40k Imperial Guard Operations

[Anon011]

Hi FeruEnzeru.
Thanks for the comment, i used Gimp tools to swap colors or change them here and there manually, i have no experience with working with sprites at all so i just experimented.

And when it comes to favorite wh40k factions mine are definitely IG/Astra Militarum with armies such as Armageddon Steel Legion, Krieg or Tempestus Scions (Stormtroopers) and of course factions such as Orks, Tau, Necrons and Chaos.

Also speaking of improving my sprites, im really keen on doing that although i dont know if i use correct tools (gimp) and how to do it exactly. I guess ill just have to practice more!

Nice to meet you too and have a nice day!

[ohartenstein23]

I use GIMP for almost all of my spritework - as long as you know how to get the palette correct, it works pretty well.

[Anon011]

I did two additional sprites today, i hope im not spamming the thread too much with my posts!

Here we have: Accatran Pattern MkIV Lasgun (Basically a Bullpup Lasgun used by wh40k equivalent of paratroopers, drop troops using grav chutes) and alternative artwork for Lasgun Power Pack

[ohartenstein23]

No, keep these coming! I might use this similarly to how you can get advanced bolters/boltpistols rarely from normal missions, or maybe coming across them as a mission where you help out drop troops.

[ohartenstein23]

New version time! Anon011, your work on the hotshot lasgun inspired me to get moving on something I've planned but only now have gotten around to - Storm Troopers!  This release includes them as a whole new soldier type once you've advanced in your campaign, as well as allowing the most veteran of your Guardsmen access to their elite gear.

As part of these changes and based on some discussion with Dioxine and Solarius Scorch, I've also decided to change the stats of the "regular human" soldier types, i.e., pretty much everbody but the Marines and Dreadnoughts, to make them less superhuman when trained up all the way.  The promotions for Veterans and Officers will include increases in stat caps, so your best soldiers can still become heroes of your army, but not quite at the level as a fully-trained Space Marine.  For those of you who have already trained some Guardsmen to the caps, congratulations at keeping them alive for that long!  If you wish to bring them back down to the new caps for the mod, I've included a transformation called "Fix Soldier Stat Caps" that will bring them in line with the new balance for the mod.

1.4:

• Locked Adeptas Sororitas behind Chapter Operations
• Reduced stat caps for most 'baseline human' soldier types to differentiate from marines
• (Temporarily) Added a transformation to reduce soldiers from previous versions to the new caps
• Added Storm Troopers with new armors and weapons
• Added promotion of regular Guardsmen to Veterans, allowing them access to Storm Trooper equipment
• Added a missile variant of the Sentinel
• Added some thermal and night vision to Sentinel armors
• Added spray waypoints to weapons with greater than 4 autoshots
• Added inventory images and custom armor previews to mounted weapons
• New hangar, dogfight, and geoscape sprites for Chimera
• Increased height of Valkyrie grav drop map now that multiple unit falling is fixed
• Increased repair speed for the Chimera

[Anon011]

Absolutely stunning Ohartenstein23!
Thanks for the update, love it

Spoiler:

after all its hard not to love it with stormtroopers added

Edit:

Spoiler:

not to doublepost

Can i make a suggestion? I think that difficulty for Imperial Guard is pretty inadequate, for the first months player is restricted to Valkyrie (and thus only 10 soldiers and no HW) as Chimera is very slow and cant reach most missions as they expire. Next thing is that enemies scaling is out of place, its good for 40k mod but for Imperial Operations some are impossible like for eg crafts that spawn Chaos Raptors and Terror missions with them first months of the game, even with Chimera HW Chaos Raptors tank almost all shots.
Also i find the interceptor craft to be too weak to take on medium/large enemy crafts, is it only me?

Anyway sorry for complaining about difficulty but i felt like it needed to be adressed, after all proper difficulty scaling is crucial to enjoy the game.

[ohartenstein23]

Life in the Guard ain't easy. Joking aside, changing the enemy progression is outside the scope of this mod - I intend to only expand the options available in bulletdesigner's 40k mod, which is difficult to begin with by design. However, I can look at addressing the issue by using different tools and tactics, some of which is already in the mod but requires learning a new way to play:

• The Chimera is slow yes, but this allows it to have a really nice map for setting up a defensive position, something I want the Guard to be exceptional at.  The trick to using it is to plan ahead where you want it - it never runs out of fuel, so if you know where a chaos mission is happening, send the Chimera to the region to wait for craft.
  
  If you don't want to play that way, you also have access to the Valkyrie Drop Transport, which can hold 20 soldiers but no 2x2 units.
• The interceptors are from the base mod, but are still not meant to take on medium/large craft on their own - you need to use multiple craft. Fortunately, most larger craft will land or can be taken down by using multiple interceptors.
• Everything but Cultists and Traitor Guard have lots of armor in this mod - trying to power through it with lasguns will take a really long time. Fortunately there are other weapons that are good at reducing armor to make the kill easier. The heavy bolter is pretty good at damaging armor, and the guard version doesn't incure a TU penalty due to overweight when you're kneeling. The sniper rifle can simply overwhelm armor by sheer power. Even though the rocket launcher is really heavy, its aimed shot is just few enough TUs to pick up, fire, and drop in a turn. You can even get another shot off if your Commissar inspires you.
• Research the better lasgun and the melta early, they work wonders.
• You don't have to do every mission and the game is pretty forgiving of losses. Roll with the punches, send extra men as cannon fodder, bug out if you have to.

[davide]

Dioxine, Solarius Scorch, and I have been greatly enjoying bulletdesigner's 40k mod, but have been thinking that the Imperial Guard gameplay could be improved.  Therefore, we're release this mod that creates a tech tree choice between playing as the Ultramarines from the original mod, or playing as a regiment of the Imperial Guard!  The mod includes new weapons, armors, and craft exclusive to the guard so you can truly overwhelm the enemy with superior numbers if not firepower.

Only the first "tier" of weapons and craft are done right now, so expect more content in the future!

To play this mod, make sure you have Meridian's OXCE+ installed as well as the base 40k mod by bulletdesigner.

It is recommended to start a new campaign with this mod if you've been playing without it, as it makes significant changes to the research tree.

I apologize, honestly I have not played yet but I wanted to ask you if instead of having alternative tech trees you get to let the player manage a base with ultramarines and another with imperial guard.

I do not know if it might become necessary to have a new attribute in the rules to identify the type of the base

[Solarius Scorch]

I apologize, honestly I have not played yet but I wanted to ask you if instead of having alternative tech trees you get to let the player manage a base with ultramarines and another with imperial guard.

I do not know if it might become necessary to have a new attribute in the rules to identify the type of the base

Unfortunately it won't be possible without some serious rewrite of code (and mechanics, and GUI, and other stuff... pretty much everything in the game about the Geoscape layer). Nut I agree it would be interesting to have.

[ohartenstein23]

You can somewhat do that if you select the Ultramarines research branch as there is still some IG content available no matter what, but other tools need to be locked behind one or the other branch for balance reasons. For example, it takes until nearly end-game tech to be able to field 20+ marines at a time, but the guard gets craft to hold 20 and 24 guardsmen right away; the mod would probably be too easy if you could load up marines in those craft.

[Yankes]

I could see done this using facility provided and forbidden "functions" . You would need two buildings, chapel and barracks and you can have only one type.
Then each base could only allow marines if have chapel or guards if it have barracks.

Only change in code will be needed is adding required "functions" to solder types and checks in purchase screen. Question is what to with transfers? I would leave them as is because it will affect craft transfer too (if it have solder with special type).

Overall something like this:

Code: [Select]

soldiers:
  - type: "SUPER_DUPER_MARINE"
    requiresBaseFunc: ["BEER", "TOILET_PAPER", "TACHOS"]

This minimal version (purchase screen availability) is doable, and I can do it right now, more advanced version (something like `requiresQuartersBaseFunc`) will need more time to do.

[Yankes]

Commit preview from future 4.0 version with this functionality:
https://github.com/Yankes/OpenXcom/commit/198ef2f9cc08cbd1c4a8b00447a0f54dd7844d08
(if someone want you can cherry pick it, do not merge because I will rebase this whole branch at some point)

[ps]
This commit now can add "bazaar" too, if you build special building you will be able to buy rare items not avaialbe otherwise.
Question ablaut selling items, do you need special building to sell some items? something like black market.
Probably this could be used more in XPiratez than 40k.

[ohartenstein23]

That might be an interesting way of doing it, but I don't think it'd fit the mod that well, the main issue is that in terms of deploying soldiers on a craft, the engine considers marines and guardsmen equivalent. In order to allow using both on the same craft, we'd need to make it such that you can only take say, half as many marines as guardsmen on the Chimera.

[Yankes]

Some thing like "weightInCraft"? where normal armors have `1`,  tanks`4` and space marine have custom 2? And maybe  Dreadnought will have 8?

This will be always greater than square of armor size. and will count to total space in craft available for units.

[ohartenstein23]

A tag on armors to give them a weight value for craft loading would be nice, but I think this should be separate from the soldier count. Solarius has mentioned it before, but a craft could be given a weight limit so that instead of the total number of items is limited, the sum of their weights is limited; a similar system could be applied to unit armor weights. Before we just implement this though, we should probably start another thread to discuss it and hammer out some details.