Dragon Commander Previews
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In order to get this turn based part of the game playing just right, the team at Larian actually made it into a board game and played it continually until they worked out the best balance of features there was. They then implemented it into the game, and the result is what you see in the game now.
Each turn, captured provinces acquire gold for the player. In order to conquer provinces, the player must move their armies, commanded by unique generals, into battle. Cards acquired through fulfilling requests for characters can be played on specific battles to influence the outcome -- and at the end of a turn, the player makes a choice of which battle they want to take a direct role in.
Then begins the real time fun. Flying around the impressively-detailed landscape as a dragon (with a jetpack -- which allows the player to either slow down time, bizarrely, or accelerate to supersonic speeds), the player can use their special abilities to attack enemy forces as well as command their troops to move and attack in a simple case of pointing the crosshair and pushing up on the D-pad of a controller. The plan is for the game to be playable by non action game fans by simply hanging back as the dragon and ordering your forces -- but more excitingly for fans of Relic's classic space RTS Homeworld, in the final game it will also be possible to zoom out to a tactical overview and command the battle from afar in 3D.
Then we move to GameInformer shares "high hopes" for it:
Even in its current pre-alpha stage of development, the sight of a full-on battle in Dragon Commander is remarkable. Swarms of fighter craft darken the skies as they pour out of flying fortresses and battleships. Final Fantasy-like zeppelins reel drunkenly as they trade explosive blasts. Towering airbases that could subjugate an entire kingdom on their own are engulfed in flame and smoke as their formidable defenses melt away under the furious onslaught of your dragon form. Entire fleets vanish into puffs of vapor at a single disintegrating roar from your draconic throat.
The gameplay is based around making the player feel as awesome as possible. The jetpack strapped to your back allows you to cross kilometers in the blink of an eye, or circle your prey so fast that its swiveling turrets can't keep track of your blurred form. The rough UI I saw at my Gamescom demo had four slots for equipping special powers mapped to a 360 controller's face buttons, with limited quantities of Imp Cannon shots (basically nukes that can one-shot anything in the game) and the dragon roar that vaporizes all smaller craft within a kilometer. The developer demonstrating the game launched the basic breath attack, a superheated plasma blast that melts steel, nonstop as he tore apart enemy fleets.
You can also issue commands to your fleets, but the functionality was very early in development when I saw the game. Their rudimentary AI followed simple commands like (attack this thing) and (fall back to my position.) Larian says that the team has big plans for improving this aspect of the game, up to and including a tactical view that you can zoom out to and give real RTS-like commands from a perspective where you can see the larger battle unfold. The ultimate goal is to make a compelling game for people who aren't as good (or interested in) flying their dragon form around themselves and would prefer to conquer the world the old-fashioned way.
