Some misc 40k mod feedback

[Delkatar]

Yeah, I'm building only one appothecary armour per base. Servitors can heal? I haven't really used them as my experience with vehicle hadn't been good so far. Considering that lately most opposition is chaos space marines, I might invest in some sentinels. I do have a cadre of guardsmen I've been training for pilots and to flesh up the ranks while my marines heal after getting shot up.

Edit: Speaking about terminators - how do you defend against a base assault chock full of them? In the previous build, the defense corridor lasted two turns and that was mostly because it took that long for more than to of the terminators to get in. After that they simply rushed in and I managed to kill two, perhaps three after a lot of reloading and in the process lost more than half of the deployed marines. Mind you, in for that defense I did load an earlier save and re-deployed everyone I had in the assaulted base but it didn't help. That's why I went with devastator strategy this time. In the previous game I went with tactical and had only six people with missile launchers/lance cannons across my bases. The rest had meltas, plasma and snipers with most of them having the standard space marine armour. Needless to say, it was a slaughter once the terminators closed in.

[ohartenstein23]

Most of the time the anti-air defense structures are useless, as you need to do the full HP in damage to prevent a landing, otherwise they do nothing.  I would also not put defenses and the cloaking device in the same base, as they are opposing defense strategies and use a lot of space combined - in general 2 cloaking devices are enough to prevent getting scouted most of the time, and base defenses take too much space until you have the highest tier plus the building that allows them to fire twice.

I would also advise against making a choke point too small, because that means it's a choke point for you when you need to finish clearing out the hangars, and having a second choke point means you can flank the enemy.  As for defeating chaos terminators, you need to pull out some big guns or reduce their armor in some way.  Krakk missiles are a good way to simply overpower that armor, and you can buy them from the beginning of the game.  If you're not using the weapon rebalance mod, then repeated sniper rifle strikes can also do it.  Standard bolter ammo damages armor, so focus-firing on the same target in the same spot repeatedly will make them vunerable to follow-up.  Early on, I like using the heavy bolter to do this, as the large magazine size and many autoshots mean that armor goes down quick.  Later, try meltas to reduce that armor even faster or graviton guns to simply ignore it.

Defense corridors with the turrets will help immensely with this, as the large armor values plus bolter ammo means you can reduce a termie's armor without putting one of your marines in danger.

Finally, don't forget that most melee weapons bigger than the knife damage armor and can get in more hits per turn than most ranged weapons.

[Delkatar]

I hope that the defense corridor will be more useful in the new version. In that mission the turrets got one-shotted all and despite focusing fire on a single terminator didn't seem to phase him.

I do know that melee weapons should work... However coming anywhere close to a group of six or seven terminators with the armour I had was suicide - couple of turns after they got to the fefense corridor and approached my people I managed to down a few of them and on the next turn I got multiple people one-shotted. It went downhill from there and more terminators and demons were coming behind that first wave.

Krak missiles, snipers, they work, sometimes. Others - I've had my whole squad focusing on a terminator and melting him in a few shots or the bloody thing could take everything I dished out for multiple turns. Not a good thing when there are a lot of them rushing in. As I mentioned multiple times, that's why I went for devastator strategy this time and focused on soldier weapons and base defenses. I could have gotten a terminator armour too but chose to build standard armours for everyone first.

[ohartenstein23]

Well yes, you shouldn't rush in to melee when there are 6 or 7 terminators, this is why I suggested not having a single-base-tile choke point as that often means needing to face multiple enemies at once instead of them being spread out enough to take on one at a time.

[Delkatar]

Of course not. That's practically suicide even if there's one of them who isn't panicked. Ideally I want to keep them at range. That really wasn't an option in the base defense if I wanted to actually kill them.

EDIT: A bit more feedback. After two easy large lander missions - traitor guard, I basically ignored everything in the air and there were no more landings that moths. The consequence was that two sectors defected and immediately a chaos base got revealed - plague marines with a few demons and terminators in the mix. For some reason I couldn't get support servitors loaded on Landspeeder, though they have no issue deploying with dropods it seemed. This time I did get 17 honour badges for clearing up the mission and a lot of money selling chaos sacrifices for a relatively light price - three dead people, one rookie Sister of Battle, a guard sergeant and a marine one. I just got my first hulk mission shortly after that but unfortunately could't get to it with enough people to beat it - it was just out of landspeeder range from my second base and most people in the first got wounded after the base assault. From what little I saw from the Orks it's a neat job and I can't wait to encounter them again, hopefully successfully this time.

One thing of note from the two plaughtroughs - I never detected a single chaos base in the first one for more than an year of in game time and in that game I was doing significantly more missions, often using droppods to evade enemy aircraft. What I note is that you play well enough not to lose sectors to chaos and thus have a chance for more enemy bases to spawn and thus liberate the places and if the side operation missions don't spawn, a player might face a shortage of honour badges that can lead to some issues with advanced equipment - either get a few nice terminator armours, upgrade fighter craft or build advanced equipment.

In contrast, by letting the enemy basically do what they want for about a month and losing couple of sectors, I'm right now ahead of the curve and got enough money to build a fourth base, outfit it with adamantium forge and basically turn built up my third one and by the end of the month it will be a nice cloaked and defended manufacturing hub that should basically solve any money issues I might have for the rest of the game.

Is it just me or isn't it counterintuitive that a great way to get ahead if you can handle assaulting the enemy bases would be to basically intentionally let sectors fall to chaos so you can then liberate them?

[ohartenstein23]

Not being able to load support servitors comes from the fact that they are classified as "auxiliary units," the same classification as for HWPs from the original game.  This means that in order to have a support servitor, the craft also needs to have room to allow a large 2x2 unit.  The droppods have space for one in their deployment, but not the landspeeder.

The difference between your playthroughs wasn't due to you being more or less active, it was pure RNG.  This mod doesn't have the code turned on that interrupts enemy 'missions' by either assaulting landed craft or shooting them down, so the most you can do is slow down missions by shooting down craft.  It sounds like your first playthrough was just lucky/unlucky in that you didn't get many missions that create bases, while your second one started with the corruption missions early.  "Playing well enough to not lose sectors" does not happen unless you beat the game before a corruption mission starts.

[Delkatar]

Good to know. Is it just me or did the new version nerf certain heavy weapons - sniper rifle and lance cannon are prime contenders. I played a few missions last night and the TU cost for snap shot seem increased so you can use it only once per turn so it's either one aimed shot if you have the TUs or a single snap one. I remember previously I was able to use two snap shots with sniper or about three or even four with lance cannon which was very useful in a lot of circumstances, especially against tough foes where volume of fire was better than a handful of very accurate shots that might not go through the armour anyway.

I got my first mission with Eldar last night too and they seem to fit - very dangerous glass cannons. Their shuriken weapons are deceptively dangerous. While the outright damage they cause isn't much, the amount of wounds that need healing ASAP is comparable to what Plague Bolters do. Facing such foes is one of the few reasons to bring more than one Appotecary/support servitor per mission - a single one of them simply can't keep up with healing ,especially if the fight gets protracted.

I got the first part of a space hulk mission finally complete before going to bed and it was neat. The Orks seem to fit - tough, have poor long range accuracity and I presume that they're very dangerous in close quarters, though fortunately I managed to panic those few who closed the range with incendiary ammo. The Nobs are nicely tough and took a lot of shots and power fist strikes to bring down. Facing a proper Boss is going to be interesting.

More feedback to follow after the next gaming session.

[ohartenstein23]

The sniper rifle did not change, it still can do two snap shots per turn.  The laser cannon got a significant damage buff and better performance versus armor as part of some changes to laser weapons in general, but as a result got reduced to only a single snap shot per turn.

[Anon011]

After playing version 14 for some time now (8th month in game as IG, 7th as SM both on "Force commander" difficulty) i decided to throw in my 2 cents to the feedback.

The Good:
-Space Hulk mission is on point, great mission really, adds tension, 'nids go down exactly as they are supposed to. Nothing as satisfying as burning trough hulk with flamers
-IG got balanced really well from my last play trough, difficulty spike is much more bearable and now IG stands a chance against the horrors of the warp
-There is lots of other great things already mentioned itt. about the game, sprites, music, atmosphere etc... I'll just say that if i had to rate this mod i'd give it 8/10.

But now onto
The Bad:
- Chaos space marines are tough nuts to crack, and i get it but its fine but Chaos Terminators can get 4 shoots from heavy plasma point black to their back and shrug it off like nothing. I think that Chaos space marines armor values need some balancing.
- Morale, I found my Space Marines causing panic among the Chaos Raptors and Chaos Terminators making them drop their weapons and run aimlessly. Im sure that my guys might be scary but to cause a panic among Chaos Space Marine elites? Kinda dubious to be honest. (of course i mean last 2 or 3 guys that usually panic when they are last chaos marines standing)
- Anti armor weapons lack the "anti armor" punch, heavy plasma gets shrugged off by chaos terminators, let alone normal plasma rifles. Heavy bolters are just weak all around. On the other hand Sniper rifle and Lascannon are the king for the most of the game. There is no point in using any heavy weapons but the Lascannon as heavy bolter is too weak to cause any substantial damage to enemies and 5 shoot burst isnt that strong either.
- Tech tree seems kind bloated, for first time players that dont know what research leads to what it can be confusing
- Attacking and successfully destroying enemy base doesn't seem to yeld any Honor Badges in loot? Maybe i missed something.
- 'Nids can both shoot and melee, this leads to some wonkynes in AI in my opinion. Example, one tyranid was standing 5 tiles away from my space marine, he had another one in sight that was 15 tiles away, he decided to shoot the guy that was further away and hide from the guy that was closer instead of just clawing the closer guy to death, maybe split nids into melee only and primarily ranged?
- I found Craft Plasma to be kind of weak compared to Craft Lascannon, what is a next step on a tech tree feels more like addition, 5 shoots only? Not that great, sometimes i found my planes missing all 5 shoots from both guns without hitting the enemy craft.
- Some options are unexplained, what does "Vox" special action for IG do? Why some space marines glow red during battle (i know that red glow is meant to mark guardsmen who did friendly fire?).
- For IG, both stormtroopers acquisition and veteran guardsmen acquisition cost honor badges, whats the point of veterans then? If the cost is the same as with stormtroopers why would anyone chose them instead of stormtroopers? Maybe im missing something here.
- Grav Canon got only one shot before need to reload? And that one shot doesnt seem to be worth it since it doesnt do great damage and isnt that accurate either. Pair it with need to manually manofacture ammunition for grav and you got yourself lots of micromenagement.
- SM got no "special action" box on the upper right of the screen like IG has. Not that this is bad, just a misc observation.
- I dont know if this is my fault or what but "special" missions are pretty rare, for 8 in game months for IG i got not even one special mission besides monthly city attacks and one or two attacks on my base and one enemy base, but riot suppression and training spawned at appropriate rate. For Space Marines i only got Hulk mission once.

The Ugly:

Spoiler:

I didnt had any idea what to put here so here are my random ideas 

- Next tier of Airgame, Vendetta gunship as it is the most costly IG gunship in tabletop, mounting 6 lascannons.
- Psykers for IG
- Sentinel armor with heavy flamers
- Maybe stormboyz or burna boyz for Orkz?
- I know that this one is kinda crazy but how about Rough Riders for IG?


Btw i hope im not too harsh or whiny, its a great mod and i'd love to see it grow even more. Keep up the good work!

[ohartenstein23]

Glad you're enjoying the mod Anon011! I can speak at least to some of the IG stuff, the marines' gear is more bulletdesigner's realm.

• Chaos Marines and Terminators have the same armor as the player's equivalents, but we give you plenty of options to reduce that armor a bit first. We probably won't make them different from player's armor, but we can consider looking at the tools to deal with them. Remember that heavy plasma isn't the answer to everything anymore, and while the lascannon is good, it is a very dedicated anti-armor tool.
• Plasma isn't really an anti-armor weapon in the mod, it trades higher damage in a single shot for no extra armor damage and being extra effective against chaos marines but not terminators.
• I agree that reaching "Mid-Tier" in research is a bit convoluted, we've been slowly changing it away from the vanilla tech tree so we'll probably keep working on making it fit the setting a bit more and making it more clear how to reach the milestones.
• The honor badges at bases are randomized by map generation - sometimes you get 0, sometimes you get 15-18.
• We can't do much about the AI, you'll have to accept that it's somewhat quirky, and genestealers without a melee option just doesn't make sense.
• I'll leave the craft weapons for bulletdesigner to talk about.
• The "Vox" icon is a placeholder for code that isn't in OXCE yet, right now it's just the officers' bayonet option.
• Flashing red just marks "traitors" in general, I'll look at improving this behavior, limiting it to guard units, and adding an article the the codex to explain it.
• Veterans are just a promotion for your already-trained guardsmen to give them access to stormtrooper gear, but it takes a very-well-trained guardsman to become a veteran while stormtroopers can just be requisitioned as soon as you have the resources.
• Grav guns ignore all armor, so it's guaranteed damage when you hit - a very powerful tool against heavy armor. Making it any better would make it a clear "best option" for almost any situation.
• Space Marines are good enough with regular melee weapons that they don't need any help with a built-in melee.
• I'm working on more IG special missions, you're seeing only the bare bones of the content on want to add there.
• Either the Vendetta or Vulture are in my notes for an upgraded Valkyrie for troop transport - your landing would be covered by one of these hovering above. For a better interceptor, I'll be adding the Destroyer variant of the Marauder aircraft.
• Psykers are coming, sprites aren't finished yet.
• If you come up with some fitting sprites for the Rough Riders, they will be all the more likely to be included in the mod.

[bulletdesigner]

hey man thks for playing, be advised must of the balance issue are resolved when played by someone.
  About craft weapons, was talk a time ago, but i will give you the stat´s

STR_STINGRAY               #R 40       A 6        D 60     Acc 65
STR_AVALANCHE              #R 50       A 3        D100     Acc 75
STR_CANNON_UC              #R 30       A 100      D10      Acc 40
STR_FUSION_BALL_UC         #R 10       A 2        D230     Acc 90
STR_LASER_CANNON_UC        #R 30      A 10        D70      Acc  45
STR_PLASMA_BEAM_UC         #R 40      A 5         D120     Acc 30
STR_THUNDER_CANNON_UC      #R 40      A 2         D300     Acc 30
STR_ASSCANNON_UC           #R 30      A 50        D20      Acc 40

notice the more power the less ammo,  so this will combine with the modification you choose for your craft´s ,
To take Down bigger "UFO" you need more ammo and more hit´s
ex cannon can deal 100x10 =1000 damage and laser only  10x70 =700
You can decide your strategy on accord to witch ufo you will take down

About chaos Marines panicking, i see your point i agree ,but i prefer to keep morale for all unit as a constant ingame (with one exception, rubric marines don´t panic)

Also Grav gun Ignore 100% Armor
    power: 40
RandomType: 2 #TFTD [50% - 150%]
So if it hit will always average 40 health, 50 health is the average for high tier units

[Anon011]

Thanks for the replies guys.

If you come up with some fitting sprites for the Rough Riders, they will be all the more likely to be included in the mod.

I wish i could but i got no skillz in pixelart/sprites/anything-requiring-any-kind-of-artistic-skill 

Grav guns ignore all armor

I didnt know that, but thats pretty interesting, their one shot nature is still kind of tedious since there is a need to manually reload after each shoot but i guess i accept it as a balance thing.

We can't do much about the AI, you'll have to accept that it's somewhat quirky, and genestealers without a melee option just doesn't make sense.

Agreed, but i was more thinking about filling map with more melee only 'nids. In the end it could make AI act little bit more logical, but i guess  how it is now works well enough, as they say if something isnt broken dont fix it 

I'm working on more IG special missions, you're seeing only the bare bones of the content on want to add there.

Awesome! Speaking of IG content tho, i just got this idea, since we already have different pattern bolters for SM, how about rare different pattern hellguns/hotshot? They could serve as high tier IG weapons, but they would have to be rare and fit into specialization to fit the weapons progression. For snipers for eg. LongLas -> Cadian-pattern Hotshot (scoped), Heavy Stubber -> Hotshot Volley (i know its already in the game).

Also thanks for clearing some things up Bulletdesigner, i kinda understand design decision here.

[EuchreJack]

I'm not sure if this works in the base game, but I found that if one of your marines that normally would suffer a TU penalty for wielding a Missile Launcher instead drops it at the end of their turn, then picks it up at the beginning of their turn, they have enough TU to fire an aimed shot.  Not sure how much this works with other weapons (sniper rifles need most of the TU to fire aimed, so picking it up might take up too many).

[ohartenstein23]

This has always been a way to deal with using weapons that are too heavy for your soldiers, even in the original X-Com. In fact, this is the way I encourage using heavy weapons when playing as the Imperial Guard, since most larger weapons are too heavy for Guardsmen.

However, we're planning on testing a change to how this logic works by swapping the TU penalty for an energy penalty using scripts, letting you use those big heavy weapons while retaining the movement penalty.

[EuchreJack]

Wow, I'm looking forward to that!  Should make the Guard more playable and slightly more mobile (when a weapon is dropped, I can't remember where I dropped it, so I usually camp the same spot turn after turn).  Even Space Marines in non-devastator companies would benefit  (green scouts can't use missile launchers without penalty, for the most part).