New Warhammer 40K game?

[Reverend Joe]

I just spent the past few otherwise uneventful days beating the campaign in Dawn of War: Dark Crusade. (Quite fun, if you enjoy large amounts of wanton gore.)

Anyway, after the credits roll, there is a short video zooming out from the planet of Kronos, showing several other planets, with large explosions on their surfaces now and again, indicating large-scale warfare. All else that is apparent is the "Relic" logo and "2007."

So, I was wondering, since this is the largest collection of internet rats I know of: has anyone picked up any news on a new 40K game, possibly (god willing) an interplanetary campaign style game, or (as I would more expect) a new "Dawn of War" style game, taking place on more than one planet?

[Decker]

Could be anything:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxpQMg-tE74

I figured they symbolized the first three games but who knows. I only have the first one, and I have only played the demo of the 2nd. I couldn't tell ya.

[Reverend Joe]

Yeah, that's the one.

Come to think of it, it'll probably be a major letdown. These things always are.

[Decker]

But since when has one of the add-ons for Dawn of War been bad?

[doc_bean]

That video is about all I've heard about it too.

[drone]

On the Relic forums, there have been rumors of a DoW2 for over a year now. Newer engine, snazzier graphics, etc. Don't know how much truth is behind any of it though.

[Spino]

On the Relic forums, there have been rumors of a DoW2 for over a year now. Newer engine, snazzier graphics, etc. Don't know how much truth is behind any of it though.

Wasn't Company of Heroes was made with a brand new engine? Chances are the DoW sequel will be made an upgraded version of that. I hope they keep and expand upon the strategic campaign game they introduced in Dark Crusade, I absolutely love it!

[drone]

Wasn't Company of Heroes was made with a brand new engine? Chances are the DoW sequel will be made an upgraded version of that. I hope they keep and expand upon the strategic campaign game they introduced in Dark Crusade, I absolutely love it!
I'm pretty sure CoH was a newer engine, and may be the root behind many of the rumors. Merging the new engine with a large meta-map campaign style (maybe even off-world space-type battles) would be nice.

[lars573]

Wasn't Company of Heroes was made with a brand new engine? Chances are the DoW sequel will be made an upgraded version of that. I hope they keep and expand upon the strategic campaign game they introduced in Dark Crusade, I absolutely love it!
CoH and DoW use the same engine. In a similar way that RTW and M2TW use the same engine. Same basic code but with fancy effects and generally more advanced.

[Lehesu]

I am fairly sure that CoH uses an entirely new engine. It may be based off the original, but the differences are numerous enough to warrant a new title.

[econ21]

I don't know if I can sidetrack this thread with discussion of Dark Crusade, but like the OP, I've been enjoying it for the last couple of days - enough to distract me from the heavier commitments of M2TW and NWN2.

It oozes atmosphere. Co-op MP vs the AI is fun with the new races adding variety. The AI is pretty decent - nicely aggressive. The combat is almost tactical enough to make me forget it's an RTS (except that now I have come to the conclusion that the best tactics is to mass an enormous force and barrel at the AIs base).

What has really caught my imagination is the campaign (I'm playing Tau), with the upgrade and honour guard rewards providing a hook to keep playing. But the strategic layer is a little disappointing - the AI moves seem almost random (save, reload revealed that) and if the AI does not move, unlike the human, they gain honour guard. Consquently, the most powerful AI faction is the one that has sat passively for longest.

Coping with an AI honour guard is a little frustrating though - when two massive forces meet, my computer starts to get laggy even when played on a slow setting. I would prefer a lower level of engagements, similar to those in skirmishes. But I have not worked out how to lower resources in campaign (unlike speed, which I can lower).

It's still fun though. My current challenge is how to hold off the Orc army with 6 honour guard from hideously stomping over one of my territories (strangely, autoresolve will do it but playing it manually they can crush a maxed out Tau force).

[doc_bean]

I really should give DC another chance, but the ugliness of the rain effects kills my enjoyment of the game, and there seems to be no way to turn it off :shame:

[Spino]

I don't know if I can sidetrack this thread with discussion of Dark Crusade, but like the OP, I've been enjoying it for the last couple of days - enough to distract me from the heavier commitments of M2TW and NWN2.

It oozes atmosphere. Co-op MP vs the AI is fun with the new races adding variety. The AI is pretty decent - nicely aggressive. The combat is almost tactical enough to make me forget it's an RTS (except that now I have come to the conclusion that the best tactics is to mass an enormous force and barrel at the AIs base).

What has really caught my imagination is the campaign (I'm playing Tau), with the upgrade and honour guard rewards providing a hook to keep playing. But the strategic layer is a little disappointing - the AI moves seem almost random (save, reload revealed that) and if the AI does not move, unlike the human, they gain honour guard. Consquently, the most powerful AI faction is the one that has sat passively for longest.

Coping with an AI honour guard is a little frustrating though - when two massive forces meet, my computer starts to get laggy even when played on a slow setting. I would prefer a lower level of engagements, similar to those in skirmishes. But I have not worked out how to lower resources in campaign (unlike speed, which I can lower).

It's still fun though. My current challenge is how to hold off the Orc army with 6 honour guard from hideously stomping over one of my territories (strangely, autoresolve will do it but playing it manually they can crush a maxed out Tau force).

The strategic AI is a bit lacking but the game is still oodles of fun. I suppose one could maximize the challenge by auto-calcing all battles that do not directly involve your commander's army but that would lead to a really long game.

I'm about to finish an Imperial Guard game on Normal difficulty and in terms of challenge my toughest battle so far was also against a large Orc territory complete with two (or three?) bases and a commander army complete with a massive contingent of honor guard units. Even when I managed to build up a huge, nicely teched up army I found the experience quite painful. However after repeated failures and reloads I found the easiest path to success was an early, extremely aggressive resource grabbing zerg rush. Simply spam as many basic units as possible and capture and develop as many resource nodes as you can. Using this method you can also either annihilate the AI's honor guard (which usually patrols around the map looking for trouble) or you can easily take out one of the AI's bases early on in the battle. Once you do that the rest should be pretty easy. Try it with a single massive rush or two sizeable ones. As the Imperial guard I found that increasing the max squad size along with the first tier of squad upgrades (squad leaders and grenade launchers, with a few select weapons related research for good measure) made the melee oriented Orc units much easier to handle. Unfortunately I don't have any experience playing with the Tau but given their excellent ranged attacks I imagine the same tactics I used for the the IG should also work for them.

Basically if you engage in a strategy of slow, minimal expansion or worse, you try and 'turtle' with a few resource nodes on a large or capital city map and the AI has a large honor guard you're screwed.

Another tip is to capture and fully develop most if not all resource nodes as you can before beating the AI on any given map. Why? Because the next time you actively defend on that map the AI will be given only a handful of nodes to work with and will be forced to deal with the defenses of your full upgraded nodes. The time needed for the AI to overcome your upgraded nodes combined with the massive resources and power your forces will be generating per second will allow you to build a large, high tech army in an incredibly short period of time. You'll then proceed to beat them to a pulp, honor guard or not.

I don't know what kind of system you have but I have an Athlon XP 2400+, Radeon 9800 Pro & 1gig RAM and the game runs great on my rig at 1680x1050 with no AA and 16x Anisotropic Filtering. I found setting Shadows to minimum (not Off), Unit Detail to Medium and Dead Bodies to none really helps to keep the framerate smooth.