Space Wolves Mod (Not Wolf Lords)

Howdo,

I'm tired of all discussion taking place in PM - it's nuts. Equally I'm afraid that I do not have access to the Wolf Lords mod from this thread (anyone got it?).

 

However, we need somewhere to discuss the space wolves.

 

Changes 0.63 > 0.64 (WIP)

Wolf lord has no shadow

UCS needs to be consolidated (plasma cannon, Land raider crusader, vindicator, missile launcher, lightning claw, long claw would seem to point outside of the space wolves UCS - Bad Torsel :(  Lord UCS should reflect that OB requires Wolves Claw, not relay)

Scouts don't come from HQ, blood claws are cappers -we happy with that?

Assault Terminators to default to lightning claws - renamed Void Claws, possibly have teleportation by default - they are missing an icon for when equipped with lightning claws.

No skull probes - ideally a wolf would be better as a detector, but the only one I know is from the Space Wolf game, but none for dow. Sergeants / bare faced units detect?

 

That's it for my initial look. Anyone else? Come at me!

Well, I can't promise to be into until several weeks from now but I want to put here some ideas from the most conservative ones to the most unique.

 

a) UCS: First and foremost, find an unused range of ucs and compile the lines into a single file if possible.

 

b) Some basic fluff : 

 

Squads (called packs) cannot reinforce. This is fluff and one of the things that make SW deviate from other chapters. The packs at full force are bloodclaws 15, greywolves 10 and longfangs 5; I don't remember the scouts now. If we use the criterium of SM squads then you remove 2 because of the sergeant and the possible attachable leader (captain, chaplain, apothecary, librarian). 

 

To balance the bloodclaws, being the first type of pack available, they can be either rather subpar than other melee-equivalent units or having their numbers increasing along the tiers. For example: starting with 5 at first tier, 10 at second and 15 at third.

 

More fluff. The leader of the packs is always drawn from the wolf guard. The wolf guard are the honour guard of the lord but they can be recruited from the greywolves or even from the bloodclaws. Therefore the wolf guard are used as sergeants and all squads but scouts should get the same or similar model. I think the current model of wolf guard sergeant is good enough and it serve for all of them. The other wolf guards which are not leading the pack, would be the ones in terminator armour or the ones as wolf riders (tbd).

 

c) Models: There are some models which look good and others than could be replaced to look even better. There are some alternatives for the wolf lord, the wolf priest or the rune priest (I think knezekj did them). The bloodclaw is using a model of a vanguard veteran with the Mk8 armour which is not the most accurate. I think there are another model of a melee veteran marine which does not use this armour with collar and in addition has an axe as upgrade.

 

Some of the models would have ideally a helmetless variant and a head with beard and long hair. Something like an utopia.

 

d) Tech-tree organization: To convey the idea that the SW are pissing on the Codex, the order of the buildings and units may be altered. 

 

In addition to barracks, armory and vehicle building, to have a special early building called "Hall of heroes" of something like that (it is quite inspired in the Warcraft 3 hero building). It is meant to create the leaders, attachable units or special ones. They have to be unlocked(researched) previously. The number of researches enabled depends on the tier (optional).

 

A list would be: Wolf lord, lone wolves, iron priest, wolf priest, rune priest, Lukas the trickster, venerable dreadnought, Bulveye the berserker,... From here you could get wulfen packs from the 13th company as allies too (in case they would get a model eventually).

 

Lone wolves are miniheroes which fight alone (non attachable) because they are the survivors of their packs who seek revenge. My candidates to detection units, along with the scouts and of course the rune priest.

 

---------

 

My proposal for the units per tier would be:

bloodclaws [initial squads from HQ]

 

skyclaws - bikers / land speeder  [all of these units are bloodclaws which got promoted in this army]

 

greywolves, scouts, wolf guard (sergeant) - longfangs - lone wolves / rhino, razorback, predator [second tier, gw are tactical and scouts are a default-infiltrated and better version of the SM scouts because they are more experienced troops, longfangs need some extra research to be enabled, they are devastator equivalent]

 

wolf guard terminators, thunderwolves* - wulfen* - dreadnoughts  [third tier, super units, thunderwolves are mysterious wolf riders and act as heavy cavalry while wulfen are super werewolves]. 

 

whirlwhind, land raider (relic) [fourth tier]

 

AI has to be updated nonetheless. Even in the current state (0.63) the build order is not made strictly accordingly to the tree.The most blatant example is using the scouts as first cappers instead of the bloodclaws.

 

 

e) Promotion mechanic. This is completely new and possibly doable, not without many tricks. It uses the buildings in a different way. 

 

This idea is inspired from the RTS Battle Realms but to a minor extent. In there, you got basic troops -resource gatherers and builders- spawned from the main building. Then you put a unit inside specialized training buildings and the unit is transformed into another kind -promoted-. If you train again this new unit into another building you get a superior level of unit, and the top one is the combination of all three training buildings.

My idea is the same but not so complex. The HQ spawns bloodclaw packs (at some rate possibly to be tuned or modified by research, or alternatively you build them). Then you can send them to some building(s) to get promoted to:

at 1st tier: skyclaws (like assault but weaker), bikers

at 2nd tier: greywolves (like tacticals), scouts (like vanilla scouts but better, infiltration by default)

At its turn, the greywolves can get promoted to

at 2.5 tier: longfangs 

 

at 3rd tier: wolf guard terminators (1 squad), thunderwolf riders (1 squad) 

The idea I had was to recover the value of the troop instead of losing them totally to not hamper the economy. Although if you get bloodclaws for free it could ease up things. The rate of creation would be given as a function of objective points controlled and even adding a probability of getting wulfen instead of bloodclaws (not promotionable).

Edited by Roderick, 10 September 2017 - 11:54 AM.

One this is ready, leave the AI to me.

AND I will of course make my own PT pass.

 

Off-Topic

Boy are we the most active team....!

But why only the three of us?

If only we had a couple more coders...

RL issues and summer mostly the culprit. Yes I agree with a couple more of persons able to handle something, everything would function smooth as silk, and faster.

I wanted to use the battle realms idea for eldar - you make guardians and then turn them into aspect warriors.

I wasn't planning on adding anything like the above. I don't have access to wolf lords so am unaware of any new models - I think these ones in torzels mod are the new ones by knezeckZ.

Not to say that I don't like the ideas, but I can't envisage how not replacing squad members would work. Unless there was no squad cap cost.

Promotion is covered by heroes - I can't think of a way to transform a whole unit.

I was mostly going to tweak the existing build a little bit. Primarily make it compatible with night lords (I still need to fix their bolter fx). Whatever I do it lacks wulfen, thunder wolves and various assets.

Anyone got wolf lords?

Did you know Battle Realms? I see you are a man of culture as well.

 

This is the reason I've ordered the suggestions from the most ground to earth to the less. I really think the SW needs to deviate as much as possible from a codex organization army and the gameplay being affected by this. I remember myself trying to defend the beta on Youtube when people said it was very similar to SM and I was pointing out the differences. Yet they aren't many, there are some, mostly on the troop looks, but they eventually match very well to what any SM chapter does.

 

Said so, I think that even a little modification like the no reinforcing rule may make them somewhat special.

 

Knezekj released some models which aren't the original in 0.63. They are in the Vostroyan minimod page in mod db I think. Knezekj modified them with some bits of fur or pelts for the leaders. There is even, not tried, a model for a wolf. Other mods like Eternal Confrontation have some of them or other ones. I think in Youtube you can see them in the army painter. 

Edited by Roderick, 10 September 2017 - 02:14 PM.

Ah, I know the pack I thought it was this one. I could make them largely squad cap free with no reinforcement, but I just don't think it will work. For a start there would be a load of lone wolves who weren't the designated lone wolf. possible that you could only reinforce near to a base or LP?

Perhaps just blood claws could not reinforce. Anyway there will be changes, but not moddb shattering ones - much less work than vostroyans or renegades. I've put in my dream TT squad for you all

or reinforce if they have the sergeant...

Full Space Wolves voice pack has everything you need ready to go.
 
Mephistoned was the original team lead has not been around for a while. If you want access to the private forums let me know.

I have messaged him, but access to files and voices would be potentially productive.

Hmm. Tried adding a howl ability. Added a subdirectory to the vanilla sergeant ability folder called howl, set the ability to ability/howl but nothing plays. Even tried setting it to ability/rally. What gives?

by "nothing plays" do you mean the sound associated to the howl or the ability itself?

Checked soundmessages.txt for the answer or did you hear a beep?

 

Gather you understand how the folder structure works for abilities. Also, might be the FDA is corrupted or not supported OR no associated .con in the previous folder OR .rat is not correct.

No beep, have a con, have a rat nothing in the log - it May be easier to look if I upload the mod in a bit.

Where's the voice pack by the way?

http://www.mediafire..._Voices_1.4.rar

I'm trying this non reinforcement thing. Squads will come out full strength and be 1 squad cap. As each squad member dies, the others get more hitpoints until you end up with a high health loner. I may have to increase maximum squad cap to account for all the little crappy squads.
Wolf guard will remain normal as they invite people which helpfully resolves their identity crisis.

Think another idea has crashed into the rocks, but more on that later when I appeal for help. Wolf howling equally does not work still. GAH!

Hopefully this mod should not be too time consuming. Have solved the detector issue I think.

How is the detector working now? Scouts or lone wolves could do the trick.

 

If eventually we could get a thunderwolf model or a wulven one ... *sigh*

 

 

This idea of the lone wolf from the squad it's something I got in mind too. I see that some things come quite natural to think of. However I don't get the point on having 1 squad cap for them? Why do you want the army to be so populous? They are still elite armies compared to simple guards. Make them quicker or cheaper if you feel that the non reinforcement it's a handicap not compensated enough with the full starting squad.

Edited by Roderick, 13 September 2017 - 10:14 AM.

Because you can't reinforce so by the nature of the beast you are going to end up with smaller, less useful squads. If it doesn't work out I can revert. The wolf voices appear to be wav files... This is a slight problem to me.

Can't you convert them to mp3 then fda??