Hey guys,
It's been a while. I've been playing lots of Soulstorm 3.10 lately in conjunction with the Bugfix Mod, and it's a blast, as always. But there's one thing that keeps getting my attention when it occurs, which I never payed attention to before (and to be honest the fact that I missed it is troubling me, but I've missed many things when testing so... meh). It concerns the Necron Lord only.
First, here are the conditions for what I am about to describe can occur:
1) Necrons must be assaulting or must be under attack.
2) Necron Lord must be active and part of the assaulting army, or part of the army under attack (obviously, since it concerns the Necron Lord specifically)
3) There must be long-range fire coming from the Necrons' enemies (I'll explain below).
In brief words (and I hope it'll be clear with this small explanation), when the Necron Lord is going on assault with a Necron army (let's say two or three, or more Necron Warrior squads, along with Necron Destroyers and Flayed Ones, that's a minimum, I'm referring to "major" assaults here, late Tiers as well), or when the Necron Lord and his army is being pushed back to the main base, and also if the enemy is using long-range weaponry, either coming from vehicles or infantry, and if the Necron Lord is around, then the following will occur:
The Necron Lord teleports itself exactly where that long-range fire comes from and immediately starts causing carnage and melee the sorry living heck out of whatever infantry and/or vehicle that had the unfortunate order to be there and firing at the Necron army from afar. In other words, if for instance I am playing as the Imperial Guard and I am defending my base from an incoming Necron army by using my Basilisks from the very end of the Basilisks' range of fire limit (that means very far from the Necron army, well "hidden" within a fog of war), then inevitably (happening 10 times out of 10 in my tests) the Necron Lord will "known" exactly where that fire comes from, and teleport there, well between two Basilisks or right in between a group of side-by-side heavy weapons infantry and will often use Solar Pulse and then punch his cold, deathly Staff of Light through the enemy. You guys cannot possibly imagine how frustrating it can be, but that's not the point, it's not because it's frustrating that I'm typing all of this, it's because it doesn't seem to make sense at first glance.
So I really have to ask if that Necron Lord behavior is actually meant/coded to be so? Because if it is then I would highly suggest revising it. You know what that behavior makes me remember? It makes me think about the quite recent problem we've had with the Dark Eldars using their soul powers within the fog of war against infantry they would normally have never been able to detect. Just in case my paragraph above wasn't clear, I'd like to repeat what that is all about. The Necron Lord teleports itself during combat (either during base defense or during assaults) right where long-range enemy fire comes from (normally well hidden within the fog of war, and normally unknown to the Necron Lord), and I do mean right where it comes from, not even a meter away from the vehicle(s) or infantry, I mean right in the middle of the very squad(s) firing at his army from afar, that means any factions capable of long-range fire (let's say Basilisks, Heavy Weapons infantry, long-range Terminators, Obliterators, most of the Tau units, and many others).
The thing is that logically the Necron Lord has (or "should have") no idea on the exact position of the source of the long-range fire against his army. There are many cases where that behavior occurs although the Necron Lord never even once penetrated into the enemy base at all. So how can he known the exact position and teleport there immediately? The problem here isn't the fact that he teleports into the fog of war, that ain't even the point. It's just that he teleports itself right where the firing comes from in the first try, he doesn't even run around to "look for" the source of fire, he just gets right there right away and disrupts everything he can, and let me tell you a Necron Lord can disrupt many things. He will then of course sometimes die there, since he teleports itself right into the enemy base, or right into the enemy's army (when the Necrons are under attack) and will simply ask for trouble even with Solar Pulse, and if he dies there, he stays there (its body I mean), and when he spawns back guess what he does? No, he doesn't stay there resuming on the carnage, he teleports away for a good two minutes or so, and then eventually does exactly the same thing again as long as the attacking or defending army is still there.
Right, so from now I think that if I resume I'll just keep repeating myself, which I've done already above. I just wanted to find different ways to explain this. In the end, all I want is to understand, to know how that behavior works and why was it chosen to work that way if that is indeed the case. If however it could be something that the coding team has over-looked then here I suggest making changes to it, to avoid having a Necron Lord which is able to "guess" where the enemy fire comes from, from within the fog of war (and only from within the fog of war, that's the point), and instead make the Necron Lord behavior... I don't know... different? Is it possible? I'd like to have a discussion about this with you guys. And, on a side note, there's a demo of DoW2 on Steam, and I tried it, and I'm glad I did, it allows me to save money, long live to DoW1!