The Adeptus Mechanicus have authorized the deployment of Release Nineteen. This includes a significant overhaul to the behaviour of plasma weapons, mostly with the aim of making them less absurdly overpowered and more practical to actually field.

Download R19!
Pre-emptive Mediafire R19 Mirror!

Please bear in mind the various particle effects for plasma weapons are a little placeholder-y. If any of you have any good ideas on how to refine them, I'm all ears.

Main Changes:
×× Balance tweaks to the GSR - improved accuracy and lethality, tweaked ballistics. Ammo capacity upgraded to 10 rounds.
×× Switched Marine Sniper Rifle to use 5-round magazines. Increased reload time appropriately. Tweaked stance offsets.
×× All sniper-type weapons now have two dots - a green dot aligned with the scope, and a red dot aligned with the barrel.
×× Fixed the Lasgun altscript to work properly.
×× Storm Bolter restored to 60 rounds, restored HE/AP ammo swap options. Increased accuracy in all modes, though having no hand at the support offset will significantly reduce accuracy.
×× Overhauled Bolter ammo; explosive rounds are now more 'generally' lethal by producing more wounding particles, whilst penetrating rounds produce fewer particles (generally around 20~25% less wounding particles than explosive rounds) -- but these particles are heavier and sharper, making them much more effective against well-armoured foes.
××× All pistol and rifle format bolts use the same size fragments; heavy bolters use even more powerful ones.
××× Development excerpt: Fixed an awkward incident where Dummies were somehow highly resilient to explosive bolts. Space plastics!
×× Added new/custom shrapnel entries; tweaked range/lethality of fragmentation grenades, grenade launcher grenades, and autocannon rounds.
×× Astartes Autocannon can now employ proximity triggered shells. These shells arm a couple of moments after launch, and detonate upon detecting anything in a small radius around them, thanks to some intriguing scripting from Cave based on Fermat's spiral. You'll know they're armed when they emit a red glow.
×× Imperial Grenade Launcher now has airburst grenades to replace the broken bouncing grenades. These grenades automatically explode if they detect hostile actors. Use them to engage enemies that think they are safe; no cover can shield your foes from the Emperor's wrath! Keep in mind that whilst they have a short arm time, they also have a small detection radius.
×× Helios Rocket Launcher now has proximity fragmentation rockets. These rockets aren't quite as powerful as normal fragmentation rockets, but their proximity sensor makes them more useful against moving targets. They have the largest detection radius of all the proximity weapons, but also the longest arming delay. When armed, they make the same lockon sound as the Thunderstrike missiles.
×× Standardizing tweaks to glow sizes. Now they're (mostly) all on the same scale.
×× Increased number of cluster mortar shell submunitions, tuned submunition spawn/delivery speeds.
×× Slightly reduced the lethality of the Auto Shotgun's shotshells. Emphasis on 'slightly'; it should still pulverize just about infantry actor you use it on.
×× The Imperium Grenade Launcher's Sticky Grenades now flash and emit smoke when the explosive charge is armed/counting down. Just in case the audio cue wasn't enough.
×× Added "Instant Calldown" strike designator option. Because sometimes there just isn't enough time to select the designator and hit 'scuttle' when all you need is an instant mortar barrage.
×× Tweaked some rate of fire values to suit Space Marine values;
××× Stalker is now single/semi-auto. Significantly increased Stalker bolt velocity to compensate; all are 35~50% faster than normal Bolter rounds.
××× Bolt Pistol is 231 RPM, and Bolter (+Combi) are 433 RPM (up from 375).
××× Heavy Bolter (and Widow Heavy Bolter) is 242 RPM unbraced, 560 optional.
××× Storm is 1,000 RPM (up from 750).
××× Stalker is 225 RPM (down from 325).
××× Assault Cannon is 1,000 RPM (down from 1,500).
××× M41 is 700 RPM (up from 600).
××× Autocannon is now 200 RPM (up from ~60).
×× Added accuracy decay to portable hellgun and hellpistol. These weapons decay slightly slower than the M41, but have the same eventual maximum spread. The Widow's hellgun does not suffer from accuracy decay.
×× Imperium Carbine and Machine Pistol can now be toggled into Full Auto mode (and back into Burst mode) using the pie menu.
×× Heavy Bolter can now be switched into and out of 'cyclic' rate via the pie menu, significantly increasing RPM at the cost of high recoil.
×× Switching to 'speciality' rounds slightly reduces the RPM of the Bolter, Bolter CombiPlasma, and Storm Bolter. Bolt Pistol, Stalker Boltgun, and Heavy Bolter are unaffected.
×× Imperium Automatic Shotgun fires shot rounds at 200 RPM, and slug and frag rounds at 120 RPM.
×× Flamethrowers changed to use Browncoat FT-200 particles for the time being. Incendiary bolts/etc. still use the old igniting/burning code.
×× Stub Revolvers now eject six casings on reload rather than one per shot, in a more revolverish fashion.
×× Fixed up a dumb mistake in the Black Templars loadout file that had their snipers using Meltaguns.

Plasma Overhaul:
×× Major adjustments to Plasma Weapon handling. Every weapon has two firing modes - normal, and charged - and feeds from a recharging cell. Weapons can't fire if they don't have enough power. There is a short delay before recharging kicks in.
×× Normal mode is default, and uses less energy. Charged mode means faster and more powerful shots, albeit at a lower rate of fire, and eats up more power.
×× Plasma Cannon still has the trajectory guide. Yes, it changes with firemode.
×× Check out this spreadsheet for a full breakdown of how ♥♥♥♥ works now.
×× Offhand Plasma Pistol is no longer available.
×× Plasma Cannon has lost its Incinerator mode for the time being. But fear not! It may return at a later date.
×× Plasma Pistol & Rifle shots are no longer influenced by gravity. Cannon shots remain influenced by gravity as before.

No thoughts on the overhauled plasma weapons?

Anyway, here's something to whet your appetites for R20;


The new ODS, or Ordnance Deployment System, scaled to twice normal size. These packages can be dropped into the battlefield by aircraft, and allow for rapid deployment of sentry guns and additional materiel for units in the field. Very handy when you need to drop some heavy firepower or specialist equipment in to bypass an unexpected obstacle.

Explosive bolts break the crate apart, so be careful when deploying it close to allied infantry - those heavy end blocks could easily crush someone.

As a final note; the bottom of the crate is designed to deploy into a stable platform that should help keep turrets stable when deploying into rougher terrain.

In game/engine terms, the ODS is just a fancy, faction-themed drop crate with some features to make it better for deploying turrets. A long-overdue addition, I think.

Im really loving the changes. Thank you for all the work making this!

Oh boy, I was waiting for a box. The drop pods just weren't doing it for me.

One thing I did notice with the current drop pods is that they eat really heavily into the terrain so that when they are released, the space marines are in a ditch. I know there is a slowing down lua magic going on but maybe you could make the slowing down thing start earlier (sensitivity on detecting the ground) or make it not chew out the ground.

Oh and another thing. Anything that isn't a bolter round seems to wound friendlies. It's troublesome when I'm on a brainhunt or send down a handful of space marines.

It's probably due to the weight, which is very high to avoid tumbling/rolling on impact. That said I can probably fix it and cut the weight down with a simple script adjustment CaveCricket threw me to help with the ODS having a similar problem.

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Anything in particular stand out as friendly-fire prone?

Ah well, the Plasma weapons is what I was concerned about, as well as the inferno rounds but I think your right, its just a risk every faction has to deal with. And your right, after reading your post I also agree with you about the balancing factor. They are already super powerful compared to vanilla.

There is also another thing. The delivery system for the Assault Marines is prone to injuring the assault troops upon spawn. For instance, I like to play in squads of 4 marines so I order 4 assault troops with the assault delivery system. When it delivers, some or one of the assault troops gets injured (as in loses a limb and/or torso). Is it possible to have the delivery area a bit wider so it can accommodate for larger amounts of marines deployed.

I still virulently hate the Dummy's Impulse Grenade Cannon, honestly, ♥♥♥♥ it.

I tried to mitigate that a bit with the overhauled plasma weapons, but there's really not a whole lot I can do there.

Likewise for Inferno Rounds, though it's more down to the scripting than anything else. I might just get rid of them and see if there's another bolter round I could replace them with.

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You should probably only use one Assault Drop per Marine. I'm not sure why they'd be colliding or anything.

All the Assault Drop is, is a null craft that gibs after 100ms. Not sure I'd be able to fix the delivery area size or anything.

The Assault marine/Skyclaw jetpacks are just so.... they're just weird, they act like a imperial guardsman jet pack but stronger.

Also, is there a skirmish mode for this? I thought I remember there was one a couple versions ago.

From what I remember, the bombardment in the beginning was not so good. Chewed up a lot of terrain.

Anyways, do you think you could do a skirmish for all the different marines/Imperial Guard?

Except the gravpacks have a max altitude of about 200px. I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here.

That said, the assault packs have to be pretty strong. Marine actors are heavy and I didn't want Assault Marines to be grounded due to weapon choices (though good luck using half the heavy weapons effectively whilst airborne without mashing airbrake (doubletap S/down) to hover).

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There was, yes. Asklar coded them up a while back. I disabled them again because they were old, and possibly buggy. It should be possible to reenable them? I'm not sure.

I know almost nothing about scene/etc. scripting though, not sure if I'd be able to do much there.

You guys didn't think the ODS was just for show, did you?




No. There are fun new toys to drop with it too!

Four of the seven variants of a new heavy defensive turret. Capable of soaking up much more punishment than the smaller Widow, the Tarantula series also sports much heavier weaponry.

Planned variants;
Autocannon ✓ - Solid all-rounder, uses fragmentation shells, good rate of fire. Good for AA and anti-infantry, but not a good choice for short-range defense due to shell blast radius. Above-average elevation range. Cheap to field due to parts surplus.
Lascannon ✓ - Extremely long range, high firepower, no need to reload. Limited rate of fire, small splash/blast area. Poor elevation range.
Plasma Battery ✓ - Shower enemies with a storm of plasma bolts, or unleash a slow-moving 'incinerator' blast. Very powerful, but also very expensive. Limited elevation.
Ordnance Pod ✓ - Armed with long-range heatseeking missiles, The Tarantula SAM variant is perfect for taking out incoming dropships. Can launch up to four missiles in rapid succession, then reloads somewhat slowly. Best elevation range of all options, but low sustained rate of fire.
Twin-Linked Heavy Bolter ✓ - Sporting two bolters opposed to the Widow's one, this model is perfect for stopping massed infantry, so long as they can be forced into its extremely limited firing arc.
Multi-Laser ✓ - The cheapest model, and best-suited for interior defense due to relatively low chance of causing structural damage. High rate of fire and decent firepower. Good elevation range.
Multi-Melta ✓ - Possibly the shortest-ranged Tarantula variant, but extremely powerful. Very limited elevation. Ideal for locking down corridors or acting as a last-ditch defense.

Awesome! Also, do you think you can make a better delivery system for them? Whenever I deliver them, it always seems to be at an angle. Maybe make a dropship?

And are you considering doing dreadnoughts and Terminators?