Release stuff! news

Hi all!

Given the release is now less than 24 hours away, I figured I'd give you all a few in-depth details about some of the new stuff!

The tau won't be mentioned until last, so please feel free to skip down to the bottom if that's all you want to know about!

Vehicle Volumes -

New vehicle designs of the Tau mean that the standard "stick a box in the middle" for volumes such as engines and crew don't apply quite so well. To work around this, I'm testing a new multi volume system (which I'm not sure will work correctly) to work around this. It involves multiple areas that are combined to make one volume, which represent an internal part of the vehicle i.e. the engines, the inventory, etc

Take, for example, the Devilsfish transport. The engines are clearly on the side of the craft, and there are definitely two. With the old volume "hitbox" that would have sat in the middle of the vehicle, hitting the engines would not actually damage the engines, only the body. But with the new volume, there are two different volume "hitboxes" combined into one, applied to each of the engine units on each side of the craft. This means that hitting the engines on the side of the craft could possibly destroy the engine of the vehicle, and hitting the main body would not. Hopefully, this will generate a better effect of the vehicles being what they should be. So far it is untested, I don't have enough time to play out every single scenario, but I hope it will work just fine.

On a related note, the Rhino has been given updated volumes to represent its 4 engine design (it has 4 different areas that can be hit to destroy the engine)

New Leman Russ' -

The Leman Russ' units currently in the game lack all animations and any options on upgrades. We all know that this is not how the Leman Russ should be, so I've put together a template of a new Leman Russ with the same model, but I can add in sponsons and upgrades, as well as animations.

This means the Leman Russ list is going to be Choc full of variants in the future, but for this release only the new Executioner will be available with one set loadout. I hope to get this list fleshed out as soon as possible.

New Units -

A whole bunch of new units and vehicles have fleshed out the current factions. The full list is as follows:

• Cultists (3 skins), rhino (armed and unarmed) and a Chaos Lord for the Chaos faction.
• Predator Annihilator (with and without extra armour), Heavy Bolter and Lascannon Razorback variants and a Captain with artificer armour for the Space Marines.
• A Techpriest, a Standard bearer and a Leman Russ Executioner for the Imperial Guard.

Tau -

The Tau are making their first appearance onto men of war, and there is no shortage of things to play with.

• Fire warriors (sha'la and shas'ui), both with carbines and with rifles. Rifles are longer range but slower firing.
• Pathfinders (sha'la and shas'ui), both with carbines and with railrifles. Railrifles are the Tau sniper rifle.
• Bonded Firewarriors (sha'la and shas'ui), elite fire warriors with different textures. Strong and faster than normal fire warriors.
• Kroot and Kroot shaper with Kroot voices. Very quick and excellent melee combatants if you can get the drop on the enemy.
• Gun drones. Lightly armoured combat drones with dual carbines. Fast rate of fire and can absorb low powered rounds (bolters will likely destroy though). Very good infantry support.
• Tetra scout vehicle. Unarmed but very quick, very vulnerable to enemy fire (can be shot down by bolters)
• Piranha scout vehicle. Slower than the tetra but better armed with a choice of burst cannon and fusion blaster (operates the same way as a meltagun)
• Devilfish transport with choice of carbine drones or missile drones. Can hold 12 passengers (not drones). Weak side armour and vulnerable engines.
• Hammerhead gunship. Strong long ranged tank that will destroy most tanks before they get in range. Weak side armour and vulnerable engines.
• One (or 6) little suprises that haven't been shown in any of the updates. Enjoy.

That pretty much wraps it up, all that is left to say is if you do find bugs and such with the release, please post them in the forum! I hope you enjoy the release tomorrow!