Historical battles Mod? (WH40k Universe)

[Euryon]

Ok, first off, I'm a RTS fan as opposed to WH40K (Though I always enjoyed painting models as a kid... Never played TT though, really).

Secondly, I've read FAQ's, searched for similar threads, and everything - but this is my first "topic" - so apologies if I've screwed up somewhere (Very imperial rules, I like it ;) )

Ok... I used to read White Dwarf, and they often detailed battles between factions and all; and I remember reading things in Codex' about "famous battles"...

Now, would it be possible (Im sure it would, when the MOD tools are released, I reckon I'll be at least passingly familiar with the mapping and scripting) to have a set of famous "Historical" battles?

Maybe setting out the campaign which gave a certain SM Chapter's Commander his reverent name? A famous Ork out-numbered assault on an Eldar base? A doomed last stand by SM's against an ever pushing CSM force?

If anyone has an encycopediac resource knowledge on this stuff, or anyone is particularly interested in this...
Discuss here I guess :D

Ill try some research myself in the meantime...

[Khruschev]

I'm surprised nobody replied to this one, I was just thinking of 40k 'historical' stuff the other day for DoW.

Course the only problem would be most of the coolest ones in the plot either involved like hundreds of thousands of guys or sides not included, but it wouldn't be too hard to script a single-player scenario where you have a small force of elite guys fighting through the middle of a huge battle trying to find the enemy leader (that's the sorta stuff that GW writes).

Offhand some ideas could be like... the end of the First War for Armageddon where 100 Grey Knights teleport to the center of the Chaos army (the terrain is all clouded by evil and there are huge grotesque shrines and daemons running everywhere and bursting out of the ground) and they have a showdown with the Chaos leader. Grey Knights play a lot like Space Marines cept they have big two-handed swords/halberd kinda things that kill daemons and guns built into their gloves. Course you wouldn't have to show all 100 Grey Knights, maybe just let the player command the leader and a handful and you run into other ones every once in a while.

Let's see... what else could work in DoW...
Maybe the battle where the Dark Angels Space Marines had to fight their own guys and their planet was torn apart from the orbital weapons fire.

I can get back to you on that. I can't think of any specific good sites on this sorta stuff right now, some of the bigger battles GW wrote a lot about that have the sides in DoW are the three wars for Armageddon (it's a planet) and the Horus Heresy (chaos vs space marine civil war) and the Tyrant of Badab War (space marines fighting each other).

Hope that helps some.

[Euryon]

A man with a quote from Voltaire replies? Superb. I'm sure you recognise "Dieu ne pas pour le gros battalions, mais pour sequi teront le meilleur" then ;)


Thanks for the information, the grey knight battle sounds superb. I borrowed a friends Imperial and Chaos Codex' for some research, but I had a further idea concerning the mod.

Basically involving the mission progression...
Eg, we have a battle.
The battle last for 3 days.
In which, the tide turns several times, and there are several historic skirmishs...
Day #1a: The SM's defend a small urban area on the left flank of the SM/Eldar allied line against an Orc horde 3 times their size.
Day #1b:An Eldar Scout force is sent behind enemy lines to disable their power, preventing them accessing the warp (You see, this is where I need my research ;).
Day #1c: A small SM force is sent to relieve a besieged Eldar outpost.

Day #2a & b: The same SM force (re-inforced, regardless of losses) is ordered to push forwards and capture the Orc defenses, and rescue an Eldar scout party that was (contrivedly) captured.

Day #2c: With the newly claimed Eldar base, re-inforce your SM force with Eldar, and capture the next strategic locaiton...

Day#3: Ordered to capture Orc Warboss, hold up and wait for re-inforcements from an elite SM/Eldar force sent to aid.... (2 part mission? Depends on game scripting open from the hard code)

So one isnt ever controlling the whole multi-thousand battle, but rather small skirmishs at different turning points in the battle. Assuming victory, they get to play the next part of the day/battle.

Does that make sense?
Im sure most of it is scriptable, and with some help and research into some actual WH40k battles, it shoul dbe quite fun....

Edit:

If others are least interested in the sound of this MOD, please post, and I will apply for a forum, as I have a lot of ideas which I don't want to bog down this thread with, for sake of practicality.
Also, anyone with relevant skills (3DSMax, World building, Scripting, even someone with an encyclopeadic knowledge of the WH40k universe... Any interest reply here or PM me, I have my fingers in most pies, but excel at none ;) )

[Dalveldrin]

Yeah i'm surprised too that no one is posting in here. Maybe the topic name leads people to believe you mean real life historical battles like WW2 and whatnot. This is a great idea though, which can be made into single player or multi-player campaigns. There are SO many wars in the history its hard to pick some out, in all the codex material there must be a thousand known historic battles. For TT they have started doing this with codexes for the war. Armageddon, Eye of Terror. I think its a great idea. Would love to see special chracters, like Chapter Masters and the Chaos Lords becoming what they are today.

[Euryon]

Well my (hopefully not too grand) designs involve a small single player battle campaign, but a big MP re-working.
Depending on how much of DoW is opened up for MODcraft butchery, I envision a compltely different battle system that does away with buildings and production, but essentially uses the points system (but not exactly like WH40k, but a similar style)

But thats just dreams right now. Need to gauge support and form a team primarily. Then work out what is actually do-able, then do what can be done....

[Dalveldrin]

http://www.criticalhit.co.uk/w40krp/appendix.shtml

Here is a link that can show you some of the battles, and includes a timeline as to when things happen in the 40k universe, if you already knew about it, sorry for the spam link heh

[Khruschev]

Bah, wrote a good reply and the forums forget I'm logged in when I try to post it. Mumble grumble...

Well anyway I think making a battle system that moves away from the RTS/base building system is a great idea, and using the GW plot generally you can find compelling sounding reasons for pretty much anybody fighting anybody.

Having to fight for control of warp access like you said could be a great objective if Chaos or Eldar are involved (they're the sides that mainly use the warp for moving troops). Orks are generally too primitive to take advantage of the warp and the Space Marines see it as heresy or witchcraft so they'd be apt to destroy the gates. (Most warp gates are supposedly self-powering though so blowing a fuse wouldn't cut it, you'd have to smash the thing to bits).

My French is a bit rusty but from what I can tell I don't think I'm familiar with that one. Heh.

One thing, (this could vary from mission to mission but it affects the gameplay/scripting). Most of the big plot campaigns could probably be played from several different angles, some more tactical and some more like a duel. Like, as an example, in the battle for earth when Chaos first split from the Imperials if you were playing a marine commander with a rank around Captain you would command a company and have a variety of tasks to perform, such as recapturing a spaceport or trying to hold a breach in the wall of the Emperor's palace for a set amount of time, but if you were playing a 'legendary' character such as a Space Marine Chapter Leader or Primarch you'd be pretty much tacked down to epic one on one showdowns with similiar Chaos characters. Just a thought.

Oh yeah, Critical Hit! That's a good one.

Oh, this is probably a bit irrellevant but I can maybe help with models/terrain if I can find the time (course that kinda depends on what the tools are like when the game comes out).

[Dalveldrin]

I would love to play the Skalthrax (Spelling) Massacre. When the Worldeaters fought the Emperors Children. When the worldeaters withdraw, Kharn the betrayer takes a flamer and burns the worldeaters for their lack of bloodlust. Thats just one battle though heh, there are tons I would love to play.

[Khruschev]

Heheh yeah, that'd be a good one to be scripted. Like you've been fighting as a Worldeater against the Emperor's Children and after surviving a few insane pitched battles it gets cold and you have to take shelter or lose all your troops to the freezing conditions and then, as the ultimate anti-climax Kharn flames you and cuts your guys in half. Lose-lose situation :)

Heheh I bet people would hate that. It would be funny though.
Nobody said being a Chaos Marine was supposed to be fun.

[Euryon]

Kruschev: Thanks for the update. Yeah, like I said, im sketchy on WH40k details, but I leanr fairly quick ;) And as for the rank-scale system - that sounds very interesting; one of my *must develop if no one else does* games involves starting life as a mere peon, and working up through ranks, and having the game system change from being a FPS as a mere private/marine, up to NCO being in charge of squads, junior officers with platoons, middle officers with companies (all Freedom Fighter style control system), then colonels with regiments - which would be RTS view, and then Generals with a Total War feel...
But thats a side-track...
The idea of having duels, small battles, or even epic Infantry meatgrinders, all sounds great.

Davaldrin: Thanks for the link! Ill read through it more htoroughly tommorow (4:45am here :yawn: )

If either of you guys are interested in assisting at all with this project, please PM me, as Id like to throw ideas around further (not signing you up to a mod team, but just if youd be interested in discussing more, I will open a forum to discuss this ;) )

Edit: Kruschev - The French is from the Pickman papers I think (or something similar) and translates as:

God is not on the side of the biggest battalions, but of the best shots.

A snipers mantra, im sure ;) (One of my favourites)

[Dalveldrin]

Although I have little to no technical skills as it comes to modding, I have quite a bit of info stored in my head as to Warhammer 40k History and Battles. One of the beautiful things though is that except for wars that talk in greater detail about with codexes etc... They rarely tell you what changed the tide of the battle/war. So it would be quite easy to fill in whatever missions you please, and not every mission/battle would need to be fully decided by the player. (Like having to kill a major character. Its easy enough to have you make small tactical strikes that disable their army movement/supply lines. I see a wealth of possibilites here.

[King Raa]

I'm no fluff expert by any stretch of anyones imagination - but is all the fluff universal on each bit of the 40k history or anywhere does one thing say this and something else say something else.
Would you also like explain the history of the battle at each point with a written/narrated intro - because otherwise it'd just be some sp skirmishes.... if any of you know any cool sounding people like of the sort usually used to narrate stuff, and assuming the map maker allows intro movies in a similar way to cnc generals (you can scroll over the map and have text coming up etc with scripted stuff) then yeh would be cool... all your favourite battles on display for people who know nothing about 40k...

w/e good luck to you. just make sure itsnot for hardcore fans only

[Euryon]

If this goes ahead, and we have "historical" battles, then I fully intened to have the player immersed in fluff :D
Narration, Cut scenes, text scripts, all that good stuff.

[Khruschev]

I'm no fluff expert by any stretch of anyones imagination - but is all the fluff universal on each bit of the 40k history or anywhere does one thing say this and something else say something else.

With some of the details GW will sometimes go back on itself as to exactly how things happened between editions of 40k, but usually that deals with really specific details of the battles, like what two people did when they were fighting one-on-one etc. Nothing that would really get in the way of a cool scenario.

Heheh when thinking about a rank system it occured to me that 40k fluff is funny in the way that instead of worrying about his troops, the overall commander (especially if it's Space Marines vs Chaos Space Marines) usually has nothing better to do than to go find the enemy overall commander and fight one-on-one

[Cailet]

How about recreating some of Ragnar's clashes with Madox (read Space Wolf and Grey Hunter for details). Imagine it, a small band of Space wolves battling through ranks of Cultists to stop the blasphemous rituals onlyto come face to face with a Chaos Sorceror and his Daemonic retinue. Tough for the good guy but very cool.

[specineff]

this i totally approve of as an idea. though obviously id rather it be units each side starts with and no actual building or reenforcing. make it like the TT or a war.

[Dalveldrin]

Yeah exactly, wow we could actually make some use out of Rhinos with this thing.

[Euryon]

My intentions are to remove building necessity and use something akin to a the points system :)

[Richtofen]

I'd probably start with the famous missions; battle for macragge, a fight from the Cadian Gate, Siege of the Emperor's Palace, 3rd War for Armaggedon, there are heaps!

BTW that chaos leader that the grey knights banished is Angron, Daemon Primarch of the World Eaters, so that is no small accomplishment that they managed to banish him!

[King Raa]

ooohhooo, whats that one I read about on the planet tyran.. the reason for the tyranids having their name.. when the nid mod is all well and good do that. do ittt. doo iittt. go on go on go on go on.

[Roma]

I plan on making a campaign based on the recent Eye of Terror conflict, including participation in some of the major battles.

Although it all depends on the degree of difficulty it is to make missions and maps for this game. If it has a program like what Starcraft and Warcraft 3 had then I should be alright.

[Khruschev]

I'd probably start with the famous missions; battle for macragge, a fight from the Cadian Gate, Siege of the Emperor's Palace, 3rd War for Armaggedon, there are heaps!

BTW that chaos leader that the grey knights banished is Angron, Daemon Primarch of the World Eaters, so that is no small accomplishment that they managed to banish him!

Yeah, heaps all around :) It'd probably be best to start with missions that involve the races in DoW already though, the nid mod looks impressive but who knows how that'll work out once the game is released so I'd put Battle for Macragge on the back burner. A good half dozen mini-campaigns could be pulled from the Emperor's Palace siege, including but not limited to the White Scars retaking the spaceport, Blood Angels led by Sanguinius holding one of the gates (I can't remember which off the top of my head... Lions or Ultimate), and naturally, the death of Horus on his battle barge. Course there'd be issues with the really legendary parts, like what Primarchs/The Emperor/Horus look/sound like, who you could play as, etc. (Also Space Marines were supposed to have crappier looking armor back then but that's probably not a big concern).

The Cadian gate may be good but from what I've seen of Codex Eye of Terror it's generally a tangly undecided mess and not as epic or entertaining as the 2nd ed plot wars. That and there are a lot of IG involved, once again a race not playable right off the bat.

3rd War for Armageddon (or even the First or Second... the same maps could be used :) ) is what I'd put my money on. I'd like to see Blood Angels Captain Tycho or the Dreadnaught vs Dreadnaught battle personally. Or even old Angron getting clobbered :) Man that's an obvious name. "We need a name for this guy." "What does he do?" "Well he gets angry and kills people a lot." "Fair enough... lets take the word angry and try to make him sound like a robot." "Angron!" "Perfect. Lets break for tea." "Smashing."

Oh well. That's my ten cents for now.

[NinjaRay]

I think the Horus Heresy would be cool. Do a cool Marine vs. Marine battle with Beefed up characters to repersent the Primarchs(the First Space marines, almost walking gods). This was the biggest conflict the imperium has ever known. You would have to pick a cool battle, like the siege of the Imperail palace or the Desturction of the Thousands Son's home world by the Space wolfs. So many cool battles just form that historic period.
Also Ryan's War would also be cool. Ryan's War was when orks overran the Crimson Fist's homeworld and got an lucky hit in a destroyed there fortress-monstary right at the beginning of the war. The Fist's had to fight a Gurilla war, aginst a much larger force. Good times :)