DoWpro
Dawn of War Professional, also known as DoWpro, is a Mod for Dawn of War. The mod focuses on returning to, and enhancing, the gameplay-experience of Vanilla Dawn of War (i.e. pre-Winter Assault).
Features
Much of the original games' cut content was re-added in the mod, as well as in general, more toys for each faction to play as - the objective being that the player is generally given more choices as to the composition of their armies.
Space Marines are rebalanced around being an Elite unit army, with their Tactical Space Marines taking 3 population (from 2 in the base game).
Chaos forces play similarly to the Space Marines, but with a greater focus on melee combat and daemonic support units. Their vehicle choices are more limited than the Space Marines, but versatility in units like the Defiler allow one unit to cover many roles.
Orks are rebalanced around being a melee Horde army (like in vanilla), except that they have more varied armor types and ways to deal with hard counters (which Orks lacked in vanilla, noticeably against the Eldar Warp Spiders).
Eldar, being more like Vanilla, are no longer about massing Dark Reapers (which is the most prominent opening in later expansions, depending on patch).
The Imperial Guard are rebalanced towards being a Horde army, where a guardsmen squad costs 100 requisition instead of 160 for four models. In order to defeat Elite unit massed gunlines, the Imperial Guard rely on a combination of disruption, dense formations, siege warfare, and fighting in multiple places at once by utilising their numerical advantage. Expect atrociously high casualty rates even in victory.
Tau emphasize mobile firepower that is rebalanced more towards the use of infiltration, jetpacks, ambushes and diverse unit combinations. Additionally, Stealth suits begin as hunter kill units, instead of Tier 0 capper units (with Pathfinder units taking their place).
The mod implements a number of cosmetic and minor improvements, in an effort to help keep some of the units closer to fluff. As an example, the World Eaters-exclusive Khorne Berserker in Vanilla is replaced with a Black Legion-style Berserker that includes team colors to make it look like a Khornate unit that happens to be in the warband.
Significant changes to the factions' tech trees (and subsequent necessary rebalancing), such as Grey Knights and Khorne Berserkers being available in Tier 1.
A series of "pancake-style" tech-upgrades ala 90's strategy-games, e.g. StarCraft.
Removal of the Fire on the Move Accuracy Penalty implemented in Dark Crusade.
Some factions are changed more than others; Necrons use a unique mechanic where they need to expand their area of control and actually gain resources in an effort to actually force them to take and hold territory and play more like the rest of the factions, as opposed to how they originally played.
DoWpro also implements new content from certain other mods (used with permission).
Resource Mechanics
Critical Locations provide twice the Requisition, which encourages map control or map denial. In addition, ambushes are encouraged as the enemy is lured out to capture them.
Power Generators rapidly scale in cost as you build more, which encourages raiding the enemy Power Generators. In addition, Power Generators explode on death.
Building a second HQ costs a significant amount of resources, but also provide significant resources. There is a defensive trade-off between building a second HQ and fully upgrading a Listening Post, because one provides more resources, the other provides more line of sight and defense, respectively.
Building a Listening Post no longer provides a gift of 50 requisition upon completion (essentially half of the principle cost). This encourages destroying the enemy Listening Posts, because the enemy won't break even as fast.
The Requisition resource upgrades were removed.
The Power resource upgrade now has a break even point after a few Power Generators have been built.
Combat Mechanics
Units in combat receive penalties to their reinforcement time. The main exception to this are Slugga boys. The penalty is significantly longer for elite units (like Terminators) compared to troop units.
Fire on the Move accuracy penalty has been significantly decreased.
Units in melee receive a defensive bonus against ranged firepower. This is in addition to the morale regeneration bonus units already get in melee.
Both positive and negative cover reduces line of sight. With regards to negative cover, this is in addition to the usual increase in damage you suffer and reduced movement speed.
The line of sight of most units has been standardized to 25, with select units having (or upgrades providing) enhanced line of sight.
Many weapons, such as Plasmaguns, have a weapon range beyond visual range. This encourages scouting ahead (perhaps with infiltration) to maximize the unit's capabilities.
Many weapons had their range tweaked to encourage positional tactics. For example, Plasmaguns had their range increased from 25 to 28. The Force Commander's bolt pistol range was reduced from 25 to 18, and his plasma pistol from 25 to 22. Combined with the cover line of sight change described above, this allows a player to force the enemy out of cover in a long range firefight.
Like in Tabletop, Morale Immunity in general does not exist.
Loss of Morale reduces movement speed by 10%, instead of increasing movement speed by 20% like in classic.
A vehicle that is reduced to 20% of its maximum hp suffers a 25% decrease in movement speed, until it is repaired. This does not affect certain vehicles, such as Dreadnoughts.
Production Mechanics
For each unit of the same type that you build and is alive on the field, the production time is increased.
Upgrades tend to cost 30 seconds to build, standardizing timing window attacks. For Eldar, however, it tends to take 20 seconds. Notably, certain Tau upgrades are even faster.
With all of Population upgrades and the Second HQ, your army size can reach 26/26. The primary exceptions are the Imperial Guard and Ork, who work differently. Without the Second HQ you reach 20/20, as per classic Dawn of War.
Builder production times have been doubled across the board, making it more punishing to lose a builder due to base harassment or during the repair of assets in combat.
Builder requisition costs have also been increased and standardized. For example, the Eldar Bonesinger went from 45 req to 90, the Chaos Heretic went from 60 req to 80 and the Space Marine Servitor went from 75 req to 90.
The cost for a Builder to fully repair a unit (vehicle or building) has been standardized to 30% of the original cost. This rewards players for saving their vehicles, and punishes players for not finishing them off. In the base game, the total repair cost is 75% for all races except Eldar which advantageously costs 20%. Note also that the cost of repair does not include weapon upgrades (such as the extremely expensive lascannons on a predator). Also, the cost of repair only includes the Requisition cost, not the Power cost.
The rate at which Builders repair units has also been standardized to 30 per second each, with the exceptions of Eldar (25 per second each, balanced by the fact that the Bonesinger can teleport to the vehicle to repair it) and Ork Grots (15 per second each, which is unchanged from the base game. Remember that Grots come in a squad). On top of this, the commander upgrades improve the rate at which Imperial Guard Techpriest Enginseers repair, which is a faction advantage.
Infiltration Mechanics
Dowpro has four specific types of stealth depending on unit; "invisible when in cover", "timed invisibility", "invisible when not attacking", and "invisible all the time".
True Sight refers to the ability of a unit to reveal infiltrators.
Commanders have a short True Sight radius (half of their normal Sight radius), encouraging them to gap close (and possibly break formation) in order to kill the Infiltrator units. When a Commander gets to low HP, the player typically attaches them to a nearby infantry squad. This means that weakening the enemy Commander can make it easier for your infiltrator units to operate unscathed.
Certain other units, marked by an icon in their production facility (such as a Barracks), have True Sight.
Frag grenades (which now have a Requisition and Power cost per use), artillery and grenade launchers reveal enemy infiltrators.
Turrets no longer detect infiltrators.
Commander Mechanics
When a Commander dies, all nearby units of the player temporarily lose 66% of their max Morale and Morale regen rate for 20 seconds.
Commander wargear is purchasable so long as you have captured at least one Relic.
Commander wargear upgrades of the same Tier are mutually exclusive until you build a second HQ, upon which the other is unlocked so long as the second HQ remains alive.
Wargear varies between factions, but there are similarities. For instance, there tends to be a wargear that increases the Commander's True Sight.
Fully upgraded Commanders tend to destroy non-upgraded Commanders in melee.
Wargear increases the base cost and build time of a Commander, making it more punishing to lose them.
To get an idea of what commander wargear provides, see the following table:
| Space Marine Force Commander Wargear | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Wargear | Tier | Costs | Bonuses |
| Champion's Cincture | 1 | 60 requisition, 30 power | Increases Sight radius by 5 and HP by 100. Enables the Rapid Deployment ability which reduces setup time by 80% and reduces reload times by 15%. |
| Iron Halo | 1 | 50 requisition, 50 power | Increases Health Regen by 1 per second, HP by 100, and provides 15% ranged damage resistance. |
| Bracer's of the Righteous | 2 | 100 requisition, 60 power | Increases HP by 150, and Melee and ranged damage increased by 5%. Enables the passive Inspiring Aura, which increases the damage of nearby troops by 10% and reduces incoming ranged damage by 5%. |
| Heroism's Pedastal | 2 | 80 requisition, 50 power | Increases HP by 350, mass by 50, and enables melee charge. |
| Master-Crafted Artificer Armor | 3 | 160 requisition, 120 power | Increases HP by 450, and provides melee damage resistance of 20%. Enables the Battlecry ability, which increases nearby unit's damage by 40% and morale by 200 for 10 seconds. |
| Orbital Relay Link Transponder | 3 | 250 requisition, 200 power | Enables the Orbital Barrage ability. |
Unit Scaling Mechanics
Squad sizes increase as you tier up the tech tree. In the case of Orks or Cultists, they can be a dramatic increase in squad size. This mitigates a major issue with the vanilla game, as well as (to some extent) Winter Assault.
Armories or the Tier 2.5 building (such as the Sacred Artifact or Sacrificial Circle) increase the squad members of specified units, i.e raptors or grey knights.
In the Dawn of War expansions, units of the next tier tend to be 50% stronger than previous tier units (in terms of HP, Damage, plus with other statistical advantages such as movement speed). In this mod, the power curve is flatter.
Like the base game, many units have two upgrades that increase the base weapon of units lethality. In the base game, units (such as Warp Spiders) tend to deal twice as much damage as non-upgraded units of the same type. In this mod, as each DPS or HP upgrade tends to provide a 20% increase in specific stat, the total stat increase is 44%.
Issues and Criticisms
DoWpro's focus on Tier 1 battles with significant attention paid to expanding and holding territory as opposed to the fast-tech-and-fight gameplay of Dark Crusade and Soulstorm is not for everyone. It also has a number of gameplay issues and bugs all its own.
The mod removes Flyers.
It also fundamentally changes how the factions added in the expansions play, and not always for the better. Those who are fans of how existing factions or mechanics already work or feel (e.g. the uniqueness of the Necrons, which the mod removes, or Dark Crusade infiltration) will not enjoy it.
Balance has focused primarily on 1v1s, as opposed to team games.
Games less frequently reach Tier 3 or Tier 4 (which is a Tier level that some players may prefer).
Units feel much more fragile than they are in the originals, because the Fire on the Move changes allow for more concentrated firepower as multiple units gang up on a single unit.
This ironically makes for a game that while certainly much more varied than Vanilla, also tends to culminate in much more protracted battles over the course of a given match, and can quickly boil down to drawn-out battles of attrition dictated by "who makes the first major mistake". In certain match-ups, such as Orks vs Imperial Guard, this is very noticeable.
If there is a specific Build Order that you wish to play (which worked in DC/SS), there is a decent chance that it is no longer viable in DoWpro. For example, 3x Dark Reaper is not as viable, as they are now hard counter units. Also, it is much harder to aggressively place turrets as they require a Control Zone to be built in.
The mod encourages early game transports (as they can be built from the HQ). However, transport gameplay is not as smooth as Starcraft (perhaps due to the game engine?), which hardcore RTS fans may not like.
Chaos is now more similar to the Space Marines (like in Vanilla), whereas in WA/DC/SS Chaos is significantly different and more unique.
The complex counter system means that there is a steep learning curve from the original. For example, Flamer weapons are highly effective against Demons.
Optimizing your units requires that you understand what armor types every unit has in the game, and roughly how well every unit's DPS performs against those armor types. Incorrectly targeting the wrong enemy unit is often excessively punishing, and encourages players to analyse Damage Per Second spreadsheets.
Even some units which keep fundamentally the same role they had in the original game may be changed in implementation, to the point where their use is fundamentally different in practice.
Jump pack units are less mobile in DoWpro. For example, in the base game at full charge the Assault Marine Squad will have 2 4/9 jumps available, requiring 110 s total to recharge from empty. In DoWPro, it is 1 4/9, approximately. From full charge if you jump, there is a 20 second timing window as you wait for your next charge.
Progressing through the Tech Tree as Eldar can be confusing if you're unfamiliar with the vanilla game.
If you was a fan of the Eldar Ranger squad (as in DC/SS), then you may be unhappy because it requires upgrades to achieve the same ranged harassment potential.
Tau is now a mobile shooty army instead of a stand-and-shoot army, which may or may not be in your favor depending on how you like your Firewarriors. On the other hand, you can now pick both Kauyon and Mont'ka within a single game.
Tau lacks the emphasis on shield drone squads that currently exists in Tabletop 8E, which Tau fans may favor.
The Imperial Guard have two pieces of Wargear called Ordo Xenos and Ordo Malleus that upgrades the Inquisitor, but where is Ordo Hereticus?
Certain build orders, such as opening with ASM or Raptors, are now more difficult to perform.
Artillery units such as Basilisks and Whirlwinds no longer do tons of damage, which is what you'd expect from artillery. Instead, they are used primarily for disruption, morale damage, and some building damage.
Certain combos from DC/SS no longer exist in the same way, for example Grey Knight's Psychic Inquisition combined with the Librarian's Smite for impressive Area of Effect damage.
Further, it has a number of unique bugs (some of which might be blamed on the core game-engine), some of which are only avoidable by being aware of them (i.e. have to actively be played around by the player). Core gameplay changes, such as Fire on the Move no longer reducing accuracy as significantly, exacerbate pathing issues on some maps, which hurts Horde armies more than Elite armies.
Links
- http://www.moddb.com/mods/dowpro - Mod DB page.