Warhammer 40k DW:U Mod

[mensrea]

Wow guys, that's some fast work! I am definitely adding Necrons, and even have their race file designed. These files will come in handy. Whichever shipset I use for the Necrons, the other will still get used on another race.

I am quite interested in seeing if anyone can find Tyranid ships.

I also was looking at some ship models Phocian had given me a while back and noticed that there were some nice Rogue Trader ships in the pack. I will be swapping out the black ships that don't match with those. They don't share a color scheme but the overall designs are the same.

To answer your question on how these races will work, I can give you a general idea here. The Necrons will have almost no population growth. Instead, they will frequently receive free troop ships (Necron ships who are gathering around the newly awakened tomb world). They will also receive massive population boosts to implementing exterminate policies on occupied worlds (converting population into more Necrons, I would restrict this to only work with humans but cannot: see pariahs). They will be forced to search out other dormant tomb worlds to build up population. Of course these aspects would normally be stifling but the Necrons will have such high bonuses that it should work out. They will also be barred from using shields and instead rely on custom armor (necrodermis).

The Tyranids will have, practically, their own tech tree and unique components. They will not use minerals and ores like every other race. Instead, they will need food and biomass to grow all their components. They wont have shields either, but instead will have quite powerful armor and component repair modules. Their population will also have a hard time growing without access to biomass and DNA (living creatures to consume). One thing I aim to do is make it so planets with massive amounts of biomass (planets where you get armillaria fruit from) make them much, much more powerful. I am also going to look into giving them the ability to spawn monsters, but don't bet on it working.

Swizzle, I did notice you had the deceiver and nightbringer listed as leaders. The C'tan were actually defeated by the Necrons in a great uprising before they went into stasis (not destroyed, but broken into many shards). Their leaders had finally come to their senses and realized the terrible mistake they had made in casting off their flesh and becoming soulless servants to the star gods. After the revolution and the beginning of the slumber, the leaders then removed the built in controls from their people, basically making them free.

Upon awakening then, they were usually lead by the nobles and lords that had commanded them before they became machines. They essentially regained their souls to an extent, only to be extremely pissed off at what they had become and more so, at all the little peasant races that now occupied their galaxy and desecrated their tombs. I'm pretty sure this was a retcon though, because I remember the lore changing at one point (sort of like how the Tau suddenly became Orwellian and the Stouts, well, we just don't talk about them). Honestly, I kind of like this retcon though, it makes the Necrons seem a lot more interesting than just being mindless C'tan pawns.

[Japhet]

Some Tyranid stuff. I hope you find it of use.

[swizzlewizzle]

Really cool images Japhet. For the ships, would recommend doing a bit of recoloring to match the color scheme across ships.. maybe make them a bit lighter so they aren't hard to see over a black space background? Cool.

[mensrea]

Thanks guys. I already put this artwork to good use.

I know I said I wouldn't be doing this. Here I am though, doing it.

Here's v.8.2: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/561 ... 0v.8.2.zip

Keep in mind this has not been thoroughly tested in gameplay, but nothing unpredictable was changed so it should be fine. I added many techs, added Necrons and balanced many things. I actually have 3 races left to work on, not counting the Tyranids and 4 pirate races I have planned. The weapon tech tree is now completely finished. I wound up adding over 120 new techs in that branch. I think it got a little out of hand but I personally like to always be able to play a different game by never simply maxing out all research. If you don't like that play style I highly recommend doubling research rates (or more).

On another note, I have maxed out my dropbox space, so I have to remove some older versions. I will try to retain major changes just in case.

v.8.2 changelog
-all but 3 races have been finished (minus art and full dialog)
-added the Necrons with full art and custom UI courtesy of Japhet and Swizzlewizzle
-extensive race balancing and rework
-complete and massively expanded weapon tech tree. 543 techs now, and still energy and high tech left
-government balancing
-many other small tweaks and fixes

[swizzlewizzle]

Can the AI handle the new expanded tech tree without dithering around at level 2 tech for eons?

[mensrea]

Yeah, it can, if you tell it exactly what to do via research pathing, which is something I have not done yet. It also follows its primary techs to an extent, which are included.

[Capshades]

Really interested to see what you'll do with the other two tech trees. Have you figured out how to get the change to the planetary facilities to work yet?

Also btw the link on the front page for V.8.1 is to v.8.2 lol

[Japhet]

Really cool images Japhet. For the ships, would recommend doing a bit of recoloring to match the color scheme across ships.. maybe make them a bit lighter so they aren't hard to see over a black space background? Cool.

Sadly, I really suck at recoloring (you can see that on the Eldar stuff I'll post in the near future), otherwise I would have changed the imperial ships into the nice and stylish green and white. I also didn't made the tyranid ship images. I found them on the web some time ago, but I can't remember where. Maybe it was the Starsector forum.

By the way, I'm aware of the C'tan fluff change, it's just that I don't like the Newcrons that much and adding C'tan Portraits is just cosmetic anyway.[;)]

[swizzlewizzle]

Looks like the computer thinks the level 1 armor is better then necrodermis for ships... so unless I manually upgrade all of my ships, they will continuously revert back to crappy level 1 armor.

EDIT: Also seems the computer thinks upgrading to the 520 size hyperdeny is good... ~_~

Also, for necrons, taking over a planet with troops results in only that planet's population, which means that even though necrons get a 400% boost to growth rate, there are no necrons on the planet to "grow"... ?

Also.. "Flee when" needs to be FORCED to "never" for necron designs - necrons have no shields so not turning this on leads to ships always retreating instantly.

Finally, looks like grav beam research is a bit broken... upgrading the beam does nothing.. seems that you copy pasted a few too many times.

**EditEdit: The higher weapon techs require a truly massive amount of research.. i'm not sure if this is intended, but the "super area weapons" tech requires on the order of a THOUSAND TIMES more research then the highest level of hyperdrive....

It's basically impossible to finish any of the end or second to end tier weapons in a normal game.

Some more... I don't know if it's just me, but for races like the imperials and necrons with really good ship maintenance... it seems that there might be *too* many ships. In most battles in the mid game my computer chugs away trying to process the battles, especially with 50 million fighters/projectiles all over the place in addition to the ships themselves... Makes things not very enjoyable.

[Japhet]

Ok, here are the Orks. The ships are...not particulary good. Most of them aren't even new. I just used the older ones to create civilian ships and bases, so that the Orks aren't using any DW vanilla ships anymore. I did put in some alternative base images aswell, but they don't mix very well. Not that Orks would care about such things. [;)]

By the way, mensrea, you don't have any plans of spitting the Orks into seperate Races/Klans?

[mensrea]

Cap, I will probably be doing the same thing as I did with the weapons. I have the trees laid out on paper. I am debating reworking the guts of the tech tree files though, its a real mess.

Newcrons - I like that. When did the change happen, anyway? Nothing even refers to the way it was before. If you didn't just confirm it I think I would begin to question my sanity.

Swizzle - glad you could help test it. The armor thing is an easy fix. Nothing I can do about the hyperdeny thing other than remove it as the AI seems to always pick the "best" component regardless of size or power requirements. Too bad there isn't a "super" version of most components as that seems to work out well with the weapons.

Necrons will have a chance of moving to the planets that you conquer and once they do then you can begin culling the natives. I can increase their likelihood of moving there but modding limitations dictate that it will never be a perfect arrangement.

No matter how many times I look at that damn tech tree I always miss something. It will be fixed.

The massive research times are intended. The rationale being that anyone can alter the research rate at the start of a game if they want to make things faster. Further, the tech races can actually stand a chance against the warlike ones if they get to the point where their level of tech is way ahead of them. Improvements get pretty significant. The way it is now, or at least will be when all trees are reworked, I would say not to feel like its cheaty to turn up research rates as unless you like week or multi week long games you won't get very far. Also, I recommend just focusing on one line or two lines of research per field. Once I get the trees done I will begin work on AI research pathing and that is what they will be doing.

It's not just you. I have a 3.8 ghz hexacore, 16 gb of RAM and an SSD drive and I have always gotten lag from big fleet battles. I was told my graphics card which has 1 GB of memory might be the limiting factor, and that does seem the case as it stops lagging when I zoom out. I had made some changes recently that I hoped would address these things, like cutting back on incomes, reducing ship maintenance reductions, and basically forcing the AI to build only the biggest ships instead of hoards of little ones. Making ships simply hold more stuff so you don't need so many in the first place. Seems like it may not have been enough, though, and I will have to go further. I was kind of hoping that it was just me and my rinky dink vidja card.

I may actually work on some graphical changes to reduce the strain on rigs. I'm thinking certain projectile graphics could be eliminated as they would be too fast and small to see anyway. Others can be simplified (fewer colors and no transparency) and made smaller. Exhaust on fighters could be removed (every fighter has its own little animated exhaust if it has the pure blue on it). Fighter detail in general could be scaled down.

Japhet - I will be adding Orkish Freebooterz as a pirate only race. Aside from that I have considered adding Orkish clans as well as Eldar factions, which is why I added them as specific race families.

[Japhet]

I think the Newcron fluff change happened in the fifth edition, around 2011. Not sure why Gamesworkshop changed it, but who knows what goes on in Matt Wards head [&:]

By Eldar factions, do you mean a separation into one craftworld faction, one exodite faction and maybe the corsairs or Dark Eldar (both as pirates)?

Also, if the Tyranids don't work out as planned, you could add them as replacement for the space creatures.

[Lord Baal]

Ah hem... There are Ork and Eldar pirates? How it's the Imperium tech tree? Could there be divided in at least other factions like SM and Adeptus Mechanicum and forced to be allies by script? It is compatible with the latest version of the game?
I... I... I'm having a total happiness attack here! Just found your mod dude. [X(] [&o] really impressive.

[Capshades]

We had a lag issue on a mod I was working on for Star Wars Empire at War, and one of the solutions was to simply double the projectile speed. Does that have a chance of working here?

[Maponus]

By Eldar factions, do you mean a separation into one craftworld faction, one exodite faction and maybe the corsairs or Dark Eldar (both as pirates)?

Don't forget Harlequins!

[swizzlewizzle]

Mensrea, I understand your position on the tech tree, but what I quoted were values from "FAST" tech level. The problem with DW's tech tree is that every tech is exponentially harder to research unless you manually modify it's multiplier... anything past the final "normal" vanilla tech level is nearly impossible to research, even with a max tech race with tons of pop. Please realize that we are talking about 10-1000x more then *the longest to research research in the vanilla game*. I can understand putting perhaps one or two levels above the vanilla levels, but they NEED to have their research cost modified.

[mensrea]

Japhet - Yes, I was thinking Craftworld Eldar and Exodite Eldar, as well as Dark Eldar, but not corsairs, as they don't seem all that much different from the run of the mill pirate outfit. The Tyranids will work out as planned, just be prepared for seeing a lot of cases where the Tyranids are not allowed to use this or that tech because its made mechanically rather than grown.

Baal - Glad you like it. The Imperium will not be split up as the Mechanicum consider the Emperor to be a god (the Omnimessiah) and the Space Marines (Astartes in the mod) are still organized by legions rather than chapters. The separation comes after the events depicted in this mod if you play with the Heresy mode on. I wanted to add them as you said in the scenario at one point but AI is too fickle to rely on as much as the Imperium relied on Mechanicus and Astartes.

Cap - I may yet just double the speed again, but I already have increased it considerably and don't want to remove maneuverability from combat. I will work with the images and economy some more and see where we are from there.

Maponus - I will probably add the Harlequins as a spec ops to some Eldar faction now that you mention it.

Swizzle - You are correct. On the one hand players can make things easier, and on the other they can make them harder too. I will make it so technologies get twice as expensive each time rather than four times. I will also make super weapon/component tech not so expensive, considering you have to research so much to even ever get to it. It actually makes sense even, you already know enough about it from researching all the other techs, so why would it be so hard to just combine them into one component.

Admittedly I took into consideration only one side of that position due to personal preference. I am glad you brought it up or I would have not thought about it much more at the moment.

[Japhet]

That's good to hear. The Eldar are my favourite race in 40K. I still work on the character role icons for them, so it will take a while until they are finished. Dark Eldar stuff is rare sadly, I've only managed to find two ships plus fighters and some troop sprites. Not much to work with.

In the meantime, here is the Empire pack. It contains some new character portraits, UI icons, troop images and four ship sets: two for the Imperial Navy, one for the Rogue Traders and one for the Space Marines. One of the Navy sets is just the old one, I added it just for completionist sake (and tweaked the cobra class, which is my favourite ship). The other set is based one the old sprites, but the weapon parts have higher quality and some of the smaller ships look better (especially the cobra class). I found them on the starsector forum, if I remeber correctly.

The Rogue Trader shipset is perfect for the private sector of the empire. Sadly, I wan't able to create good looking Adeptus Mechanicus ships as constructors but the trader ships will suffice.

As for the UI, I dind't really know what do do first, which colours I should use, etc. I'm personally unhappy with the diplomacy button. So, I'm open for suggestions.

Also, have you considerd adding the Tau at some point? I know they were not around during the Heresy, but not every game session has to be set in that era and it would allow for great what-if-scenarios. Just asking because I've some nice Tau ship & troop sets waiting to be used [;)]

[mensrea]

Japhet, thank you very much. I like these Imperial ships a lot more than the ones we have, so much in fact that I am replacing them all. I did think about using the rogue traders but decided against it because they don't match. I did use some of the alternative ships, stripped them of obvious weapons and made them into the civilian ships. Now, not only do all ships match but they are much better looking in general. We even have new stations. Your UI work is also really good. I especially liked the Necron and am looking forward to checking out the Imperials. The ship names were kind of confusing though, did you mean to leave the translations in?

For the Dark Eldar we could just color shift the Eldar. I'm not sure what you use to edit things but with paint shop pro its very easy so if you don't want to do it I can.

How about a rustic looking scroll for the diplomacy? Or a space marine, as they is usually how the Imperium conducts diplomacy.

I will not be adding the Tau, I kind of am making a stretch to add Necrons and Tyranids, but Tau were definitely in the stone age at this time. I imagine when I'm done with the mod someone will change races around to reflect M41 though, so there is that. Of course, I would be glad to use the Tau ships for one of the other races considering they still use vanilla ships. Perhaps Scythian or Kehletai?

[Cyrtis]

Such a great mod! [:D]


I'm shocked! SHOCKED I tell you! The eldar are diplomatic geniuses! With a little currency to grease those weird alien hands/paws/appendages, they can get their hands on ALL the legacy tech (well, except orky and guella stuff). Is that gamey? And what the heck does "resettle" mean? Cause my eldar are just fine living among huge populations of shapeshifting vampires, et al. Weird...