DoW: The Final Expansion (TFE)
DEVELOPERS
Omar Sarakbi
DESCRIPTION
Previously entitled "Ultimate Balance Mod" was a small project I created during lockdown in a bid to fix the glaring balance issues that plagued the Dawn of War competitive multiplayer, and to fix some of the notable bugs.
​
Over time UBM spiralled from a small balance mod into a full-blown project, adding new mechanics, units, maps and reinventing the whole gameplay experience.
​
In light of this the mod has been renamed to "The Final Expansion" or TFE for short, meant as the fifth and final expansion in the DoW series.
​
Bellow I've added a small showcase of what is to come TFE, but much more is in the works on top of this!
STATUS
In Development
YEAR
+2019
GENRE
Real Time Strategy, Mod for Dawn of War 1
PLATFORM
Windows, Dawn of War Soulstorm
SPLASH DAMAGE
This is an example of the Splash Damage system
In vanilla Dawn of War, units can only hit 1 troop at a time with standard attacks. This leads to infantry swarms surviving far longer against superior enemies than they should
TFE uses splash damage to negate opponent's swarm melee tactics. A powerful melee walker, commander, or commander squad may use splash to make them an effective anti-swarm unit
Most benefited is the iconic Dreadnought. No longer is it useless against infantry in combat, do not underestimate it
VERTICALITY
Inspired by Age of Empires II, The Final Expansion adds a verticality mechanic. Troops on high ground are able to see further, shoot further, and are slightly more accurate
Players who know how to use the terrain to their advantage will be able to outmanoeuvre their opponents. This also supports 'elastic defence' strategies, pulling back to more favourable ground and then turning on the unexpecting enemy
​
We've also edited the official Relic "Mission Editor" (map creator) tool to allow us to draw verticality heat maps, baking the height values into the map itself
COMMANDERS
We have expanded the power of commander units. Unlike Ultimate Apocalypse style mods, we did not add a wargear system to super-charge commanders. Instead, the commanders similar to how they felt in the base game, but gave them all a fresh take.
​
The Chaos Sorcerer is an example of a commander that has changed lots. His most notable new ability is "Consume". Inspired by Dawn of War 2, consume kills an allied unit and in return heals the Sorcerer as well as reduces the recharge time of his abilities. This allows the Sorcerer alone to take on a sizeable enemy force, if controlled with diligence.
FOCUS ON INTENSE MICROMANAGEMENT
TFE is a mod designed for competitive players and places micromanaged abilities front and centre. Players who utilise them will dominate over a less active opponent
​
In this video we see a chaos melee force attempting to charge guardsmen, who would certainly be overwhelmed if the enemy reaches them. However, well timed "stomp" usages from the Sentinels prevent the Chaos player from approaching with their Champions of Tzeentch
​
It's ability usage like this which adds a new level of complexity and fun to the game. Using them at the right time makes all the difference
ADAPTABLE CODEBASE
TFE has a rapidly growing codebase written in Lua / Dawn of War Scar.
​
Many of our designs are not possible without custom coding. Additionally, our designs are very broad, from new ability systems, resource systems, new cover system and adding weather to the game. To address this, I have created highly adaptable code in the form of TFE_Core.
​
Core acts as a master for other sub-scars (script files), generating the information about the current play state from players, to troops, time etc. All systems takes from core and all information needed can be supplied from there, allowing for quick roleout of new ideas and systems.