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.
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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.
