I must confess I've not played your mod, to spare my laptop's poor graphics card, so I don't know if you're doing this already, but it'd be cool if Space Marine units were the same size as vanilla and just had two or three activations per turn to make up for it (as well as being appropriately tough). I guess you'd have to scale their grenade powers to that, too, for balance - either reduce the cooldowns or increase the damage. Just a thought!

Originally posted by YossarianSmith:

I must confess I've not played your mod, to spare my laptop's poor graphics card, so I don't know if you're doing this already, but it'd be cool if Space Marine units were the same size as vanilla and just had two or three activations per turn to make up for it (as well as being appropriately tough). I guess you'd have to scale their grenade powers to that, too, for balance - either reduce the cooldowns or increase the damage. Just a thought!

That's a good idea actually. It was something I was actually thinking about myself since they don't usually show up in groups of 60 like featured currently but I never got to it before release.

I'll give it a look, and if it turns out well I shall update the mod with it featured.

I've got mixed feelings on that idea - to be honest, the whole idea of lore marines being these unstoppable badasses issss... Not entirely true, in my experience? It's more that in the lore they often don't end up fighting the kind of opposition they face on the tabletop. Like, when was the last time you read about a heroic marine protagonist going head to head with the kind of MEQ-killing firepower that the meta encourages?

Regardless, I do have to ask; is this mod compatible with, or could a version be made that is compatible with, the community balance mod? Obviously the tactical balance would be somewhat distorted, but there's things like the cost reductions for construction buildings, Eldar city cost scaling, Necron research shuffling, etc.

Originally posted by Ddraig Lleuad:

I've got mixed feelings on that idea - to be honest, the whole idea of lore marines being these unstoppable badasses issss... Not entirely true, in my experience? It's more that in the lore they often don't end up fighting the kind of opposition they face on the tabletop. Like, when was the last time you read about a heroic marine protagonist going head to head with the kind of MEQ-killing firepower that the meta encourages?

Yeah I was planning on just toning them down to something around x4, or around that area. That way they're still not in super large numbers since there's only about 1000 space marines to a chapter, but they're also not ridiculously OP by only needing 4 per unit.

A good middle ground is basically what I'm going to be looking for there. Once I reach some sort of conclusion though, let me know if it ends up being too awkward or something like so, but hopefully that won't be an issue whatsoever.

Originally posted by Ddraig Lleuad:

Regardless, I do have to ask; is this mod compatible with, or could a version be made that is compatible with, the community balance mod? Obviously the tactical balance would be somewhat distorted, but there's things like the cost reductions for construction buildings, Eldar city cost scaling, Necron research shuffling, etc.

For the most part it should work, as I've only touched the units and a few weapons. But things like cost reductions and research should be seamless.

If it's really wonky with unit balance, just go into the mod folder for community balance (steamapps\workshop\content\489630\2525112361\Data\World) and delete the weapons folder within their, and it should work fine.

It'll redownload it by unsubscribing and resubscribing, so other than that you should be fine.

I'll investigate further, but I suspect it might not be as seamless as you suggest - the patch notes mention messing with the model counts of some units, Ratlings and Stormtroopers, for instance, and surely that would be a conflict?

That's why I was asking about the possibility of a compatibility version that combines the two, because while some of the changes would be seamless, as you say, others seem like they'd create mod conflicts, and even if they don't, then like - if vanilla ratlings have six members, and the balance mod feels they're better balanced at five, then setting their unit size to x12 of base reverts the balance change, y'know?

I'm honestly not super up to date on the balance of this game (or invested in it; as you say in the description, if each of the factions are fun to play as and against, that's good enough for me), or whatever debates drive the changes the community mod makes, but I do remember my days of heavily modded Total Warhammer campaigns. Multiple mods that make gameplay changes without compatibility bridges can cause all kinds of weird domino effects.

Originally posted by Ddraig Lleuad:

I'll investigate further, but I suspect it might not be as seamless as you suggest - the patch notes mention messing with the model counts of some units, Ratlings and Stormtroopers, for instance, and surely that would be a conflict?

That's why I was asking about the possibility of a compatibility version that combines the two, because while some of the changes would be seamless, as you say, others seem like they'd create mod conflicts, and even if they don't, then like - if vanilla ratlings have six members, and the balance mod feels they're better balanced at five, then setting their unit size to x12 of base reverts the balance change, y'know?

I'm honestly not super up to date on the balance of this game (or invested in it; as you say in the description, if each of the factions are fun to play as and against, that's good enough for me), or whatever debates drive the changes the community mod makes, but I do remember my days of heavily modded Total Warhammer campaigns. Multiple mods that make gameplay changes without compatibility bridges can cause all kinds of weird domino effects.

Unit-wise I believe this mod should completely overwrite most of the other mod's files in that regards to unit balance, but yeah I suppose seamless isn't the right word for it. You would really have to check for yourself, as I'm not entirely for sure.

Tech upgrades, and anything in regards to cities besides the balance of the HQ itself (e.g. health & damage) should be okay though.

I'll see what I can do about a version mixing the two once I do a few more updates for this mod, however. The more the mod can work with, the better, after all.

One thing of note is that I would make sure this mod goes above it in the load order, as from what I understand the overwriting process is the same as Total War's (top first bottom last). So you may get the best results that way, though weapons may a be a bit iffy.

I'm currently in the process of de-integrating the weapon modifiers anyhow, as I figured out the workaround so that I don't really need to use any of those files, just the units and a few world files for scaling. Specifically to make it more compatible with other mods.

Yeah, so I did some actual investigating, and the result is that for any unit changes, your mod overwrites the community balance mod - including things that you didn't alter in your mod, like production/upkeep costs. So, the bad news is they might as well be incompatible, the good news is that insofar as they're incompatible, it's a clean split with no weird domino effects that I can see.

Oh, and while some units have had their member count independent abilities buffed to compensate for the unit sizes, you've missed a few. Grenades on heroes in general look to be a bit funky, and cities are an odd one - I guess their scaling health is hard to multiply? But except for the Eldar, Ork and Tau ones, they all seem to be pretty badly under-armed now. Here's what else I noticed;

Imperial Guard:
The Summary Execution ability of the Commissar still only kills 1 member. This arguably doesn't need fixing, it's just worth noting that it means the cost goes from minor but sometimes meaningful to utterly trivial.

The offensive abilities of the Primaris Psyker (Molten Beam, Life Leech, and Psychic Maelstrom).

Techpriest Enginseers and their Blessing of the Omnissiah.

While Imperial Bastions have had their HP buffed, their armaments have not been, leaving them somewhat uh, comically under-armed when they're looking out at a sea of over a hundred cultists through the sights of all of three heavy bolters :P

Chaos:
The Daemon Prince's offensive abilities (Gift of Contagion, Sensory Overload, and Breath of Chaos).

Heldrake's and Noctilith Crowns might want another pass in general. I don't have the Chaos DLC so I can't be sure, but while their HP look in keeping with the rest of the mod's scale, some of their weapons ssssseem to be untouched? Baleflamer looks like it got a tweak, but not Meteoric Descent on the Heldrake, or the Noctilith's tentacles.

The Warpsmith's heal, Master of Mechanisms, seems untouched.

Eldar:
All units seem to be perfectly accounted for... However, webway gates should really have their health buffed unless the intent is for any eldar player to have to treat their network as made of cobwebs fit to blow away at the slightest breeze.

Necrons:
Cryptek's resurrection orb.

The Lord's Void Strike ability might want another look. +12 attacks every three turns looks a lot less impressive when you have 14 attacks at base.

Neutral:
The Lord of Skulls weapon abilities seem to be untouched. Vaul Sentries seem to be entirely untouched, too. Neither are a big concern, honestly.

Orks:
Mek's Tools, on both big and regular meks. Yeah that's it.

Space Marines
The Captain's orbital strike ability.

The Chaplain's Oration of Restoration.

The Fortress of Redemption's starting lascannon and researchable missile launcher armaments. Their researchable heavy bolters are fine tho.

The Librarian's Shockwave ability.

Tau:
Nothing that I can see, but I don't have the DLC to check support systems.

Tyranids:
The researchable Regeneration ability.

The Hive Tyrant's psychic scream.

I am... fffairly sure the Tyranid city's heavy venom cannons aren't supposed to have an accuracy of *60,* for *500% hit chances.*

Originally posted by Ddraig Lleuad:

Yeah, so I did some actual investigating, and the result is that for any unit changes, your mod overwrites the community balance mod - including things that you didn't alter in your mod, like production/upkeep costs. So, the bad news is they might as well be incompatible, the good news is that insofar as they're incompatible, it's a clean split with no weird domino effects that I can see.

Oh, and while some units have had their member count independent abilities buffed to compensate for the unit sizes, you've missed a few. Grenades on heroes in general look to be a bit funky, and cities are an odd one - I guess their scaling health is hard to multiply? But except for the Eldar, Ork and Tau ones, they all seem to be pretty badly under-armed now. Here's what else I noticed;

Imperial Guard:
The Summary Execution ability of the Commissar still only kills 1 member. This arguably doesn't need fixing, it's just worth noting that it means the cost goes from minor but sometimes meaningful to utterly trivial.

The offensive abilities of the Primaris Psyker (Molten Beam, Life Leech, and Psychic Maelstrom).

Techpriest Enginseers and their Blessing of the Omnissiah.

While Imperial Bastions have had their HP buffed, their armaments have not been, leaving them somewhat uh, comically under-armed when they're looking out at a sea of over a hundred cultists over the sights of all of three heavy bolters :P

Chaos:
The Daemon Prince's offensive abilities (Gift of Contagion, Sensory Overload, and Breath of Chaos).

Heldrake's and Noctilith Crowns might want another pass in general. I don't have the Chaos DLC so I can't be sure, but while their HP look in keeping with the rest of the mod's scale, some of their weapons ssssseem to be untouched? Baleflamer looks like it got a tweak, but not Meteoric Descent on the Heldrake, or the Noctilith's tentacles.

The Warpsmith's heal, Master of Mechanisms, seems untouched.

Eldar:
All units seem to be perfectly accounted for... However, webway gates should really have their health buffed unless the intent is for any eldar player to have to treat their network as made of cobwebs fit to blow away at the slightest breeze.

Necrons:
Cryptek's resurrection orb.

The Lord's Void Strike ability might want another look. +12 attacks every three turns looks a lot less impressive when you have 14 attacks at base.

Neutral:
The Lord of Skulls weapon abilities seem to be untouched. Vaul Sentries seem to be entirely untouched, too. Neither are a big concern, honestly.

Orks:
Mek's Tools, on both big and regular meks. Yeah that's it.

Space Marines
The Captain's orbital strike ability.

The Chaplain's Oration of Restoration.

The Fortress of Redemption's starting lascannon and researchable missile launcher armaments. Their researchable heavy bolters are fine tho.

The Librarian's Shockwave ability.

Tau:
Nothing that I can see, but I don't have the DLC to check support systems.

Tyranids:
The researchable Regeneration ability.

The Hive Tyrant's psychic scream.

I am... fffairly sure the Tyranid city's heavy venom cannons aren't supposed to have an accuracy of *60,* for *500% chances.*

Thank you for taking the time to make me this list. I'll go over each one and revise the cities as I do.

Ironically the Tau Ork and Eldar are the last cities I did, so I must've figured something out that I forgot to implement with the other cities.

EDIT: I was right about the city scaling issue, should be the easiest to fix.

I'll give it all a general look and see what I can do about fixing everything, though it might take me a little bit, the next update you see should be exactly that.

You are most welcome :)

One thing I will say is that the reason cities are so weak atm is purely just because I can't find the right table to edit for scaling the health.

I might just be able to implement one in like I did to fix most of the weapons (hence a lot of the single units still having weaponry at around x12, which works better than scaling the weaponry itself for whatever reason), but the paper mache HQs aren't intentional.

I love this everything in this mod so far, and appreciate the ridiculous effort of editing all those tables after trying to do something similar for only the guard for personal use. A couple things I've noticed so far:

I do second the point about the eldar webway being made of tissue paper and chewing gum, starting infantry can kill it with one shot.

The space marine artillery vehicle repair ability hasn't seemed to scale with the health. I feel there isn't really a point to healing 12 HP on a vehicle with 200. I haven't gotten around to all the factions, so I don't know if this is a vehicle vs infantry problem or just a space marine problem.

The spacing on the guard heavy weapons squad may have been missed, they're taking up several tiles in a pretty extreme demonstration of social distancing.

Thanks for all the hard work!

I can confirm, webway HP is still 32, and Thunderfire Cannon's repair ability only heals 8. Weirdly, Techpriest Enginseer's with the same ability heals 96. I guess there's something in the back-end that marks them as different abilities? Mek's Tools are fixed over with orks though, on both big and regular meks. Odd.

Going down the list from before; most of the Primaris Psyker's abilities have been tweaked, but not their ult, Psychic Maelstrom.

Ditto the Daemon Prince's Gift of Contagion, and only that - I guess it might be harder to catch because it inflicts a damaging condition rather than killing things directly?

I gather you fixed the Lord of Skulls but not the Vaul Sentry. Probably the more important one if you're gonna do any of them, to be honest.

The Captain's orbital strike is unchanged, and yeah, the operation version also hasn't been tweaked. Neither has the Librarian's shockwave ability, at least in the compendium. Also, the Chaplain's oration now heals a meaningful amount on activation, but not the heal-over-time portion.

Tyranids don't seem to have had any updates.

Thank you guys for the continued feedback. I've said it before, but it's greatly appreciated.

Apparently there's a major fault that nobody seems to be able to scale the HQ HP, which is immensely unsatisfactory for me.

One way or another, I shall figure out a way that HQs will be worth their weight in more than just firepower. I may have to take a look at increasing the armor, to see if I can artificially scale it that way, but either way despite a lack of updates recently, there are still continued plans.

Will get to work on the things I seem to have forgotten, although some things don't have tables for it, so it'll be trial and error for a bit to see what things I can and can't insert to get these things to work.

In any case, once again, thank you majorly for the detailed feedback, and most of these things should be fixed in the next update.

Armour wouldn't work, it caps out at 83% with anything beyond that just counteracting armour penetration. Plus there's a couple things that pierce all armour, like Enslaver melee or Umbra death shrieks.

Hmm. A bit of investigation says that the existing city damage reduction doesn't seem to apply to the city itself, only as a terrain modifier to other units.

If you can give cities custom traits, you could give them 91.6% invulnerable damage reduction. That would cut all incoming damage down to 1/12th of the norm, which is EFFECTIVELY the same as giving cities x12 HP.

Well, except that any repair abilities would be able to full heal any city in the game, but if you're sieging a city you should probably kill those, and it's the only solution which occurs to me.

EDIT: Oh, and a couple things I noticed - Ambull regeneration is still only +2 per turn, but that's unlikely to ever matter. What might well matter is that Obelisk's only have 90-odd HP still.