Online Campaign mode

[CanadianGaurd]

You think it would be possible for DoW to translate a WH40K campaign like the recent Eye of Terror on multiplayer? Wouldnt it be cool if relic and GW create new online campaigns for DoW in which every player in the world can take part in and somehow affect the storyline of future expansions?

[GreatSamaman]

Well, I really doubt that Relic or GW would do this, however, I have no doubt in my mind that someone out there will. All it really is, is setting up a site with good registration and login safeties, as well as a decent ladder. As long as people are honest about their games, then it could be implemented easily. The safest way to do that is have both parties, the winner and loser, both verify the outcome of a match. Then the person running the campaign would tally up wins as they come and determines the consequences from them, such as if one side takes over a certain sector, whatever/etc...you know. I'd gladly take part in such a campaign. The only problem with these things, is dedication and organization. Things can get out of hand quickly if things arent organized early enough, and because of this, people give up easily. I'm sure there will be some decent ones though. Give it time. :D

[Triceron]

Although the prospect of an online campaign as such would definately be awesome, I have to say this would be a LOT of work to make a workable multiplayer campaign. Multiplayer campaigns, as great as they are, aren't incredibly popular and played very much. Competitive multiplayer is much more widely appreciated for online play. The idea is very cool, but I don't think it's going to happen.

[CanadianGaurd]

CnC Generals and Total Annahilation had a system that was able to track which races won the most games online. TA I believe showed you which race conquered certain parts of the online universe. Couldnt a DoW campaign be done like this?

[Asklepios]

There are always campain clanwars as an alternative :)

[MVB]

I'm interested in some kind of community-wide campaign, although I wouldn't personally advocate anything other than standard no-holds-barred gamestyles (i.e. no silly replicate-tt-style gaming) ... wonder if there are some people out there equally interested ... and if so, perhaps we could get together a public, unaffiliated campaign worked out by release time, using info from beta testers when the nda is dropped (if it is) to help plan it to match the game's style.

[Crested_Ones]

would be a cool.. I'd definitely use it!

[Zurgnoff]

http://www.homeworldladder.com/hwladder.php works exactly like GreatSamaman's score keeping ideas, all you would need to do is set up a site like it (dont know if they would help you but you might try asking), and implement the rest of his idea about tallying up wins/losses

[MVB]

Ladder is fine enough; I think the idea here is having a campaign ... I reck'n various players' groups could be "Factions" in it ... and nominate admirals ... admirals would move their troops where they needed, and battles would occur as the map dictated.

[slaanesh_bloke]

This seems like a pretty good idea to me; would be a whole new way to play the game if you had a bigger picture like a world map with territory on it to consider. :D

[Lopan]

I love things like this. To have a competitive online campaign where you can gain territory would be awesome. If someone created some kind of website for this I would definately sign up.

[hybris]

Great idea!
Since Eye of Terror currently involves both 40k and Battle Fleet Gothic battle reports, I don't see any reason why they should leave out Dawn of War.

That said - I really think DoW needs one or two expansions with new races, before it becomes relevant for the Eye of Terror setting...

[MVB]

I wouldn't count on that, though; adding new races introduces all kinds of potential balance issues, and Relic is anal about balancing their games well -- which is a GOOD thing. As a result, it'll be a LONG time before there's even the chance for new races in an expansion.

Also, this doesn't need to coincide with the Eye of Terror. It could simply be a Dawn of War specific campaign.

Since people are interested, perhaps a few volunteers could post here with their a) website design skills/options, b) ability to work with things like battle report scripts where players can report wins/losses, and c) people who are interested in helping moderate matches/campaigns/etc. ... I don't reck'n there's a need for me to, as I'll be busy workin' with TLSC as usual, and there's some relic-community-controversy about us. So maybe if enough qualified individuals posted here, we'd have enough to put together and run a solid campaign.

[Red Cell]

Don't see it happening in any official capacity but there is absolutely nothing to stop people doing it themselves, like people did in the TT before GW even organised campaigns.

You create a map, divide territory, assign players, sort out who plays who, they give in results etc Very simple to do as long as people are willing to make an effort and get involved. A problem for any campaign, online or TT, is at the start you get piles of people, who then proceed to barely get involved....same with clans.

One I'm in for Joint Operations now has loads of people on roster, but some are barely on at all.

[OniMika]

Alls I can say is take the world domination mode from ra2 and make it...good.

[ColShag]

I've actually done this in the past with Homeworld. I built a custom mulitplayer space strategy game where all the space battles would be fought with Homeworld custom maps (all the units in the battle were setup in the maps).

Homeworld was nice because you could build custom maps with flat files as input. My game would custom build these map files as required for the players in question which made the campaign system work very well.

Assuming Relic has a simliar feature for Dawn of War I could setup another such "game" for this community.

Would you guys be interested in this approach?
Does anyone know if Dawn of War supports flat files for map customization?

C.

[Periadoc]

You know, this is an amazing idea. I know that I'd try to participate as much as possible if such a site was set up. I'm not real big on the TT version, but heck, this is something that I'd love to get involved with. (I'm not the most tech savvy person in the world, but I can participate.)

[Humhu]

Its a great idea, but its kinda vague... Do you mean a PlanetSide styled perpetual campaign with a constant world and different 'armies', etc., or a basic ladder with custom maps?

And about the tallying idea, I know you guys say its been done before, but wouldn't it be a little too easy to falsify outcomes?

[Zurgnoff]

Keeping people from falsifying outcomes insnt terribly difficult, just make every party involved report the outcome, if there is a discrepency make them submit a screenshot of the after-action report screen (scoreboard) to prove it one way or another. If someone goes through all the trouble of photoshoping an outcome screen, it will eventually be noticed because of his/her error, or the number of win/loss disputes they are involved in.

*edit* just noticed this was your first post, welcome to the forums :)

[BrianGeneral]

Maybe fixed-time continuous gaming......anyone?:)

[Humhu]

Well a fixed-time continuous universe would need an obscene amount of servers for a fan mod/add on. ie: Planetside, run by SOE. Of course, if Relic takes the idea to heart, they would be able to do something with it, but if they did, the multiplayer would completely overshadow the other aspects of the game, making it better for a seperate game methinks.

Zurgnoff: Thanks, but its not exactly my first post. I posted a few on the HW2 forum before, but oh well, that's the attitude that makes the Relic Forums so...civilized?

[ColShag]

Thanks for the interest guys, the previous post was my first post (acutally my second).

Looks like there is some interest for my idea, of course a lot of this idea depends on how cooperative Relic is. Anyways I'll explain further what I'm talking about to hopefully come across a bit clearer for you guys.

Basically what I'm talking about is not a website that would be setup for you guys to log into, but rather a seperate game that I would create, and you guys would install onto your computers. This game would connect to my server (or a friends server, or one or your servers if someone wants to host a game). There would be basically two applications, a client application that most players would have. This application would be used to get all information about that status of the "Galactic War", and for players that are "leaders" of their "Clan/Empire" they could use this application to move units, etc.. The other Application would be a Server Application that would connect to a database (on that server) and would keep track of all information in the game, plus do things like email players of upcoming battles, and new rounds of play for empires.

Each game would have anywhere from say 4 to 8 Empires playing against each other. Each Empire could be controlled by one person who would do all Strategy and Combat, or the Empire could be run by a group of people (Clan maybe?) with some sort of Structure involved. (i.e. there would have to be at least one leader of the group to do all strategy, or the group could do strategy together if they are cooperative enough).

Here are some other possible features of my "Game"

- Things like Non-Aggression Pacts, Alliances would be encouraged.

- Each Empire would have a set number of starting Planets including a HomeWorld Planet (no pun intended)

- Diplomacy between Empires including backstabbing etc would be part of the game.

- The game would have its own Research Tree, Research would allow Empires to build more specialized units, etc..

- There would be Spying, Spies could do things like steal research, discover Fleet/Army sizes, sabotage industry

- There would be a simple industry system with factories and other ways to make Credits for your Empire. Credits would be used to purchase new Armies and Fleets, build Research Centers, Spy Centers, Factories, you get the picture.

- I could also include Homeworld in this game, so in essence we could have all space battles fought with Homeworld (or Homeworld 2 potentially), and all ground battles fought with Dawn of War.

Do you guys have any questions? I don't visit this forum too often, so if you want to email me directly feel free to do so (mcshaggis@hotmail.com). Or post your questions in this forum and I'll answer them to the best of my ability.

What I want to stress to you is that I've already built this game in the past. I've made this game using Homeworld and Starcraft to fight the battles, and then later my friends got me to make my own battle system. But I could always revert back to Homeworld and Potentially Dawn of war if Dawn of War allows for input file map customization.

Thanks,

C.

[FeloniousPunk]

- I could also include Homeworld in this game, so in essence we could have all space battles fought with Homeworld (or Homeworld 2 potentially), and all ground battles fought with Dawn of War.

C.

Has anyone done a BFG mod for HW/ HW2? (Preferrably HW2)

[Shakrith]

I can see it as a marketing strategy. GW can allow DoW games into their campaigns!

[Humhu]

The Homeworld2/DoW idea sounds cool to me, especially when hooked up with a backdrop involving planetside and space combat. I especially like the clan/empire feature (maybe have clans IN the empires? who knows), but a marriage between HW2 and DoW would be short lived, so what do you do?

MOD! Mod like crazy and fuse two games together with some multiplayer client, not to mention a spiffy chat system to rival BNet for coordinating that big attack against the RelicNews mods. (JK mods, we love you)

[Dread]

if u manages to make a online campain please notisfy the rest of us on this forum :)
would love one, specially with city fighting rules, wounder if marines can hide and ambush from buildings... guess that question will come up soon in this forum ^^

[gnomes]

im in but some ceirial rules whould be need to make it fiar i have seena bfg mod some where

[Dread]

hopefully there will be key holdinglocations ( which they usually use in megabattles as main objective ) and that you either get bonuses for holding them ( like a cannon to fire or something so that its important to hold just THAT one ) or its the objective to hold as many as possible untill the time goes out or untill u have them all

this would enable megabattles and thats atleast a bit on the way

i would love a ship to ship combat, ive allways been fasinated by such and would love the possibility to have one, would be a great part of a campain, save some of your troops ( or like spacemarines would do, save a soldier, they never leave ANYONE behind if they can free him ) or just destroy the reactor, take over the ship or something like that

[Shakrith]

I like the ship-to-ship boarding actions. Maybe there could be a Starcraft-esque Facility tileset to allow boarding actions, which are a huge part of the 40k universe and the idea of SM/CSM drop pods blasting through voidshields onto ships, jumping out through vacuum into airlocks and then conducting fierce corridor fighting to reach the bridge/reactor/brig to complete a mission. I especially like the idea of parts being conducted without artificial gravity, but I don't know how this would work.

[Srealth_Dragon]

Maybe they could use a system like the one used in Shattered galaxy. a big world map with sectors each side could in turn select a sector to attack. or the winner is alowed to do so.(each sector stands for a map)