How CA Could Handle Warhammer 40,000, Star Wars, WW1 - Future of Total War

[@mauroferrari5518]

Personally, I would like them to take it slow. Like: WH40k1: conquer a planet, establish how economy, settlements, races, battles work. WH40k2: conquer the whole system, add interplanetary economy, space battles, etc. WH40k3: conquer a sector, add the warp, etc.

[@BittermanAndy]

I think even game 1 has to have more than one world. A planet and a moon, minimum. Preferably a whole system, though maybe that could be game 2. But a sector could be a later game, or never (warp travel is sloooooooooooow).

[@mauroferrari5518]

@@BittermanAndy warp travel is fickle. Sure, accidents are rare(ish), but they can happen... trips that take months could take less, and so on 😉

[@martinbrady3532]

The Star Wars game might be more of an FPS or like Alien Isolation

[@Алексей545-т6б]

About connections between ground battles and space combat - here is my ideas: . 1)Each planet siege start with space battle (depending on how advanced planet is it would have it own garrison fleet, space and air defense) . 2)Result of space battle would be directly influence on the ground battle. Something like this: . 1.Numbers of ships (and their type) in your fleet limit your max number of ground troops and vehicle's you can carry on. Lost some ship during the space battle? Well, bad for you - good chunk of your troops die without making even a single shot/ This would bring element of the tactic in battle . As example - you want to bring more transport ships with you so you could have more troops on the ground. OK. But transport ships are weak - so you need think on how guard them from enemy units because for them it would be a tasty prey to hunt down . 2. Results of space Battle influence ground battle in a way - how many forces you have in total and many you could send as a reserve (also give you a tactical task - you need to split forces wise because if you waste it all at once...well bad for you). Also it would provide additional options such as orbit strike or sending couple units in chosen location (teleport terminators squad in the rear or just send quick reinforcement). It would give different options depending on which faction you play. . 3.Air forces and anti-air defence - i think we should skip full scale air battles and instead they should serve as attrition for your ground forces during initial landing and your sending reserves - something like you landing on drop pods or close space shuttle and they blow them down (at least certain % of them). You could also call limited (because they occupied with "battle in the air" numbers of them to support your troops on the ground and they would act as fly unit in TWW) 4.Siege itself would be multistage event (depending on how advanced and heavily fortified planet is) and would continue for several terms. Important difference with TWW - siege would not freez planet activities like it was in TWW. As i said earlier - your fleet would act as a your base, while planet would still able to generate troops, vehicles, etc to the limited extend (so it would be easier to defend planet then to take it). . Planets would separated on several key areas (each of them provide huge bonus and options to defender side) attacker should take. For example - space port would provide garrison fleet with opportunity to retreat and repair damaged ships (so they could use "hit and run" tactic in order to tarnish your upcoming reinforcement and fleet on the orbit. Attacker would force to conquer each one of those areas in order to dwindle planet defence capabilities. He also could act head on and attack "main target" but would suffer huge attrition as a debuff for such bold choice. Defender would need think wise on how he would split his forces and which areas he chose to defend . 2)Key aspect of TWW40k game should be "cloud of war" - basicly player should not know what happen on the global map and his area of vision must be tightly link with territory he have in control (so he have little time to prepare for the siege and each player had a element of surprise). Ofcourse certain factions (for example - eldar due their ability to see future) would have way better vision on campaign map and another faction would have ability to limit another players vision (tyranids). Also almost every faction would have certain buildings (like observation station) and units (psykers, astropats) in order to make your vision better and this would play a key role - prepare your planets to the siege would take time (several turns). Better you able to prepare - better stats you get in defence. So depending on how early you spot enemy forces are coming = better defence you able to prepare.

[@invictakaizeros7821]

If nothing else, we'll see Chaos Daemons immediately as a faction given they play and look similarly to their fantasy counterparts

[@Watch-CaptainAlain]

If CA wants to do 40K, and they want to start small, then I don’t think there’s any better way to get people to buy it than to set it at the start of the Horus Heresy with the Istvaan campaign, and then later dlcs, expansions, or titles can turn it into a galaxy-wide game. The campaign gameplay probably needs to look like a mix of Empire at War (galactic/sector scale) and Dark Crusade (system scale) with multiple, territory-based maps per planet and some mechanic for triggering space battles around controlling airspace. The army management probably needs to look like Ultimate General (particularly for managing how different companies are equipped, both for weapons and armor marks) and battles should probably look like Wargame with a greater emphasis on buildings, ruins, battlefield scarring, and terrain. Infantry and tank companies should be deployed in full, but individually controlled on the squad or platoon level (with a morale bonus for staying within an area of the command staff for that company). Your characters are the line and command officers whose traits you will have to manage. That said, I think there should be less emphasis on your characters winning than just surviving. It would be really cool to simulate characters that lose against the enemy but gain bonuses against them out of sheer hatred (think Shadrak Meduson). Your legendary characters are of course your primarchs and named legion masters. This could be translated work in 40K, but 30k is more manageable for starting this out, and will probably draw more attention. All the game needs to do is simulate the story-telling that 30k players already do with their local campaigns: creating legends and characters outside of the established narrative, but working within it, and because of the factional confusion - particularly at the start of the Heresy - you can absolutely still have free-for-all campaigns. The problem with doing this in 40K is that some factions just don’t hold/expand territory, and certain factions just reduce the amount of territory available, so you’d have to have an absolutely massive amount of content to account for places players will never get to. Now, Star Wars is a little more complicated. I think starting with Empire at War and ‘souping it up’ is a good idea. Of course, unless they use the Old Republic era or go by the old lore I probably won’t be all that interested. A total war Lord of the Rings is already effectively done, and while CA would be right to copy off of Divide and Conquer’s notes, that will probably create a lot of bad feelings. Making a game in the First or Second Ages would be more interesting. I think expecting historical titles from Total War at this point is a fool’s hope. They’ll have one chance with Medieval 3 I’m sure, but they’ve a long way to go before I’d be confident in their success. They’ve really lost their way when it comes to historical settings.

[@Алексей545-т6б]

Horus heresy is a bad choice to make. This is basicly "different colors of space marines beat living shit out each other". Kinda boring

[@Watch-CaptainAlain]

@@Алексей545-т6б I don’t disagree, and that’s exactly my point, because that’ll free up development time for other aspects. Of course if you want factions, there’s always the Imperial Army, Mechanicum, Cultist lodges, independent human planets untouched by the Great Crusade, Imperial-controlled planets and their militias, Xenos species (both recognizable and foreign to the 40K setting), and non-god-aligned daemons.

[@SeanMaguire02]

Then that's Horus Heresy not 40k. They are 2 different licenses at this point.

[@adamleblanc5294]

TL;DR: More staff is not always more better 6:00 - Software Engineer here, with lots of friends working at both indie and AAA studios. Sometimes overhiring can be bad if you don't need that many people. It creates bottlenecks, cause breakdowns in communications and additional overhead that can drag development down. You get people with nothing to do and it can create a culture of slacking off where only a few people are actually getting anything done. The breakdown in communication also leads to a lot of watested time and mistakes being made. The reason overhiring happens is because management has never read the mythical man month and believe that if you get 9 women together you can create a baby in 1 month. As in, they overhire because they expect it will speed things up, but it actually slows things down. Now, some projects DO actually need a lot of staff. But it normally comes down to the volumn of assets that need to be created and how much of that work can be put into silos. You really don't want any individual "team" to be bigger than 15-30 people (and that's pushing it), because things breakdown after that. In an ideal world, you would have less than 10 people per team. If you can't break the work down into smaller, focused teams, it's often better to just make small teams and let the project take longer. Since making bigger teams leads to the problems I mentioned in the first paragraph and makes it cost more to do less, and often leads to a worse product. Total War Games could very well be the type of game that cannot easily be broken down into small silos, but the management overhired and it caused problems. There was a lot of overhiring in the tech industry during the pandemic, which is why we are seeing layoffs now. In a lot of cases it's less of a traditional reason for layoffs (wanting to spend less) and more of an issue of hiring more people than you have work, or at least work that can be divided into small enough silos to work with that many people. This is all a gross over simplification. HIghly recommend reading the Mythical Man Month.

[@Алексей545-т6б]

Huge problem in Warhammer40k would be scale - what scale would we get? Solar system (like in Dow)? Sector? Segmentum? Doubt that CA would make whole galaxy as map (this is too much) - more like all events would happened in one sector and this would bring limitations on factions and characters they could bring in . For example: 1)You cant bring Tau Empire because this is very small (in terms of galactic scale) and cant travel to far from their home 2)You cant bring all famous chapters of space marines (same for all other factions) - because it would look absurd if everyone start crowd in one place. Same go with Heroes. . This could be partially avoided if CA choose important very location as campaign map (for example Nachmund gauntlet and Vigilus = key point which connect two halfs of the Imperium) - it important enough for varios factions and Heroes to come there and you can play on different goals of each faction to make interesting gameplay Downside of such decision - forget about Tau

[@EvilAzrael]

1/4 of a planet

[@alexs_toy_barn]

19:35 Dawn of war 3 is like a 5.9/10 in reality, especially after the patch that removed all the unit unlocks, but the community treats it like it's as bad as launch rome 2 or empire, which is unfair imo, fun fact I bought the limited edition back in the day, I still have the goodies

[@revanlord05]

Man, it felt weird hearing Heroes of the Storm Theme, Blizzard really did that game dirty. Anyway. As for a lot of points about it, Star Wars and 40k both are sci-fi settings as opposite to Historical or Medieval Fantasy Settings, A lot of what people consider familiar or associate to Total War would be outside down. Lots of adjustment or even a total rework on the Battle phases need to be done in order to make both of those settings justice. The re-introduction of Naval Battles as form of Space Battles, wouldn't be surprisingly hard, they may have to make new stuff for things Small Crafts, How boarding will work and firing arcs. As for Ground Engagements? Again We'll be looking on something a bit closer to a more large and bigger Company of Heroes without the base building, An large and better Empire at War, a Large Scale Ground Control or even World in Conflict but not on the same scale as say, Wargame or Broken Arrow. Cover System has to re-added and improved, make it more robust and able to interact with terrain, Flying Units has to be reworked (Fighters and Bombers don't stand around and shoot, Gunships are a different matter, however.), Capturable and Garrisonable Buildings for infantry, etc. Now, for the Grand Campaign side, it could be fairly easy, at least for Star Wars. It can work similar to Empire at War with Galactic Conquest, but the planets - taking on example with Helldivers 2 - has their own provinces rather where the land armies could act fairly identical to standard Total War when landing.

[@alvarodobban6130]

I will be happy with any of those universes reflected on a total war game tbh. I would love to see a Star Wars strategy game though

[@sydsweiner6516]

How the fuck do you make a WW1 game? Is every battle a trench stand still? "My lord your soldiers are developing trench foot. Recruit a medical doctor as soon as possible"

[@badolf6416]

I remember empire at war very fondly. I always wanted a sequel. If they do i hope they make an old republic era. If they are allowed they can imagine so much more new stuff. For 40 k i would love a unification war game but that is not likely i think

[@bluebuchanan9357]

My biggest argument against space battles in 40K is the fact that you pointed to an entire game as the basis, and then said CA should do better. That is an absurd demand. You want CA to dedicate a similar amount of manpower as was put into battle fleet for a single system in a game that is already having to revolutionize their preexisting system. That does not even take into consideration that each additional faction will require its own naval assets. That dev time would be much better spent focusing on the ground battles, or even just further fleshing out other systems.

[@Costin_Gaming]

BFGA was made by a much smaller team than what CA has though. If they can spend 100 million on that shitstain of Hyennas they can spend a lot less on space battles.

[@bluebuchanan9357]

@@Costin_Gaming That’s still a small studios worth of time being dedicated to it. I just think the time dedicated to naval battles could be better served on other far more important aspects. Beyond just building the initial space combat system itself you are looking at having to make new units for each faction in the game. Sure you can get away with all the imperium factions just using the same set, and then reusing it for chaos but with spikes. But that’s boring and uninspired. Beyond that once you reach the other faction you lose that easy asset swapping. You’d have to make a new naval set for every Zeno faction. That’s dev time that the much smaller dlc dev team is going to have to spend on it instead of other interesting and fun mechanics. Beyond that the more I think about naval the more I specifically dislike it from a gameplay perspective. Unlike a terrestrial total war where it is fairly easy to ignore the water if you don’t want to, it will be impossible to outright ignore space in a 40K game. How will your navy protect your troops as they traverse space. Will it be like old total war games where you have a distinct navy and army. Where when you embark your army they become transport ships that aren’t particularly effective needing real naval ships to protect them? That sounds horrible because then you’d basically be forced to escort every army with your navy due to the sheer ubiquity of space. If you didn’t your doom stack could easily be destroyed by a semi decent navy. Will your troops instead each have their own ship based off the ground unit. I don’t like that either because you’d lose autonomy over both aspects as you make compromises for the other. This doesn’t even get into how it might limit the chances of normal land battles even more than it is now. Many people already feel like there’s an over abundance of siege battles and not enough land battles. Adding naval battles would only cut further into that number since you’ll be spending a considerable amount of traversal time in space. Again the more I think on space battles from an overall experience point of view the more I find I don’t like the idea. As for money I agree the 100 million on hyenas was the dumbest thing they possibly could have done. However, that means they now have 100 million dollars less than they had before. That’s going to cut into the budget regardless of whether we want it to or not. As a result they have to be smarter with the money they have. I’d rather they take that more limited money and dedicate it to the core aspects of what 40K is about. They have a ton of challenging work as is to create an authentic 40K battle and campaign system. Let them focus on that, and then if they manage to have a well polished experience in that they can look to the future total war 40K games to add in as a feature.

[@saintwalker0834]

Just feels weird to me to follow up TWW3 with 40k when we're 4 editions into AoS

[@kapitankapital6580]

I think the most suspicious thing about the TWC "leak" is that it just reads like somebody who is collecting information from other leaks. Like, the idea of a Star Wars TW is a big deal, and this guy has apparently had information on it already, but they just didn't say ANYTHING until it got mentioned by Dual Shockers. Like call me a skeptic but it seems like a pretty big coincidence that you just happen to mention the Star Wars game AFTER it was leaked somewhere else.

[@Costin_Gaming]

There's leaks and leaks. I imagine TWC knew before but decided to take advantage of the furor on reddit to make themselves more relevant. Also there's authorized leaks too. Possible CA deliberately fed this info out there. Some on TWC may have known about it before but they released it only when they were asked to.

[@adamleblanc5294]

The leaks do make sense though. All 3 games are very similar, focusing more heavily on combat at very long ranges and very little on unit formations and mele. So it would make sense for CA to tackle them together. We won't know until we get some kind of official comment, but those three games being mentioned together makes a lot of sense from a technical/game design perspective, since they all follow a similar formula that non of the other games have.

[@kapitankapital6580]

@@Costin_Gaming I'm sure this was written to make themselves more relevant. That's why it's an inconsistent amalgamation of existing leaks mixed with some generic history fan cope. Because they just made it up. TWC is a dead forum. If CA wanted to leak something they would do it through Reddit or their forums, or at a stretch Steam. This is clearly a cry for attention.

[@VikingNewt]

Totalwarhammer 40000 *excited noises*

[@bezyn2291]

Warhammer I was a performance improvement. And then TWW II and III were a significant downgrades.

[@elloco9135]

I honestly think WH40k is pretty far in its development. I don’t think CA just started working on WH40k recently and my guess is the remaining devs are enough to get the game done until 2025/2026.

[@balyboo5856]

World War I, no don't think so, trench warfare doesn't fit for that engine.

[@Costin_Gaming]

That's why they are making a new one.

[@aaronbaron3155]

Of course wh2 didn't sell as much... it was the same game just w more factions. They would have had to greatly expand or improve the way things happened. (Imagine being able to field armies like they show on the cinematics and be able to control them as easily as you can now for an example.) The possibilities are vast, but they do the bare minimum. And the customers showed them what happens as a result.

[@nopnop1067]

Total war: 40k

[@Daniel-xv3nw]

another reskin hype

[@truekinggreed8051]

First?

[@Red_Hot_Little_Pepper_Pupper]

I think all of those could be an interesting games on their own right. For WW1 I don't think air battles would be needed, maybe naval as an addition something perhaps like what they did on fall of the samurai. But better. Plus capturing as BF1 the essence of WW1 Could be something very interesting. And Warhammer 40 and star wards have huge potential in many ways I would think for what you mentioned and combining those things you mentioned snd show with what they could do if they out their hearts onto it.