Ground Control

Unlikely most RTSes, Ground Control ignores resource gathering entirely. In each mission, the player controls a preset number of squads (which they select from their pool prior to the drop). After insertion, the player accomplishes their mission, then extracts from the area to a friendly LZ. In all, a very fun game. Like all games, it has some good and bad points.

Good:

• The graphics and camera control are awesome. You can play the game from a far overhead view, in which each trooper is a mere pixel. Or you can drop down, and see the world from the perspective of that infantryman. Which is a great view when you are watching a bombardment - units and buildings blow up spectacularly! Use of the Microsoft Strategic Commander is a great aid to camera control here.
• The unit command interface has the same clean simplicity as Total Annihilation. Give each squad a command for how it can move, when it should fire, and whether it's in line formation or column formation.
• Command of squads. In most games, you command individual units, even though you'd never send one infantry to attack something. In Ground Control, you have squads, which range in size from 1 to 8 units.
• Line of sight and elevation effects are impressive. Units on heights have better range and accuracy. Stealthy units can sneak right past other units. Indirect fire rocks!
• Squad experience accumulates from mission to mission - if the squads survive. Destroyed squads are replaced with green units.

Bad:

• If you move a group of squads, the ordering of the squads follows two rules. 1) The Command APC is placed as near the middle as possible. 2) Squads with lower numbers are placed to the right, in a strict hierarchy. Numbering is, of course, based on the order in which you placed the units into the dropships before the mission.
• The aerodynes (aerial units) are a bit strained. They can sit in very tight circles over a location, making them interact more like fast hovercars. The game would probably be improved by removing the planes entirely.
• The AI is, as usual, operationally dumb. If you give a ground unit a target on an elevation, it'll happily shoot away at it, doing almost no damage, while your artillery slowly bombards it into oblivion.
• The manual doesn't bother explaining defensive structures. So when you first encounter the anti-missile gun emplacement, which shoots down artillery shells, nuclear bombs, and anything else that drops out of the sky, you're in for a surprise. Whoops!
• Evac via an LZ requires only that the Command APC arrive at the LZ - so you can leave units in defensible positions around the board, and they will evac as long as they are still alive when the APC reaches the LZ.