Okay, I thought I had posted my Concepts portion of the blog, but apparently I didn't. I apologize to my fantasy viewers.

Kicking off, I'd like to talk about the various units in the game. Starting off with infantry, there'll be various variants of infantry. Talking only about the UNSC here, infantry units would include the standard riflemansquad, which is primarily comprised of four rifleman armed with the MA5 series assault rifle. The sniper squadis comprised of two people: one spotter and one sniper, which can engage enemies at a much longer range than other infantry squads, but lack the close up firepower for personal defense. The anti-air squadcan take down aircraft with their missile pods, and the anti-tank squadcan take out tanks with their rocket launchers. A grenadier squad, which is excellent at suppressing enemy infantry, is also available.

Which on a side note is one of the new gameplay mechanics. On top of a certain class killer (this unit excels at destroying vehicles), you also have class suppressions. So, the aforementioned grenadier squad can suppress any infantry advancements. Basically, you hold down the Y button for the tertiary ability, which is the suppression move, but can be swapped out for other tertiary abilities (more on that on a later date), and then the big circle comes up (the one used to select units). You then press A over the designated area and the selected unit(s) then move into position to cover and suppress that area. Any units that they are equipped to suppress will have a 70% chance of automatically falling back, and upgrades can be applied to either reduce your chances of falling back (active counter) or increase your chances of suppressing (passive counter). Moving through the suppression field will heavily damage the intended units, so any infantry moving through the grenadier squad's suppression field will sustain heavy damage unless they retreat immediately. Combining two or more squads into one suppression field increases the suppression capacity, so it's harder to pass through that field now. However, bypassing the suppression by bringing in non-suppressive units (such as vehicles passing through an infantry suppression zone) will cause little to no harm and can usually punch through without much delay. This creates an extra layer of strategy as you fall back, regroup with a friendly armored division, and then proceed through the suppression field once more.

Moving on, ground vehicles. You'll have tons of them. Without ground vehicles, you couldn't effectively provide an efficient task force for advancing through enemy lines. You'll need some form of ground support, basically. The first up is the Mongoose, which is considered a scout vehicle, which is a quick and nimble vehicle used to scout out enemy or unknown terrain as quickly as possible. Mongooses generally have no offensive firepower without upgrades (even then, it's rather inaccurate) and has low armor, so it's a top priority to get your Mongoose in and out. That way, you won't be spending a majority of your fund on scout vehicles, as well as getting the upper hand. The Warthog can be classified as a light attack vehicle, which has the machine gun to mow down infantry as well as inflict moderate aerial vehicle damage. A neat feature to be added into the game is the ability to select the loadout of various vehicles and units. For the Warthog, you can choose to mount the machine gun (for heavy infantry and moderate aircraft damage), Gauss cannon (for heavy vehicle damage), missile launcher (for heavy aircraft damage), troop carrier (to ferry troops to the frontlines), and any other possible variants I might've missed. The Scorpion would be considered the main battle tank, and is what defines land assaults. One of these babies can punch straight through enemy defenses without major harm. Just make sure it doesn't get itself into an ambush otherwise you're in a hairy situation. The Cobra is considered mobile artillery, as it can lock down and fire on targets from nearly across the map. The Wolverine is called the mobile AA platform, as it can shoot down aircraft with ease. It can also use the suppressive ability to suppress a certain region of the sky. The Elephant is a dedicated troop transport, and can ferry up to multiple squads, as well as lay down some heavy suppressive fire.

You might've caught me use the word ferry, and basically for vehicles that apply, you can choose to replace the suppressive tertiary ability with the ferry ability. This allows the said vehicle to meet at said rally point. When you send a squad to the rally point, it immediately hops on and the ferry then moves to the designated drop location (which can be changed accordingly). Different vehicles have different carrying capacities. The Troop Hog, for example, can only ferry one squad at a time, but a Pelican can ferry up to three, and the Elephant up to five.

Aircraft is aplenty in the Halo universe. The Falconis an aerial troop transport and can ferry troops. It has dual machine guns, ideal for taking on entrenched infantry and soft skinned vehicles. The Pelican (which should now be a unit) is also an aerial troop transport, but with the loadout ability, it can turn into a light gunship, similar to modern day Apache helicopters. It can be fitted with dual rocket pods and an undermounted machine gun. The Hornet is a light attack bird, or can be called the light airborne attack vehicle, having enough firepower and decent armor. The Hawk, an upgrade, can be considered amoderate airborne attack vehicle, since it is armed with laser firepower. The Vulture can be considered a heavy gunship, since it can rain down death with its powerful cannons and rocket pods.

The loadout ability is a little something something that should be added into the game for versatility. Basically, when you're in the circle menu and you hover the cursor over the unit (so you've highlighted it), you can then press Y to bring up the loadouts panel (if applicable) where you can change the armament or total tactical usage. The Pelican, for example, can ditch the troop bay for ammunition storage, which then turns the Pelican into a dedicated gunship.

Finally, space vehicles, should space combat work flawlessly. The corvettesare light scout ships for both factions. The corvettes are quick and nimble, but cannot sustain much damage. Frigatesare mainline space ships, not ideally armed for massive combat on their own. They are the equivalent of a frontline soldier. Carrierscan carry multiple units (as mentioned in the space combat portion of the Concepts blog, units are deployable units from your space ship, allowing you to conduct operations with smaller vessels, such as Longswords and sending Shortswords and Pelicans into the atmosphere of a planet for operations there. Destroyersare massive ships and can sustain quite a bit of damage. They favor heavy firepower over protection. Cruisersare massive ships as well and favor heavy protection over firepower, but by no means are they weak on the offensive side. Of course these are the general classes, as there are more in-depth ones, such as assault carriers, light frigates, different classes of cruisers, etc.

That should give you a rough idea of the amount of units to be available in Halo Wars 2, counting space vessels. For the UNSC, there are approximately 30 units that I can think off the top of my head from the Halo lore that fit these unit classifications. Count the Covenant in, as well as the space bound support vessels, such as the Sabre, Longsword, and Shortsword, that should easily round out the total unit variety to 70. There's still room for more too. Plus, any infantry variants haven't been thought of.

Next update, you should expect my explaining in-depth the new features I listed here (suppression, tertiary abilities, ferrying, and loadouts), as well as some look into the control scheme, and maybe even the Covenant perspective on things. Stay tuned!