Warhammer 40K MOD

[narf poit chez BOOM]

SPY-MOOSE?

THERE ON TO ME!

[Eradan]

Originally posted by Kodos:

Me and Locutus have been working sporadically on a mod. The main snag, is that neither of us have BFG, so I am basing things off whatever I can figure out. If you wanna help, be my guest.

Well how far have you gotten?

I've renamed all the bmps in the Drushock shipset for Nurgle, the Plague-God. The Race-Portrait for the Drushock was freakish in just the right way to be a "Great Unclean One" and some of the Drushock ships have a sort of moldy look that fits Nurgle. So I've made their leader "Ve'Meth" (from the 'Soul Drinker' novel by Ben Counter) and his title is "Daemon-Prince".
I'm giving all 4 of the Chaos leaders the title of Daemon-Prince while keeping the original Chaos Legions by Atraikius to represent the ideology and forces of Chaos Undivided as represented in several of the novels.

Yea, actually I've never played BFG either; I got hooked into this SF universe from the novels, some of which are really good. I did play "Warhammer Fantasy Battles" a long time ago. That led me to the Warhammer fantasy novels and then to the 40K books. I love them; they're deep and dark in a way Star Trek never was and Bab5 only flirted with...

For the Eldar, I'm using the Minbari shipset because there's a strong resemblence. The Min AI looks like it's pretty close to what I want to. (Not really a coincidence; the B5 Minbari and the Warhammer Eldar are both derived from Tolkien's Elves) Their leader is "Eldrad Ulthuan" and his title is Farseer. I'm going to make them Propusion Experts as well as making them the only race with the Lucky ability which I've renamed (what else?) Farseer. I'm going to give them an extremely low birthrate to represent their high level of evolution and to balance off the genius level research they'll have. Also, the low birthrate will represent the whole dying race thing the Eldar in the "Real" 40K universe are dealing with...

Anyhow, this is just some of what I'm doing...
Eradan

[Lord Kodos]

Well Locutus is taking care of all my Graphical needs, as, as I have said countless times, I am unable to draw a circle correctly ^_^

As of now, its mainly in the planning phase.

For the most part:
-Each race has 3 bases, a Colony ship, and several ships. The exceptions being Necrons, Eldar, and Tyranids.
-Radioactives have been renamed "Warp Resources" basically, and are used by most races to power their starships. Of course Necrons do not use this resource at all, and Chaos relies upon it heavily.
-The Imperium has been lumped into one empire, but can take SM Chapters as a kind of racial trait.
-Necrons take a C'tan as a racial trait and each C'tan has benefits and components, although only one C'tan may be chosen. The benefits are:
Nightbringer:30% Combat To-Hit Bonus
The Deceiver:30% Intel Bonus
The Dragon:30% Space Yard Rate Bonus
The Outsider:Ships Share Experience
-Chaos can choose to be Unaligned or choose a Chaos god. Like the C'tan only one god may be chosen and each has benefits and components.

[Eradan]

Originally posted by Kodos:

For the most part:
-Each race has 3 bases, a Colony ship, and several ships. The exceptions being Necrons, Eldar, and Tyranids.

I can see what you're trying to do here and I like it, but is it actually possible to customize the set-up this way?

Kodos:

-Radioactives have been renamed "Warp Resources" basically, and are used by most races to power their starships. Of course Necrons do not use this resource at all, and Chaos relies upon it heavily.

I've renamed "Psychic Technology" as "Warpcraft" and in my conception only Tzeentch and maybe the Slann will have it.
Remember the Slann? A lizard-man type race that appears in some of the early 40K novels, and the the predecessor game to BFG, something called "Starship Battles". In 40K, they're supposed to be, like the Eldar, a dying race but possessed of even more powerful psychic abilities. Not a Chaos breed per se, but loathed by the Imperium anyway. Anyhow, I was planning to put them in either as a Neutral, or as a regular race with very low repro and very hi research. Like the EldarAI, but even more so.
Other Neutrals I want to put in are the Saruthi, the Squats, and the Kroot. For the Saruthi who are big arachnids, I've already got a renamed Hevordah shipset which has just the right spider-creepy look to it.

Kodos:

-The Imperium has been lumped into one empire, but can take SM Chapters as a kind of racial trait.

I can't imagine the Imperiumn set up any other way, but how are you going to represent the Space Marines? I mean which of the racial traits were you going to re-write to represent their influence? In my Version, they're just one of the troop types. I've already got an OK 128 bmp of an SM which is standing for the heavy troop type. Eventually tho, I'll probably change the mod over to one of the major mods that uses 5 troop types, and then the SM will become "TroopSmall",and tanks and Titans will take the medium and heavy slots.

Incidentally, what major MOD are you using , if any? I'm still working from the original rules, but I've played some of the major MODs, and there would be advantages to adopting some of their features, or even basing the whole 40K mod in one of them.

Eradan

[Suicide Junkie]

A scenario will let you set up a planet-less start and/or include a number of custom ships from the beginning.

[Lord Kodos]

You can add racial traits ^__^.

And yeah, I remember the Slann, they where reborn in the new Necrons codex as the Great Old Ones. Im only including the major races although Degenerated Slann will apear as a neutral race. Other neutrals are Rogue Human Factions, Dark Eldar Pirates, Kroot Warbands, and other minor factions/races from 40k. I wont be including Tau, as we simply dont know enough about their ships to make a meaningfull raceset, or technology tree.

[Eradan]

Posted by Kodos:

I wont be including Tau, as we simply dont know enough about their ships to make a meaningfull raceset, or technology tree.

Enough is known enough about their culture to at least do a meaningful setup and General file. And their culture is the real drawing point, since the 40K universe is overloaded with races who are aggressive or xenophobic. The Tau fill a dramatic need and a strategic niche.

Granted, there's no tech tree for them, but then creating a completely 40K consistent tech tree is probably going to the hardest part of this. As far as the shipset goes, just looking at the models and illustrations on the official website, you can see the Tau ships have a certain blocky, utilitarian quality. The Piundron shipset in the original files has (to my eyes) a lot of the same quality. I'm using a renamed Piundron shipset as the Tau ships supplemented for more flavor by a few images from the web reshaped into 128bmps. I've already got a great one of a Tau "Crisis" battlesuit which I'm using as the TroopMedium in the set.

Of course using renamed shipsets isn't as cool as having the exact right images made by someone with genuine talent, but they're still a lot better than nothing. And while I'm waiting for those to appear, I'm gradually accumulating web images that are just fine when reworked. The trick so far has been finding images that were roughly square already, so they can be converted to the 128-128 format with distortion. When I finally get a decent cropping tool, I'll be able to use a wider variety of images than just square ones. Even so, I already have about 20 images that are genuinely good.

Eradan