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Warhammer Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus - now with Heretek expansion

lightbane

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Dec 27, 2008
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The patch so far seems it will be about nerfing some of your abilities, tripling the health of the final boss and increasing the capacities of many necrons, actually making them dangerous.

Which one is better and why? Torsion cannon vs Heavy Gravcannon?

How can I obtain Kastelan Robots? Or heavier Servitors? I know these are around, but none of the of the mission-givers are coughing up the goods. I suppose the fem-Skitarii has them near the end of her quest-line, right?
 

Galdred

Studio Draconis
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I didn't have much time to play, so I only played a single mission, but the nerfbat did hit my current build hard (which was the point):
The skill that gave 1CP/character/Turn now gives 1 CP if the pool is empty (which is usually not very often, because you cannot do much if you start with an empty pool!).
The skill that made heavy weapon free to fire now reduces cost by 2.
The machine spirit power that made heavy weapon free to fire now reduces cost to 1, or does something else entirely (like increase AoE, or maybe it already did, and I missed it).
 

Galdred

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
2 more missions in, the necrons hit much harder than before, and I ended one mission with everyone at less than half health (I got a +necron init event that snowballed hard).
Overall, I think the changes are in the right direction. CP generation has become a bit weird now, with some maps flowing with CP sources, and other where you are starved of it (I had a map with zero CP source at all).

The skill that prevents Attacks of Opportunity it still broken (it is a T1 skill), as you can collect CP on necrons (with dendrites), then move back and hit them with heavy weapons.

Btw, blackstone cost for troops is (partially, between 60 and 80%) refunded if the troop survive. I just discovered that at 39% awakening...
 

Jinn

Arcane
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Nov 8, 2007
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2 more missions in, the necrons hit much harder than before, and I ended one mission with everyone at less than half health (I got a +necron init event that snowballed hard).
Overall, I think the changes are in the right direction. CP generation has become a bit weird now, with some maps flowing with CP sources, and other where you are starved of it (I had a map with zero CP source at all).

The skill that prevents Attacks of Opportunity it still broken (it is a T1 skill), as you can collect CP on necrons (with dendrites), then move back and hit them with heavy weapons.

Btw, blackstone cost for troops is (partially, between 60 and 80%) refunded if the troop survive. I just discovered that at 39% awakening...

Good. Sounds like they're on the right track. I suppose I'll wait a bit longer till they get it to the sweet spot. Thanks for your thoughts, Galdred. Would love to read more if you end up playing further.
 

Galdred

Studio Draconis
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Game becomes too easy again around 49 awakening after getting the dendrites that gives +2 CP from opponents and the aforementioned skill to avoid AoOon top of the skill that refills the CP gauge, and the canticle that provides +9 CP.
Necrons are still harder to kill, so it is not as trivial as it used to be, but still, the harder missions were the 3 during which I had to adjust.

But at least, it takes a bit longer to get a broken combo (the CP gauge refill is at the end of the skill tree, and the +9CP canticle takes some time to get. I also just got the 2CP dendrites).
 

Galdred

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Latest patch added some content (a small set of missions with specific rewards if I got it correctly), and rebalanced some things:
Now the skill to avoid AoO has been swapped in 2nd position with the one that reveals the opponent stats in melee.
I wish they would let people respec because it is really a dead skill for a non melee build...
 

Hellraiser

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Apr 22, 2007
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Danzig, Potato-Hitman Commonwealth
Got it and finished it. If the balance patch did help then I dread to think how easy it was before that patch, as I only played after it.

Architect was a joke boss, I just brute forced the fight with Plasma Culverins and he died. Didn't even have an energy armour breaking canticle :MWhy bother with destroying the thingies?

Last boss has no armour and no support units, just him versus your cultist borgs and cannon fodder Skiitari. Seriously? You call this "praise the omnissiah" difficulty (maybe if one doesn't kill off the other bosses in optional missions it might be a challenge)? And he had 3 times less HP before the patch? What?

The fight against the Astronomer was the best one, I had to postpone the mission for later as I got my ass kicked by him. But that's probably because it was so early in the game that the truly overpowered tools were out of my reach.

Map pool is too small. In nuXCOM it was only visible after one playthrough, here I saw some maps 4 or 5 times.

Will replay this again after they add difficulty levels, a few more balance changes and maybe some new content. The good thing about this game is that it is replayable, even if the small map pool does ruin it. The combat mechanics are decent, just the abilities and necrons need a major balance pass. I would just amp the damage or make the necrons more durable.

I will say one thing though, once I got to level 6 wokeness or however that is called and those instantly reanimating necrons are a bitch. They should make them work like that on a very hard difficulty level.
 
Last edited:

StaticSpine

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I'm not really getting the system. I'm going on a mission where you can't get many cognition points and there are no artifacts to replenish it on the battle arena, so my units can't attack since usual meele attacks deplete cognition points. What do I do?
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,156
So, I finished the game. The update made things more interesting and harder, but the flaw remains: By end-game, your techpriests have access to OP gear... Which funnily enough is a thing that happens in most games where cogboys are introduced.
The game has the basics done (there are many different units that use different strategies that can synergyze, scenarios that force you to reposition and so on), so it has potential.

I'm not really getting the system. I'm going on a mission where you can't get many cognition points and there are no artifacts to replenish it on the battle arena, so my units can't attack since usual meele attacks deplete cognition points. What do I do?

You need to use your abilities and/or gear to replenish CP, such as the humble skull with the right abilities, scanners and so on. Also, Servitors, they're always useful to be used as literal meat-shields.
 

vonAchdorf

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Sep 20, 2014
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Why does this game have such, at least nominally, high system requirements / recommendations, especially for the graphics card (8GB Radeon)? The arenas are quite small, the model detail is ok, but not amazing, ...
 

Hellraiser

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Danzig, Potato-Hitman Commonwealth
I'm not really getting the system. I'm going on a mission where you can't get many cognition points and there are no artifacts to replenish it on the battle arena, so my units can't attack since usual meele attacks deplete cognition points. What do I do?

Cognition mechandrites or just use troops for the damage dealing, using all cognition to first summon the troops. Skiitari with Radium Rifles are very good sources of physical ranged damage. Alpha Skiitari Rangers or was it Ranger Vanguard? Either way those guys with power swords and attack of opportunity immunity are also good. Hell, all of the troops are good for damage dealing except the servitors.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/20...einvented-tactics-for-warhammers-cyber-monks/

How 40K: Mechanicus reinvented tactics for Warhammer's cyber-monks

70


The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the difficult journeys they’ve taken to make their games. This time, Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus[official site].

The Adeptus Mechanicus are one heck of a Warhammer 40K faction. These shadowy racist warrior monks are more machine than human and worship a trinity of machine gods. They say stuff like, “From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I prayed for the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the blessed machine.”

Those words are from the intro to Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus, an excellent turn-based tactics game that really gets the AdMech. Yet developer Bulwark Studios hadn’t even played 40K before they took it on. In order to make it, this small team had to negotiate decades of sacred lore and intense fan expectation while also being disallowed from following existing tactics templates, even 40K’s. Such is the challenge of making a licensed game, but sometimes great things can emerge from stricture and a dose of inspiration.

Bulwark are the French developers of strategy-RPG Crowntakers, which Adam declared was “on the whole, a delicious, hearty, warming broth” back in 2014. But in the years following its release they failed to find their next big project, instead taking on various work-for-hire gigs to keep afloat. In early 2016 the money began drying up and they felt the studio had lost its reason for being. “If we hadn’t gotten anything by the end of the year we would have to close,” cofounder Manu Monnereau tells me.

Then in spring, Crowntakers publisher Kalypso made a proposal. Its subsidiary, Kasedo Games, had been chasing Games Workshop for a licence to make a 40K game and had finally been given a chance to pitch concepts based on the AdMech. Would Bulwark like to work on one?

“We started buying Adeptus Mechanicus and Skitarii codexes, because we knew nothing about them at the time,” says Monnereau. They knew that it was a long shot, attempting to impress Games Workshop with an idea based on hurried research into 40K’s epic factional nuance and detail. But they put together a five-page pitch, and waited.

“And then we didn’t hear about it for six months.”

mech_mechanicus_00001.jpg


It wasn’t easy to figure out a game concept from the Adeptus Mechanicus’ rich history. As Monnereau read the codexes, lushly illustrated books which blend stories and background histories with tables of stats and rulesets for the tabletop war game, he found them fascinating. “This is the faction which crafts the weapons for the Imperium, so OK, what kind of game can we make from that?” he says, but an idea didn’t immediately emerge.

They’d previously been exploring a simulation about managing resources. Perhaps they could translate it into working as the AdMech, so you’d be constructing weaponry on their forge worlds, where billions toil to fuel eternal galactic war? “But you’d be building weapons that you couldn’t play with and that would be really frustrating, so no, we didn’t do that, no way.”

Then they started to learn about the AdMech’s zealous quest for knowledge, in which they send expeditions into the outer reaches of the galaxy to find ancient technologies. “Actually, we were pitching at the same time a game about space archaeology and it was surprisingly close,” says Monnereau. But he knew it had to be based on one planet since Bulwark simply didn’t have the resources to make more.

Thus the original pitch had a basic theme and setting. And since it wasn’t going to be a simulation, it’d be a tactical game – given their experience from making Crowntakers, it was the safest choice.

At least, that’s the way they saw it. From the outside, it might seem ambitious to pitch a tactics game to a company built on tactics games and a fervent fanbase. (“People are pretty harsh when they speak about 40K on forums,” says Monnereau.) But Bulwark didn’t really think about all that. They were busy enough figuring out how to extract a good game from the Adeptus Mechanicus.

mech_mechanicus_00006.jpg


Finally, in late 2016 they got a call. Games Workshop liked the idea and had given it the green light. “It was a life-changing moment,” says Monnereau. The studio was saved. Games Workshop gave Bulwark a choice of enemy faction, and so they began begin to think about which might give AdMech enough secrets and mysteries to go out and dig up.

“We came to the Necron, who are an ancient civilisation. It was interesting because they live on tomb worlds in hibernation, so it was a good fit because the AdMech is known for retrieving as much as they can and at all costs, even risking the Necron hibernation protocol.” It was time to buy another codex.

“But still, we were really afraid.” Nervous of making a 2D game because it could look too cartoonish, Bulwark decided it had to be 3D, even though they’d never made a 3D game before.

What’s more, they had to make an original tactics game. XCOM 2 had come out earlier in the year, further cementing its successful take on tactics design. But, as Monnereau says, ”Games Workshop were not comfortable with us being too close to XCOM”. Bulwark were happy to make something distinctive and new, but it added yet more pressure on the project.

That’s why there’s no cover system in Mechanicus. “Cover is one of XCOM’s defining mechanics,” says Monnereau. “Nobody said don’t put a cover system in, it came from us. But it wasn’t a pure design decision, it was a reaction to us not wanting to fall into that trap.”

mech_mechanicus_00002.jpg


But it was also supported by the lore. The team couldn’t find any 40K art that features an AdMech Tech-Priest cowering behind a wall. “So it made sense but it was difficult because as designers, cover was a top reference and so we had to find our own mechanics and couldn’t rely on what we knew worked really well.”

If that wasn’t enough, Bulwark also ruled out having hit probability. They wanted the game to be fast-paced, with each decision certain, and also for missions to comprise several battles. RNG would make decisions feel meaningless if it scuppered a run.

So what would their game have? The Adeptus Mechanicus came to the rescue. Its transhuman Tech-Priests constantly chatter to each other over the noosphere (like, the internet) and are obsessed with data. Since the Necron are basically robots, perhaps they could be hacked? And perhaps their tombs could be controlled?

Nope. Games Workshop nixed the idea because Necron technology must remain unmastered by any other faction. So Bulwark focused on the data bit. If the AdMech are in the tombs looking for knowledge, perhaps that knowledge could be abstracted into the game rules? This idea led to two of Mechanicus’ core mechanics.

First came scanning. The AdMech can scan Necron enemies to see their hitpoints and armour type. “It was pretty convenient as we had this emblematic Servo-skull with each Tech-Priest and we had to find it a role to play during the game,” says Monnereau. What’s more, needing to know armour type to defeat Necron efficiently also helped replace an early attempt at a body-part targeting system that was slowing down the pace too much.

mech_mechanicus_00004.jpg


Next came the cognition system, which is probably Mechanicus’ key mechanic. “I was reading a Black Library book called Priests of Mars which is dedicated to the AdMech and there were people who see everything as a reason to learn, gathering statistics of servitors falling over,” explains Monnereau. “It was the idea of them seeing the world through analytics and processing that stuff all the time.”

In practice it means that various actions add cognition points to your team’s shared pool, which you spend on firing most weapons, moving long distances and performing special abilities such as healing. It therefore governs every aspect of the game.

Its early function, however, was to help encourage players to move around the levels, because in early prototypes they’d tend to pop out from behind a wall to fire and then pop back in again to take advantage of its line-of-sight system. “It’d be like a cover system but not an official one, so it’d be pretty terrible,” Monnereau says. The idea was that if there were mysterious Necron-built pillars around the level that provide cognition points when a Tech-Priest stands in range, they’d provide reason to expose themselves.

In the final game there are many sources of cognition, from defeated Necron to class traits, but the fact that cognition is shared is a nice nod to the way Tech-Priests are wired up to each other: one priest’s knowledge becomes everyone else’s. It also results in some typically abyssal-dark 40K humour: when expendable units like servitors are hit they earn cognition, representing the team having learned from the recorded telemetry of the Necron’s attack.

mech_mechanicus_00003.jpg


But the real neatness of the cognition system is that while it reflects AdMech lore, it also introduces fresh considerations into tactics: new risks and rewards, and the interesting challenge of eking the very most out of a Tech-Priest’s turn, earning and spending points while bearing in mind what your next priest will have to work with.

Other parts of AdMech lore arrived in Mechanicus almost wholesale, such as their chanted Canticles, litanies that the Tech-Priest sing to each other over the noosphere to give them stat buffs and bonuses. But some aspects of the lore took the team down dead ends. The AdMech believe that their weapons and equipment are inhabited by Machine Spirits which must be appeased so they work properly. “It was basically a system for reloading weapons and overheating, so when you fire your plasma weapon you could hurt yourself,” says Monnereau.

Critical misses like this are extremely Warhammer, but they feel punitive in the context of a singleplayer computer game, costing the player both health and cognition which would mean having to earn more over a turn or two before they can take out the opposition. As Monnereau says, “It wasn’t very fun, it felt like having to wait and it slowed down the pacing.”

So after several changes, Machine Spirits were simplified to being an attack bonus after a weapon is fired a certain number of times. I get the feeling they’re not satisfied with the solution (“We had different opinions,” says Monnereau), but close to release, they had to plump for one.

mech_mechanicus_00005.jpg


Indeed, with the economy of its single tomb setting, balance issues on launch, and systems like Machine Spirits which don’t quite matter in the midst of combat, the entire game bears evidence of the pressure Bulwark were under as they balanced the needs of the licence with those of the studio. But it doesn’t matter. Mechanicus reflects the AdMech’s obsessive piety and craving for knowledge and uses them to forge a new take on tactics. But what’s best about it is how much it both delights in and transcends its source.
 

baud

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RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
Why does this game have such, at least nominally, high system requirements / recommendations, especially for the graphics card (8GB Radeon)? The arenas are quite small, the model detail is ok, but not amazing, ...


I've since played Subanautica, which is also using Unity and I realized the above comment is a little unfair toward Unity. I mean Subnautica is an open-world game, in real time, with dozen (hundreds?) of entities at the same time, better-looking with a big range of graphical options (I was running it on a 4 years old integrated GPU and it was playable!). With this we can see the difference between 'amateur' devs who had never worked before on a 3D game before and devs who had made their own engine for their game (Evolution/Spark for Natural Selection 2) and show a good competence in programmation/optimisation.
Also I'd guess the means were different, for Mechanicus they worked for like 2 years with 1,5 programmers whereas on Subnautica they worked for a much longer time (4+ years) with more programmers (between 4 and 9).

So I'd say that the game runs poorly, it's because it's developed on a budget by an inexperienced devs with not that much time, not because of Unity. Unity made just the development of the game possible with such constraints. Whether it's good or bad thing is left as an exercise for the readers.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2019
Messages
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This game has an excellent presentation, it runs very well, but the lack of difficulty (despite all the patches apparently) is ruining it. There are also two things that i'd like to to see changed.

1) Interactions with curios

Are there some rules here that can help the player to make the good choice most of the time, or is it a plain retarded lottery ? It would be better if the equipment and the skills of the Priests were influencing the results, a bit like the choices of classes and of races are helping in these situations in The Storm Guards.


2) Awakening Level

It increased so quickly that i barely scratched the system, finishing still without problems with only 4 Priests at Level 18-20, 4 extra spots for minions rarely used, plenty of items missing, etc … They must slow down the progression, set a minimum value at the end below 3 (to encourage the destruction of scanners) and rebalance combats to be very hard for a more stuffed cohort. This hopefully leading to an EPIC final battle with a party of 10-12 units lasting 20 turns, because the current one is sadly pathetic.
 

track02

Novice
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Jan 6, 2019
Messages
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Been in the mood for some 40k recently and decided to pick this up and Gothic 2
I'm liking the look and feel, I think they've really nailed that although I've always found the Mechanicus pretty cool
Gameplay is alright, feels fairly standard so far outside the cognition system which seems a bit pointless after a few upgrades

I've only done a few missions but am I going to get in trouble later if I only focus on 2 tech priests though?
I've been using my priests to tank and heal each other whilst the Skitarii troops snipe everything, they just seem to do so much damage and now they've leveled up they get two attacks a turn.
 
Joined
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I've only done a few missions but am I going to get in trouble later if I only focus on 2 tech priests though?
Probably not, at worst, 3 Priests plus strong troops should be enough for the rest of the game, given that the beginning is the "hardest" part.
 

StaticSpine

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I used 4 priests and free troops for CP farming. Had no problems. Finished the game somewhere around 70% of awakening level.
 

track02

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Ended up with 3 Tech-Priests and 4 Skitarii Vanguard (which at level 3 seem way too good)
Waited until the meter was at 100% before the final fight to see if anything would happen but it just forces you into the last mission.

Even having to fight a boss I'd missed before Szaregon it was still really easy - each went down in one turn.
Maybe if you had to fight all the bosses at once and you only have time/opportunity to take out a couple of them during the campaign it'd be a bit more challenging.
 

StaticSpine

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Ended up with 3 Tech-Priests and 4 Skitarii Vanguard (which at level 3 seem way too good)
Waited until the meter was at 100% before the final fight to see if anything would happen but it just forces you into the last mission.

Even having to fight a boss I'd missed before Szaregon it was still really easy - each went down in one turn.
Maybe if you had to fight all the bosses at once and you only have time/opportunity to take out a couple of them during the campaign it'd be a bit more challenging.
I fought 3 of the remaining bosses before Szaregon. It was still not challenging.
 

noctilucent_samizdat

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Feb 15, 2019
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O.K. I just watched the trailer for warhammer mechanicum and that was freakin bad ass..I have chills now . And it has good reviews . So maybe I should buy it
 

Jinn

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O.K. I just watched the trailer for warhammer mechanicum and that was freakin bad ass..I have chills now . And it has good reviews . So maybe I should buy it

I would recommend waiting until they add a "hard" difficulty. I foolishly bought it on release and have been waiting since then for them to get around to making their game challenging.
 

spectre

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So I tried this, played once, got to 30% progress bar, decided to re-do it from scratch, I managed to get back more or less where I left.

I'm not a big 40K fan, most of what I know about the universe was from Dawn of War. With that in mind, I think the game's got a few good things going for it.
Let me start by saying I'm finding the choice of factions quite peculiar. On the surface it looks like tentacled living robots vs. egyptian-themed living robots, and you're supposed to root for
one of them.
However, despite the overall budget feel and very limited voice acting (shame really, what drew me into Dawns of War was the VO), it really manages to deliver a decent amount of 40K fluff
and background information with the banter going on between the main characters while on a mission. The characters are of course quite cliche, but I didn't get an impression that a line of self-parody was crossed
somewhere. They're an interesting bunch to work with, from the obligatory and typical religious fanatics to the obsessed researcher who pretty much speaks in programming lines.

At first glance, the tactical combat may look like another SEXCUM rip-off, but that's deceptive. For starters, I was quite relieved to be spared waist-high walls for my units to hide behind. Line of sight can still be obstructed by structures and characters,
but there's no more leapfrogging from cover to cover. I did my share of it in the first firaxis game. No more chance to hit, only thing that's radomized is damage and several damage avoiding effects (and even then it's quite tolerable).
As a result, the combat is brutal and predictable. A nice combination. The systems aren't terribly complex, you basically have two main types of damage. Some enemies are more resistant vs. energy weapons, others vs. physical weapons,
so you should bring a mix of both. What makes the system slightly less complex and therefore interesting is the fact that enemy resistances are hidden until scanned with an item, ability, sometimes even shooting a weapon.
As a result, the game's combat encounters resemble a puzzle - you need to determine which enemies to attack first and how to generate sufficient amounts of "Cognition" (which is used to take extra move actions and to use pretty much all the advanced equipment)
to make it all happen.

You only start with two machine priests, sounds pitiful, but you will quickly see each guy grow into a one-person band with all the various attachments, armor pieces, weapons, mechanized tentacles - each item is used separately on the battlefield,
so the end result is that after only a few levels your team will whizz around, shoot necrons, hit them with axes, shoot them again, buff an ally, repair a guy here, make a quick data analysis there ... there's quite a bit of strategic depth despite the limited
number of pieces.

You also have a bunch of auxiliary troops - more or less expendable. Starting from humble servitors who are good at soaking enemy fire and earning a few cognition points, you quickly unlock more troop types.
They are much more squishy and not as versatile as the machine priests, but they can serve various roles, from resource generation to support fire and even frontline combat. While your main team of machine priests
starts combat on the battlefield, the auxiliaries need to be summoned by spending "Cognition" points.

All in all, half of the fun in this game is customizing your team for optimal performance, and there's plenty of things to choose from and bring on a mision - the skills for your techpriests, their equipment, the auxiliary troops and canticles (three single-use "spells"
which unlock and get upgraded as you progress)

The campaign gives a good impression. You have quite a lot of freedom in deciding what order you want to do things. Each mission tells you the potential rewards up front - a bunch of stuff to upgrade your team,
new weapons, new abilities, more squad slots, more techpriests, etc. Reminds me of DoW: Dark Crusade. While on a mission, you get to explore the tomb area, resolve a bunch of random encounters before you proceed to the main combat.

So far, so good, right?
Unfortunately the game's got its share of faults. The major flaw is in the lack of difficulty. While I'm still hoping to be proven wrong, the most difficult part seems to be in the early game when your characters are still inexperienced
and you don't have a lot to work with. After a point, the game becomes trivial because your team gets too good at removing opponents and the AI doesn't really step up to provide a challenge. The enemy don't really work together,
don't focus fire, I don't think they even have means to help each other out, I've yet to see any kind of friendly buffs etc.
So, at some point, the game becomes about knocking xenos around with all the righteous fury. Can't say it isn't fun for a little bit, but that's not why I'm playing strategy games for. I really hope this gets solved in a major patch.

Another flaw is lack of variety. Once the initial charm wears off, you begin to notice that all the necron tombs look the same, the enemies start looking the same, and while some combinations of map layouts and opponents can be genuinely interesting,
I believe it's a serious hazard to the game's longevity.

Other than this, the only thing that slightly annoys me is the randomness of tomb exploration. It feels like it doesn't really matter which option you pick, sometimes you get a minor bonus, another time a slight penalty. Neither affects the game in the long run.
 

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