Warhammer 40k mod development thread

[The Great Apple]

"In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war"

While journeying to reinforce the battle-torn planet of Armageddon, Imperial ships ran into a warp storm.
Badly damaged, their only choice was to attempt a landing on a nearby planet. Ships landed scattered all over
the planet, and, finding their communications systems destroyed, the survivors began to set up camp...

The last attempt to do a Warhammer 40k mod on these forums unfortunetely didn't go too well, however, I'm going to see if I can get one going.

Version 1 should be quite simple. Here are a list of ideas/aims:

Religions:

• 2 Religions

• Imperial
• Choas

• 3 Civic options

• Imperial - only for Imperial Religion
• Choas - only for chaos Religion. Contains different factions of chaos, each with their own bonuses, and unique units. Chaos undivided is in there to, with a high upkeep, but the ability to build all the unique units.

• I'm planning on using the culture model to represent the spread of power of religions. I think the religion model as it stands is a bit too binary.
• Certain Imperial units have the abilty to purge land of an Chaos Religion
• Once you have changed your state religion to chaos, you cannot change back to Imperial...

Units:

• Each religion will have it's own set of unique units.
• Special units such as:
  • Marine Dreadnaught (availabilty based on the casualty rates of high experience squads)
  • Greater demons (can posses choas champions)
  • Air and land transports

Upgrades:

• Squads can be upgraded with certain heavy weapons, each with unique effects. Graphics for these weapons will be shown in game.
• Experienced squads can be upgraded to First Company Terminator squads.

Great people:

• All the usual great people are available to the Imperials, except the great prophet.
• Great military leaders can be generated normally, or from winning a battle.
• Great psychers for the Imperial factions can be used to build up enough psychic energy to broadcast a message for rescue/assistance, and can cast spells (undecided really)
• Great sorcerers for the Choas faction can be used to summon demonic hoards, and cast nasty spells (again, not quite decided)

Interface:

• Separate interface for each religion

Pretty much all of the buildings and units will have to be made for the mod, however it may be possable to
convert some units from other games (Dawn of War being the most likely source).

I hope to have a beta version by April 2006 - although it may depend on how long it is before we can start making units. Once version 1 is complete, it should be quite easy to add a few more races. I definately plan to include Orks.

Mod Progress (version 1):

XML: 75%
Python scripting: 90%
Art:

Unit animations: 5%
Leaderheads: 0%
Buttons: 20%​

AI: 5%
Interface: 40%

Overall progress: 50%

DISCLAIMER

This forum thread is completely unofficial and in no way endorsed by Games Workshop Limited.

40k, Adeptus Astartes, Blood Angels, Bloodquest, Cadian, Catachan, Chaos, the Chaos device, the Chaos logo, Citadel, Citadel Device, Cityfight, Codex, Daemonhunters, Dark Angels, Dark Eldar, Dawn of War, 'Eavy Metal, Eldar, Eldar symbol devices, Eye of Terror, Fire Warrior, the Fire Warrior logo, Forge World, Games Workshop, Games Workshop logo, Genestealer, Golden Demon, Gorkamorka, Great Unclean One, GW, GWI, the GWI logo, Inquisitor, the Inquisitor logo, the Inquisitor device, Inquisitor:Conspiracies, Keeper of Secrets, Khorne, the Khorne logo, Kroot, Lord of Change, Necron, Nurgle, the Nurgle logo, Ork, Ork skull devices, Sisters of Battle, Slaanesh, the Slaanesh logo, Space Hulk, Space Marine, Space Marine chapters, Space Marine chapter logos, Tau, the Tau caste designations, Tyranid, Tyrannid, Tzeentch, the Tzeentch logo, Ultramarines, Warhammer, Warhammer 40k Device, White Dwarf, the White Dwarf logo, and all associated marks, names, races, race insignia, characters, vehicles, locations, units, illustrations and images from the Warhammer 40,000 universe are either ®, TM and/or © Copyright Games Workshop Ltd 2000-2005, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. Used without permission. No challenge to their status intended. All Rights Reserved to their respective owners.​

 

[The Great Apple]

Here is the provisional tech tree. If anybody can find good icons for the ones that are currently defaults I would gladly use them!

 

[bigmeat]

You should also include chaos undivided, and is this going to be a solely human mod? you could include eldar and some other

 

[The Great Apple]

The trouble with choas undivided is that they are a bit generic. They have no specific units really. Each of the chaos religions can build all the generic units anyway, however their demons/special marine units are slightly different, and they get slightly different attributes on their cities. I'm thinking switching between choas powers would be quite easy, maybe with a few turns of anarchy, or something.

As for other races - adding a new race puts up lots of difficulties. Their units must be balanced, a new tech tree has to be built, a load of new units have to be made... and... lots of stuff! I was thinking that after I got the humans up, I might put orks into the mix, and maybe eldar (as units may be able to be converted from DoW). I was thinking maybe orks would act as barbarians in the first incarnation.

 

[Inuk]

I definetly encourage you to continue in your effort to create this MOD. I love the WH40K universe. I'm only starting to mess around with editing in civ IV but if I can I'd be glad to help at some point in the future.
Keep it up

 

[HahnHolio]

Well this is like what i was lookin for!
R u still on dis1?
i´d like to c this on my machine

Greetz

HahnHolio

 

[The Great Apple]

Well this is like what i was lookin for!
R u still on dis1?
i´d like to c this on my machine

Greetz

HahnHolio

Yup, I'm poking away at my .xml files. I've done quite alot of the units, and I'm going to move onto the Civs and religions next.

 

[Rodman49]

Interesting to see how this will turn out, I never really thought of the Civ engine as a decent platform for any type of Warhammer mod (I much prefer any RTS engine - I run a Warhammer 40k mod for Red Alert 2, and I've worked some with the team that makes a 40k mod for C&C Generals) as you can't really make good use of one of Civ 4's best features, diplomacy. Anyways, best of luck.

 

[mrkingkong]

Very pleased to see you are willing to put yourself forward for the gruelling test that is a WH40K mod. Looking forward to it immeasurably...

Just hope you can bear "The Strain", which forced the last WH40K mod-maker into the ground. Im sure we all remember, so moving on...

I like your ideas for the mod version 1, however i would like to put forward a few suggestions that could be included:

-> Some "Inquisitor" type units (iv seen an example of this in the mods thread, so would be fairly easy to accomplish with Python methinks!

-> Perhaps some sort of Great Hero that is born whenever a demon is summoned (Sigmar-esque) - that would be a nice little twist to the game. Im sure some ingenius Python programmer could rustle that one up!

Just to say, good luck! Cant realy offer much help unless you want XMLs or Civilopedia entries doing, which i am sure you are perfectly capable of yourself so im here as more of a "cherrleader" !

mrkingkong

 

[The Great Apple]

-> Some "Inquisitor" type units (iv seen an example of this in the mods thread, so would be fairly easy to accomplish with Python methinks!

Maybe some sort of mission for the Marine units - slowly removes religions (and population) over time?

-> Perhaps some sort of Great Hero that is born whenever a demon is summoned (Sigmar-esque) - that would be a nice little twist to the game. Im sure some ingenius Python programmer could rustle that one up!

How do you mean? I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here!

Just to say, good luck! Cant realy offer much help unless you want XMLs or Civilopedia entries doing, which i am sure you are perfectly capable of yourself so im here as more of a "cherrleader" !

mrkingkong

Hehe. While somebody doing Civilopedia entries would be nice, I'm not really at that stage yet. I'm also not really sure about the .xml stage (ie. how everything is going to fit together number-wise).

At the moment I'm fiddling with python - trying to get to grips with what I can do with it. I'll probably release a few very small mods soon, most of which I think I may include in this one.


EDIT: And if anybody has any ideas about civics... I'm listening. I can't really think of anything!

 

[mrkingkong]

1)About the deamon spawning Great Hero thing- what i ment was....

In Warhammer Fantasy game, whenever a Chaos Hero was born (one who could find the 7 artefacts of Chaos and so forge the tribes and Gods of chaos into one army, fighting under one banner, for that particular leader), a two tailed comet would fly through the sky and somewhere in the Empire (fantasy version of the Imperium, if you like) a "saviour" would be born (i.e. the only one with the power to defeat that Chaos Hero in one on one battle). They would then clash to decide the fate of the world...see what im getting at?

I thought perhaps this could be implemented into your mod, so that by some clever Python coding, a unit could be created (the 'Great Hero' for good) whenever a Greater Daemon of Chaos is summoned...

2)Liking your Marine idea also, would work!

3)Good luck with the XML fiddling!

mrkingkong

 

[Rodman49]

In Warhammer Fantasy game, whenever a Chaos Hero was born (one who could find the 7 artefacts of Chaos and so forge the tribes and Gods of chaos into one army, fighting under one banner, for that particular leader), a two tailed comet would fly through the sky and somewhere in the Empire (fantasy version of the Imperium, if you like) a "saviour" would be born (i.e. the only one with the power to defeat that Chaos Hero in one on one battle). They would then clash to decide the fate of the world...see what im getting at?

If I remember correctly didn't Valten get smoked and Grimgor (the Orc) defeated Archaon in single combat?

 

[mrkingkong]

If I remember correctly didn't Valten get smoked and Grimgor (the Orc) defeated Archaon in single combat?

Ok, ok so there must be other heroes capable of defeating the "bad guy" from other races as well!

Perhaps then it would be either
a) completely random which race gets the hero
or
b) all races get their own version of the hero with odds dead equal between them, and therefore it is all luck and strategy which hero wins...

Or you could just scrap the idea... thought it might add an extra dimension to the mod though!

mrkingkong

 

[Josh92]

You said this was near Armageddon... thus there should be some orc outposts. They could sort of substitute for barbarians.

The issue of heros and greater beings:

• Also if you convert to the chaos religions the heros should be great demons(high attack and can convert other cities to chaos).

• 
  heros for imperial cities should be Inquisitors, and space marines(purges cities and kills demons).

Good luck with this. I was actually thinking of starting a 40k mod too. So i'm looking forward to playing this. Good luck man

-Josh92

 

[mrkingkong]

Hello again. There seems to have been no activity lately- just wondered if work was still progressing.

I was thinking of making some leaderheads for the civs for you to use, to save time and help production...

Any idea which civs and leaders you will need?

mrkingkong

 

[The Great Apple]

Yes, things are still progressing. I've just uploaded a provisional techtree on post 2. I'd quite like some feedback (especially on names... as I have quite a few "Advanced blah blah"). I've still got to finish the icons for it (lots of chemistry), and most of the unit icons are still pretty dull...

@Josh92

Well you can help if you like

@mrkingkong

To be honest, it's one thing I had not much thought about. One problem stems from the fact that any of the imperial factions can jump over and turn to chaos at any moment, so there would probably have to be a "good" and "evil" leaderhead for each one (with the SDK I'm hoping for a way to change a Civs leaderhead dependant on circumstances).

Hmm... civs...

I supose there are probably 2 options - either have the Civs as some generic human leaders (feels better from the background perspective), or have them as actual 40k Civs (feels more "40k").

 

[mrkingkong]

Hmm yes this is quite a dilemma. Perhaps you could have two main factions as Chaos and Imperial (perhaps with commanders from the Armageddon campaign leading them as sort of a "forward base" of operations on the nearby planet), with other local human/ork/whatever leaders being able to align themselves either way. Could be a sort of compromise, which would let you have generic heads for the leaders in the time until the SDK, after then you could do the change-with-regards-to-alignment-thing (which i think is a great idea by the way).

mrkingkong

 

[mrkingkong]

Some suggestions for tech tree:

Adv Communications replaced by Super E-comms
Adv Medicine replaced by Nano-Medicine/Nano-Therapy
Adv Transportation replaced by Hyperlanes
Adv Fuels replaced by Crystallized Fusion
Adv Bombarbment replaced by Planetary Assault/Planetary Bombardment
Adv Rifling replaced by HEA Rifles*

*High Energy Absorption Rifles

HEA Rifles would make available Plasma Rifles and Meltaguns
HEA Rifles could lead to another tech, HE Explosives, which would make available Plasma grenades.

Planetary Assault would make available the option to call in planetary bombarbments of part of the map (perhaps like a nuke, but without radiation)

Nano-medicines could lead to another tech called Nano-espionage which makes available a spy called the "nano-swarm", which is basically a swarm of nano-particles that are difficult to detect due to their incredible small size and no solid shape (yes, credit due to Micheal Crichton there!)

-----------
Whilst the above are futuristic they are by no means exclusive to the Warhammer 40k world, i just thought they would suit this sort of scenario. And yes, nano-swarms were light-fingeredly stolen by me from Micheal Crichton's book "Prey", which has no endorsement whatsoever and which i do not wish to get sued for so....

-----------
mrkingkong

 

[The Great Apple]

I'm not really sure about the nanite idea... it's not really true to the universe (and that is one of the stipulation Games Workshop make on mods).

The planitary bombardment idea sounds fun. I'd have to make Space Flight required for it as well though. How do you think it should work with races? It would be a bit strange to have 2 Civs bombarding each other from space, but not having a battle in space (maybe a long term aim of incorperating a "space layer" like CTP...).

Does the tree look alright (positions of techs and so forth)?

Also, has anybody any Civic ideas. I need Imperial ones, and General ones. Chaos ones are sorted!

 

[mrkingkong]

The planitary bombardment idea sounds fun. I'd have to make Space Flight required for it as well though. How do you think it should work with races? It would be a bit strange to have 2 Civs bombarding each other from space, but not having a battle in space (maybe a long term aim of incorperating a "space layer" like CTP...).

Perhaps you would first have to gain control of space above to be able to bombard the planet. Im not quite sure how this would work however....

Perhaps you would just have to be able to call in forces from the surrounding conflict??

Or maybe just build a building (eg "Space Combat") which then sets in motion a random event and occasionally gives you a free bombardment of other civs which lasts a turn or so-if you dont use it in that turn or two, then you lose the domination of nearby space. Perhaps the building of certain buildings in nearby cities could increase the chance of you gaining control of "near space", a building such as "Space Port" or "Adv Space Ship Production" or whatever.

However this isnt quite as satisfying to play i wouldnt think and il try and think of something better.

Also, has anybody any Civic ideas. I need Imperial ones, and General ones. Chaos ones are sorted!

For the Imperials:

-GOVNMT, Divine Emperor
Low Upkeep
# 25% increase in culture in all cities
# 30% decrease in scientific output
# 5% increase in trade
# +1 happy face from building "Temple of the Emperor"

-RELIGION, Inquisition
Medium Upkeep
# Non-state religion causes +2 unhappiness per city
# No non-state religion spreads
# State religion causes +2 happiness and +2 gold in top five cities

-ECONOMY, Civilized Piraticism (??)
Low Upkeep
# +2 gold per city
# +2 unhappy faces per city
# Increases maintenance