Dawn of War Gold; Demo Out

An anonymous reader writes "It seems that Relic's Dawn of War has gone gold, and is due out on September 20th. Published by THQ, Dawn of War is a Real-time Strategy game based in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It's gotten a few previews so far - but why trust them when you can grab the demo? Unfortunately, a quick jog through Google didn't turn up any torrents."

Comments

3dgamers.com

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

3dgamers has a torrent running, I used it.. yesterday after reading about this on penny-arcade. It's a pretty quick torrent, and I should probably start seeding again for the /. crowd.

Re:3dgamers.com

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Here's a link to the torrent.

Re:3dgamers.com

[herulach]

Also filerush has one. clicky maxing out my connection at the moment.

Re:Awesome game

[phoenixTMW]

I agree - at first glance, this game is pretty well done. I don't know much about the Warhammer universe, but the ways resource gathering and troop building are implemented make a LOT more sense than other RTS games. Instead of having harvesters gather "ore" and "building" infantry, capturing and keeping strategic points gives the player an influx of "prestige", if you will, and troops are dropped down from orbit (for Space Marines, at least). One quibble I have is that the troops don't really exit from the building structures; they just sort of appear. But I also like the fact that individual Marine squads can be upgraded and reinforced.

Great Game with Balance Issues

[carcosa30]

I played the beta extensively from 1.3 to 1.4.

My opinion agrees with the general consensus that 1.3 was far better balanced than 1.4. The reinforcement times have been decreased since 1.3, causing a severe rushing problem-- in effect, you have factories pumping out units right inside the enemy base.

So, if the enemy tries to build tech, build listening posts for gathering resources, according to some people even building a power plant (!) he's going to be far behind when you get into his base with, say, three marine squads.

In effect, the reinforcement system amplifies the Law of Diminishing Firepower which states that in a firefight, a momentary advantage to one side increases on a geometric rather than linear progression. If you get behind by a squad, you are not only losing the firepower of that squad but you are losing the reinforcing ability of that squad, meaning that your enemy is not only whittling down your numbers faster, but he himself is increasing in numbers faster than you are.

Perhaps they will balance the problems by the time the gold comes out. I doubt it because there are many, many. I do think the problems are of a nature that will cause the game to get pale at mid- to high levels of play rather than making it not fun from the start; from what I saw of the game it's extremely cool anyway.

Especially if you loved the tabletop wargame. Those were the days...

Re:Great Game with Balance Issues

[Rakthar]

The devs yanked the 1.3 reinforce system because it ruined balance. A dev posted this on the relic forums:

"The reason we removed the reinforce time modifier in 1.4 is that it threw unit balance completely out of wack. We'd spent months balancing all the units against one another using an established reinforce time, and changing that time basically threw all that work out the window (the Orks in particular suffered with this change). We would have had to re-balance the units practically from scratch, and that was far too great a risk so close to shipping."

He also mentions his intention to try to see the "reinforcements come much more slowly in battle" system reimplemented at some point (in a different post)

"The most frustrating thing about this whole issue for us is that I think we're 'all' in agreement. Reinforcement mods were a great addition in 1.3, and I want them back right now. That very fact should show how serious we consider this balance issue to be that we would stall putting in a change that we all agree will make the game better in the long run.

I say stall because no, we aren't going to let this one rest. We can't re-visit this issue for release (which should give you an idea of how close we are), but unless lightning strikes me down we will re-visit it."

So there you have it, why the reinforcement system in 1.3 was removed.

RTS vs RTT vs TBT

[Dachannien]

I'd rather see WH40k developed into a turn-based tactical game, much as the tabletop game was. But barring that, real-time tactical would be better (a la Myth 1, 2, and 3), and would solve the issues with squad reinforcement being unbalancing (since you wouldn't reinforce your squads in combat). Strategic issues could be taken up in a meta-game of sorts, in between combats, and the results of those combats would affect the outcome of the strategic game.

Too late now, I guess :p