Warhammer Why didn't Final Liberation and Chaos Gate modding took off?

[Derek Larp]

Yes, I heard DoW1 had the most active modding community out of all the WH40K games; too bad I never got into the game. They shut down an SH mod?

Yep, it was fairly hilarious and pissed off lots of people - there was a very nice standalone Space Hulk game that some dudes released for free at about the same time, GW shut them down (the game was then re-done to remove all 40K stuff and remained available with a generic sci-fi setting) and then killed the Space Hulk mod for DoW1 too. Mind you this was ages before the official Space Hulk games started to come out. There were still lots of cool mods for DoW1 though, for example someone made even a Tyranid mod, which however tended to break the game because of the huge number of units, that could appear on the screen.

Now that you mention it, I think I remember that Space Hulk game. If it's the one I think it is, I played it at the time and liked it but never returned to it. Too bad it got stomped by GW.

Yeah, I dont know the sales numbers, but I remember that the reviews werent that great when the game came out back in the day (it was usually 7/10, ie. "OK, but not great," there were lots of complaints because of frequent crashes etc), so the game most likely didnt do well enough financially to justify further work, which I guess was planed at the start (probably datadiscs with other armies and campaigns, perhaps moding tools etc).

Do you mean Alien Assault?

If you're interested, the game is still available for free and can be very easily modded into 'real' Space Hulk:

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Alien_Assault

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Yes, Alien Assault is what they named it after the forced change from 40K into the generic sci-fi setting. Thanks for posting the link, I have forgotten what it was called!

 

[Galdred]

I retried fiddling with the FInal Liberation modding tools:
I have seen no example of anyone managing to add units without having the game crash on the codex/encyclopedia part.
You can relatively easily revamp existing weapons, units and formations, or add weapons, but you cannot add a new unit or formation to the campaign.

I made all vehicles sturdier by lowering the chance of a track/Wheel hit (because these have much lower armor values, but still destroy the vehicle when the armor is bypassed by penetration). I improved the penetration of battlecannons to bring them on par with lascannons, so that orks have a chance to punch through late game armor.
I upgraded Space Marine armor by a lot(the armor value they have make it impossible for any bolter/lasgun shot to be stopped by armor), and increased their cost.
I added infantry to the commissar unit so that it won't eat an army slot for no good reason.

It is also impossible to change the ork unit selection algorithm, so they will still field barely usable units late game.

Update: I upped the armor of space marines, but it doesn't seem to change anything. I will try pushing it to impenetrable values to see whether it works at all, but it is possible the game ignores the armor value for infantry units entirely. After all, none of the units in the game had armor able to block anything, even with luck (ie, the minimal random roll for penetration of any weapon would be enough to bypass armor).

 

[Galdred]

I did some further testing:
Decreasing the track% hit of the LAnd Raiders did wonder. They can still explode prematurely, but are no more the tracked joke they were before.
Increasing the armor of Space Marines to 34 did nothing, so I tried 90 instead, and it made them unkillable, to the point the AI would not even bother using overwatch against them.

I think that the artillery units are undercosted and the tank/APC units are too weak (and maybe overcosted?).
In the Space Marines TT, a heavy weapon platoon had roughly the same cost as a tank squadron or a heavy artillery battery (200 for a basilisk squadron, 200 for a Land Raider squadron, and 200 for a heavy weapon guard platoon).
In Final Liberation, siege mortars and earthshakers are much cheaper than tanks, but perform better against almost anything.

But the other issue is that late campaign, orks pose basically no threat.

So here is what I planned to do about it:
Give better armor penetration to some ork tanks and to their stompas. I'll replace the Splinrippas with the Braincrusha (same range as a volcano cannon, same Penetration as a quake cannon, very low armor), as these are similar in look.
I'd add a massive armor boost to Space Marines and Bad Moonz nobz (with a cost increase).

I'll increase the cost of fighter/bombers as they are a pain to negate, and are devastating for their price.
I'll increase the durability of the Land Raider and Thunderhawk.
I'll increase the cost of deathstrikes and titans massively.
I'll increase the penetration of the volcano cannon, but increase the price of the Shadowsword acordingly.
I'll probably increase the boyz count in ork units, so that they are not a waste of a slot.

I'll make transport vehicles much cheaper, and probably add them to infantry units so that they don't waste a slot.


What do you think about these changes?

Update: I compared the cost of units in the game, to the cost in the TT:
Infantry: 75% (50% for heavy infantry)
Tanks (Leman Russ): 150%
Heavy artillery: 66%
Super heavy Tank: 100-120%, but they get 4 HP vs 1 in the TT
Titan: 100%
APC: 120%

heavy infantry has a very low anti tank power in the game, but tanks all have a good chance to be hit in an area with very low protection, even from the front, so heavy infantry will typically have 17% / 33% to hit a tank where its armor value is lower than the penetration of a heavy bolter.

in the TT, infantry would also be instakilled by any hit, while in the computer game, each hit only eliminates a single character from a 5 men squad, making it much more resilient, except against artillery which can roll against each character in a squad + each character in the neighbouring squads.

So no wonder that tanks are badly outperformed by heavy infantry and artillery.
I'm thinking about bringing tank cost down, in line with the TT.
Not sure about what to do with infantry. The AI uses it very poorly, entrenching at the edge of your range, even if you outrange it:
Orks will typically entrench at range 29 from your heavy weapon squads, so you can move them 1 tile (to range 28), and hit them without them neing able to fire back (as they have range 20).
So increasing the cost of infantry would make orks even more of a joke to face late campaign.