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Base building isn't just "not a 40k thing", it shouldn't be a thing anywhere. Remember what that RT in RTS is supposed to stand for? Real Time. This not a genre where it makes sense for your troops to sit in one place digging trenches for hours just to have even the most basic kind of "base", and it's absolutely stupid to have the kind of "we're under attack! Quick, build a tank factory so we can build more units to fight back!" nonsense of games like Starcraft. It's right up there with "clicks per second" and having overcoming terrible interface design be considered an essential component of player skill on the list of bad game mechanics that should have died decades ago.

 Peregrine wrote:
Base building isn't just "not a 40k thing", it shouldn't be a thing anywhere. Remember what that RT in RTS is supposed to stand for? Real Time. This not a genre where it makes sense for your troops to sit in one place digging trenches for hours just to have even the most basic kind of "base", and it's absolutely stupid to have the kind of "we're under attack! Quick, build a tank factory so we can build more units to fight back!" nonsense of games like Starcraft. It's right up there with "clicks per second" and having overcoming terrible interface design be considered an essential component of player skill on the list of bad game mechanics that should have died decades ago.

Its the only sensible way to draw out the experience though. There are games (and mods for dow) that allow you both to start with a full army and then have at it.
Base building allows you to start with smaller skirmishes, fighting over ground with less units and progress into full blown battles.

You could hold ground and get rewarded with reinforcements but there's no management of resources there.

DOW2 allowed you access to your units in the campaign but you never progressed past skirmishes. Your three marine squads and their commander would fight maybe 10 or so orks at a time. A single ork dreadnought was a dangerous threat, 2 was time to retreat.
Further- the elite strike team model didn't gel well with other factions in Retribution- the Guard and the orks relying on kick ass specialists rather than mobs was particularly grating- even if you did get to buy disposable grunts during the missions with power and requisition just lying around in crates.

Having a base is certainly not alien to 40k- whether in the background or the fortifications shoehorned in in the past few years. You'd expect that the Ork Camp be located a tad further from the Guard HQ but that's an abstraction to keep dismounted infantry relevant.
Finally, in DC, you had multiple ways to win.
Destroy the enemy stronghold- a perfectly viable strategy in 40k lore. Tear down the enemy's production facilities and reduce his ability to make war against you. That should work against any army- even marines need planetside bases when their ships are busy in orbit and cannot redeploy them at will.
You could win by controlling a percentage of the critical points (Victory Countdown has begun!) thus winning without ever seeing the enemy base. This was particularly effective against opponents who were 'castling' and building their base with lots of turrets and so forth, neglecting the land war.

DOW2 missions felt much more rail roaded- there was less player agency during the mission. This reflects the worst traits of 40k on tabletop.

You should go play Ground Control 2 if you haven't already; that game has no base building but resource management too. Each map has 3-4 landing zones that you must capture to send in new units via dropship, while other smaller points are scattered about that add a steady trickle of resources that you need to request for units in the first place (otherwise players would just call in the biggest units they have available). The way to win the game was to destroy the enemy's current ground forces and either deplete them of resources so they cannot request new units or to capture all the landing zones so they have nowhere to land.

You could even upgrade and set your dropship to join the fight after it deploys new units for around 30 seconds to cover your landing zone, but if it's shot down, you're going to be crippled for a while.

So there you are - a game with no base building that has a scale of combat from skirmish to full on battle with resource management. Now picture a 40k setting with Thunderhawks/Valkyries/Orcas/Chinnorks fulfilling the same mechanic. That's a million times more representative than base building

Some gameplay for your amusement




G.A

Dawn of War with starting armies is a horrible game, even worse than as it is. The base building fakes tactical depth (in truth having an optimised build order is best) and without it the sheer grindiness of the game becomes evident.

Look at Total War for an example of a game series that does proper tactical combat without on-site construction.

A TW-esque game on a much smaller scale and with more detail and terrain would be excellent. You could easily make the campaign map work in 40k; SM just have ships instead of territories (or better yet, the Imperium is simply a single big faction).

 Peregrine wrote:
Base building isn't just "not a 40k thing", it shouldn't be a thing anywhere.

There are some games-- like the Total Annihilation series and their spiritual sequels-- that actually do justify base buildings in-universe, through high technology and magic. The fact that in these games, most of the units are either robots or fast-baked clones programmed to only obey your commands helps in that regard. They are built and programmed from a template on the commander, who is explicitly able to create a base in mere minutes or hours of effort.

But in most games, base building is an odd abstraction.

I think doing 40k the way the Wargame series does it would work though.

Supreme Commander/2 is a good example too of justified basebulding.

40k, however, is different. The factions of 40k have either no technology or inclination to do the same.

I really hope DoW3 goes back to DoW. DoW2 just felt like a bad Warcraft 3, and there's nothing quite like building up a massive force then crushing your opponent in one swoop.

I think my point of "basebuilding is more 40k" got mixed up via my own poor choice of words.

Rather, I saw 40k as far larger, less of a personal experience of named characters, and more of armies clashing over battlefields. In my experiences of both games, DoW 1 felt better at that than DoW 2.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
I think my point of "basebuilding is more 40k" got mixed up via my own poor choice of words.

Rather, I saw 40k as far larger, less of a personal experience of named characters, and more of armies clashing over battlefields. In my experiences of both games, DoW 1 felt better at that than DoW 2.

I think it fell more in line with the fluff. Not the bases, but the scale of armies. DoW2 felt more Space Hulk level, while DoW1 felt more "Planet war" level.

Whilst I agree with a lot of the what the OP has said, I do believe that Sega are doing a pretty good job...well at least with some studios. Creative Assembly for example have gone from strength to strength and they seem to be doing a good job at making quality games for a number of IPs.

I did however feel sad when I watched a terminator doing back flips and the whole colorful kiddy look to the game is a right turn off. May check out Halo Wars 2 for my Sci fi RTS kicks.

 jreilly89 wrote:
I really hope DoW3 goes back to DoW. DoW2 just felt like a bad Warcraft 3

... if anything, DoW1 felt like a bad Warcraft 3. DoW2 felt almost nothing like any of the 'craft series games.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jreilly89 wrote:
I think it fell more in line with the fluff. Not the bases, but the scale of armies. DoW2 felt more Space Hulk level, while DoW1 felt more "Planet war" level.

Both of them are perfectly valid interpretations of 40k, but the thing is, to get the larger scale, you don't necessarily need a base building function. Wargame comes to mind, a scale far larger than DoW1, yet there's no base building at all-- at most, you can put supply depots down (the game has an ammunition and fuel supply system that you need to consider logistics for your units occasionally), and that's it.

The amazingly horrible pathing of DoW effectively limits fight size to a queue. I played Tau a lot and I remember the Broadsides requiring absurd amounts of space to move, creating chokepoints in your own army if it consists of more than a few units.

DoW2 did not have big battles (unless you mod it) and DoW failed to do big battles well. Sorry, no points to DoW.

 =Angel= wrote:
Its the only sensible way to draw out the experience though. There are games (and mods for dow) that allow you both to start with a full army and then have at it.
Base building allows you to start with smaller skirmishes, fighting over ground with less units and progress into full blown battles.

But why do you need to draw out the experience? If you want to fight a small skirmish and then a huge battle just have two separate missions. It's better to have a short mission that is great at all times than a small amount of awesome stuff drawn out into an hour of playing time by adding in low-value filler content.

You could hold ground and get rewarded with reinforcements but there's no management of resources there.

Good. Resource management in the Starcraft sense is a terrible mechanic. An RTS should be about commanding your army, not about micromanaging how many dollars your harvesting units are collecting to pay for new units.

Having a base is certainly not alien to 40k- whether in the background or the fortifications shoehorned in in the past few years.

Having a base is fine. Building a base is not. There's a huge difference between one or more players starting the game in a fortified position and magically building concrete fortifications/tank factories/etc in a few seconds as an enemy force is closing on your units.

 Peregrine wrote:


But why do you need to draw out the experience? If you want to fight a small skirmish and then a huge battle just have two separate missions. It's better to have a short mission that is great at all times than a small amount of awesome stuff drawn out into an hour of playing time by adding in low-value filler content.

You draw out the experience so that you balance time to react, firefight time and game length.
You don't want the game to be able to end in 2 mins flat, your expert deployment allowing your guys to gun down the enemy in record time- leaving no time for the other player to learn why he lost.
Ideally the game would be paced so that you can adapt to a setback rather than the loss of a few units being an auto failure. You don't want to achieve this learning/adaptation time through high time-to-kill (TTK) firefights or the game becomes boring and static.

DOW achieved this time through ramping up the scale of the conflict gradually. FPS with low TTK achieve this through a respawn mechanic that lest the players try again immediately after they get killed. (Counterstrike is an interesting exception where games tend to be short and sweet, low TTK and permadeath meaning the game is over in a sudden blaze of action.)

In addition- the early steps of the game aren't filler- they are crucial and tense scounting/recon actions. Keeping units alive whilst trying to out maneuver the enemy and secure vital areas- retreat or attack when faced with enemy units- building up a picture of where the enemy is.

Good. Resource management in the Starcraft sense is a terrible mechanic. An RTS should be about commanding your army, not about micromanaging how many dollars your harvesting units are collecting to pay for new units.

40k is (now) about grabbing victory points throughout the game. In DOW you are permitted to introduce new equipment or reinforcements in exchange for your victory points rather than just waving them in your opponents face at the end of the game.

Having a base is fine. Building a base is not. There's a huge difference between one or more players starting the game in a fortified position and magically building concrete fortifications/tank factories/etc in a few seconds as an enemy force is closing on your units.

Whereas in 40k, both players can purchase a freaking castle as part of their army if they so choose.


Base building is an abstraction like Battlefield's control points. The USMC don't defeat their enemies by slowly lowering their flags and raising Old Glory.
I agree that it's silly on the face of it but the purpose it serves and the depth it adds to what would otherwise be a deathmatch amkes it worthy of inclusion, IMHO.

I'll stress again that Ground Control and Wargame both have resource management, no base building and make sense as well

 General Annoyance wrote:
I'll stress again that Ground Control and Wargame both have resource management, no base building and make sense as well

I haven't played them and can't weigh in on that discussion.
The wikipedia article does say that

Because it is a real-time tactics game, Ground Control does not use the mechanics of resource and economic management as found in some real-time strategy games

and that pre-mission unit selection is very important.

 =Angel= wrote:

 General Annoyance wrote:
I'll stress again that Ground Control and Wargame both have resource management, no base building and make sense as well

I haven't played them and can't weigh in on that discussion.
The wikipedia article does say that

Because it is a real-time tactics game, Ground Control does not use the mechanics of resource and economic management as found in some real-time strategy games

and that pre-mission unit selection is very important.

That was Ground Control 1. Ground Control 2: Operation Exodus (I linked gameplay above) has acquisition points that you spend to request for more units that are earned by capturing points on the map. Only the first game had a pre mission army selection (much like a certain tabletop game that DOW takes its universe from)

I enjoy base building...most RTS fans see it as part of the experience

Don't pretend to speak for anyone but yourself.

 =Angel= wrote:
You don't want to achieve this learning/adaptation time through high time-to-kill (TTK) firefights or the game becomes boring and static.

BS. 40k games should take their time instead of rushing down everyone. Marines vs CSM takes time to play out because both are damn tough and IG take time to defeat because they are so damn many.

Every 40k game so far has had a too low TTK. Look at what happens you give a CS TTK to a 40k shooter. You get Eternal Crusade, an utter disaster.

 Ashiraya wrote:


Every 40k game so far has had a too low TTK. Look at what happens you give a CS TTK to a 40k shooter. You get Eternal Crusade, an utter disaster.

Care to elaborate on Eternal Crusade? I haven't managed to get into the early access yet, but from what I'm seeing it looks like a fairly well made 3rd person shooter. Reminds me of Space Marine in mostly good respects

Everything dies insanely quickly. The game does not offer a believable reason for SM to wear armour at all given how quickly you die even with it. The game also heavily rewards camping for that reason.

In Space Marine you could at least take half a magazine of bolter rounds or so before you went down, even at point blank, and that was still a bit harsh considering Marine armor resists their own weapons well. In EC you die in a split second.

This is without touching on all the other reasons that the game is bad, such as excessive developer greed and deception, art direction...

This might shock you, but Space Marines can die. Sure they are tougher than a normal IG soldier, but at the end of the day they are not each infallible super gods they die all the time to stuff. Some of the mary stu fluff makes them insane but I write that off as bad writing and Imperium propaganda.

In real life bullet resistant armor only works for one bullet and sometimes not even that and soldiers still wear it since anything is better than nothing.

 Gamgee wrote:
This might shock you, but Space Marines can die. Sure they are tougher than a normal IG soldier, but at the end of the day they are not each infallible super gods they die all the time to stuff.

I was saying 'Space Marines die too fast to their own weapons'.

I know daring to say that Space Marines die too fast to absolutely anything is provoking xeno/IG players into telling you to check your SM privilege, but saying that they kill each other too quickly has no effect whatsoever on your Tau and certainly does not imply that they cannot die.

In real life bullet resistant armor only works for one bullet and sometimes not even that

And this is not real life.

Just making sure I've seen some pretty annoying space marine fans. Your cool though.

 Gamgee wrote:
Just making sure I've seen some pretty annoying space marine fans. Your cool though.

And I've seen some annoying Tau fans. Gee, aren't labels cool?

I thoroughly enjoyed the base building RTS of DoW 1. DoW 2 was much less entertaining for me. Sunk many, many hours of multiplayer into the first but couldn't bother do do more than a dozen matches in 2. I don't care if it's not fluffy. It's not fluffy that two armies would line up roughly 50 meters apart and always in (ostensibly) equally powerful forces but hey, that's an average 40k game and no one is decrying it.

Oh and the 'RT' in RTS doesn't refer to the game world but the players. It's in direct contrast to turn based, as in both players are working in 'real time' to defeat one another.

Frankly if this game is more like DoW1 I'm far more likely to buy it than if it echoes 2.

 Ashiraya wrote:
DoW2 did good:

Model quality
Sound and effect quality (weapon sounds etc, wraithcannons! With the exception of bolters)
Cover
Tactical combat
Commander implementation
Absence of base building

DoW2 did bad:

Lore balance (Catachan punches hit harder than Big Choppa nobz and their shotguns hit harder than Warp Spider weapons).
Model scale (Guardsmen are taller than Marines in PA)

You obviously forgot the most important part:
DoW2 did bad:
-WAY LESS FACTIONS AVAILABLE!!![i]

DOW 1 through SS fan, not so much DOW2.
I like building bases and huge armies. i dont play multi player.

Not impressed by what Ive seen. But its early, so i'll reserve judgement. It looks like a Moba, where you get to call in the creeps. If theyre using the same game engine as COH2, It will be crap.

With COH2s lack of mod ability and $ega$, milk them attitude. I expect the same here. With a added in game store, selling commanders with special abilities, skins and other assorted milk.

Now with the Total war people selling races for $20 squigs. They know they can get away with it. It will be Gdubs prices for a video game. Digital crack instead of plastic.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

You obviously forgot the most important part:
DoW2 did bad:
-WAY LESS FACTIONS AVAILABLE!!![i]

No relevant faction was exclused from DoW2.