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To those who've been following, the open beta for Dawn of Warhammer 40,000: Firestorm has been released not to long ago.

It can be downloaded here.

Yessssss. I'd just checked the forum a few days ago, I guess I must've missed it. Thanks for the heads up, I'll be playing the crap out of this.

Just found it. Lucky since I just recently got back into DC. This is probably going to be way above my play level though. :\

Now we just wait for CS Goto to wrok another mediocre book with another horrible-as-fuck ending.

What does this mod do exactly? TT balance and race mod (from the description) doesn't say anything to me. How does it compare to, say the Annihilation mod?

Thanks

Kuja wrote:Now we just wait for CS Goto to wrok another mediocre book with another horrible-as-fuck ending.

I'm basing this off the last post in this thread before mine. He would write a book based on a mod??

[R_H] wrote:What does this mod do exactly? TT balance and race mod (from the description) doesn't say anything to me. How does it compare to, say the Annihilation mod?

Thanks

First of all, it adds a whole slew of content. There are tons of new units: Space Marine veterans, command squads, Land Raider Crusaders, Imperial Guard Leman Russ variants, Ork Kommandoz and Battlewagonz, etc. Just about everything you'd find looking through a tabletop army Codex is in the game.

There are revamped sounds: They're a lot more intense and generally war-like, and most notably the freakin' bolters sound a bit more like bolters (still not perfect, but hey, it's improvement).

Primarily, however, it does a ground-up overhaul on the core game mechanics. Every stat and ability is based much more closely on their TT counterparts, and balanced from there. Combat mechanics are probably the most immediately apparent change, as they are much more fluffy; most small arms won't hurt light vehicles or buildings at all, Space Marines are quite a bit tougher, things like that. Additionally, abilities make more sense with regards to TT and fluff: the goddamn Chaplain now has Honour of the fucking Chapter and Litanies of fucking Hate *cough* (sorry, pet peeve), most units that can Infiltrate in TT can Infiltrate in DoW40K, and most that can't can't, and so on.

In my (admittedly biased) opinion, it's the only real way to play DoW ever since the original versions came out for WA.

Wow, so it does away with some of the RTS-legacy stuff? I might have to dust of DoW then. Is combat balance between units still the same?

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:

[R_H] wrote:What does this mod do exactly? TT balance and race mod (from the description) doesn't say anything to me. How does it compare to, say the Annihilation mod?

Thanks

First of all, it adds a whole slew of content. There are tons of new units: Space Marine veterans, command squads, Land Raider Crusaders, Imperial Guard Leman Russ variants, Ork Kommandoz and Battlewagonz, etc. Just about everything you'd find looking through a tabletop army Codex is in the game.

There are revamped sounds: They're a lot more intense and generally war-like, and most notably the freakin' bolters sound a bit more like bolters (still not perfect, but hey, it's improvement).

Primarily, however, it does a ground-up overhaul on the core game mechanics. Every stat and ability is based much more closely on their TT counterparts, and balanced from there. Combat mechanics are probably the most immediately apparent change, as they are much more fluffy; most small arms won't hurt light vehicles or buildings at all, Space Marines are quite a bit tougher, things like that. Additionally, abilities make more sense with regards to TT and fluff: the goddamn Chaplain now has Honour of the fucking Chapter and Litanies of fucking Hate *cough* (sorry, pet peeve), most units that can Infiltrate in TT can Infiltrate in DoW40K, and most that can't can't, and so on.

In my (admittedly biased) opinion, it's the only real way to play DoW ever since the original versions came out for WA.

Do they have different variants of the Baneblade?

How about Land Raider Terminators? i.e. the 6 lasgun barrel ones.

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Do they have different variants of the Baneblade?

How about Land Raider Terminators? i.e. the 6 lasgun barrel ones.

No. And I assume you refer to the Terminus, and no. There's no Apocalypse stuff unless you count the Baneblade.

Stark wrote:Wow, so it does away with some of the RTS-legacy stuff? I might have to dust of DoW then. Is combat balance between units still the same?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. It is a little less generic-RTS-y, yes. Combat balance is really up in the air right now, as it's only Beta 1, but it's quite a bit different than vanilla anyway. If you mean "Does close combat squad x still counter ranged squad y" then no, the balance is completely different. While it's still important to, say, tie up heavy weapons squads in hand-to-hand (so, for instance, an Assault Marine squad would still be quite effective against a Tau Firewarrior squad), there aren't specific pre-dictated responses required like in your typical RTS ("omfg hes usin tac marinez y r u spammin shoota boyz NOOB omg").

Yeah, that's what I mean. Sounds like it makes it a bit more like tabletop, which is a step in the right direction.

Since you probably know, is there a reason why mods don't move the assets from DoW into the far better CoH engine?

Stark wrote:Yeah, that's what I mean. Sounds like it makes it a bit more like tabletop, which is a step in the right direction.

Since you probably know, is there a reason why mods don't move the assets from DoW into the far better CoH engine?

Well, first of all, a straight lift of the art and data from DoW to use in a mod for CoH would probably be illegal. I'm not sure if Relic/THQ would object or not though.

Then there's the problem of the differences in the engines. You'd have to put in a lot of functionality which doesn't really exist in CoH (most notably, hand-to-hand combat), and you'd have to put a lot of stuff into the DoW content that only exists in CoH (such as squad AI/positioning, quasi-intelligence WRT cover et al, tank sponsons might be difficult to implement, etc.).

That said, ever since CoH came out I've been dying for something to do this, but I've never gotten my hopes up as it's a rather lofty pipe dream.

EDIT: Actually, it should be noted that the project lead for DoW40K also plays quite a bit of CoH, so you'll see a few CoH-style improvements in DoW40K.

Help, the text file in the zip says to unzip it to the DoW:DC directory, but it doesn't show up in the mod list in-game?

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Help, the text file in the zip says to unzip it to the DoW:DC directory, but it doesn't show up in the mod list in-game?

You probably didn't preserve the directory structure. You should have the single "DoW40k" folder (or whatever it was) right in the main DC directory alongside "w40k" "dowxp" and "dowxp2" and whatever other mod folders you have.

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Help, the text file in the zip says to unzip it to the DoW:DC directory, but it doesn't show up in the mod list in-game?

You probably didn't preserve the directory structure. You should have the single "DoW40k" folder (or whatever it was) right in the main DC directory alongside "w40k" "dowxp" and "dowxp2" and whatever other mod folders you have.

I unzipped the contents as they are.

Does it matter what version of Dark Crusade I'm using?

You should probably patch it. And double-check the directory structure:

C:\Program Files\THQ\Dawn of War - Dark Crusade\DoW40K_FoK

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:You should probably patch it. And double-check the directory structure:

C:\Program Files\THQ\Dawn of War - Dark Crusade\DoW40K_FoK

I patched Dark Crusade to 1.2. It works now.

The mod is odd though. I tried skirmish but it doesn't allow me to up the unit quota.

What exactly does this mod change? I couldn't find any info about it on Dawn of War Filefront.

Thanks

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:You should probably patch it. And double-check the directory structure:

C:\Program Files\THQ\Dawn of War - Dark Crusade\DoW40K_FoK

I patched Dark Crusade to 1.2. It works now.

The mod is odd though. I tried skirmish but it doesn't allow me to up the unit quota.

It isn't supposed to. However, you may notice that many units don't take up overall unit cap; they just share softcaps with a few other units. So for Space Marines you can have six basic infantry squads, three tanks (or Devastator squads, which share the tank cap), three elite choices, three jump troop squads (so Assault Marines and the two types of Land Speeder share the same cap), two commanders, and six troop transports (Rhino and Razorback in any combination totaling six APCs/AFVs). The elite choices are where the hard decisions come in; between the two types of Veterans, two types of Terminators, and three types of Dreadnoughts, you can only have three total. The idea is to make the army structure conform more closely to what you see in the tabletop game, where armies get only so many infantry, vehicle, command, and elite choices rather than spamming the good troops.

[R_H] wrote:What exactly does this mod change? I couldn't find any info about it on Dawn of War Filefront.

Thanks

Aside from the changes I just mentioned, it adds a lot of units to each race and completely changes the damage/armor system, so that basic infantry weapons won't hurt vehicles or buildings, among other things. That last bit really helps to curb early-game rushing; if you can't destroy the enemy's base with your starting infantry, there's little point to throwing them at his turrets.

Thanks Rogue 9. I like the softcap concept. I'll have to wean myself off of 40 inf 40 veh cap though

How many heavy weapons upgrades do SM tactical squads get? How many do devastator squads get?

Thanks

[R_H] wrote:Thanks Rogue 9. I like the softcap concept. I'll have to wean myself off of 40 inf 40 veh cap though

How many heavy weapons upgrades do SM tactical squads get? How many do devastator squads get?

Thanks

1 and 2 at first, then the Armory upgrade ups it to 2 and 4 respectively.

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:
1 and 2 at first, then the Armory upgrade ups it to 2 and 4 respectively.

In TT don't Devastor squads get 6 heavy weapons, or am I thinking of something else entirely?

[R_H] wrote:In TT don't Devastor squads get 6 heavy weapons, or am I thinking of something else entirely?

No. Four. DoW40K is spot on except that the DoW engine cannot differentiate between special weapons and heavy weapons, so in the mod it's possible to take 2 meltaguns or 2 heavy bolters (or whatever) in a Tac squad.

Holy shit, I just tested the Imperial Guard. Armored Company doctrine, bitches!

What the hell. Filzip keeps locking up when I try to unzip the rar, but when I try to unzip other rar files it works.

Anyone else having this problem?

Thanks