Dawn Of War Pro Mod

[Lothlar]

http://www.moddb.com/mods/dowpro

Through a lengthy period of trial and error dating all the way back to the Age of Empires the TD RTS crew (I may have had something to do with it...) has come to the concensus that Dawn of War Pro is awesome and shall be the RTS of choice for next LAN. At this stage numbers prevailing it looks to be teams of 2v2, rotating in a ladder sort of system much like how quake has been run in the past. The idea is just to have fun and learn while keeping the games to a reasonable length.


Q. What you will need to make it go?

A.
1 copy of Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, patched to version 1.2
1 copy of DoW Pro http://www.moddb.com/mods/dowpro we will be running version 3.40 + the 3.41 hotfix.

And that's it folks...



Q. So what is this game anyway and why is it awesome?

A. Dawn of War is Relic studios brutal RTS take on the Warhammer 40k Universe, focusing on gory tactical land based combat. You can play as:
-The Imperial Space Marines - A highly armored futuristic meta human space knights. Heavy all rounders.

-The Forces of Chaos - Really evil version of aforementioned space knights twisted by malignant gods of desire supplementing technology for demons. Focus on melee combat unlike their puritan brothers.

-The Eldar - Elves in space! Fragile, micro intensive combined arms specialists that excel at hit and run.

-The Orks - A plague of green muscle bound creatures fueled entirely by their belief in conquest. Low tech, high casualties may be a disadvantage for some of the squishier races but orks more then make up for it with pure unrelenting numbers and brutal close combat abilities. An axe is still an axe.
Aggressive horde gameplay.

-The Imperial Guard - Not everyone can be an uber meta space knight cloned from humanities dormant psychic god Emperor. For the rest of the humanity military service consists of wielding crappy laser riffles and flak jackets on the frontline against humanities onslaught. But never fear you also get tanks - big shiny thingys and monstrous artillery support.
Defensive Horde Gameplay.

-The Necrons - The undead in space with a distinctly Gothic/Egyptian feel. Their focus is on heavy, hard to kill infantry. However in Dow Pro the Necrons now suffer the drawback of being the only race unable to reinforce in the field, their units must return to HQ to restore their lost numbers.
The Necrons now focus on stealth attacks with brutal effciency.

-The Tau - Basically Starwars in Space. Can focus on either long range/high damage or close combat troops. The Tau advantage is their flexibility. Each unit is a very distinct specialist that works together as a larger co-ordinated fine tuned machine.



Q. What's the Pro part mean?

A. Pro mod basically rebalances a lot of the default game to break away from grindy stalemates into decisive tactical engaugements, making each race unique and focusing on relic/hero gameplay with more aggressive economic model.

Say what now slowly?

Well basically put, in each map there are control points. You capture these with infantry to gain manpower and you build generators to make energy. If you want to increase the flow of manpower requisition you get your builder unit to build an observation post on top. Further upgrades increase flow of resources. Simple no?

Teching up and more advanced units require increasingly more power. Each additional power plant increases the cost of future power plants - just like how the Necrons play in the default game.

On each map there are gold things, relics. Capturing them gives you more manpower requisition and when you put an observation post on top you get the option back at your hq to purchase war-gear pieces from the single player onto your primary hero unit. This means your hero scales over time and adds another layer of depth, meaning you can focus on a big army, or a smaller army and a stronger focus on your hero.

We will be running a feature called hero mode. It basically means the longer your units live in the field, the more experience they gain, meaning if you take care of your troops they should scale nicely across game.

The game also focuses on a hard counter system. Meaning if your enemy throws a tank at you, you need to attack it with an anti tank gun or some such (like a bigger tank of your own :D). When in doubt run away. It is always better to preserve units then run them like so many pieces of meat under mighty steel.

The default view distance of units has been lessened so scouting with cheap, high speed units to spot for traps is important before you make your move, or even just providing line of sight for your artillery to fire properly :D - scouting the battlefield always helps.

Demons and Necrons are now majorly weak against fire. So if you see a horde of such buggers headed your way, put some flamethrower action on them, shred their moral and then butcher the squealing fools.

And that should about do the basics. If you want to learn more read the manual in your download, it's pretty descriptive.

[Scorp]

Awesome post Lothlar - I'm looking forward to giving this a go :)