DC Bugfix Mod - Armor Piercing Fix Addon v26a

Dawn of War: Dark Crusade Bugfix Mod - Armor Pierce Fix Addon, v26a
-------------------------------------------------------------------
By Soul Reaver
--------------

This addon to the "Dawn of War: Dark Crusade Bugfix Mod" modifies the damage and armour piercing values of several abilities and weapons. If you haven't got the "Dawn of War: Dark Crusade Bugfix Mod" yet, download and install that first. You can probably find it at Moddb.com

This addon has been tested with v26.1 of the Bugfix mod but will likely work with any other versions of the same mod as well..

This addon is intended to deal with what would appear to be incorrectly entered Armour Piercing values for some abilities/weapons. It is offered as a separate addon because installing it will have balance implications.

If you have any comments or suggestions about this addon, feel free to contact me at meet_soul_reaver@hotmail.com

What is the Armour Piercing bug?
--------------------------------

When working on the Dawn of War: Dark Crusade Bugfix Mod v26, I came across something rather odd: the Imperial Guard General's Strafing Run abililty had armour piercing values of 300% set for most infantry targets (though only 100% for non-infantry). The thing is, Dawn of War doesn't 'allow' armour piercing values of over 100%, and just rounds them down to 100%. I then found several other weapons and abilities with over 100% armour piercing values too.

This obviously is a mistake, since there's no practial reason to set the values above 100%... unless, that is, these weapons/abilities were originally meant to do a lot more damage to certain target types than they currently do.

This is supported by the fact that a couple of these abilites/weapons seem to be a bit underpowered for their primary purpose. The Imperial Guard General's Strafing Run, for example, does equal, rather lacklustre damage to all targets... but if the 300% damage vs infantry actually worked, it becomes really deadly against infantry, and actually does what its tooltip says it does (ie, can potentially wipe out whole squads... if they're too slow to get out of the way, of course). Similarly, the Tau Crisis Suit's relatively underwhelming Missile Pod weapon upgrade works a lot better in an anti-vehicle role if it's doing 140% damage to light vehicles and 120% to medium vehicles like the armour pierce values suggest it should be doing.

These considerations make me think that the original intent of these abilities/weapons isn't being met because someone coding the values wasn't aware of the 100% armour pierce cap. To overcome this, I've modified the damage and armour pierce totals so that the weapons will now be doing their 'intended' damage to all targets.

Why Make This A Separate Add-On
-------------------------------

There are two arguments as to why implementing this bugfix might not be a good idea:

1) There are real balance implications to this change - several units and abilities gain significant damage buffs against certain targets.
2) I can't be completely certain that the armour pierce values really were a mistake - it could be that while they began as a mistake, they were simply left later since playtesting ended up showing that the effective damage they were doing was sufficient.

With this mod installed, Strafing Run becomes a powerful ability; Harlequins change from being good to being absolutely deadly against Commander-type units in melee; Hellhounds become very efficient listening post/base defence raiders; Crisis Suits with Missile Pods become more effective against vehicles; and Psykers... well, I suppose they do a bit more damage to very heavy infantry units with one of their abilites. This will certainly change the game balance a bit. Not everyone will like these changes.

Rather than forcing an opinion on players, I thought it best that you can choose whether you think the values should be corrected or not. If you think the original values are wrong, install this fix. If not, or you think the balance implications are too great, then leave it be.

What Does the Addon Actually Change?
------------------------------------

The addon does the following:

- Imperial Guard General's Stafing Run ability damage vs all infantry and infantry_heavy armour increased 3x
- Imperial Guard Psyker's Lightning Arc ability damage vs infantry_heavy_high armour increased 1.5x
- Eldar Harlequin's Riveblade damage vs commander armour increased 3x
- Tau Crisis Suit Missile Pod damage vs vehicle_light armour increased 1.4x, and damage vs vehicle_medium increased 1.2x
- Imperial Guard Hellhound Inferno Cannon damage vs structure_light armour increased 2x

It does so by adding/replacing the following files in the Bugfix directory with newer, modified versions:
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_psyker_lightning_arc.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_psyker_lightning_arc_advance_sp.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_psyker_lightning_arc2.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\weapon\eldar_riveblade.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\weapon\guard_inferno_cannon_hellhound.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\weapon\tau_missile_pod_crisis_suit.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_1.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_2.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_3.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_4.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_5.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_6.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_7.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_8.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_9.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_10.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_11.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_12.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_13.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_14.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_15.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_16.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_17.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_18.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_19.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_20.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_21.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_22.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_23.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_24.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_25.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_26.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_27.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_28.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_29.rgd
- Bugfix\data\attrib\abilities\guard_strafing_run_children_30.rgd

Note that the Vindicare Assassin's rifle also does slightly more than 100% armour pierce against a number of targets, but it exceeds 100% by only such a tiny amount (less than 1%) that a fix isn't really warranted and thus hasn't been included.

Compatibility:
--------------

If you choose to install this addon, you will have to ensure anyone else you're playing the Bugfix Mod with is using not only the same version of the Bugfix mod, but has this addon installed as well.

Removal:
--------

If you want to remove this addon after installing it without having to reinstall the entire Bugfix mod, you can do so by running "Remove Dark Crusade Armor Pierce Fix Addon v26a.exe" from the Bugfix folder. It will restore the 'basic' values of the Bugfix Mod v26.1.