Warhammer 40k DW:U Mod

[Japhet]

Looking forward for the new release.

In the meantime, here're everyone's favourite cannibalistic bird people - the Kroot. Only four ship images, but the rest is all there, art wise, at least. I had to create most things from scratch, so the UI looks a little primitive a and simple, but I think thats fitting for the Kroot.

Working on Chaos is frustrating, there's not much I can do. I managed to finish the UI icons, but since chaos is a nonplayer faction, nobody will ever see them. In terms of ships and bases, I have several bomber and fighter images and some special capitalships. Not much, really.

However, I've found a nice ship set for the Orks. It doesn't look like the canon Ork ships, but I think they're more...well, orkish. It could at least serve as ships for the freebooterz.

[blackhelm]

So (mentioning the tau reminded me) why are the Kroot a pirate race? Or am I just crazy and that Kroot photo is totally something else? I wasn't aware that the Imperium, or anyone else, ran into the Kroot prior to the Tau helping them against greenskin incursions in M38 or so. I don't particularly feel very strongly either way (frankly, I'm surprised the rather enthusiastic piracy and mercenary bent of the Kroot didn't cause them to play in galactic events far earlier), but for consistency's sake, it might be good to think about nixing them.

Looking forward to the next update!

Edit: Aha! Japhet ninja'd me and confirmed my suspicions! Anyways, I'm cool with having the Kroot, because flavor-wise it definitely SEEMS like they'd go be pirate mercs, but there's no lore for it during the Great Crusade.

[mensrea]

The Chaos art will be used by the Laer (Slaanesh worshipers: http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Laer ) and the Brotherhood of Ruin (a mixed pirate faction that worshipped Chaos: http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Brotherhood_of_Ruin ).

Yeah, I actually just googled "wh40k mercenary" at some point and put one of the pictures I found in. At the time I didn't realize it was the Kroot, and after I did I figured no one else would. It seems my time is up and I will have to replace them.

I will use the Kroot stuff for the Vrakk, as they are basically giant Kroot.

[mensrea]

So after planning what to do with research cost balancing I have a solution but first I wanted to reveal my findings and give a little background.

Each tech after column 1 doubles the previous column and we have 17 columns. This means we go from 2 times as expensive at tier 2 tech to 131,072 more expensive at tier 17. At normal research rates of 120k base then the most expensive tech would cost 2,061,584,302,080k. Even with 6000k research that would take 12,369,505,812,480 months, or 1,030,792,151,040 years to complete.

Now, even if I set it to 1k base research, level 17 tech would still cost 131,072k. At a more modest research rate of 2000k that would still take 60 months, or 5 years, to complete.

Of course I'm not factoring in tech theft, crash research (natural or forced), tech trading or other discoveries in this, but I'm thinking the difference would not be that profound.

The solution I have in mind is to make costs linearly more expensive after x32. So instead of 32-64-128-256, etc it will be 32-50-70-90 and so on. Now, keep in mind that at normal base research rate the 32 is 3840k, which is still a pretty hefty sum. Still, its actually doable at this rate, especially if you dump extra money into crashing research projects.

Any thoughts?

[Solarius Scorch]

Hmm... While Tau definitely aren't ready to explore the galaxy, weren't Vespids advanced enough...? I'm not sure... Well, just a thought.

[Capshades]

Your solution sounds good, how long would column 17 tech take to complete at 120k base, with average research speeds and your new concept?

[mensrea]

Average (2000k~) at the highest possible research cost (25200k) would take a year. If you throw money into it, 4 months. The super weapons start over at x50 though, or they would be too expensive. This is at the 120k base, which is normal. I think this is a very good balance now. At the lowest research setting possible (1k) a user could fly through the research system. At the highest it would take a very long time.

By the way snizzle I really have to thank you again for pushing this issue. I was a little stubborn at first but this is actually reasonable now.

[mensrea]

Alright, time for v.9! Things are really starting to come together now. The tech tree is 2/3 done. All but 3 main races are finished. I have devised some new systems that I will be using to classify races, and I have been working towards those systems with this update. I did not add the Tyranids yet, but when I do they will be worth it, having their own unique techs for just about everything. In general this update represents a major overhaul, mostly due to the tech fixes, but we are getting closer to being done with races. Lots of new artwork too, thanks to Japhet and GEM.

Anyway, here it is: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/561 ... %20v.9.zip

And here is the changelog.

v.9 changelog

-completely new energy & construction tech tree
-balanced tech tree costs. it's actually reasonable now
-reworked e&c components
-fixes and balancing for weapons tech tree
-beginning fixes to high-tech tech tree
-reworked many components for better firing animations
-more racial balancing. working towards 5 general categories of races
-more tech trees for legacy components. moving away from 1 tech gives all
-UI's and complete and improved shipsets for Imperials, Eldar, and Ork. added many new flags. UI for Vrakk (thanks to Japhet)
-more government balancing
-reworked Necrons
-general reduction to maintenance reductions
-new named characters for the Interex: Sumrell, Sosa, Klyne, Japhet, Maponus
-added improved images from GEM (credit goes to Martian)
-fixed all reported bugs and addressed all approved suggestions
-general fixes and reorganizations

[Capshades]

Everything looks good so far, just one thing that bugs me. The text line "Weapons & Defenses" seems to have expanded the definitions box in the unit info window, squishing in the actual information box. Not a problem, just looks really weird haha

Like the changes to the tech tree, looks like you pulled it off well. I really like what you did with the thrusters and vectors.

Really like some of the new art. Are the star animations new too? They look really cool.

Edit: Also, did you change component resource requirements a lot? It seems like I'm constantly out of uranium for the first 20 minutes.

Is the planet (specifically homeworld) construction speed for imperials supposed to be decreased by 1/4? Looks like all the boost are still there but it's outputting a quarter of the old build rate.

[mensrea]

Well, I could easily change it back to just weapons, it just bothered me that armor was there. I am using a monitor with a pathetically low resolution so that is probably the reason I didn't realize that.

Thanks, Cap. I didn't like how thrusters were done before so I took that approach.

The art is from GEM, the graphics enhancement mod: tm.asp?m=3211317&mpage=1&key= . It was gathered from various artists and assembled by Martian.

I did increase uranium costs as I felt I had made them too cheap again but its a very fine balance. I may have to work with it again a little. Make sure the AI is not pumping out ships with atomic weapons as that will put a big dent in your uranium stocks.

And no, its not supposed to be doing that with the Imperials. I don't receall changing anything so I don't know what the issue is. I will take a look.

[Cyrtis]

Love what you're doing with this mod! Just a minor thing- it seems the necrons are locked out of building armoured divisions, as they cannot build the prerequisite tech. I don't know if that was intentional or not.

[Cyrtis]

Where can I find out what all the character traits actually do? Is there a guide somewhere?

[ehsumrell1]

ORIGINAL: Cyrtis

Where can I find out what all the character traits actually do? Is there a guide somewhere?

Yes Cyrtis, there is a section on what the Character Traits and Skills are in the Appendix in
the back of the DW Universe Modding guide.

You can get it via download here: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3615682

[Cyrtis]

Thanks! By the way, what is "The Briar Patch"?

[mensrea]

It was from a good Star Trek movie: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Briar_Patch .

[Japhet]

Chaos. Not much compared to the onther packs, just two UI sets for the Emperors Children and the World Bearers, some character portraits (mostly fallen Primarchs), some new ships (fighters & bombers) and a collection of chaos troops (not usage ready though).

Oh, and I noticed that some of my images in the mod are labeled wrong or misspelled, which means that they will not show up properly. I'm sorry for that.

[Capshades]

My homeworld is currently producing 9000 construction points, where as it used to produce 10800 in the last couple versions of the mod. (26+ billion people, Imperial continental 98%+, Bakura shipyards)

And I don't build military ships for like the first hour, so the Uranium crisis was all due to just civilian ships and constructors.

[mensrea]

Cyrtis - Sorry about that. I was trying to force Necrons into not using any armor but the necrodermis and I inadvertently locked them out of researching armored troops. It will be fixed. How are the Necrons doing, by the way? I was unsure about restricting them from shields but that armor is pretty tough stuff, especially combined with their nano-repair modules. That does remind me though...I should be making Necron infantry much stronger, sort of like how I made the Astartes very powerful.

It's cool Japhet, mistakes happen, I just appreciate your contributions. As you guys know I am not big on the art dept. so I have been relying on user submissions. Thanks again.

Capshades - I think I may have misunderstood your first post a little. Thinking about it I may have altered something with that as part of general balancing but I will double check to make sure it wasn't something unintended.

Also, I removed the fuel cells, which were early generators and needed nothing but lots of minerals and some ore. So now if you start on a world without uranium there's a chance you could face crippling shortages if the stocks get used up by overly ambitious AI. My suggestion is to immediately rush your constructors to uranium deposits as the fusion reactors are a little harder to get to and require enormous amounts of hydrogen to build anyway.

I also wanted to get some feedback about the tech tree so far. There are already a dozen or so things that I will be changing, mostly involving new techs, but before I commit to that I want to know what else I might need to add/fix/etc. I am thinking that bringing those fuel cells back may be nice; they will be the one form of power generation that actually uses vanilla amounts of fuel. So please, weigh in on the tech tree so far, make suggestions, critiques, etc, it is all valued input.

[Capshades]

I really like the idea of fuel cells, makes it more enjoyable for pre-warp/one planet starts. Their just being really inefficient made it important to upgrade soon, but didn't require you to have rare resources just to start expanding.

Really excited to see what you do with the High-Tech tree, will you be making it easier/harder/same to get wonders?

[swizzlewizzle]

AI problem I wanted to bring up.

Check this out:

As you can see, the imperial AI has not moved out from his homeworld yet... and this is a few years into the game. There are so many ships there that it almost completely lagged out my game.

Wonder how we can fix this...