General gameplay suggestions + imperial guard changes

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Grantovich
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General gameplay suggestions + imperial guard changes

Postby Grantovich » Wed 22 Dec, 2021 12:31 pm

Hi there. I'm a Dawn of war 2 player since games for windows live launch in 2009 (i even won a tournament once!), and love watching Indrid`s casts (too old to be competitive already), so you can have some context that i'm not a random noob who came from nowhere. Loving the elite mod so far since we won't getting the new proper dawn of war game for sure. It's awesome that this game is still maintained and played till this day. Elite team did an absolute splendid job in this regard.

Alright, getting to the topic. I got some general gameplay suggestions for you to discuss (and maybe to implement if the dev team will find these good and possible to develop). These changes won't make the game less competitive and will give some choice and decision making to the player. The suggested changes are:

1. Sync kills toggle button. It was probably discussed for a hundreds of times, but why not to give the ability to toggle sync kills on each unit you control? Sometimes it's beneficial to allow your unit to perform sync kills since it'll tank more incoming damage, you can trade DPS for tankiness this way. Also it's a dawn of war game after all, not a competitive starcraft 2 powerhouse so why not to give people this eycandy if they personally want it? It should be toggled off by default, but you can enable it anytime if you want.
2. Campaign-like cover usage toggle button. Big ranged squads currently have a lot of trouble when things comes to getting into cover properly. I know that this was done deliberately to give the player more micro control but why not to make it togglable? Sometimes it's beneficial to allow high-model count squads to take cover properly instead of spreading out. This is especially noticeable with heretics, guardsmen, termagaunts, shootas and guardians. It should be disabled by default, but you can toggle it on if you want your squads to take a long stretches of cover properly.
Image

3. Models healthbar toggle keayboard button. Really neat QoL feature that lets you see how much HP does each individual model have. Dunno if this even possible to make via mods.

Over to imperial guard changes. It seems that this faction have some major design flaws. I would also suggest some cosmetic changes to the faction (you previously did something like this with Dire Avengers so i guess you're not afraid to do such things ocassionaly).

1. Guardsmen squad. Very straightforward and boring unit atm. Not a lot of decision making with these guys. Losing them en masse isn't impactfull at all, you can throw them at the enemy and replace the losses with dirt-cheap costs. They have the model count which is even higher than heretics and tyranid swarms. What i want to change is to make guardsmen more valuable by reducing their model count while increasing their HP and give them an entrench ability.
- Adding the sergeant will no longer grant two additional models. Guardsmen squad will become a 7-model squad with 940 hp. (130 hp guardsmen, 160 hp sergeant). Squad will no longer reinforce two at a time with the sergeant. Melee DPS should be increased from 2.0 to 2.3 and lasgun DPS should be increased from 4.12 to 5.14 (chaos heretic autogun DPS) to compensate for model loss. Killing a model should give 4 red instead of 3. Reinforce time should be increased from 3 to 3.5 seconds. Sergeant chainsword should have some more DPS (at least 10, slightly worse than melee heretic damage). Sergeant gives the entrench ability to the squad. Sergeant occupy only 1 pop instead of 3.
- Entrench - Risk-reward ability. Replaces the deployable cover ability. Guardsmen squad becomes static and can't do anything for 6 seconds and then spawns a green cover crater in the same fashion as deployed command chimera does. Squad can't move or repair vehicles when in entrenched position. Squad becomes immune to all forms of knockback while entrenched. To break cover and move or retreat guardsman squad must expend another three seconds. The crater will despawn after this. This ability will allow guardsman squads to trade better in a ranged firefights (which what they're all about), compensating decreased model count and the lack of two at a time reinforce. At the same time entrenched squads can't support vehicles or simply cap points and they become extremely vulnerable to melee, flamers, grenades and artillery STs, not to mention other AOE effects. It's also a very thematic change - you can finally roleplay krieg properly!
- Tier 2 unlocks commissar and vox operator upgrades. Commissar does not add additional models anymore, increasing the squad model count to 8 with 1100 HP total (Commissar have a 160 hp). He can still summary execute a squad member to break retreat. He's a capable fighter on it's own, adding up to the overall firepower of the squad. Commissar should also double the regular guardsmen's melee DPS from 2.3 to 5 (slightly worse than grenade launcher heretics melee) so the squad can at least compete in melee with other T1 general purpose infantry like scouts and guardians. Vox operator upgrade costs 75/0, adds up additional guardsmen model with 130 hp, 5.14 ranged DPS and 2.3 (5 with commissar) melee, bumping the model count to 9 (So the overall squad HP would be 1230) and allows the squad to reinforce two at a time. Commissar and vox operator occupy 1 pop each.

Entrench ability gives some decision making while operating with guardsman squads and you'll now have a more valuable and less expendable unit, so you have to use cover and maneuver with the guardsmen more to avoid huge losses and req expenditure. Non-cautious play will tank your req, forcing you to make more power purchases in T2 (Guard players can often completely bypass major power expenditures in T2, especially in team games, carrying through it with lascannons and melta stormtroopers, and this allows them to skip right to T3).

2. Catachans. This squad is riddled with abilities and some of them are slightly overpowered. Ol`unreliable is unavoidable and absolute no-brainer, you have to use it in any scenario and it guarantees immediate profit. Squad`s grenade launcher outside of this ability doesn't work for some reason. I also want to suggest a cosmetic change to this squad.
- Rename catachans to guardsmen veteran squad and give them regular guardsmen voiceovers. They should be actual catachans only when Catachan jungle fighters elite color scheme selected (This color scheme is the whole reason why these guys should be labeled guardsmen veterans instead of catachans). They should have a regular guardsmen model with spotter capes. Sergeant should carry laspistol and a power sword (catachan knife if catachan elite color scheme selected).
- Ol' unreliable should have it's damage reduced from 40 to 30, and a grenades travel time should be equal to the regular grenade launcher shots so the player can avoid this. Using the ability will now take some skill. The model with grenade launcher should shoot grenades with lord general retinue member DPS.
- Remove smoke grenade ability from the unit. It can already reliably counter setup teams with ol` unreliable.
- Give FOTM to the squad to compensate nerfed ol` unreliable and the lack of smoke grenades.

3. Artillery spotters. Another squad which is riddled with abilities. Smoke shell is basically a free lord commissar flare, dunno why somebody decided to add such an ability to the squad which already disrupts the shit out of ranged blobs while remaining free of harm.
- Smoke shell should behave as a catachans smoke (so it's a defensive ability now). We already have a commissar flare to cut weapon range of enemies. It should share the cooldown with the regular shell so guard player have to decide each time if he want to support his infantry or disrupt enemies.

4. Chimera. I never saw somebody using a mobile base upgrade. Mobile base is too vulnerable to AV and nukes and it's benefits are questionable. It needs some buffs to be useful. It should also be a risk-reward ability.
- Mobile base will now grant Seer Council ranged damage reduction aura within the range of 32 when deployed.

5. Leman russ. You never have a reason to leave it in it`s default state. Battle cannon should be a middle ground between vanquisher and executioner upgrades. Vanquisher should be a pure AV option while being less effective than standard battle cannon against infantry. Executioner, on the other side, is less effective against vehicles but more effective against infantry. So instead of straight upgrades we'll now have a narrow specialisations, which encourages decision making once more.
- Executioner now have a plasma_pvp damage type, making it less effective against vehicles. Damage per hit from 27,5 to 33.
- Vanquisher cannon now have an armor_piercing_pvp damage, making it ineffective against infantry. Damage per hit from 150 to 180.

Lots of stuff here to discuss so i'm really curious what do you guys think about this.
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Impregnable
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Re: General gameplay suggestions + imperial guard changes

Postby Impregnable » Thu 23 Dec, 2021 3:50 am

- You will gain more attention and responses by posting this on Elite Discord. Most of community activities and functions have moved on to Discord. The forum is not closely monitored anymore for that reason. That being said, Discord can be a bit annoying in terms of keeping a lengthy suggestion like this visible as replies being added can push the original comment far up making it hard for people to find it eventually. Therefore, posting it on both sides is more beneficial imo. You can link this post in Discord when it is requested by others rather than having to post the entire wall of text every single time.
https://discord.gg/s8JRMNG
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