Crucible v2.04 released! news

Hi everyone! Pretty huge patch this time. Apologies for it taking about 6 months but I got crazy busy with my work and we had a lot we wanted to do. There have been a huge amount of changes made but most of the smaller ones you'll have to take a look at the changelog to see! It'll be linked at the bottom. So some of the biggest changes? Keep on reading!

Firstly we have the first part of the Space Marine Chapter system being implemented. This will be primarily in two parts (I say primarily as we'll keep on improving it indefinitely). This patch features the Dark Angels, Salamanders and Raven Guard. Next patch will have Imperial Fists and Space Wolves. Each faction has approx 6 new, unique, units and we'll add more content (researches and unique mechanics for example) as time progresses.

Lets take a look at a few units from each Chapter (click for 4k fullscreen image).

Going onto other things. Another major rework is that for hotkeys and icon positioning in general. Going through all the units also resulted in a lot of tightening up of ingame descriptions. The idea of this rework is for each icon to have it's place and to not move around as more abilities for example are researched. The hotkeys for everything also had to be unified between races to make things much more intuitive and to make there be a much bigger link to icon placement on screen and the corresponding hotkey on the keyboard. I'm sure this will take some getting used to for most people but it is a rework I felt was hugely needed and I'm looking forward to hearing people's feedback. As a note, it is worth mentioning that hotkeys for weapon upgrades have now been globally removed from the game (necessary as there is only so much space on the keyboard). These are the only thing that will need to be clicked on in game. Here is an example of an ability rich squad with an attached commander.

Another big change is for Eldar. Many people will know that this mod was originally (sort of) created so I could realise my dream of the perfect Eldar representation in Soulstorm. I promise though that I have severely limiting the time I spend working on them so the other races can get some love! So my issue with the Eldar Aspect Warriors was that they were split over tiers, in gameplay making some early game and some mid game in strength. This never sat well with me as the whole point of Eldar is that all their warriors (excluding their citizen warriors - the Guardians) are equally elite warriors, just treading different paths. I therefore designed a new system where the player can choose, game to game, which Aspects will have the strength of basic tier 1 infantry, powerful tier 1 infantry and powerful tier 2 infantry. This is done with each aspect having two tiers of upgrades and the player only being able to choose 7 of them. I have also made a lot of differences between the Aspects depending on the tiers selected. Starting off with limiting access to Exarches and smaller squads, all the way up to larger squads, new abilities, better stats and more. Here is a look at the system (and new icons).

The final major change is further changes to the campaign. Difficulty has now been renamed to Normal, Hard and Brutal and the Necron Stronghold has had a TOTAL redesign and rework. This is curtesy of Oleg. I won't go into more details now as I don't have all the details memorised but maybe Oleg will make an article here at ModDB sometime.

Apart from these more major changes, there have been many (and I mean MANY) other changes. Please see the following link for the changelog;

Docs.google.com

Finally, I have made new installation tutorials (separate ones for installer and ZIP folder methods) and these are linked in the v2.04 patch download section here on ModDB. Hopefully these will help people out. They are pretty clear and detailed.

Apart from that. Have fun! And say hi on the Discord. Link is below and is the best place to chat with the devs, get news, give feedback and learn from other players.