Scope And Scale [Archive] - Relicnews Forums

greynite1

11th Dec 03, 1:38 PM

We have to see the overall commitment to the title. Warhammer 40k is a HUGE Universe with every possibility you could think of for a game. FPS, RTS, Strategy games. The Trick will be deciding what races to include and yes having good Missions and story behind it. However I think we need to think long term here. I believe what the game needs is well thought out and balanced Game mechanics and well represented armies.

It will also need a very strong Multiplayer Component. This I believe should be the [b]bread and butter[b] of the Game. The Armies should be unique and fun to play as they are on the table top and you should be able to fight a one off battle classic like Space Marines Vs Orks and have a rip roaring good time with a bud. I think this will ultimately make the game very successful.

Another very important thing for any 40k players will be Army Representation. If everybodys armies are represented and well balanced in the game you will get a whole lot more interested players who now have a quick 40k fix and will want to play the game over and over. This will increase the replayability and value of the game 10 fold. So Additions or expanision packs to the game could add say Blood angels and Space Wolves as well as Specific Chaos Space Marine Armies. Or Different imperial guard armies.

There should be a Unit Cap on the forces in scenarios for instance being able to build 50 marines with Las cannons should not be possible unless you can come up with some real good ways of balancing it so that such units will not instantly overwhelm an opponent. *IRON WARRIORS ANY BODY*

Beelzebuddy

11th Dec 03, 2:26 PM

There should be a Unit CapLook kid. Youse new here, so I'll give yas a bit of advice: don't go around saying that kinda stuff unless youse likes sleepin' and likes fish. Get what I'm sayin'?

Seriously, though, mutually agreed-upon unit points for each game seems a better solution than a hard-coded unit cap. Perhaps several standard point settings to help games start quicker by using saved armies that players built previously.

Russian Ninja

11th Dec 03, 3:01 PM

It should be, above all, balanced. Every unit should be usable if the player wants to, depending on his or her tactics, with no real Uber units that can totally own anything they're fighting. Each unit should be Also, if it does opperate on Epic scale, there should be some way of being able to destroy Titans without having to resort to using another Titan. It shouldn't be invincible, as it was pretty much in Final Liberation, but conversely it shouldn't be weak either as it is supposed to be a massive giant mecha. No need for Lasguns to fell the thing. Hard balancing act it is. The unit cap is probably a good way of ballance, maybe limiting Titans to being able to choose 1 big one (Warlord's) or 2-3 smaller ones (Warhounds) in games. A similar restriction on Super Heavy Tanks would also help.

Falcrum

11th Dec 03, 3:32 PM

i think a points system is better than a unit cap, due to the varying strengths of the troops of each race. 100 Space Marines versus an equal number of Guardsmen would hardly be a far match.

Inquisitor

11th Dec 03, 4:18 PM

Originally posted by Rusian Ninja
Also, if it does opperate on Epic scale, there should be some way of being able to destroy Titans without having to resort to using another Titan. It shouldn't be invincible, as it was pretty much in Final Liberation, but conversely it shouldn't be weak either as it is supposed to be a massive giant mecha. No need for Lasguns to fell the thing.

Rusian Ninja: Aren't Titans "supposed" to be immensely hard to kill for conventional forces? I mean, those things are gargantuan. I remember reading in a GW article somewhere that Land Raiders with their las-cannons are just about the only thing in a SM or IG army that stands a chance of harming one (not counting one pissed off daemonhost who basically demolished a titan all by himself, if you've read the Eisenhorn Trilogy ;) )

I would think that Titans be killable only by other titans or one really really freakin' large army with gobs of tanks and armor.

Keep in mind I've never played Epic, so I could be totally off base if those game rules conflict with what I've read elsewhere.....

greynite1

11th Dec 03, 4:33 PM

Technically I think they are impossible to kill for conventional forces simply because they are too huge, can absorb too much damage and can deal catastrophic damage in return.

An IG Army or Space Marine army has a good chance of Damaging them but they would need specific tanks to do such. Infantry would not be able to mass enough force in time to stop a Titan.

For Ig an Armored Company of Battle Tanks could make a Smaller Warhound Class titan think Twice but more then likely not a Warlord or Reaver titan. Too many weapons.

Space Marines could actually use their ruthlessness to attack the thing in close combat and potentially do some damage. They also have Vindicators which have huge nasty guns for doing damage but they need to get REAL close to do so.

To Appllyon your right i best get right wit Da Family. :) Whose hand do i kiss?

Your right probably a point system would be better. The only thing with that is you would have to include the whole army and all the weapon options of an army in their to get everything right. Now I'm not a programmer but that sounds like alot of work. I'm a 3d modeller and animator so i know how much work it is to build all them assets, yikes but still fun stuff. :)

I mean it would certainly be easy for 40k players to understand and create an army hehehe they could make their own real armies in the game and see if they do as well. :)

Russian Ninja

11th Dec 03, 4:50 PM

Ok then, how about both. Point system and restrictions on some of the bigger stuff, like in the codexes. That way we don't have Titan armies like we had in F L. That's what I'm worried about, the possibility that infantry, bikes, tanks and all that becoming totally redundant in the face of titans.

Keep in mind though that this is assuming the game will be in Epic format. It might be more small scale with the biggest thing being the odd Baneblade.

markedouglas

11th Dec 03, 5:04 PM

Personally, I would love to just see a W40K size scale for this and NOT an Epic size. I want to be able to see my marines shooting and getting shot with cool little animations for the models when they DO get shot...

Dawn Falcon

11th Dec 03, 5:23 PM

Epic. Epic ALL the way.

Dimension

11th Dec 03, 7:26 PM

I want bigger than epic. simply because this hasn't been seen before. we've seen epic, we've seen 40K, we've seen an FPS adaption (or several, i think the space hulk games were FPS as well).

I hope the engine reduces detail as it zooms out, so that you can play while being zoomed out, see hundreds of soldiers and vehicles lumber across the battlefield, shooting the bejeesus out of each other.

then i shall record, and zoom in for detailed spiffy animations whenever i feel like it.

in any case, i finally wanna see(and play, naturally)the big battles that only the codices and nifty stories in white dwarf talk about.

*edit* why you people talking about balancing issues and unit caps? in case you didn't notice, there is already an established, successful and reasonably easy unit points system as well as an established and (as far as i can tell) balanced unit catalogue. from what I've seen i don't think it'd be hard to adapt those rules to a non-turn-based system. things like firepower and speed translate pretty well.

*editedit* well, the coolest thing of course would be if the battles would be scalable so that you could actually choose whether to have a 500 point army or a 500.000 point army or more. however, if I'd have to choose between small and beyond epic, i'd definitely go for the beyond epic for novelty.

Splitstar

11th Dec 03, 9:23 PM

i say at the begining it should be minor squrmishes

but then at the end there should be more then one battle going on at a time were you have to switch back and forth from one battle to another and were hundreds participate in each...

ya NICE

The5thElephant

11th Dec 03, 10:45 PM

Switching between battles gets way too hectic.

Russian Ninja

11th Dec 03, 11:16 PM

Also when things get so big, you generally can't keep such good control over your units. Your orders generally become "Attack Here", instead of trying to issue something more strategic and complex. Micro gets thrown out the window, except with the Titans, Super Heavies and anything else that's big. It's not exactly tactical combat.

black dawn

12th Dec 03, 8:36 AM

that's kinda true in any huge battle russian dude... if you have a big force it's harder to control, i think it makes it more realistic... Also it makes you be a better commander in a bigger battle having to decide what's important, and what's sacrificial, i think they need to scale though, from 500 points to like whole chapters battling it out so like 15,000+ points

Inquisitor

12th Dec 03, 8:42 AM

Originally posted by Rusian Ninja
Also when things get so big, you generally can't keep such good control over your units. Your orders generally become "Attack Here", instead of trying to issue something more strategic and complex. Micro gets thrown out the window, except with the Titans, Super Heavies and anything else that's big. It's not exactly tactical combat.

Yes, it seems the issue here is whether the game will be more strategic, Epic style gameplay or more tactical, trooper-level combat as in standard 40K. Or, Emperor willing, both. Hopefully we'll get an answer soon from the devs on this :)

Tyryt

12th Dec 03, 9:09 AM

Mmm both, with the ability to disallow units for unit selection (a-la Total Annihilation) or more broadly (no superheavies/titans) etc. But, combined with enforcement of Force Organization, this shouldn't be a major concern.

It would be great to see a platoon of Guard swarm a Titan to drop the satchel charges in his knees and bring it down though. :)

Tyryt
Let the swarm consume.

SoheilsX

12th Dec 03, 9:59 AM

it would still take a group of terminators to be able to carry enough charges. The knees of the titan are probably big enough to carry a whole load of whirlwinds, which they kind of do in some cases. The Overlord class titan can do the equal damage of an orbital strike.

Tyryt

12th Dec 03, 10:23 AM

Scale is a bit off, Titans are not THAT big. Infact, I believe that the Warlord is supposed to be approximately 80 ft tall, with warhounds around 60. Overlord are larger, but they are also MUCH more rare.

And remember, in epic at least, you can make swarm attacks on titans with infantry units..... Titans also have problems targeting small things like infantry, which again, is the reason why you always want to use both in conjuction (same reason to have infantry with tanks, they support and complement one another).

Tyryt
Let the swarm consume.

The Collector

12th Dec 03, 7:46 PM

I'd like a Horus Heresy thing: maybe as a Prologue?

As a ingame movie with the engine or as a playable level, it'd be pretty interesting.

IWAssassin

12th Dec 03, 9:17 PM

Scale I'd say Not Epic and Not 40k, but more Total Annihiliation. Hoardes of troops, Hoardes of tanks, plenty of Flyers, but not quite up to the Titan Level.

After all by the 40k Fluff, Titan Legions are exceptionally rare, but also deploy in LEGIONS. Epic kinda misrepresents that when you can get 2-3 Titans on the battlefield, if they show up you're going to have tens of thousands of troops on the battlefield, with thousands of tanks, and a full hundred titans, otherwise they're not going to show up at all.

Also eliminates the point that NO Tank should really be able to engage a superheavy [either super tank or titan] but without the ability to Titans are immortal unless you yourself have a Titan.

Dont include Titans at all and you dont have that problem.

The Collector

13th Dec 03, 9:21 AM

A "Commanders Titan"? Sorta like Ground Controls Command APC?

Only problem is, even one is devastatingly powerful...

Flame Carrier

13th Dec 03, 10:03 AM

i would like too have 10000 units in a battle

Aurek

13th Dec 03, 10:41 AM

A Titan is just like any other piece of hardware. Its no a be all and end all (though nearly ;) ) leave a titan on its own and all the enemy has to do is use some heavy artillery or heavy bombers, no more titan. Though used effectively titans can take out entire armies on theyre own ( who remimbers the vortex missile? :) )

I remimber reading about 20 Land Raiders taking out a chaos traitor warlord titan. Remember also there are many classes of titans for different roles. From Knights all the way up to Imperiator titans.

I dont really think this game sould rach such a scale though. A smaller scale 500 - 5000 points in 40k terms would be excellent and would produce a balance between big engagements with enough control for tactical thinking. Oh but naturally a good multiplayer could make or break the game.

Finally isint all this specific feature discussion a bit redundant at the moment? Relic have only probably just got initial concept and design out of the way and thet game will probably be a long time coming yet (2005?)

dewolfe

13th Dec 03, 10:45 AM

Finally isint all this specific feature discussion a bit redundant at the moment? Relic have only probably just got initial concept and design out of the way and thet game will probably be a long time coming yet (2005?)

It's been said elsewhere that the developers have been locked in a basement for the past year or so working on DoW already, and if I'm not mistaken, there's already a playable version.

Tyryt

13th Dec 03, 10:47 AM

Actually, it's been in production for a year already, with concept for 6 months before that, and is slated for 4th quarter 2004 (so octoberish likely).

I think we are all just hoping. On a second note, once the basic engine is designed, adding new models and tweaking statistics etc, is usually quite easy (look at all the mods...)

Tyryt
Let the swarm consume.

Stymie_Jackson

13th Dec 03, 11:24 AM

Originally posted by Aurek
I remimber reading about 20 Land Raiders taking out a chaos traitor warlord titan.

Wow, talk about a flashback. Yeah, that was a cool peice of fluff...the enemy titan (I think it was a reaver actually) was piloted by too skilled a princeps to let him live...good stuff.

Titans can be taken down by tanks, and not even superheavy tanks, but it helps. Void shields need a -1 save modifier weapon to drop, and lascannons (two on each Land Raider) can do that.

Me, I want to see Battlezone meets 40K. I'd think it be so cool to have a squad based game where you were the Company Captain. Make it a first person shooter perspective with orders (go there! attack there! run away! get me coffee!). How cool would that be with halfway decent AI?

Pick your squads, arm them, and then lead them into battle...

Bah, it'll never happen tho. It's gonna be an RTS more than an RTT (real time tactical, no building, just fighting!).

:cranky:

Brother Jonah

13th Dec 03, 12:22 PM

Anybody familiar with the Close Combat series? I think that 40k: DoW should be somewhat on par with it, both scale wise and unit number. They will need to make a good(and easy) map and campaign editor to go with it too. ...and it HAS to be RTS - no turn-based nonsense!!! That 40K:Final Liberation game GW and SSI tried blew big chunks. First-person shooter?? Aww man, come on!

thesamonthemoon

13th Dec 03, 12:30 PM

I'm guessing it's going to be on the same scale as *drumroll* Warhammer 40K!

That would makes sense to me, this game being based on WH40K and all...

It seems less likely to be based on Epic 40K to me, but I supose I could be wrong...

I'm hoping it's on the same scale as regular 40K though, anything from 100-10,000 pt games, without harvesting.

I think, what would be particularly sweet, would be making the game so far zoomable, that your looking over the shoulder of your space marines, which of course, I'm hoping are as detailed as guys from first person shooters.

Sure, the polycounts would be ridiculous, but everybody is going to buy a new computer when Doom III and Halflife 2 come out. And of course, Relic could use a system similair to HW2, where models have multiple levels of detail based on their distance from the camera.

Aurek

14th Dec 03, 8:12 AM

Actually, it's been in production for a year already, with concept for 6 months before that, and is slated for 4th quarter 2004 (so octoberish likely).

WoW, thanks for that. Great news! :)

Probably I would bet we will be getting a game similar to chaos gate.With heavily updated graphics etc. Couple of squads a side, vehicle, special char or 2. A persistent campaign setting with the ability to equip squads to you're liking and experience. Its been done, it works, its good.

What I sincerly hope we do NOT get is a tradition "RTS" with building units on the fly and the like. However I have a huge amount of faith in relics ability to redifine the RTS genre again :)

Numenor

15th Dec 03, 2:26 AM

I always was an Epic player. 40k wasn't big enough, not epic enough so i chose epic instead. I think if they wan't to make this in the spirit of 40k, which is set in an EPIC universe. My point is, to give a true feeling of the universe its set in, the scale must be at least equal to ground control at a squad based level.

Personaly I would like the scale to be bigger than that. Thousands of troops, titans, flyers, drop pods, chapters, regiments, detatchements and a good allround coating of mayhem. Thats the 40k that I always played.

Obviously, titans would be a limiting option, but they AREN'T indestructible. They dish out the fire power of an entire army, so why would you be surprised if takes the fire power of an army to take one down? Those of you against titans seem to be talking in terms of one unit matching them, and for that it would have to be another titan. But its not a one-unit-per-side game is it? Infact, the Imperial Guard's artillery has a Deathstrike Vortex Missile launcher, and a bit of luck with those can really make a titan sore. Then you also have super heavies, Engines of Vaul for eldar and countless others. I think the universe was well balanced so if they convey it properly into the game, that will be balanced too, whether they use titans or not.

PS, Imperators are my favourites

Numenor

AdrianWerner

15th Dec 03, 3:02 AM

The problem with Epic is that it lacks characters..it cool..but characters are IMO very important in WH40K universe..with Epic scale..all units would be reduced to tiny masses..no small terminator squads, no sneaking, no city fighting..I would rather see it in Ground Control scale.

Numenor

15th Dec 03, 4:47 AM

True on some accounts but it can also be worked around. For instance, we could see city fighting yet, with lots of ground control missions, and yet have pitched battles on a total war scale. Just because one mission is huge, doesn't mean they all are.

And as for characters, I think a computer game is the ideal situation to see powerclaws etc, mowing their way through a bunch of orks. Even in the Total War series, where your general/character had no special abilities, they were still important and could change the sway of the battle, even though there'd be 2000 other men in your army.

Numenor

Russian Ninja

15th Dec 03, 5:45 AM

Originally posted by AdrianWerner
The problem with Epic is that it lacks characters..it cool..but characters are IMO very important in WH40K universe..with Epic scale..all units would be reduced to tiny masses..no small terminator squads, no sneaking, no city fighting..I would rather see it in Ground Control scale.

Yes, that's one of the problems with Epic. There's no room for Commissar Yarrik or Dante to shine as it's too big. Total War, your commander was 1 out of 2000, but in Epic, it's more like 1 out of 2 Million. Armies like Space Marines and Eldar which rely on a lot of Finease and a lot of control don't really do too well in Epic either. Their sneaky tactics, use of agility and other things like that generally don't go all too well in Epic.

Darkness

15th Dec 03, 6:39 AM

i hope it wont go epic size, that is so brutish, the wh40k we know and love is special because of its tactical depth and the characters etcetc. That is what i want to see here, battles up to max 8-10000 points AT MOST with Alot of focus on multiplayer and gameplay, singleplayer means 2 days of playing then youre done and the game is rather dead. but a good multiplayer... just look at what became of starcraft, the dusty old boy still has alot of multiplayer action soo many years later.

seeing the opportunities warhammer have on that field makes me drool a pool on my keyboard, I pray that they will focus on adding the armies and the tactical depth that i love, ima get sick of the lag and problems my 100000 point tyranid army will make, if we go epic, just telling them to "attack move" and watch what happens, im feeling sleepy just talking bout it.

But from the looks of the small clips of information the media got their grubby hands on it seems like the high paced action game Im looking forward too, so cheers

The Collector

15th Dec 03, 7:58 AM

Give us a scaling option. "Small" armies and "Epic" scale. Then implement a points system, and have players set up their own armies and save them and such. Enable IG players to choose between different planets for bonuses, Space Marines to choose different characters, etc.

In the Warhammer 40k/Epic 40k games, what are the rules concerning Titans? 1 per thousand points or one per player or something?

Numenor

15th Dec 03, 9:22 AM

One in 2 million?

Ok man... with orks, an infantry detachment is made out of a maximum 10 mobz in the main force with 10 supporting mobz. The main force mobz are a maximum of 4 units in each. Each unit is 5 individual orks. The supporting detachment Mobz can only contain 1-3 units each, most of which are tanks. So really you are looking at maybe 300 orks per detachment, and you get 4-5 detachments per battle, your still only looking at say 1200 orks, and thats pushing it, so compared to Total War its not that bad, and I can't see the problem with characters and scale.

When I say I think it should be like epic, I mean exactly that. No more than say 1200 men per side, and I think Relic are quite capable of giving that depth and character involvement.

And Collector, the rule in epic for titans (at least for the Imperium) is 1 choice from the Imperial Titan Legion Detachment which is as follows:

One or Two Warhound Titans ....................... 200 pts Each

One Reaver Titan .......................................... 390 pts

One Warlord Titan ........................................ 555 pts

Adeptus Mechanicus Ordinatus .................... 200 pts

Imperator Titan ............................................ 900 pts

So an imperial player can choose one choice from any of the above options for his detachment, and the choice made is the detachment itself. If the game has been given a points/detachment limit, the player can have only titan detachments, and make one a command titan for a cost of more points.

For some points comparison: An Imperial Guard Sqaud, which contains 2 units (10 men) with no special weapons or anything, is 14 pts, compared to the 900 pts Imperator Titan, the cost means for the same amount of points you could buy enough tanks to knock one out.

Numenor - feeling like a know-it-all

Beelzebuddy

15th Dec 03, 11:36 AM

So it would take ~640 men to take down one Imperator Titan?

I like those odds.

blood_angel

15th Dec 03, 12:32 PM

The obvious perfect game will be a direct conversation of the WH40k game, the players are set a no of points and build a team. And unless Titans are in the current WH40K game they are not going to be in the computer version.

Alas its also pretty obvious GW are not going to allow the full on experience with all races, characters, or customizability the board game offers as its a threat to the sales of the board game.

Take a look at all previous GW computer games. You are restricted to just one species (Marines in SPace Hulk, Eldar in Rites of war, Tau in that shit last one) and can mix and match little. So its all probable that relics game will be just the same but with simply newer visuals.

Beelzebuddy

15th Dec 03, 1:46 PM

Alas its also pretty obvious GW are not going to allow the full on experience with all races, characters, or customizability the board game offers as its a threat to the sales of the board game.While it may be the philosophy pf GW, I urge you not to fall in behind such obviously flawed logic. A great computer game that shows gamers just how rich and detailed the universe is would draw them to the boardgame, not away from it. Just from thinking about what the video game might be like I myself am contemplating buying a unit or two of space marines, even though I know I'll never have time to paint them.

Restricting the video game to shelter the board game is the same bastardized logic that turned Magic the Gathering: Online into a steaming pile of shit. If the suits say it has to be, it has to be. But for god's sake, don't egg them on.

IWAssassin

15th Dec 03, 3:53 PM

Indeed Epic Scale is closer to 1200 Orks, while the true scale of 40k would be in terms of MILLIONS - making Space Marines the most rediculous force in existance, they'd be utterly useless.

This actually came up during the Eye of Terror Campaign, as people noticed it was big news when a company of marines showed up.

"Governor, the Black Templar 4th Company has just arrived"
"Lieutenant, Thats 100 marines. Thats the equivilant of 1000 Guardsmen. Do you know how many guardsmen reinforcements arrive into the sector every day?"
"No, sir"
"Billions, Lieutenant, Billions. In fact give this war six months and we'll have seen Trillions of Guardsmen come and die for the emperor. And you're telling me about the arriving force the equivilant of 1000? Dont waste my time"

Splitstar

15th Dec 03, 8:24 PM

Originally posted by black dawn
that's kinda true in any huge battle russian dude...

wait did he just call Rusian Ninja a russian dude? :argh:

Russian Ninja

15th Dec 03, 10:50 PM

Originally posted by Numenor
One in 2 million?

Ok man... with orks, an infantry detachment is made out of a maximum 10 mobz in the main force with 10 supporting mobz. The main force mobz are a maximum of 4 units in each. Each unit is 5 individual orks. The supporting detachment Mobz can only contain 1-3 units each, most of which are tanks. So really you are looking at maybe 300 orks per detachment, and you get 4-5 detachments per battle, your still only looking at say 1200 orks, and thats pushing it, so compared to Total War its not that bad, and I can't see the problem with characters and scale.

Remember though that that's only game wise. In actual "Fluff" wise, it's very different. In the game, it's only a representation of the actual scale of things. Look at some of those 40K drawings of humungous battles. That's what Epic's "real" size is.

Anyway, one thing about scaling battles is that it's very hard to make a game like that. You'd have to have a lot of modes, far more programing work, different sized units for each type (in true Epic styled games, you'd have to have a lot smaller units as you'd have so many of them) and far more work all round. But that's only if there's a very big scale. For a scaling from small to reasonably-big-but-not-too-big, then that could be a good idea.

Shadione

16th Dec 03, 10:43 AM

Originally posted by IWAssassin
Indeed Epic Scale is closer to 1200 Orks, while the true scale of 40k would be in terms of MILLIONS - making Space Marines the most rediculous force in existance, they'd be utterly useless.

This actually came up during the Eye of Terror Campaign, as people noticed it was big news when a company of marines showed up.

"Governor, the Black Templar 4th Company has just arrived"
"Lieutenant, Thats 100 marines. Thats the equivilant of 1000 Guardsmen. Do you know how many guardsmen reinforcements arrive into the sector every day?"
"No, sir"
"Billions, Lieutenant, Billions. In fact give this war six months and we'll have seen Trillions of Guardsmen come and die for the emperor. And you're telling me about the arriving force the equivilant of 1000? Dont waste my time"

Sure, if marines were stupid enough to stand in a trench with the Guardsmen. But that's not what they do. To hold a line and die horribly is the Guard's job. Space Marines are basically the ultimate commando.

Don't overlook the fact that accompanying a marine force is a small fleet capable of razing a planet or taking on any opposing enemy starfleet.

Marine forces typically show up to a planet, strike orbital defenses, taking them over and turning them on the planet below and destroying essential services, like power and transit. They then perform surgical strikes, eliminating leadership and government. They then bomb the planet for effect, hitting a few key population and military centers. By that point the ground forces are so demoralized and disorganized that they can be taken at leisure by the Guard. Every combat that involved actual marines was a small one with critical, focused goals, and in every case the marines chose the battleground.

And don't forget, in this example the planetary resistance has been utterly destroyed by the marines, and likely 99% of the population never even saw one. This comes into the second effect of marines, which is reputation. Most Imperial citizens will never see a marine in their lifetime, and likely consider them to be gods, myths, or both (don't forget that they are direct genetic descendants of the Emperor, and so godly by their association alone). When a marine shows up their mere presence is debilitating to the enemy. That's why they march around in bright blue armor. They 'want' you to know that they are there.

If a company of Black Templars showed up than a Billion Guardsmen without hope would suddenly believe that they could not be defeated with the power of gods on their side. The Templars would choose their fights so that they are an overwhelming force where it is most needed. Not to mention that nobody knows how to wage war on every level like a marine.

Obviously, the tabletop game doesn't get this across, but then its got to be balanced and reasonable, but one of the best books to see the effects of marines on a Guard force in the Storm of Iron novel, which also works to show how Chaos Space Marines provide the same function.

Stymie_Jackson

16th Dec 03, 12:38 PM

Nice points Jay...there's a reason why the Imperials call Marines 'Angels of Death'...it's because the Adeptus Astartes are considered half divine, fathered in a sense by the Emperor himself and his godlike sons the Primarchs. So how psyched would you be if your guardian angel appeared in the flesh with a .50 fully automatic assualt gun? I thought so.

In other words, like Jay said, Marines take on mythical proportions and their effect is as such. Just the rumor of approaching Marine forces has ended uprisings!

During the 3rd seige of Armageddon, once the intial Ork landing was pushed back and the tide of battle turned in favor of man by the thousands of marines and millions of imperial guards, the Marines left planetside and left the rest to the guardsmen. Why? Because they are no use in a cleanup mission, even one that would take years and claim million more lives.

Marines are a quick strike force. They pick their fights on their terms, changing their force multiplier past that of a simple additive math. In a battle line, maybe one marine is work 10 normal men...but you almost never put marines into straight combat. They would not hold the frontline line regular troops! They drop into the enemy rear, wipe out the enemy command post and leave, teleport into the support areas, etc. Marines are used in a quick strike/assassination/recon/assault tactics. A squad of 10 marines can be worth the weight of an entire regiment of 6000 guardsmen in total combat effectiveness when used in the proper manner. That's right, 600 to 1 or more.

BasT

16th Dec 03, 12:58 PM

I think a C&C:Classic kinda game would rule
but the tech is outta date so thats a no.
In C&C:Classic the scale was perfect it aloud for the massive mammoth tanks but also for the little minigunner
i personnally would see a Marine,Guardsman,OrcBoy as beening the basic unit (depending on race) and a LandRaider or tank of equal size(again depending on race) to be the biggest, if you were 2 have the titans wouldnt that basicly null the smallest units and you would need 2 have it in shogun style,
but of course in Epic squads were 5men, and detactments were 5-6groups of them, wouldnt that make it messy controlling it on the squad lvl?
My vote would be GO FOR EPIC STYLE! but you'll have 2 work it on the detactment size which means squads will have to used by the Ai.
It would be great to see 5man squads ducking and diving with their detactment, on there own after you giving them an order to move 2 a position a hold it... if ya wanna hear my idea's
bastchiken@msn.com

thesamonthemoon

16th Dec 03, 1:18 PM

I would still perfer a smaller scale. WH40K scale, rather than epic.

And of course, because computer games are so much easier to manage than board games, you could have giant 50,000 point games. But I think that most games should be around the same size as a normal game of WH40K.

Shadione

16th Dec 03, 1:26 PM

The other way marines are portrayed is as a defensive, holding force. This is the only way marines act like a 'conventional force', but in these cases they are more than equal for most opponents, and far superior to any other troops.

They can go for days (weeks?) without sleep, almost never get tired, have heightened senses, are far more vigilant, intelligent (if only due to accelerated brain processes) and tactically minded than the average grunt. They can withstand grenades, fire, and other types of weaponry typically used to kill defensive positions. And sure, maybe 10 guardsmen could drag a marine down, but leveraging 10 men against 1 simultaneously in a defensive situation is not easy. Imagine 10 guardsmen charging a marine standing in a doorway! That's likely 10 dead guardsmen.

If 2 soldiers can hold a bunker against dozens of enemies (maybe more) imagine what 2 marines could do in that situation!

Stymie_Jackson

16th Dec 03, 1:29 PM

Wow, much impressed by the Relic guys understanding of Warhammer and Marines in particular. If the lead Relic guy knows so much about the mythos of the game, I think we are in for a real treat with Dawn of War!

However, in a defensive situation, although Marines are great at fighting vs overwhelming odds when properly dug in, I'd still rather have Squats in my bunker! Shame they worked them out of the game...all abhumans seem to have gotten the shaft in the latest release.

Tyryt

16th Dec 03, 1:34 PM

Hence the reason Guard has the Leman Russ. :)

Course, I'd love to have my bugs as they are portrayed in the fiction as well, Tyrants and carnifex able to shrug off the most greivous fire without a flinch, ammo from their weapons chewing and melting though ceramite and plasteel, hordes of gaunts and stealers that are almost the equivalent of marines, lictors and red terrors appearing from no where to decimate a company or armoured collumn single handedly then fade away again, swarms of gargoyles harridans and other flying things blackening the skies while bio-titans shake the ground with their massive foot-steps, shocks from Trygons throwing everything into lightning-flash negatives.... mmm the swarm.

Tyryt
Let the swarm consume.

IWAssassin

16th Dec 03, 2:58 PM

Very good point Shadione... I will say Marines DEFINATELY have their uses, after all in theory nothing would come close to giving them a true challenge when fighting in a building or close quarters cityfight [not represented in the game] as nobody could bring a weapon to bear larger than a bolter, and we all know how pathetic those are against marines (:

Still comparitively speaking, there's the quote in the BBB "Give me 100 Marines, or, failing that, 1000 regular men" it can be Inferred that he wouldnt be stupid enough to ask for marines in a task where Marines are not ideal [eg a standard 40k game which represents worse case scenario for Guard and Marines, though for different reasons] so even then we believe that 1 Marine is at MOST 10 Stormtroopers even in a situation where Marines are ideal [the doorway example], noting that Stormtroopers are not regular men.

At that point the use of Marines when compared to billions of Guardsmen arriving [and hundreds of thousands of stormtroopers] is strictly for morale reasons. Theres in fact reference to this in the 2nd Edition IG Codex, which mentions the order of reinforcements to a warzone, once the Imperial Guard show up generally speaking the Marines go off to a different disaster, as by that point things have gotten so terribly wrong that marines become utterly useless [having no prime targets to strike that would make a difference, and if one appears, send in 10x as many Stormtroopers]

starrider

16th Dec 03, 4:15 PM

also, that quote was said by rogal dorn himself. in his time, the space marines were leigons, not the small chapters they are now. then, you could use them to do dang near anything

Stymie_Jackson

16th Dec 03, 4:24 PM

10,000 or more marines, first generation lead by the demi-gods themselves and brand spanking new Titans (also convieniently come in Legion size!).

You could outnumber that 10,000 to one and still horribly lose. They would kill your forces quicker than you could bring them to bear in significant enough numbers to beat the Legion.

No wonder they forbade armies of marines that big from ever existing again...it would be unstoppable except by another Space Marine Legion. Hmmm...they never DID split the Space Wolves up more than once...hmmm...wonder if they kept the unquestionably loyal Space Wolves in nearly unchanged form for a reason...

Russian Ninja

16th Dec 03, 5:06 PM

This is just a fluff question, but out of the 20 original legions, 9 turned traitor (Black Legion, Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, Night Lords, Alpha Legion, World Eaters, Death Guard, Emperor's Children and Thousand Sons) whilst 9 stayed loyal to the Emperor (Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Raven Guard, Ultramarines, Imperial Fists, Salamanders, White Scars, Iron Hands and Space Wolves), but does anyone know what happened to the other 2 legions?

Anyway, Space Marines are not really suited for an Epic style combat. Many other armies are also not suited for Epic combat. The likes of Eldar and Dark Eldar for example. There's no real way to use their speed in Epic, mainly because most of the game is about who's got the biggest guns and who has the most numbers to soak up casualties from those guns.

thesamonthemoon

16th Dec 03, 6:28 PM

Those other two leigons of marines have become something we like to call a "Plot Device". ;)

What your saying seems to make sense, except for the numbers of Imp. Guard... Where do you get all of these "billions" of Guard every day?

The Collector

16th Dec 03, 6:31 PM

Space Wolves couldn't split. Not enough people: their selection program is almost like the Space Marine's version of Hell Week. Plus their genetic instabilities.

Stymie_Jackson

16th Dec 03, 7:11 PM

Originally posted by The Collector
Plus their genetic instabilities.

Some would say 'gift'.

GhellerField

16th Dec 03, 7:27 PM

Originally posted by The Collector
Space Wolves couldn't split.

Or rather, they did, but their successor chapter didn't exactly get away without suffering a plot device and being annihilated/destroyed/purged.

I, for one, am hoping that, regardless of the scope involved, the nefarious forces of the Holy Orders of the Inquisition will not keep their fingers out of the pie, stereotypical plot twists be darned! :evilnod:

IWAssassin

16th Dec 03, 8:19 PM

Okay mathematics time here to justify the statement of Billions of Guardsmen.

Givens:
The Imperium has 1 million worlds [40k3 BBB]
The Imperium is Mostly Gamma class worlds [40k3 BBB]
Gamma class worlds average 5 billion people [40k3 BBB]
Warzone declaration sees reinforcements from the nearest 10,000 lightyears [40k2 C:IG]
Time for reinforcements from the edge of that radius is 75 Days [40k2 C:IG]
Mustering Time is 20 days [40k2 C:IG]
The Imperium is 70,000 ly in Radius [40k3 BBB]
A Guardsmen summons is 10% of the standing military [40k2 C:IG]

Thats all the givens we need. Now the caculations.

Nbr Guardsmen in the Imperium = 1,000,000[planets] * 5,000,000,000 [population] * 0.01[recruitment rate for PDF] * 0.10[Guardsmen from PDF] = 5,000,000,000,000

Area of the Imperium = Pi * 70,000[r] ^ 2 = 15,390,900,000 sq ly

Area of Recruitment = Pi * 10,000[r] ^ 2 = 314,100,000 sq ly

Percent of Imperium = 2.0%

Number of Guardsmen in recruitment zone = 5 trillion * .02 = 100 billion

Days of reinforcements = 75 days [average last reinforcement arrival] - 20 [average first reinforcement arrival] = 55 days

Number of Reinforcements per day = 100 billion / 55 days = 1,818,181,818

1.8 billion Guardsmen arrive every day starting at Day 20 until Day 75 of the call for reinforcements.

Now this is actually using LOW numbers. First we used 70,000 as the radius of the Imperium. Unfortunately this is misrepresented as its 70,000ly in one direction and about 10,000ly in another, making the TRUE radius 40,000. This would tripple the number of Guardsmen in the recruitment area. Second, we're using a 1% recruitment rate of the military. This is lower than the U.S. PEACETIME recruitment of soldiers, and with the entire galaxy in a constant state of war it could easially be 10% or higher.

Russian Ninja

16th Dec 03, 8:29 PM

Also, a lot of the Guard are usually mass-conscripted into it, particularly around warzones.

IWAssassin

16th Dec 03, 8:37 PM

Depends on the Local Governors... its not in the laws of the IG for that to happen, IG just take a percentage of what you have. If you happen to have a 99% military world [eg Cadia] you're going to be giving a LOT more (:

Also one other provision I didnt mention. 10,000ly is the STANDARD warzone declaration. Its possible [though not common] to extend the declaration to 30,000ly [which would even bring reinforcements from Earth]. Its also possible to make multiple summons. In such a disaster as all of Chaos spewing forth from the Eye its not too hard to believe that they would summon from a 30,000ly radius and make two or three summons, which would yeild Tens of billions of guardsmen showing up per day, not just 1.8 (:

Stymie_Jackson

16th Dec 03, 9:46 PM

Where the hell would you deploy an army that vast? How many planets in a front are you talking about? What about supply it? It takes 9 non-combat personell for every 1 combat troop. That's not taking the NAVY into account!

And why would you pull back THAT many troops when the imperium is probably engaged in hundreds of simultaneous (if not thousands) of medium+ intensity conflicts at any given time? Besides, PDF is NEVER pulled from it's station, it is a permanent defense force except in cases of utter necessity.

Nice math, but you are not taking the military reality into account. Besides, in a battle THAT utterly massive you telling me a 1000 marines to use where best needed would be dismissed? No Imperial commander worth his salt would look THAT gift horse in the mouth!

Shadione

16th Dec 03, 10:58 PM

Originally posted by Stymie_Jackson
Wow, much impressed by the Relic guys understanding of Warhammer and Marines in particular. If the lead Relic guy knows so much about the mythos of the game, I think we are in for a real treat with Dawn of War!

Imagine our excitement when we signed the project. :beer:

Shadione

16th Dec 03, 11:12 PM

Originally posted by Stymie_Jackson
Hmmm...they never DID split the Space Wolves up more than once...hmmm...wonder if they kept the unquestionably loyal Space Wolves in nearly unchanged form for a reason...

As an avid Wolf player I can tell you the exact reason the Space Wolves were never broken up:

Who would dare?:vikingb:

Shadione

16th Dec 03, 11:13 PM

Originally posted by Rusian Ninja
This is just a fluff question, but out of the 20 original legions, 9 turned traitor (Black Legion, Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, Night Lords, Alpha Legion, World Eaters, Death Guard, Emperor's Children and Thousand Sons) whilst 9 stayed loyal to the Emperor (Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Raven Guard, Ultramarines, Imperial Fists, Salamanders, White Scars, Iron Hands and Space Wolves), but does anyone know what happened to the other 2 legions?

All records expunged....

thesamonthemoon

16th Dec 03, 11:48 PM

Wow, IWAssassin, I didn't expect such a thourough explenation.

I can only offer one complaint, and It's negated by the fact that your data is canon, and mine is just a statistic based on our own galaxy: In a 70,000 ly area, you would have one heck of a time finding 1 million habitable worlds. -Edit Nevermind.... I'm wrong about this.-

But like I said, your data is canon, so I'll accept it. :)

Shadione - I hold to my original sugestion that those leigons have become a Plot Device (capitalized on purpose). ;)

Silmaril

17th Dec 03, 3:01 AM

I think those records have been "expunged" for a very long time. At least 15 years real time, and I don't think they ever reappeared. The 40k universe has gone through a lot of changes over the years. Hell in Rogue trader the primarchs weren't god - like. Leman Russ (sp?) of Shadione's beloved Space Wolves, was originally just a commander who rose through the ranks.

IG always have been, and always will be, cannon fodder with a few Commisaars at the back. :)

And if they're in there, Shadione, the Tyranid swarm will tear your little Space Wolves apart, just like they did to the Ultramirines on their first contact :muffy:

Tyryt

17th Dec 03, 6:00 AM

Originally posted by thesamonthemoon
I can only offer one complaint, and It's negated by the fact that your data is canon, and mine is just a statistic based on our own galaxy: In a 70,000 ly area, you would have one heck of a time finding 1 million habitable worlds.

Errr how did you arrive at the above conclusion? We've so far only been able to detect the largest of planets (Giant and supergiant gas giants) in the nearest stars (less than 50ly).

The Milky way is 100,000ly (or so) across, and contains approximately 700 BILLION stars (remember, space is 3d, not a flat plane like in star trek, and they are still counting as we get better technology to see them). Given the assumption that only 1 in 700 stars contains a habitable planet, or one that can be made habitable through terraforming or even just hive cities, you could still get 1 million inhabited worlds.

thesamonthemoon

17th Dec 03, 11:08 AM

D'OH!!

I dropped a zero! (I was looking at a 7,000 ly radius, but even then, my data is off quite a bit)

How embarasing...

Even more embarising, the milky way is thought to be significantly less than 100,000ly in diameter (maybe 60K or so?).

So anyway, ignore my previous post. :)

IWAssassin

17th Dec 03, 6:14 PM

Actually the most recent reports I've read suggest the Milkey way is much LARGER than the previously assumed 100,000 ly - up to 250,000 ly

which would make us go from a large galaxy to a VERY large galaxy (:

The Collector

17th Dec 03, 6:28 PM

Remember, most of the Wh40k action is about half the galaxy...they had that part called "The Fringe" beyond the range of the Astronomicon.

In any case, to maintain those billions of troops, I'm guessing that countless greater billions more are transporting supplies. You might be able to reduce the amount of supplies and support personnel needed by pre-positioning and automating/multi-tasking as much as possible. I'm presuming that supply volumes aren't loaded down with the interesting items that we use for our troops. It looks like they fight light, since they're expected to die before running out of supplies.

Lasguns probably use less ammo then magazines. Depending on the size of the energy boxes or whatever lasguns use, you can remove magazines, chargers, and individual rounds from the supply chain.

Keep in mind that the Planetary Defense Force is on site and can be tasked for resupply when the IG arrive. You have a force ready to assist with distribution as soon as their "task" is transferred over to the IG. In any case, supplies may be transported through The Warp just like everything else. Local factories can manufacture supplies, stockpiles can be pre-positioned, and then PDF can be transferred to convoy escort and supply processing. By those 20 days you will need the entire PDF to do rear security, convoy escort and supply processing. If necessary, IG units can be tasked to assist with supply.

Depending on how "Epic" the battle is, not every unit will be committed to the line. Some are rear security, strategic reserve or recovering. These extra units can help resupply: but they do eat, and need food. At least they won't be consuming ammo.

IG units are created by slicing off ten percent of a Planetary Defense Force each year. I am guessing that they take a division if you have ten, and get all of its equipment and vehicles (which is STC-standardized, life would be hell without the STC's standardizing of units), and thus each mobilised unit already has the pieces necessary to support itself.

The thing is, the way the enviroment of Warhammer 40k is structured, it's all-war, all the time. Expecting multiple wars along the perimeter, not all of those billions of troops are going to any one planet. They'll be spread out reasonably on each warzone, if they're clumped up close to each other.

OT: In any case, the Warhammer project may generate some positive buzz for Relic, and boost sales of other titles a few ticks.

IWAssassin

17th Dec 03, 6:43 PM

Supply wise, thats the nifty thing about Las Technology. Issue a soldier 3 clips and he'll use them the entire war. You DONT need to resupply ammunition because the Las Clips last forever and can be charged however you want [including throwing them in a camp fire, though this will reduce the lifespan of the clip].

Many of the tanks dont need fuel, because they run on plasma reactors which will last them the entire war. Several variants of the tanks dont need ammo resupply [such as the Turbo Laser Destroyer].

Equipment wise, their CLOTHING is half armor half clothing and generally will last years, needing no resupply in that manner.

In fact the only resupply that becomes necessary is food. Its not a huge issue to ship JUST food compared to shipping food, ammo, etc, and the people shipping it are Imperial Navy, which is a completely different force alltogether [recruited from a completely different pool of people].

The only issue is yes you dont have everyone on the front lines. This is actually a good thing as its rather difficult to fit 100 billion people on a planet when you ALSO have to fit the entire opposing army. Many will go to defending nearby systems, but like in the case of the Eye of Terror Campaign it was the entire region at war anyway, so that makes no difference, and again it was a single Company of Marines arriving in the region vs a billion guardsmen arriving in the region. Even compared to the troops arriving on a single planet every day, which would well exceed a million, 100 marines wouldnt be worth noting aside from the psychological value to the troops.

The Collector

17th Dec 03, 7:16 PM

The major problems are then in procurement and distribution of nonperishable foodstuffs. Local supplies will not last. Foraging is not guaranteed, especially on crappy worlds like Tallarn.

The supply problem may be mitigated by the amount of expected combat deaths. Based on the fluff-pictures of Warhammer, I don't expect too many people to walk away from combat, especially against alien races like Orks or Tyranids. Against human rebels, probably a minimum of IG troops with a larger proportion of space marines as a percentage of force deployment. With Genestealer cult outbreaks, probably just space marines. Against Chaos hordes-nothing will last too long anyways, so send all you like!

In any case, I've never seen a image of a Imperial Dropship before. How *do* they deploy stuff from ship-to-surface?

IWAssassin

17th Dec 03, 11:00 PM

I dont think they've ever designed one.... suffice to say its a vehicle that can carry at LEAST a company, and thats up to 300 men plus tanks... the thing would be bloody huge, making the Forgeworld Thunderhawk, or the new Tau thing, look like ants.

Suffice to say it would be huge even in epic scale (:

Although its POSSIBLE that the Transports in BFG have landing capacity... one thing about Guard there's no way the army will EVER deploy without first having captured a space port [which is in my view the REAL use for Space Marines, in the true tradition of marines. Capture the beachhead, then go home while the regulars fight it out]

Concieveably if the whole thing just landed on a world, that would work. And transports are what... a kilometer long? (:

The Collector

18th Dec 03, 8:11 AM

Too vulnerable. They would need heavy armor and firepower to defend their landing area. Can't expect Space Marines to do everything, especially if the enemy uses artillery to shell the landing area rather then sending troops.

Tagy

18th Dec 03, 2:30 PM

For comparison, you can see here what size a dropship should be, and this one doesn't even carry the troops, it teleports them in directly(chaos one): Chaos dropship diorama (http://perso.club-internet.fr/heweb/wargames/gday2003/gdayvrac/image1.htm)

Oh wait, there's the official drop pods later in the gallery. They are space marine ones and look like this: Drop pods (http://perso.club-internet.fr/heweb/wargames/gday2003/gdayvrac/image6.htm)

starrider

18th Dec 03, 5:09 PM

those arent dropships, they're droppods. you can get em off forge world. they only carry a squard or so of space marines. a true dropship would be much larger.

The Collector

18th Dec 03, 5:35 PM

I thought Thunderhawks carried people as well?

In any case, it's too inefficient to drop a massive force like the Imperial Guard on small drop pods. Every pod would carry a squad or a tank, and then be rushed by enemy and broken piecemeal. The IG is dangerous by concentration and volume of fire.

The Chaos Dropship might be what the Imperium Dropship looks like. Since the Chaos guys basically rebelled with Imperium equipment during the Heresy, they would probably retain the Dropships, which become warped by the Chaos stuff. Most of the designs in Warhammer are relatively old, so I'm guessing the Imperium would use something like that dropship: except not in red. Probably green like Imperial navy vessels in BFG.

IWAssassin

18th Dec 03, 5:49 PM

Thunderhawks carry people, but again WAY too inefficient for Guard as it carries up to 30 people... not even a full platoon.

I highly doubt that Chaos Dropship is normal gear for anyone except POSSIBLY Marines. Again deployment method is something more suited for Marines than Guards as its designed to land in the middle of the battlefield. In the Guard, only Stormtroopers ever do such, and they do it with Valkyries or Grav Chutes.

The Collector

18th Dec 03, 8:53 PM

A dropship must be armed for the possibility of attack by surprise forces, and armored in the event of artillery attack.

thesamonthemoon

18th Dec 03, 10:32 PM

Err... not nececarily...

Say, you have a giant 1km transport. Inside, perhaps, are several aero-dynamic high atmospheric craft, from which IG could parachute.

Thus no need for weapons or armor.

Pure conjecture of course... ;)

IWAssassin

19th Dec 03, 1:57 AM

Were the landing ships from WW2 armed? No, they were just buckets with motors on the back... it it was hit by a shell, so what. This becomes especially true when its known canonically that IG transports are utterly massive and DO require a space port to land on. If one is shot out of the sky nobody cares that much, besides orbital vessels will bomb the hell out of the site that launched the attack (:

Mr Carrot

19th Dec 03, 2:15 AM

atmospheric class such as:

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Imperial%20Navy/valkpaint2.jpg

Noir

19th Dec 03, 3:21 AM

Originally posted by IWAssassin
Were the landing ships from WW2 armed?

Some Amtraks were armed with a 75mm howitzer :p

ÜberJumper

19th Dec 03, 11:28 AM

Most british landing craft were armed.

http://www.geocities.com/britsatwar/landing_craft.html

black dawn

19th Dec 03, 1:09 PM

Originally posted by Black Splitstar

wait did he just call Rusian Ninja a russian dude? :argh:

yeah.... errr i forgot his name... lol

this topic has strayed so far off topic it's rediculous and not really helping relic all that much. after thinking a little more, here's some of my ideas:

i mentionded before, in some other topic that there should be some sort of campain mode where your forces grow and you get more and more guys. also another type of campeign that goes througth a story like starcraft would be excellent too.

another important aspect would be multiplayer, both allied (like 2v2 and free for all, and the free for all wouldn't be all that hard to engine if it's not turn based... the only hard thing would be close combat, and who's charging what unit and how many attacks

The Collector

19th Dec 03, 5:18 PM

It moved from discussion of scope and scale of the game to scope and scale of wh40k in general.

dewolfe

20th Dec 03, 6:37 AM

EDIT: Wrong thread...how embarrassing!

The Collector

20th Dec 03, 5:37 PM

The new Codex Imperial Guard seems to have a image of a dropship. I don't have a page number, but it appears to come with the caption: The Battle of Tyrok Fields. Vessel in background has open ramps and appears to be deploying troops.

[Edit: I found these tidbits off of Critical Hit (http://www.criticalhit.co.uk)

"GALAXY TROOP SHIP
The Galaxy is a fleet support ship used to transport regiments of the Imperial Guard from one star system to another. The Galaxy itself is not a proper warship although it will often operate as part of a battlefleet, supplying troops for planetary landings.

Imperial Guard regiments are recruited from a world's best warriors - gang fighters from hive worlds, planetary defence forces from industrialised worlds, tribal warriors from feral worlds and the feudal elite from medieval worlds.

At the time prescribed by the Administratum, a troop ship such as a Galaxy arrives at the planet to recruit the elite warriors. They then begin a great journey through space during which they are trained in the armaments and tactics of the Imperium. They are issued with standard Imperial equipment - lasguns, flak armour and so forth - and instructed in the Imperial faith. When they arrive at their destination, they have been trained into a crack force, their natural warrior skills honed to a razor-sharp edge.

Some regiments are sent to conquer and pacify newly-discovered planets and may remain there afterwards as a garrison, forming a new warrior elite to rule the planet. Other regiments may be moved from warzone to warzone, fighting countless battles on the Imperium's behalf."]

IWAssassin

21st Dec 03, 5:05 AM

Page 12 for the record... never noticed it but it DEFINATELY is a ship, with things that LOOK like loading ramps extended. I always thought it was a building but definately has drives on it and if you look closely even landing gear.

That thing has to be at LEAST a kilometer long (:

The Collector

21st Dec 03, 8:26 AM

It has engines in the rear, and appears to have "legs" on the bottom. Troops are offloading.

The Galaxy Troopship carries regiments. At least it seems that they offload directly from these vessels.

Vision_DK

21st Dec 03, 12:15 PM

Epic scale would be nice, we have too many really bad pansy 'hero based' RTS's .... not even fun

Unless It's something grand i'm not getting into this.

The Collector

21st Dec 03, 7:14 PM

A Horus Heresy level would be awesome, even if not part of a campaign.

starrider

21st Dec 03, 7:32 PM

indeed, but which battle? the battle for terra would be hectic, great fun to play too.

The Collector

21st Dec 03, 7:46 PM

Battle for the Imperial Palace would be chaotic and confusing. It'd have to be a co-op level?

Russian Ninja

22nd Dec 03, 2:33 AM

Originally posted by The Collector
The new Codex Imperial Guard seems to have a image of a dropship. I don't have a page number, but it appears to come with the caption: The Battle of Tyrok Fields. Vessel in background has open ramps and appears to be deploying troops.

That's not a Drop Ship. That's a Leviathan. You'd see them in Final Liberation. They're typically command vehicles and Battlefield support with their massive Doomsday Cannons. They've got Void Sheilds and numerous other guns as well.

DemonTalons

22nd Dec 03, 6:37 AM

I hope they dont make it like Warcraft 3.

Anyone wonder how do you think theyll do the HQ units? Like will they have a RPG type of system for your HQ or will you simply be able to pick a HQ equip it with what you want and it acts like another unit?

Adalpheus

22nd Dec 03, 6:41 AM

The thing is, warhammer 40k isn't epic40k so it won't be happenning (I dare relic to prove me wrong :) ) so you might as well go away now. Heroes add to the game I find, in that you can't just rush a load of troops at a small squad that happens to have an amazing hero that will rip them to bits. It means that you have to step around him, weaken him with indirect fire and then attack.

In any battle there are some people who are just better at fighting than others. The inclusion of heroes and leaders in strat games takes this into account. Also, if you didn't have a hero of some sort, who would lead your task force? You need an HQ (leading unit) or else your imp guard are going to leg it at the first smell of a daemon...

DemonTalons:

That could go either way. For the campaign, I would expect it to be an RPG type thing where your hero/es gain experience during a battle and are then accorded better stats/equipment. For skirmishes (assuming you get that option), I'd expect them to use the same system as the table-top uses (points). So you could have an enormously powerful psyker, but he would cost you a bomb in points...

dewolfe

22nd Dec 03, 10:24 AM

That's not a Drop Ship. That's a Leviathan. You'd see them in Final Liberation. They're typically command vehicles and Battlefield support with their massive Doomsday Cannons. They've got Void Sheilds and numerous other guns as well.

Thing is, if I'm not mistaken, there are 2 different Leviathans. There's the epic command vehicle, and another one, this a member of the Imperial Navy (go here (http://www.felixent.force9.co.uk/games/images/img008/sf10027.jpg) ). Best that I could find, although it's a conversion and doesn't look that big.

The Collector

22nd Dec 03, 9:39 PM

Link to the vessel/craft thing that could be the Leviathan (http://home.graffiti.net/winsettz/GamesWorkshop.jpg)

Yes, I acknowledge that I will burn in Perdition for posting up GW imagery. We all know who it belongs to, and I'll take it down sooner or later.

Is that the Leviathan you speak of? o.o It doesn't look like the Leviathan out of the Final Liberation thread on this forum.

thesamonthemoon

22nd Dec 03, 11:25 PM

Well, of course the game is going to have Rocket Propeled Grenades (RPGs), or some more advanced version thereof. ;)

As for heroes, I'm hoping for them to be just as in WH40K; i.e. they should be tough, but not unreasonably so. They can't hold the line by themselves, but they can make the critical diffrance. :)

Adalpheus

23rd Dec 03, 4:32 AM

The Collector

23rd Dec 03, 7:25 AM

I thought the 13th Wulfen company was running around the Eye of Terror.

dewolfe

23rd Dec 03, 9:38 AM

There was mention earlier in the thread of the space wolves being split up. If I remember rightly, they were split a few times. When they converted the SM legions into chapters, a load of the space wolves got pissed off and decided they didn't like the system and they've been rampaging around the Eye of Terror stamping on Chaos' head ever since.

The Space Wolves had only one successor chapter, and I forget the name of it. Wolf Brothers or something. Anyway, they were purged because of unstable gene seed. As The Collector stated, the Wolves' Thirteenth Company, the Wulfen Company are the ones running around the eye. The 13th was made up completely of those who were…“too wild” (the best explanation would be to read Bill King's Space Wolf or the Space Wolves' codex). They led the attack on Prospero, the home world of the Thousand Sons, right before the Horus Heresy. When Magnus the Red and the rest of his surviving legion opened a tare in the warp to escape, the 13th was also sucked in.

Apparently (this is the conclusion of a discussion in the Games Workshop in my town), the two missing legions were copyright of ex-members of GW who left the firm and therefore they can't be put into the codices.

I know that GW lost Malal, the fifth and coolest Ruinous Power, to a situation similar to this, but most likely they put in the two expunged Legions for something that people could talk about. Actually...reaching back in my memory, I remember reading about how in Rogue Trader (the original 40k) the two missing legions were the ones who landed at Istvann V that were completely destroyed. Back then, IIRC, the Salamanders were the only ones to make it off. Now of course, the Salamanders, Raven Guard, and Iron Hands all landed, all took a beating, and all barely escaped.

IWAssassin

23rd Dec 03, 5:58 PM

There are thousands of chapters of space marines, and nowhere near 10% of them are described in the codices or Index Astartes (I&II). For the tabletop game, this allows you to paint your entire force pink, but still play as the Blood Angels or any other chapter with special rules... (I'm currently creating an Imperial Fist army with black and yellow stripes instead of completely yellow armour).

Actually there are 1000 chapters at the current time. Of course less than 100 have ever been named so the effect is the same, but just thought that deserved clarification.

As for the Space Wolves.... thing is a LOT of people see them as Heretics that should be expunged [along with the Blood Angels and Dark Angels]. They're tolerated because they're simply too effective to lose.

Of course that goes back a while to the point where fluff said only 3 chapters didnt follow the Codex Astartes to the LETTER [the Codex Astartes being the holy writ of the Marines, defining exactly how they are to operate at all times]. These days, even the Chapter whose claim to fame is having WRITTEN the Codex Astartes 10,000 years ago doesnt follow it. Mainly because there was a cry that if X army gets special rules, so should Y, so all Marine armies have some special rules which all defy the Codex Astartes.

The Collector

23rd Dec 03, 7:28 PM

Warhammer 40k has missile launchers I believe. So RPGs can't be much of a stretch. I think a "rocket-propelled krak-grenade launcher" is their RPG.

Dagda

23rd Dec 03, 8:55 PM

hah Titans...Bring em on in 40K Ill just bring a few term squads with thunderhammers and teleporters.

Stymie_Jackson

24th Dec 03, 10:06 AM

Originally posted by dewolfe
The Space Wolves had only one successor chapter, and I forget the name of it. Wolf Brothers or something.

I think that's it...the Wolf Brothers or the Brother Hood of the Wolf (not to be confused with the cheesy french film).

They were labeled as an 'ill-fated' chapter, so genetic instability was probably the cause of their end.

And you're right, it is the Wulfen that stomp around the eye of terror...they are not a seperate chapter but a seperate COMPANY of the Space Wolves chapter, however, since the SW were only broken up once and a currently larger than any other chapter it stands to reason one company can actually be a large number of troops, more so than normal.

Hmm...GW always contradicts their fluff, the silly wankers. Can't be bothered to read their own crap I guess. Anyway, the Wolfen I THINK are often confused with a group of Space Wolves that ran off looking for their Primarch, Leman Russ and never returned. The commander at the time got some psychic message and left with his company to seek their old boss and never showed up.

Now either they became the Wolfen, or the Wolfen were sucked up by the destruction of Prospero and these dudes are ANOTHER group of lost Space Wolves, or Games Workshop is doing their 'Let's not make any sense and bastardize our story line again' routine once more.

Oh, they try to cover it by saying that the Imperial history is cloudy due to all the wars and much is lost to legend and myth, but that's a simple excuse for not managing their story lines. They should take a queue from that dork George Lucas and have a tight grip on their storylines.

IWAssassin

24th Dec 03, 10:13 AM

HA! Compared to the continuity of SW the Warhammer 40k storyline is bulletproof. Lucas might be facist about storylines, but when it comes to continuity.... he doesnt even keep it with relation to his own movies.

Stymie_Jackson

24th Dec 03, 12:10 PM

I beg to differ IWA...Lucas, and I'm no fan of the guy that destroyed Star Wars and replaced it with Happy Hippies in Outer Space but EVERYTHING is controlled...video games, fiction, comics, they all must get his stamp of approval before being released. This is so there are no contradictions.

Meanwhile, GW has about 4 different story lines for the final battle of the horus heresy. Gee, first the emperor is saved by a squad of terminators who distracted horus in one version, than 3 years later there's no mention. Even though terminator honors supposedly contain a peice of the emperors armor in tribute of this feat. This patten repeats itself...hell, look at Orcs now...NOW in 4th edition they are SPAWNED by fungus? Don't get me wrong, it sounds great, but there is no previous basis for this. What about Squats?

Did Leman Russ die in battle? They say that. Did he vanish without a trace? They say that too. They say he's still alive, he's in statis, he's dead but will be reborn to lead his boys, or he'll just return from the dead.

And GW's answer? This is myth and history and thus there will be multiple interpretations. My answer? LAZY ASS WRITING. It's not like the same guys haven't been running GW...they have. I remember when Andy Chambers was a teenager! They just get sloppy or don't control the fiction. Too much effor I guess.

40K's plot is about as bulletproof as munster cheese. But much tastier. At least it provides you the opportunity to embrace the stuff you like and ignore the rest.

IWAssassin

24th Dec 03, 2:48 PM

At one point Lucas admitted he'd never even read the EU stuff. Continuity is FAR out of whack. Now granted we dont typically have 4 stories about one event but... the most obvious [and one of the most controversial] is the so-called Super Star Destroyer. Depending on WHICH source you go to, its either an Executor class [books, naval tradition] or Super class [other books]. Depending on which source you go to its either 17.6km long [movies] 11km long [some references, SW.com] or 8km long [most books and video games].

Theres a line from Obi-Wan, about nobody knowing what causes the force, despite Scientists both Jedi and non Jedi researching it for ages. In EP1 however its exactly known, symbiotic parasites known as midicloreans. One of the most obvious Ep1 flaws is straight from Ep5, where Obi Wan tells Luke that Yoda was his instructor. Yoda was NEVER Obi Wan's instructer.

Another of my favorites is the population of Coruscant. Most numbers say 10 billion which is rediculously low. Other numbers say 1 trillion, which is only low (:

Also established was the definition of sector. At one point each Sector had 1 Senator in the Old Republic, and there were 1000 sectors each with 1000 worlds. As of Ep1 every world had a Senator, yet there were far less than 1 million senators there, and other references say Sectors range from 10-50 worlds.

At least GW sorta provides a slightly plausible explaination for their shoddy writing (:

Darnit wrote that without remembering my personal two favorites. Not necessarially inconsistancies but logic gaps.

BFC refers to the New Republic Fleet Strength as a TOTAL of 500 non-fighter class vessels. HoT Refers to the strength of the Imperial Navy at its strength as being 25,000 Destroyers. Now even if ALL Rebel vessels were Destroyer class, thats still taking on 50:1 odds. Unlikely! And all evidence points to maybe 50 of the 500 being destroyer class, and that doesnt take into account that Star Destroyers were FAR less common than Frigates or Cruisers.

The last one I have comes from one book. Vector Prime. In it we establish the bad guys have 2 types of weapons. One type is a volcano gun. Useless against X-Wing class shields, but great against hulls. The second is a Gravity Beam. Rips away shields, but is useless against hulls. The bad guys fire all their gravity beams at a Star Destroyer, and the shields hold. 5 Minutes later the Destroyer is destroyed. Anyone else see the continuity error? They couldnt lower the shields at all. Yet the ship was Destroyed.

Tribunal

25th Dec 03, 10:18 PM

It's funny to think in a topic of scope and scale that people forget about the scope and style of the guys at Relic and things that they might do to change the way the game is played. Homeworld I and II were (are) great in the way that they start -- a few fighters, your mothership and a corvette in a mission or two. A great way to start it, and along the story you get more and more vessels until you have an armada that can change the balance of power of their universe. Who says they are not working on the same for this game?

First they need a great 3d engine, which as we all know they are great at doing. To start the game off, how about giving players control of a several hundred point force. You can select troops/squads, weapons and minor vehicles, and the ability to create special characters. YOU (the character in control) could be in an orbital station, away from the field etc, but still be an integral part of the story, as well as commanders of other forces and other vital characters that may be included who you may have to defend over the course of time.

As the game progresses it is very much like 40k, you can control individual units or groups of units, and the mouse wheel would be integral to this (and my expanded idea). You would have three distance settings you could select -- close, medium distance, and a further distance from the field. The camera could be panned as needed, and would allow for complete viewing enjoyment of the ensuing carnage. Several missions into it though, you would begin to cross into the epic boundaries, and a new set of mouse zooms would be included. The first three would be the standard mouse zooms for normal scale, but after clicking it the fourth time you would enter into the epic scale, where you would order several squads at a time orders, and have more of a sense of epic battles. There would be a total of three mouse zooms for the epic scale as well, for a total of six mouse wheel clicks to go from a close up camera in the normal scale to a maxed out epic scale view. With the way these guys use lod'ing, the transition shouldn't be that rough, and there could be thousands of units on screen at once battling it out.

As far as MP etc is concerned, with this sort of set up, you would be able to select what sort of game you wanted to play based either on gametype, or by the total amount of points you wanted to spend on the game. You could have a 500 or so point army in one game, and go into the tens of thousands the next for a completely different type of game. In each game, however, you could use different squads that you designed yourself, or use pre-exixting/randomly created squads provided with the game. I loved configuring my squads in Ground Control, and if I could have the full creative approach to 40k I would be ecstatic.

Imagine this: You are ordered to hold a bombed city from an assault of chaos marines on the way to retake the city. You start off with 10 squads of troops and several tanks. You use the epic screen to order the 10 squads to different areas in the city, then sqitch to the normal scale to order the troops to go into certain positions within the city and assume overwatch. You select certain units to stand in front of windows ready to fire, and wait for the dreadnaughts before bringing the las-cannons out as being potential targets. Midway through the mission, you are ordered to secure a communications array. You quickly scroll through the different squads, select the one you want, and keeping in the normal mode make your way through the war torn streets to the industrial complex with the array there. You kept your losses down by having indivivuals use overwatch while others advanced and since it will take a few minutes before the building is secured you have your troops take up positions in nearby buildings and out of view (there could be an indicator over the building, and enemy units would have to destroy the occupied building defore the the last of the occupying force was destroyed). Your forces are holding their own until several dreadnaughts arrive at the scene and start to take the buildings apart, and you just lost your last las-cannon in the area. You order your Rhino (which had been using hit-and-run tactics all over the place) to advance and try to take them out. You need to but time before the Rhino arrives and you need at least three marines to secure the communications array, so all you have left is the special unit, who has displacement fields etc so he might last a little bit, or if nothing else buy you the time you need.

I would love to be able to play a game that has elements of epic and the regular 40k scale together. There could be normal missions that suddenly have the epic thrown in, and epic missions that require you to order one unit about exclusively to complete specific mission-card-esqe scenarios that might appear in the middle of a mission. You could have more flexibility in the mission types you could play, and think of how you could have the game start, teasing the players with huge titan warfare, and then being demoted and having to work your way to the top again. As far as unit creation goes, the freedom to create thousands of troops and have them saved for future use is appealing as well, and something that I would love to have. Ground Control had the beginnings of this, but was never fully fleshed out. I can't wait to see what the guys at Relic are going to do.

Tribunal

26th Dec 03, 6:00 AM

What if you are allowed to "create" an entire chapter of marines? That way it wouldn't be just taking over squads in an existing chapter, knowing full well what is going to happen to those chapters during the course of the 40k universe. Each and every event that would happen would be new, not pre-determined, even though you know the events that are occuring during the time period you are playing. There would be certain characters that would need to have pre-determined names etc, but the creation of an entire chapter would be amazing.

There are two chapters with no real information right now, so what if GW handed one of the chapters over to Relic and said "Have fun, make a story up that goes along with the flow of the 40k universe."? With the knowledge that the Relic guys are showing re 40k, just imagine what they could pull off. They're really good with storylines, as we've seen, and with more freedom and less timeline restrictions they could make one of the best RTS games ever... Err, again!

(BTW, this is not a double post, take a look at the time differential)

Mr Carrot

26th Dec 03, 8:45 AM

New chapters are made all the time at different foundings so making up a new space marine chapter isnt a big deal.

The thing is though they will probably miss big sales unless they aim to inocporate at least 1 or 2 of the big name chapters so little Jonny can see his Blood Angels/Ultramarines in a game.

Tribunal

26th Dec 03, 9:06 AM

Yeah, you are right about that, although I would rather be able to create MY own chapter, give it the colors that I want, and select the banners/symbols that I want. That would offer so much more than just to ride the coat-tails of one of the other well-documented chapters, IMHO. Relic's been good about the MP options as far as colors, sides and the like, so I'm pretty sure we won't be let down too much in that category at least!

Darkness

27th Dec 03, 3:33 AM

hmm problem is with epic and regular is that they operatoe on different rules? 100 marines means little in epic, but inregular; whoa! so i dont see how theyre gonna mix it by using 1 set of rules

The Collector

27th Dec 03, 9:31 AM

The Warhammer storyline tended to evolve as time went on. Things became infeasible and as such, they were modified, and they hoped nobody would go back and suddenly notice.

blood_angel

27th Dec 03, 2:04 PM

My perfect computer game conversion.

Its the beginning of a war between X and Y (preferably Orcs and Space Marines/Imperial Guard but I wont limit it to them.....yet :) )
All you see is a space map with each others terrorities marked out and planets of interest on the borders.
Now each 'level' is determined by the CPU by deciding to invade one planet near its border in enemy terrority at random. It could be an industrial world, a death world, a desert world whatever. This determines the make up of the level.
Now to defend against an incursion all surrounding friendly planets have a points limit describing the reinforcments or amount of troops you can pick. This gives you the points to choose an army with.
It cuts to a 2D view of the level, You choose and deploy your army like the tabletop game. You dont get to see what the other side is deploying.
Then after deployment the 3D RTS starts and you play.
The outcome of the game decides if you keep or lose the planet to the other side.
Then it goes back to the space map and starts all over again until one side is wiped out.

Now theres a problem of how can you attack an enemy planet and capture some of their terrority. Well occasionally (each turn after the other side invade?) you get orders from higher up (the emperor, the warlord, the tyranid big boss I forget the name of atm, whoever) telling you to take over a planet, be it for terrority or strategic reasons. So you become the attackers and fight on their turf.

And the borders dont end up static until you win, they flucate all the time giving the impression that you are only a small part of a major battle.

Your thoughts?

The Collector

27th Dec 03, 8:18 PM

Reminds me of Emperor: Battle for Dune's system, where you chose which province to attack, and depending on the amount of adjacent provinces (or the presence of reserves), received reinforcement.

IWAssassin

27th Dec 03, 10:12 PM

Originally posted by Darkness
hmm problem is with epic and regular is that they operatoe on different rules? 100 marines means little in epic, but inregular; whoa! so i dont see how theyre gonna mix it by using 1 set of rules

Simple, its a computer game so wont use EITHER set of rules [both of which are far too clunky for a computer game to use].

That said, one of the advantages of a Computer game is you can do things you cant otherwise, like represent both types of battles. One reason 100 Marines is nothing in Epic is because thats a MUCH larger battlefield than you would EVER want marines showing up to. Fluffwise they're worth 10:1, and logic wise they're by far best in a room to room fight taking a building. So in true StarCraft like style you can have the single-building missions where Marines are worth a lot, but also the Epic sized battlefield missions where, while slightly better than Guardsmen, they simply are sharks out of water.

Numenor

28th Dec 03, 8:33 AM

True true, but in all honesty, do you really think we will ever see an exact 40k table top sized game on a computer. Not a chance. Why?

A 40k game can last for hours if its big enough. Why?
Movement, then firing, measuring, dice rolling, moving the actual models and so on. If that was all done in real time, do you really think that a 40k game would last anything longer than a couple of minutes?
To make it a respectably long game I can't see how they'll manage without scaling it up a bit.

Numenor

deggy

30th Dec 03, 3:32 AM

With regards to making an "exact 40K table top sized game on a computer"...

Part of the appeal of the table top experience is that it is NOT a computer game. It is a decidedly analog experience (if you'll excuse the term). The anticipaction of slowly collecting an army, the modelling/painting/converting, then the endless hours of noodling with your army list, the 8 hour games - sometimes spanning days, the physical interaction with your opponent, stretching ever blessed inch out of your 6" movement and assault ("That's the longest 6" i've ever seen!" heh)

It all feeds into an experience that is very hard to reproduce. And would you really want to? Even the act of how your arrange and place your models is a very personal one that no AI could accurately replicate. Besides, having a computer make the placement decisions for you would give you some one else to blame! ("Crap! I needed my hero with the str5 power weapon up front! There goes my squad")

40K table top is ALL about chance and luck and unexpected compromises between strategy and reality. Computer games share a lot with the rest of computer software, where dependability and predictability are key to user satisfaction. In computer games/software, there is so much going on under the hood that the average person doesn't understand (including us developers... that's what we call bugs!) that its always a struggle between taking too much away and doing too much...

If that makes sense... It gets back to this; you can get upset at yourself or your friend, but we don't want you upset at the game for not doing things "the way you would have".

Thanks for listening! You all are posting some really good comments! Keep it up.

-chris