels, so that the cursor highlights one plane and one ground unit simultaneously. For the average player, switching a unit shouldn't take more than half a second, or a second if you're still learning the order of the units on the menu.

The side special is much easier to visualise than to explain, but I hope I've done it justice. Tell me what you think.

Hm... that is a valid point. 6 Andys playing on the field and you're going to have a lot of buildings.

- Unit size I imagined would be similar to the assist trophy for infantry. Of course, tanks should be larger.
- Your special ideas feel like it would make Andy more enjoyable - rather than camping by his base, he can spawn units anywhere. However, I feel like "scroll" should be neutral special, with repair being side. Other than that, I'll edit the OP.

I made the scroll side special for ease of use. You're going to be inevitably using left or right, so might as well make it easy to access that way.

More importantly, if people play with a pad, it's going to be difficult to quickly tap left or right to get the unit you want. The alternative here could be simply holding left or right, and then quickly tapping special instead. So to scroll, you just have to be holding either special or left/right, and then tap whichever one you aren't holding. This does mean however that it would have to be side special.

Dry wrote:

I made the scroll side special for ease of use. You're going to be inevitably using left or right, so might as well make it easy to access that way.

More importantly, if people play with a pad, it's going to be difficult to quickly tap left or right to get the unit you want. The alternative here could be simply holding left or right, and then quickly tapping special instead. So to scroll, you just have to be holding either special or left/right, and then tap whichever one you aren't holding. This does mean however that it would have to be side special.

That's the reason it should be neutral - you're going to use left or right anyways, but it would feel more awkward to scroll in the opposite direction you started the move in. A slower scroll would be better for pad-users, but would make it not as efficient to use... hm. Why not just make it so each tap of the B button switches? No need to hold side, imagine it like Shulk's monado.

Also, I think it might be nice if you could control both wheels independently - that is, press up or down to switch between land and air units, so you can have unique combinations available. But I'm not sure how to make that work correctly....

The point is that you don't scroll the opposite direction. No matter which way you're facing, the scroll goes in the same direction. I probably should have explained that more explicitly, but I was hoping it was intuitive.

Each tap of the button works with smaller inventories. Not so much on Andy.

I thought of controlling things independently, yeah. There's the possibility of only having the cursor on either a land or an air unit, and using up or down switches between land and air, but that would just make it slower and more difficult to use. There's also the possibility of using left/right for land, and up/down for air, but this would either look weird for the air units, or require a vertical strip for air units, which I can't visualise well either.

Fair point for air/land swapping.

How large of an inventory are we talking? If air/land are on the same strip, that means only 5/6 of each (there are only 6 possible air units, but do we really want the black bomb?), which is just as many as there are monado arts. Your method relies on having 2 inputs - one to hold out the menu, one to select the next item on the menu. I feel that it would be faster and more intuitive if a single press of B switched to the next set of units, which flashed above his head momentarily to remind you which one is currently active.

Well, my problem is more that it could be annoying to have to press special 5 times to get to the unit immediately to the left. But, if you don't think that's a problem, neutral special would be fine too.

Dry wrote:

Well, my problem is more that it could be annoying to have to press special 5 times to get to the unit immediately to the left. But, if you don't think that's a problem, neutral special would be fine too.

Maybe I'm just not understanding clearly how you get to the unit immediately on the left. You hold left and press special? But it shouldn't matter which direction you're facing, which seems odd to me. What if your opponent is to the left and you want a unit that's one to the right?

Then you press special and hold right. You don't have to use whichever direction your opponent is in. If you don't linger on the left/right input, you don't even need to change direction if, say, you use side special to the right and you're facing left.

Dry wrote:

Then you press special and hold right. You don't have to use whichever direction your opponent is in. If you don't linger on the left/right input, you don't even need to change direction if, say, you use side special to the right and you're facing left.

If you press special then hold right, that's a neutral special move. If you hold right then press special, you face right first. Which is it?

Press special AND hold right, not THEN hold right. Basically, treat it like Samus' missiles. If you don't want to change direction, you input as though you're going for a Super Missile.

So, Smash B versus a regular Side B. Yeah, that should work better IMO. Honestly we should avoid doing stuff like Ryu's EX fireball inputs if possible since it's just not intuitive for most people.

Hm... I suppose that could work, but I've never seen a move that had a smash input that didn't make you face that direction. I suppose it's unique.

Now that I understand it, I edited the OP to reflect that.

Roy wrote:

Hm... I suppose that could work, but I've never seen a move that had a smash input that didn't make you face that direction. I suppose it's unique.

Now that I understand it, I edited the OP to reflect that.

I'm not following. Side Special should always make you face the opposite direction (unless used in the air) just because of the nature of the controls of this game.

If you are having an issue like this, I would suggest mapping Repair to Side Special and Unit Selection to Neutral.

No no no no you're confusing things again aaargh

Roy's original moveset (after my first post) already had Repair on side special and unit selection to neutral. My idea is that unit selection has to be as quick as possible to not interrupt the flow of the game, so it's better to have it on side special and switch it instantly, rather than hold neutral special for a couple of frames and then start scrolling. As you said yourself, the latter is somewhat like Ryu's ex B input, and isn't intuitive.

In Roy's last post he wasn't just talking about side B, he was talking about side B AND Smash B. So he was saying that he's never seen a Smash B before that didn't force you to change direction. The reason I suggest Smash B is because if you do a proper Smash B, you won't need to change direction.

I think to avoid confusion, let's use this system: Smash B is when you press left/right and special at the same time, Non-Smash B is when you press special while holding left/right, and Side B is both Smash B and Non-Smash B.

I don't see why you couldn't just tap B without pressing a direction to change units, and hold it to continue changing. Assuming B is Unit Selection.

Falcon8r wrote:

I don't see why you couldn't just tap B without pressing a direction to change units, and hold it to continue changing. Assuming B is Unit Selection.

That's what I thought (keep pressing B ala Monado), but he wanted the ability to change in the reverse direction (Monado speed > jump instead of jump > speed).

My only problem with that is that it's annoying to press B five times when you just want to get to the one directly to the left. However, I have also already said that if you yourself don't think that's a problem, then Neutral Special would be fine for Unit Selection.

I feel that the Wars series is long overdue for a character in the Smash series. I would fully support Andy for sure.

I didn't change anything besides making some wording more clear, but I wanted to bump up this old thread anyways. I feel like Advance Wars deserves recognition as it is a significant first (second?) party series.

Sure, I support

Yeah, sure, support. I feel you should give Andy a strong neutral game to make up for him only having 2 useful special moves.

Lego Shaq wrote:

Yeah, sure, support. I feel you should give Andy a strong neutral game to make up for him only having 2 useful special moves.

Andy was the most average CO within Advance Wars - he didn't give his units any strengths or weaknesses. I do realize he has a couple of 'worthless' specials, but the other 2 specials are amazing.

Though, he is using wrenches as opposed to Mario's fists, so maybe a bit more range and power would be good.

Roy wrote:

Lego Shaq wrote:

Yeah, sure, support. I feel you should give Andy a strong neutral game to make up for him only having 2 useful special moves.

Andy was the most average CO within Advance Wars - he didn't give his units any strengths or weaknesses. I do realize he has a couple of 'worthless' specials, but the other 2 specials are amazing.

Though, he is using wrenches as opposed to Mario's fists, so maybe a bit more range and power would be good.

The fact is is that he literally only has 2 specials, amazing or not, and that needs to be compensated somehow. Strong neutral's would be good, honestly.

I suppose that's fair. Maybe there could be a 3rd usable special?


Capture - Andy stamps the ground, and a small building appears where he is standing (about up to Andy's height). While this structure is active, Andy's passive gold rate increases. Any unit that pass through the structure will be repaired slightly. After taking around 20% damage, the structure collapses. While it can be passed through easily by players, projectiles will hit it instead of passing through. Up to 3 structures can be placed at a time.

An important mechanic in Advance Wars is capturing cities, which are used to increase your income rate and to refuel your units. This special would encourage opponents to contest the buildings as well as giving him an extra shield against projectiles without having to spend funds. This would be down special (deploy moved to side). Thoughts/concerns?

Well, Andy sounds as a good idea for SSBCs a good idea for SSBC XD.

Howver, about Special Abilities, I was thinking in this:

-Neutral Special: Machine Gun: Andy uses a Machine Gun for attack his enemies. You can let pressed the button for shooting more.

-Side Special: Tank: Andy rides a tank, and he dashes against his enemies. After starting it, you can shoot with only pressing the Special Attack button. This move can be cancelled by pressing the Attack button, or using the jump button, or being attacked by an enemy.

-Up Special: Helicopter: Andy rides an helicopter, giving him about three seconds worth of flight. While riding it, you can shoot if you want, using the Special Attack button. This move can be cancelled by using an aerial attack, or being attacked by an enemy.

-Down Special: Bazooka: Andy uses a bazooka for shooting a missile against his enemies.

-Final Smash: Hyper Upgrade: Andy starts to ride his tank, and he gets ready to attack his enemies, while being accompained by a group of Infantry Units, Helicopters, Planes, and Tanks. Andy gets more Attack power during the Final Smash.




What do you think? Comment, please.

Can you please read the OP and focus on what's there, instead of simply just throwing out your random ideas for special moves? Because what you suggested basically undermines the entire concept behind the character. And to be perfectly honest, if those were Andy's special moves, I would be incredibly dissapointed and would rather not have him in the game at all.


And this applies to any and every topic you post in, really. Changing the given moveset needs a lot of discussion to back it up, and you have shown none.

Why has it taken me this long to find this? I loved playing the Advance War games, and it has been atleast known by Nintendo with the assist trophies. Support