DerpHammer mod for 0 A.D. Empires Ascendant

Hello!
Last time I announced that the next article would be covering the heroes of the Orcs & Goblins. As you can probably tell, this isn’t really the case anymore. Instead I wanted to do a general news post to go over various changes I’ve made to the mod over the last few months, including factions, units and overall game mechanics, and then also touch a bit on what’s going to happen moving forward.

Let’s get started!

First, about those Hero articles…

The last couple of news were lists of heroes for the first 2 factions (Empire and Dwarfs), with my plan being to go through the Greenskins next and after that the Vampires.

Truth be told, I got sick of that format almost immediately as putting them together was kind of a drag (which is why that Dwarf Hero article took so long to come out as I had to basically force myself to finish it).

So future news will no longer follow such a format.

What have I been working on?

Updating Units and Factions

As I’ve continued working on DerpHammer, I have slowly started getting an idea of what I’m actually doing. This mostly manifests in me changing around which faction gets which units and giving a much-needed facelift to certain units. Some of these are just minor changes, while others are more noticeable.

Faction Rosters

In an attempt to make sure all factions are somewhat even and prevent unit bloat, all DerpHammer factions will follow certain restrictions when it comes to their unit rosters. These are as follows:

• 4 Civilian Units (Worker, Trader, Healer and Support)
• 15 Military Units (divided into Core, Special and Rare, more on that later)
• 5 Naval Units (including a Fishing Boat and Trading Ship)
• 1 Commander Unit (your General, can be upgraded to have Mounts)
• ? Wizard Units (details to be determined whenever I properly integrate a Magic system)
• 4 Hero Units
• 1 Titan Unit (optional)

Only 4 Heroes? Not 8?

Originally, I planned to give each faction 8 heroes, allowing me to include plenty of Warhammer characters (or rather their legally distinct knock-offs) plus whatever fun ideas for original characters I had. I have since realized that this number is probably too high.

So now the number of heroes per faction will be reduced to only 4, with each one meant to represent one aspect of the faction. My goal is that this will help to also make them all be more unique. But it does also mean some of the heroes I shared in previous posts will sadly no longer be part of the game. Sorry about that!

Another change coming to heroes is that they will no longer have a mount progression like regular commander units. Instead they will now immediately start mounted (if they actually have a mount that is)

What is a “Titan”?

A term I borrowed from Hyrule Conquest, another 0 A.B. mod, a faction’s Titan is a special unit that can be recruited only once. The Imperial Dragon and the Thunderbarge, which were previously classified as heroes, will be the titans of the empire and the dwarfs respectively. Not every faction may get a titan however, as not all of them have a unit befitting this status.

Player Colors

I textured most units with specific color schemes, however since 0 A.D. does allow a unit’s texture to change based on which player owns it, I’ve been slowly updating each model to allow for that since I think it’s a nice quality of life feature.

Some decisions I’ve gone back on

In previous news updates I’ve shared some changes I decided to make to certain factions.

The empire getting WW1 era warships, orc generals riding giant evil birds instead of wyverns, etc.

Some of these sounded nice at the time, but as I thought about it more I realized I didn’t like them as much as I thought and so I ended up reversing them.

So I have returned to wyverns and wooden ships, giving them some visual overhauls in the process.

Major Gameplay Changes

Core, Special, Rare

Most Warhammer fans should be familiar with these 3 words!

For those who aren’t:

Back in Warhammer Fantasy, units were divided into these 3 categories that limited how many of each you could bring to a battle. This is a system I am also implementing into DerpHammer to some extent

The gist of it is that Core units can be recruited in unlimited amounts (provided you have the resources of course), while Special and Rare units have limited numbers. These limits can be increased by building additional Civil Centers.

Typically Core units are your basic troops, Special units are more elite and Rare units are your big center pieces.

Overhauling Resources

0 A.D. has 4 types of resources: Food, Wood, Stone and Metal

One of the first things I did was add Magic as a fifth resource, preparing myself for a future Magic system. But I have since decided that it would be better to overhaul the vanilla resources entirely.

My initial idea was to simplify everything into 3 resources:

• Points for units
• Materials for structures
• Magic for spells

However, turns out 0 A.D. didn’t like me removing a resource, so maybe materials will remain split into Wood and Stone, meaning all I’m really doing is replace Metal with Magic.

The point though is that unit costs will be simplified into a single resource, which should make it easier for me to implement and balance stuff!

A Note on Morale

Non, not my morale. I mean Morale as a gameplay mechanic!

0 A.D. doesn’t have a Morale system but it is a pretty major aspect of Warhammer. For the time being, Morale will be represented through various buffs and debuffs, which isn’t ideal but it mostly gets the job done.

That said, there is actually a Morale mod for 0 A.D. out there, so in the future I might look into making DerpHammer compatible with that.

Unique Faction Mechanics

Making each faction properly unique would be the dream, wouldn’t it?

Sadly, the limits of 0 A.D. and my lack of coding knowledge mostly prevent that from happening. I’ll try my best to work in some fun stuff that mixes up how each faction plays but don’t expect too much!

Final Words:

Where do we go from here?

I keep saying I want to post public updates more regularly but never actually end up doing so.

I should probably rethink how I do these news posts, less “look at this big new article!” and more “here a nifty thing I just added!”. Eventually I do want to post proper faction overviews, but before I do that I really want to finally make icons for every unit.

So, with all that said, I think this brings this big update post to an end!

Wait, so when is the new version gonna be done?

…
Honestly? I have no idea; so much is still unfinished and/or broken…

I'd love to put out something playable this year but I don't want to make more promises I can't keep. Here's hoping though!

With all that said, see you next time!