40k Mini-mod?

I don't agree with this, have you played FF lately? Тhe AI tends to use the same strategy as I do, count on your units to eather die, or get so good from the XP that the wrong promotions don't mater any more. But maybe I have just been playing to much banor lately..

The equipment promotions are the only FF promotions I am aware of that are mutually exclusive. Which was the point at hand; shock and cover aren't mutually exclusive, plasma gun and missile launcher are.

Not for several weeks. But what difficulty do you play at? Thats a pretty bad strategy, particularly at Immortal or Deity difficulty level (where the AI gets lots of free unit promotions).
FFH and FF is all about unit preservation. The 20% strength bonuses per level (as opposed to 10% in vanilla civ) mean that veteran units are *massively* more powerful that their un-veteran counterparts.
Remember that a 20% strength differential shifts a 50/50 fight to a 70/30 fight.
So accepting unit losses of units with poor promotions is a bad idea.

In most wars in FFH/FF (at least at real difficulty levels), the AI has built up a massive army and then invades with this.
Units constructed after the start of the war are trivial.
As one of the quotes in civ says "He who goes to war and expects to win has already lost, the victorious general first wins and then goes to war" or something like that.
In other words, build your army *before* the invasion. The AI does.

So, if the AI builds a big army and upgrades them all with plasma guns (because it doesn't have the missile launcher tech yet) and then gets into a war and you have tanks, it will get totally hosed; its existing army will be pretty helpless against your tanks, and it will be unable to rapidly adjust to get an AT force.

Your mod is much more specialized than even shock/cover. In FF, shock/cover gives 40% bonus, regular combat gives 20% bonus.
In your design, plasma vs missile launcher will have an even larger impact than this.
You can't be *almost as effective* against tanks using a plasma gun or heavy bolter as you can using a missile launcher.
The AI can still put up a decent fight against your army of axemen without shock promotions if it just uses normal combat promotions.
But the AI isn't going to be able to put up a decent fight against your army of tanks if it gets plasma gun promotion rather than missile launcher promotion.

Wait, are you sugjesting that I add the ability for a single unit to have multiple weapons at once? This can get messed up...

Not what I'm saying.

By concern was this;
a) AI discovers tech for tac squad, and starts pumping out tacs.
b) 30 turns later, AI discovers tech for plasma gun, and instantly upgrades its entire army to plasma guns
c) 30 turns later, AI discovers tech for missile launcher, but can't upgrade to missile launchers because its entire army has plasma guns
d) AI gets into a war with human player using tanks; AI is a pushover because it has no AT.

This is a problem. But less of a problem if instead we have:
a) AI discovers tech for tac squad, and starts pumping out tacs.
b) 30 turns later, AI discovers tech for plasma gun. However, it can only upgrade to the plasma gun when i) it makes new tac squads or ii) its existing tac squads gain a level
c) 30 turns later, AI discovers tech for missile launcher, any of its existing tac squads now upgrade to a missile launcher when they gain a level because the AI sees you have some vehicle units
d) AI gets into a war with human player using tanks; AI is a not a pushover because it has at least a little AT.

However, the intelligent AI selection of promotions will only occur when those weapons gain strength bonuses vs particular unit classes.
Ie: The AI will choose the shock promotion when you have melee class units.
BUT: the AI won't choose a promotion that gives fire damage when your units have a promotion that makes them vulnerable to fire
and so similarly: the AI won't choose a missile launcher promotion because your units have a promotion that adds resistance to various other damage types.

This is a problem with your idea of using the elemental damage system combined with damage resistances through particular armor promotions; the AI can't see (or plan for) the armor promotions when choosing its weapon types.
And it will only choose its weapon types if they have bonuses against unit classes that you have access too.

So, even if you have a system where vehicles have an "armor plating" promotion at start that gives them high resistance to lasgun, bolter and plasma damage, if you want the AI to get missile launchers to counter your vehicles, it isn't enough for the missile launcher to add +3 AP damage.

The missile launcher must actually have a strength bonus against unit class: vehicle (like shock/cover/formation etc).
You take out the AC, you rename a lot of things, you add the Combat related culture changes (a favorite of mine), you do a lot of other things that I would need to do

We're probably putting the AC back in ("winds of chaos"). Influence-driven-combat is another civ modmod somewhere, there are probably instructions in that for how to get it implemented.
Name changes are just text (and you'll have to rename them all anyway for 40k).

I can't blame you for this part, you mostly know only from the PC games
Mostly true, though I've also read some of the books and browsed the codexes. But the point still holds;
And even if "improvements" aren't pillagable, you still have to either:
a) let players build them OR
b) have them pre-built on map script creation. (in which case you may as well use my version).

I agree about making use of the population; in my conception "making use of the population" is represented by working that tile.

So, you can only exploit the population or a resource if you have enough military force to keep them secure and/or repressed. This is what the population size of a base represents; how many tiles in the area near a base you can keep secure enough to extract resources from. And this tile might be a town (commerce production) or a factory (hammer production) or whatever.

These don't necessarily have to be your main troops; you can conscript locals to form militia, hence why some tiles provide manpower. With enough manpower from local forces, your base size grows, and you are able to work another tile, or keep it secure.

But if marines or orks or whatever invade a planet, its not like they spend a ton of time building farms and mines. They're building military bases, not founding cities. And they're not putting lots of resources into developing cities by building civil infrastructure in them (factories etc).
Which is what you have if you have normal city development and workers building terrain improvements.
My version makes it much more of a military mod, and less of a development mod, which seems to fit the idea of an invasion better.
This also helps make the mod more challenging by removing the production advantages that the human player normally gets from superior improvement placement/construction.

I'd work on a timescale of 1 turn = 1 week.
 
The equipment promotions are the only FF promotions I am aware of that are mutually exclusive. Which was the point at hand; shock and cover aren't mutually exclusive, plasma gun and missile launcher are.

Not for several weeks. But what difficulty do you play at? Thats a pretty bad strategy, particularly at Immortal or Deity difficulty level (where the AI gets lots of free unit promotions).
FFH and FF is all about unit preservation. The 20% strength bonuses per level (as opposed to 10% in vanilla civ) mean that veteran units are *massively* more powerful that their un-veteran counterparts.
Remember that a 20% strength differential shifts a 50/50 fight to a 70/30 fight.
So accepting unit losses of units with poor promotions is a bad idea.
Firstly, Dieti and Immortal are a bit out of my league, as well as the league of the average player. The game has to be balanced around Noble.
Secondly, I checked and it is becouse I am playing Banor lately. They train troops faster than you can lose them.

In most wars in FFH/FF (at least at real difficulty levels), the AI has built up a massive army and then invades with this.
Units constructed after the start of the war are trivial.
As one of the quotes in civ says "He who goes to war and expects to win has already lost, the victorious general first wins and then goes to war" or something like that.
In other words, build your army *before* the invasion. The AI does.
Prehaps, but by the time the AI can get to Missiles or melta it will already have some light tanks out there. For example IG Chimeras so at will come from other things.
Unles the AI is stupid enough to make a pure guardsmen rush...
I meen, if anything it should at least chose light vehicles for the higher base strenth.

So, if the AI builds a big army and upgrades them all with plasma guns (because it doesn't have the missile launcher tech yet) and then gets into a war and you have tanks, it will get totally hosed; its existing army will be pretty helpless against your tanks, and it will be unable to rapidly adjust to get an AT force.

Your mod is much more specialized than even shock/cover. In FF, shock/cover gives 40% bonus, regular combat gives 20% bonus.
In your design, plasma vs missile launcher will have an even larger impact than this.
You can't be *almost as effective* against tanks using a plasma gun or heavy bolter as you can using a missile launcher.
The AI can still put up a decent fight against your army of axemen without shock promotions if it just uses normal combat promotions.
But the AI isn't going to be able to put up a decent fight against your army of tanks if it gets plasma gun promotion rather than missile launcher promotion.
I am atempting to make it so that the promotions make a diference, but not that much.
A melta gun taken vs armour will maybe at most count as if another unit without it suicided on the tank before.


Not what I'm saying.

By concern was this;
a) AI discovers tech for tac squad, and starts pumping out tacs.
b) 30 turns later, AI discovers tech for plasma gun, and instantly upgrades its entire army to plasma guns
c) 30 turns later, AI discovers tech for missile launcher, but can't upgrade to missile launchers because its entire army has plasma guns
d) AI gets into a war with human player using tanks; AI is a pushover because it has no AT.

This is a problem. But less of a problem if instead we have:
a) AI discovers tech for tac squad, and starts pumping out tacs.
b) 30 turns later, AI discovers tech for plasma gun. However, it can only upgrade to the plasma gun when i) it makes new tac squads or ii) its existing tac squads gain a level
c) 30 turns later, AI discovers tech for missile launcher, any of its existing tac squads now upgrade to a missile launcher when they gain a level because the AI sees you have some vehicle units
d) AI gets into a war with human player using tanks; AI is a not a pushover because it has at least a little AT.
This I understand, and basicly it is how it will be.
The weapons will require a level up slot. It makes sense that your basic units will not be using heavy weapons untill they acheive a degre of veterancy. And it might help the AI a lot as you said.

However, the intelligent AI selection of promotions will only occur when those weapons gain strength bonuses vs particular unit classes.
Ie: The AI will choose the shock promotion when you have melee class units.
BUT: the AI won't choose a promotion that gives fire damage when your units have a promotion that makes them vulnerable to fire
and so similarly: the AI won't choose a missile launcher promotion because your units have a promotion that adds resistance to various other damage types.

This is a problem with your idea of using the elemental damage system combined with damage resistances through particular armor promotions; the AI can't see (or plan for) the armor promotions when choosing its weapon types.
And it will only choose its weapon types if they have bonuses against unit classes that you have access too.

So, even if you have a system where vehicles have an "armor plating" promotion at start that gives them high resistance to lasgun, bolter and plasma damage, if you want the AI to get missile launchers to counter your vehicles, it isn't enough for the missile launcher to add +3 AP damage.
This is a problem, so I will probably add some bonuses to the promotion as well. So a +3 AP damage and +10% vs vehicles for the squad (representing the AP training that comes with the weapon).


We're probably putting the AC back in ("winds of chaos"). Influence-driven-combat is another civ modmod somewhere, there are probably instructions in that for how to get it implemented.
Name changes are just text (and you'll have to rename them all anyway for 40k).
Don't put it back. Unlike FfH the WHFB world is not as shifty and as turny. The world is stagnant. And the AC is the oposite of stagnation.

Mostly true, though I've also read some of the books and browsed the codexes. But the point still holds;
And even if "improvements" aren't pillagable, you still have to either:
a) let players build them OR
b) have them pre-built on map script creation. (in which case you may as well use my version).

I agree about making use of the population; in my conception "making use of the population" is represented by working that tile.

So, you can only exploit the population or a resource if you have enough military force to keep them secure and/or repressed. This is what the population size of a base represents; how many tiles in the area near a base you can keep secure enough to extract resources from. And this tile might be a town (commerce production) or a factory (hammer production) or whatever.

These don't necessarily have to be your main troops; you can conscript locals to form militia, hence why some tiles provide manpower. With enough manpower from local forces, your base size grows, and you are able to work another tile, or keep it secure.

But if marines or orks or whatever invade a planet, its not like they spend a ton of time building farms and mines. They're building military bases, not founding cities. And they're not putting lots of resources into developing cities by building civil infrastructure in them (factories etc).
Which is what you have if you have normal city development and workers building terrain improvements.
My version makes it much more of a military mod, and less of a development mod, which seems to fit the idea of an invasion better.
This also helps make the mod more challenging by removing the production advantages that the human player normally gets from superior improvement placement/construction.

I'd work on a timescale of 1 turn = 1 week.
I generaly dislike the idea of not allowing players to build improvements. As who ever is taking the planet is not there for a skirmish, he is there to take, conquer and fortify for generations to come.

Playing it to only fight over a pre made landscape with no buidling sounds a lot like what you here refused to do. It is removing the civ from it and making it a battle royale C&C game. To parafrase:
"In the world of the 41st milenium, there is a lot more to life than war."
 
Don't put it back. Unlike FfH the WHFB world is not as shifty and as turny. The world is stagnant. And the AC is the oposite of stagnation.

What we're looking at doing is trying to have the game lead up to a Great War against Chaos.

Remember that some of the final chaos techs are Chaos Incursion and The End Times, where demon princes walk the earth.

It won't be the same as the FFH apocalpyse, but we may well use the counter.

I generaly dislike the idea of not allowing players to build improvements. As who ever is taking the planet is not there for a skirmish, he is there to take, conquer and fortify for generations to come.

Well, its up to you. But reconstruction of the planet is really only going to take place after the war is over; the military forces are there to take and conquer.

You'd still be building units, buildings in your bases, and moving your armies around.

My main motivation is in wanting it to actually feel like the invasion of a pre-existing world that is already developed, rather than the slow gradual construction/development of an Empire (which is what basic civ does). The former mod is new, interesting and different, the latter is just a re-skinning of standard civ with power armor models.

You could still merge the ideas, as follows.
i) Have the world start populated with barbarian cities. These cities are pop1, but start with some pre-built terrain improvements around them. (Problem; you'll still see extra barbarian cities spawning in empty areas through the game, which doesn't really fit with having a pre-existing world. New cities shouldn't really be founded during a planetary war.)
ii) Prevent these cities from being razed, and do not give any factions settler units.
iii) Have the game start with highways (=normal roads) built linking these cities (so there is a pre-existing infrastructure network; this changes how combat works a lot, since it creates natural lines of invasion and encourages chokepoints).
iv) Allow players to build only a handful of improvements. They can't build highways, at most they can build roads (=trails from FF and WHFB, weaker roads with more limited movement). Maybe they can build a factory (+1 hammer), farm (+1 food) and power plant (+1 commerce).
v) Have a wide range of other improvements that are spawned on map creation. If you like, use these as bonus resources (probably no need to build an improvement on them to use them, see the Planetfall mod for this). So you can still have a range of armories, fortifications (built on highways, to act as roadblocks), forges, intensive farmland, greenhouses, mines, spaceports, etc. that provide higher tile yields than the minor improvements the player can build.

So, you still get the feeling that you're fighting on an existing planet, you still have incentive to heavily contest the areas with more valuable starting resources, but you can still build some terrain improvements yourself. But the improvements you can build over a short timespan can never match those pre-existing things constructed over the previous centuries.

*edit*
Try the Fury Road mod for a flavor of what I'm trying to achieve (a post apocalyptic Max Max/Fallout mod); that mod has a bunch of weapons depots, fuel depots, armories, city ruins, highways etc. that spawn on map creation. In that mod, they're strategic resources required for particular units (you have to have an armory to build units with guns for eg). But the point is similar; those areas are more highly contested because of their value, and the pre-set roadways act as funnels for invasions.
 
What we're looking at doing is trying to have the game lead up to a Great War against Chaos.

Remember that some of the final chaos techs are Chaos Incursion and The End Times, where demon princes walk the earth.

It won't be the same as the FFH apocalpyse, but we may well use the counter
Fair enough. Althou I am warning you, the lord of change knows no mercy.
Talking about witch, I am beta testing for a WH40K DoW SS mod for the Thousend Sons and a Lord of Change model is about to come out. I might be able to rip it, but with no animations. Interested?

Well, its up to you. But reconstruction of the planet is really only going to take place after the war is over; the military forces are there to take and conquer.

You'd still be building units, buildings in your bases, and moving your armies around.

My main motivation is in wanting it to actually feel like the invasion of a pre-existing world that is already developed, rather than the slow gradual construction/development of an Empire (which is what basic civ does). The former mod is new, interesting and different, the latter is just a re-skinning of standard civ with power armor models.
This for me makes no sense at all.
A planetary invasion would always need to rebuild and rework things on the go. You don't just conquer, leave a few guards and move on. If you do that, than you are eather the Necron/Nid (who leaves everythig dead) or the Dark Eldar who steals what he can and burns the rest. Even orks grow their population and need food on the planet.

So, you still get the feeling that you're fighting on an existing planet, you still have incentive to heavily contest the areas with more valuable starting resources, but you can still build some terrain improvements yourself. But the improvements you can build over a short timespan can never match those pre-existing things constructed over the previous centuries.
If we are on an imperial world, most improvements are in fact rebuildable, but redundently semy-usles. With things like mines, manifactoriums and such pre build many milenia ago and basicly World Improvements.

Try the Fury Road mod for a flavor of what I'm trying to achieve (a post apocalyptic Max Max/Fallout mod); that mod has a bunch of weapons depots, fuel depots, armories, city ruins, highways etc. that spawn on map creation. In that mod, they're strategic resources required for particular units (you have to have an armory to build units with guns for eg). But the point is similar; those areas are more highly contested because of their value, and the pre-set roadways act as funnels for invasions.
I played it, and hate it. It is the exact oposite of what I consider fun.
 
Interested?

Not really, honestly I didn't really like DOW1 that much, at least beyond the initial ork campaign. And Soulstorm was terrible. I play a fair amount of DOW2 these days though.
This for me makes no sense at all.
A planetary invasion would always need to rebuild and rework things on the go. You don't just conquer, leave a few guards and move on.

Thats not what I'm suggesting. What I am suggesting is that the improvements and reconstruction that occur during an invasion are of much smaller scale than those that happen after.
[And there has to be a degree to which you're conquering and moving on; for marines at least, according to fluff planetary invasion will only be a few hundred marines; an entire chapter is reserved for whole star systems with multiple worlds. So by necessity the marines are doing the fighting and then recruiting local militia to actually control areas and provide law and order.]

Think about WW2 in Europe (6 years in length); invading armies conquer new land, but you don't see any new construction occurring by the invaders until the war is over. Thats how wars operate, and I think it would be really cool to have a 40k mod that actually simulated a *war*, rather than standard civ empire construction.

A good mod to think about might be the BTS Broken Star mod. A big pre-existing world of enemy cities with many preconstructed units and buildings, and then a bunch of factions that start with a single point, and try to expand and conquer while securing key strategic facilities (missile silos in this mod, maybe things like manufactoria in 40k).
Admittedly, the patches to BTS broke that mod by making the barbarian cities unite into a massive unassailable empire, that kicked in the other AI players and nearly always beat down the human player.

I agree that there was much not to like about Fury Road (and I haven't played it for ages), there was too much unusable terrain there. And the fuel system was annoying needless micromanagement. But you didn't like the idea of pre-existing resource clusters that acted as focal points, and pre-existing highways?
 
Not really, honestly I didn't really like DOW1 that much, at least beyond the initial ork campaign. And Soulstorm was terrible. I play a fair amount of DOW2 these days though.
Actualy, I was asking about the model for the Demon prince of Tzentch...
But if you are not interested I understand.

Thats not what I'm suggesting. What I am suggesting is that the improvements and reconstruction that occur during an invasion are of much smaller scale than those that happen after.

Think about WW2 in Europe (6 years in length); invading armies conquer new land, but you don't see any new construction occurring by the invaders until the war is over. Thats how wars operate, and I think it would be really cool to have a 40k mod that actually simulated a *war*, rather than standard civ empire construction.

[And there has to be a degree to which you're conquering and moving on; for marines at least, according to fluff planetary invasion will only be a few hundred marines; an entire chapter is reserved for whole star systems with multiple worlds. So by necessity the marines are doing the fighting and then recruiting local militia to actually control areas and provide law and order.]
But they newer neded to conquer a civilised world. When you are fighting say in France as the Germans, you can afort to just conquer and keep becouse you have the industry in your own country to support the teritory. In the end, food and supplies are just a few days by truck away from you.

When you are on a fresh planet, you need to get self suficient fast. The SM would not recruit new troops, but you can bet that they would set up factories for Bolter rounds, tanks and pre fabricated turrets on the planet as soon as the battle showes no sign of being over fast.
You can not expect them to bring everything beforehand, othervise it would bring the question of: "Why don't they just drop the baneblades in turn 1 but wait for the baneblade tech? I meen, those things are rusting in orbital transports or something while we go off fighting the orks on foot?"

There would be a need to establish the population centers into as much as normal life as you can fast, and that meens rebuilding infrastructure. A Space Marine strike force might be just 100-200 marines, but after them come the servators, the Tech Marines, the supporting Imperial Guard and support troops to take and hold that teritory.

I agree that there was much not to like about Fury Road (and I haven't played it for ages), there was too much unusable terrain there. And the fuel system was annoying needless micromanagement. But you didn't like the idea of pre-existing resource clusters that acted as focal points, and pre-existing highways?
I hated that and the entire redescovery thing.
Basicly it ended up with being nothing like normal civ, removing building up completely and turning into somehing I just could not enjoy.
It's one thing to have a few unique super features and another to have the world layed out for you already. Especialy since the target of the invasion would be a civilised world based on the 1st game.
 
Actualy, I was asking about the model for the Demon prince of Tzentch...

Oh, as in a model for this mod? Sure. Talk to Llama though. We may or may not include it (I think we only need a single greater demon, and that will probably use the Bloodthirster model aka Hyborem), but can't hurt to have the model.
But they newer neded to conquer a civilised world. When you are fighting say in France as the Germans, you can afort to just conquer and keep becouse you have the industry in your own country to support the teritory.

I was always under the impression that all the stuff for an invasion basically would be carried in from off-world.
When the IG invade a world, they are bringing in their tanks from orbit, they aren't building them onsite on the planet's surface.
SM equipment is rare and often ancient; its not like you can rapidly set up a factory to start churning out bolters and plasma guns.

The gradual buildup and tech represents more and higher forces gradually arriving at the planet.

I would visualize a storyline like this; something happens on planet X, there is some major discovery, like a warpgate or ancient tech or a native rebellion on a strategic world whatever, and all the nearby races suddenly rush to the planet with whatever they have nearby. Initially there are only a few scouts and forward elements, but gradually over time more and more stuff arrives as you research tech, and your faction gives a higher priority to the conflict on that planet and diverts resources towards you, eventually sending the really good stuff like terminators and baneblades and fire prisms.

Its not an exact match to real fluff, because in reality a tech-tree development makes no sense; a force would show up with all its stuff and just fight, they wouldn't wait until halfway through the war to start fielding baneblades and land raiders. But we have:
a) a necessity given the civ engine to research tech over time to get better units
b) its fun to have a gradual reward system where not everything is immediately available

A rebellion works best actually; some imperial planet revolts, the IG and Marines rush to engage it and reconquer the planet, the Eldar see this as a good chance to reclaim an ancient dormant warpgate, chaos and orks see it as a time to go in and conquer the world.

It's one thing to have a few unique super features and another to have the world layed out for you already. Especialy since the target of the invasion would be a civilised world based on the 1st game.
I don't know what you mean by the 1st game - are you talking about Dawn of War 1?
The fact that you are invading an already civilized world is precisely why you must have much of the world already laid out for you.
If the world doesn't already have a bunch of pre-existing cities with pre-built infrastructure, then it won't feel like you're invading a civilized world; it will feel like you're colonizing a new planet. And that just doesn't make sense fluff-wise; you don't send out space marines to colonize an empty or barely-populated planet, you send them out to conquer one that already has a lot of stuff there.

What do you think about the Broken Star scenario analogy? Make this something like that, but on random maps? So the barbarians represent the planetary rebels, and each faction is trying to take over both from the rebels and to defeat the other factions.
Add some interesting victory conditions that vary by faction.
 
I was always under the impression that all the stuff for an invasion basically would be carried in from off-world.
When the IG invade a world, they are bringing in their tanks from orbit, they aren't building them onsite on the planet's surface.
SM equipment is rare and often ancient; its not like you can rapidly set up a factory to start churning out bolters and plasma guns.
So, you are bringing all your bullets, your food, your supplies for the milions of guardsmen and bilions of planetary population with you beforehand?

That sounds a little bit stupid. Considering that the population has all the resources nesecary to feed and suply it self. Than why not just use their automobile plants to churn out chimeras and their farms to feed you?
Or do you plan to bring bullets for the entire campagine allong with you or hope that the other faction can not establish orbital superiority thus rendering you without supplies from off world and in a single word dead.

The gradual buildup and tech represents more and higher forces gradually arriving at the planet.

I would visualize a storyline like this; something happens on planet X, there is some major discovery, like a warpgate or ancient tech or a native rebellion on a strategic world whatever, and all the nearby races suddenly rush to the planet with whatever they have nearby. Initially there are only a few scouts and forward elements, but gradually over time more and more stuff arrives as you research tech, and your faction gives a higher priority to the conflict on that planet and diverts resources towards you, eventually sending the really good stuff like terminators and baneblades and fire prisms.
This is generaly it, but it is diferent to actualy having all the races having constant supply lines runing food and amunition to the planet.

I don't know what you mean by the 1st game - are you talking about Dawn of War 1?
The fact that you are invading an already civilized world is precisely why you must have much of the world already laid out for you.
If the world doesn't already have a bunch of pre-existing cities with pre-built infrastructure, then it won't feel like you're invading a civilized world; it will feel like you're colonizing a new planet. And that just doesn't make sense fluff-wise; you don't send out space marines to colonize an empty or barely-populated planet, you send them out to conquer one that already has a lot of stuff there.
And that something has been ravaged by chaos/orks/rebelion and general war of the PDF vs invaiders by the time you get there. Half of the cities are smoking ruins, the other half is swamped with refugees and such.
By the time the Astartes get called in the planet is already in a deep mess.

You also have to consider that each planet has it's own Planetary Defense Force as a standing army.
These will have factories and stuf for munitions and supplies that you will want to rebuild.
Also, these will have fought the forces of evil to a standstill at least or worse by the time you get there so a lot of the planetary infrastructure will be in ruins.

In DOW1, the campagine showed 3 and I say 3 major cities on the entire continent, (even thou we can clearly see that the planet is at least as populated as earth) with the rest being only ruined abandoned landscape left after the ork invasion. In the empire, the IG and SM response time to distres calls can be mesured in years or even decades, not mounts or weeks.

Think about a map with scatered Barbarian cities, roaming ork and chaos hordes and hell spreading all around by the time the cavalery gets there.
 
So, you are bringing all your bullets, your food, your supplies for the milions of guardsmen and bilions of planetary population with you beforehand?

That sounds a little bit stupid.

Food, definitely can be provided on-site, ammo, maybe, but weapons and vehicles? No way, you'd have to bring that stuff with you. Some random planet isn't going to have factories that can churn out Falcon grav tanks, or land raiders, or baneblades, or Defilers, or wraithlords.

And that something has been ravaged by chaos/orks/rebelion and general war of the PDF vs invaiders by the time you get there. Half of the cities are smoking ruins, the other half is swamped with refugees and such.
By the time the Astartes get called in the planet is already in a deep mess.

I think you're just thinking from the SM perspective. Presumably the mod will be playable as any faction - if not, then you're wasting most of its potential, and you may as well just make a single scenario rather than a mod. If you're orks or chaos or whatever, you're the ones invading the world! You don't show up only after everything has been destroyed; you show up when there is lots of stuff already there to loot and conquer.
Showing up only after the world has already been destroyed and rebuilding it sounds really boring. People want to play WW2, not the Marshall Plan. Particularly when the stuff you're going to get from fluff is mostly units, not terrain or city buildings.

Think about a map with scatered Barbarian cities, roaming ork and chaos hordes and hell spreading all around by the time the cavalery gets there.

Makes very little sense when playing from the perspective of anyone but the IG or SMs. If I'm playing as ork, I want to show up to a nice civilized world and butcher and loot it. If I'm chaos or Eldar, I'm going to be invading, and I'm certainly not going to be building stuff on-site.

I think the rebellion storyline is a very strong one because it fits fluff and lets you do a mix of everything.
You have some entrenched rebels that control the cities and have decent infrastructure, but are somewhat lacking in heavy weapons and get knocked over by the various expanding factions without too much difficulty.
There can be a bunch of stuff that was destroyed in the initial uprising (the planetary guard mutinies, deposing the planetary governor and declaring the planet in rebellion). Factories have been damaged, farmland destroyed, mines closed down, manufactories without power.

But there's still going to be a ton of stuff there; roads, cities, spaceports, etc.
Think about the initial DOW1 campaign; you fight to recapture the spaceport, you dont' have to rebuild the thing from scratch.

But any map that basically starts greenfields (ie without any pre-existing terrain improvements) rather than brownfields (some pre-built infrastructure) is going to feel like colonization, rather than invasion. Leave that to normal civ mods, and Planetfall (=Alpha Centauri remake).

I strongly suggest giving Broken Star a try if you never did. It has a bunch of issues and is barely playable because of the super-powerful barbarians, but has a lot of potential.
 
Food, definitely can be provided on-site, ammo, maybe, but weapons and vehicles? No way, you'd have to bring that stuff with you. Some random planet isn't going to have factories that can churn out Falcon grav tanks, or land raiders, or baneblades, or Defilers, or wraithlords.
Actualy, what you do is bring those things in a pre fabricated state as we engeners call it. (I finished an engenering high school)
Esentialy, this meens you bring a lot of modular parts witch you can than asemble with almost any production line. And since any planet belonging to almost anyone (orks and nids excluded, but who would go there anyway?) has some production capability, these can and must be adapted to fit the rolle.

Why do you think that the Tau in Dark Crusade chose a masive city as their center of comand, and not some isolated army base?

I think you're just thinking from the SM perspective. Presumably the mod will be playable as any faction - if not, then you're wasting most of its potential, and you may as well just make a single scenario rather than a mod. If you're orks or chaos or whatever, you're the ones invading the world! You don't show up only after everything has been destroyed; you show up when there is lots of stuff already there to loot and conquer.
Showing up only after the world has already been destroyed and rebuilding it sounds really boring. People want to play WW2, not the Marshall Plan. Particularly when the stuff you're going to get from fluff is mostly units, not terrain or city buildings.
And what makes you think that one of the mapscripts wont say be: Invade the Exodite Colony/Demon World/Chaos Bastion? The Chaos/Eldar/Tau/ect are not always on the ofensive you know.
It would be fun invaiding a demon world filled with barbarian demons and clensing it.

Makes very little sense when playing from the perspective of anyone but the IG or SMs. If I'm playing as ork, I want to show up to a nice civilized world and butcher and loot it. If I'm chaos or Eldar, I'm going to be invading, and I'm certainly not going to be building stuff on-site.
The Orks are not there for butchering civilians, they hit any place that already has war. They do not want to atack some civilised world in the outher edge for the pilaging. They come when the planet is already beset by war or if they have already been there.

The ork breeding system allows them to re apear on a planet as soon as things start hapening, even if they have all been purged from it before.

I think the rebellion storyline is a very strong one because it fits fluff and lets you do a mix of everything.
You have some entrenched rebels that control the cities and have decent infrastructure, but are somewhat lacking in heavy weapons and get knocked over by the various expanding factions without too much difficulty.
There can be a bunch of stuff that was destroyed in the initial uprising (the planetary guard mutinies, deposing the planetary governor and declaring the planet in rebellion). Factories have been damaged, farmland destroyed, mines closed down, manufactories without power.

But there's still going to be a ton of stuff there; roads, cities, spaceports, etc.
Think about the initial DOW1 campaign; you fight to recapture the spaceport, you dont' have to rebuild the thing from scratch.

But any map that basically starts greenfields (ie without any pre-existing terrain improvements) rather than brownfields (some pre-built infrastructure) is going to feel like colonization, rather than invasion. Leave that to normal civ mods, and Planetfall (=Alpha Centauri remake).

I strongly suggest giving Broken Star a try if you never did. It has a bunch of issues and is barely playable because of the super-powerful barbarians, but has a lot of potential.
I played, it and I do not like it. End of story.

I dislike blunt conquest with no buildup like C&C.

If I do that, I will be completely wasting my favorite part of the CIV engine. If I had wanted such a conversion I would have started moding Red Alert. I could barely bring my self to finish that stupid game, and I got bored of Broken Star at turn 70 or so.


And this is my final word.
 
Eldar and Chaos (among others) aren't carrying pre-fabricated factories around to starting huilding on a planet surface. All Eldar stuff is produced on the Craftworld, and a lot of chaos and SM stuff is ancient - you can't start producing dreadnoughts or defilers on some new planet.

Why do you think that the Tau in Dark Crusade chose a masive city as their center of comand, and not some isolated army base?

Because they lived there! They governed the planet, and had many citizens there. So of course their government was in the capital city. The planet was part of the Tau Empire.

And what makes you think that one of the mapscripts wont say be: Invade the Exodite Colony/Demon World/Chaos Bastion? The Chaos/Eldar/Tau/ect are not always on the ofensive you know.
It would be fun invaiding a demon world filled with barbarian demons and clensing it.

Thats fine... but why when the invasion starts does the chaos bastion or whatever not have any infrastructure? And why do the chaos forces have only a single starting base, like you? And why are there 5 other races also there at the same time? Its still going to feel like a bunch of races got together to colonize the planet, not that the planet is being invaded.

I'm going to feel ridiculous if I show up to invade a chaos bastion with space marines, and land with a few scouts and start building farms, mines and factories on the planet surface, which is a barren wasteland with no infrastructure.

Its your mod, obviously, but I think your conception makes no sense given the fluff. And having a 40k mod where much of what you are doing is building terrain improvements will just feel very wrong - and very much like every other mod out there. If all you want to do is play the vanilla civ again but with different unit graphics, thats fine, but I think there is potential for actually changing the game and having something that plays differently.
 
No, what you see is potential for something that you would like to see played out.
Personaly to me I would much more like the idea of colonising a semy inhabited planet than fighting over setled ground.
I love the build aspect of civ and to me war is secondary and only the meens to the end and not the end it self.

My ideal scenario is this:
Turn 0: Planet X is sparsely inhabited (maybe 2 or 3 bilion top)
All the factions land on planet X, the IG want to colonise, the SM want to check the planet for sutable recruits, the Tau want to colonise, the Necron want to kill, the Orks want to fight ect...

Turn 50: The factions figure out they are not alone, they start fighting.

Turn 100 - 200 - 300 --- 500: The factions fight each other while trying to acomplish their initial objectives.
 
Obviously its the potential *I* see..... how could it be otherwise?

I doubt I could manage to get into playing a game though where the space marines showed up and started colonizing a planet.

Best of luck though! (And I really do mean that sincerely, if you create something thats fun I'll definitely try it.)
 
You know, considering that your greatest spell ever did just what it was suposed to do.... I think I will just have to make you see things my way once it is done.

Untill than, I hope you will still be here to serve as advisor and balance police on the combat mechanics. The one thing I need you for.
 
You know, considering that your greatest spell ever did just what it was suposed to do.... I think I will just have to make you see things my way once it is done.

I don't really know what you're talking about in the first half here... but it sounds positive, so.... you're welcome?
I'll try to keep an open mind :)
Untill than, I hope you will still be here to serve as advisor and balance police on the combat mechanics. The one thing I need you for.

Sure, happy to help on things like that, I think our visions are similar enough that I could be useful in this sense. But I think our broader visions of the mod are different enough that I probably wouldnt' be very useful to you with help in general mod design.
 
I don't really know what you're talking about in the first half here... but it sounds positive, so.... you're welcome?
I'll try to keep an open mind :)
Warhammer 40K, Ahriman and his greatest spell.
-Note the last paragraf, epic fail.
Sure, happy to help on things like that, I think our visions are similar enough that I could be useful in this sense. But I think our broader visions of the mod are different enough that I probably wouldnt' be very useful to you with help in general mod design.
Good, since balance is all I need.
 
Well, balance is only really testable once you have a playable alpha, but I'll do what I can.

The really tough thing in the civ engine is the all-or-nothing nature of combat; one unit wins, and can eventually heal back up to full strength for free, whereas the loser is obiterated entirely.
Plus, relatively small strength differences make a big difference in the outcome of combats.

This makes it very very hard to balance concepts of civs with "strong" units like space marines vs civs with "weak" units like guardsmen; strong really is so much more valuable than weak, it has to have a massive cost-premium to be balanced.
 
Hi lads.
I'm just starting to think about give a chance to mod civIV. This one is the best post I saw here and making it into reality is a nice goal...

Before offer my help I'll make the mod's tutorials from the forums. But, I've a good mind for php encoding so I'll stay around here to do whatever I think may be helpful.

^^
 
Are you interested in the Warhammer Fantasy mod (which this forum is dedicated to, and is very active, and which has a playable beta compatibly with BTS 3.17 and will soon have an updated playable alpha that is compatible with BTS 3.19) or these concepts of a 40k mod (which AFAIK mostly exists in PPQ Purple's head, I don't think anything has really been created and nothing has been discussed in 3 months).
 
Ok... I got the point... "Castillos en el aire" like we the spaniards say (more or less "castles built on the air").

Fantasy isn't too much attractive for me, but I'll take a tour in the forum.

By the way, DUNEWARS is a NICE MOD. I installed it yesterday.
 
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