Warhammer 40k Battlesector

Games
100

Finished the campaign. Some thoughts on the game.

  • I can’t remember the last time I played an old school, story based linked campaign like this. Clocked in around 20 hours or a bit more. It was nice! This style of game has a rhythm to it that let me sit down and do a mission a day.

  • The story wasn’t any great shakes. But they did a lot with what was just a few lines of dialogue between each mission. The voice acting was better than I expected.

  • I think my unit ratings held up. But as you progress AP becomes more and more important - so the plasma guns got better and better.

  • Like most of these types of games, you don’t know what’s useful in the upgrade tree and what’s filler until you finish. I can tell you now what’s useful - flamers - beeline for flamers and put them on everything - Land Speeder, Dreadnoughts, even the Predator. They can insta-kill 2 full units of small 'nids for just 1 action point. Not useful is the Stormraven missile strike. Saving up 3 command points for this takes too long. I only used it once just to get the achievement.

  • I’m thinking about doing the campaign again on the hardest mode. The devs said on the Steam forums that that is where the Sisters actually come into their own. Because they are cheaper than Blood Angels, you can field a lot of them and soak up damage.

  • Love the camera! Probably the second best game camera behind Ghost of Tsuhima.

All in all this is a great little game. It’s no Total Warhammer, but it got me hooked and I had a great time with it. Looking forward to DLC with other races - there is a lot of potential to see how other factions play.

On Baalfora I was born, and on Baalfora, I will die.

101

I finished the campaign also, and I can’t recall the last time I did that in this type of game. Combined arms are the way to go, and using priests to heal your non-armor and techmarines to repair your armor.

103

Spoiler on that mission that pissed me off - you don’t get to keep the staff and use it!! Come on! If there’s a badass relic I’m recovering, let me use it next mission!!!

104

Interesting the new Dev Diary talks about a veterancy system. This is something I thought about quite a bit while playing. I was at first disappointed my units didn’t gain veterancy after every battle. This is what happens in Total Warhammer and I like that system (especially getting to name units myself).

As the game went on though, I appreciated the balance that went into the game to give you that progression of new units that you adopted as older units became less useful. I agree with the devs that each level is a unique tactical problem and you want to spend you points on the best tactical mix. I enjoyed the freedom of being able to lose a unit to a random Exocrine shot and try make the best of what I had left. By the end I was pretty firmly against veterancy!

It’s hard to believe it’s almost a month since Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector was launched!

We’ve received a lot of feedback and feature requests from you since the game was released. In this diary, we’ll talk about some of the most common requests, and what we are doing about them.

The most common request we’ve seen is for more units and factions. Everybody has a favourite faction and wants to be able to deploy their preferred units on the battlefields of the 41st millennium. The good news is that we are already hard at work on adding more factions. We always expected this game to grow and evolve over time, and adding factions is a part of that plan.

It’s important to us to maintain the quality level of the base game, and creating a faction takes a lot of work. We really look forward to being able to show you the new units we are working on soon!

Two other feature requests have come up quite a bit, and they are a veterancy system and a more in-depth unit management system in the campaign.

It’s true that in the campaign, losing units doesn’t really matter much because you can easily add replacements without cost. This was a design choice we made during development, as we wanted the focus of gameplay to be on tactical decisions in battle, over RPG-like systems and trying to keep units alive.

We are adding systems that fit with our design goals for the game, whilst providing both a lightweight Veterancy system and an opt-in Requisition Actions system that adds more decision making outside of battles.

The Veterancy system will add 1% accuracy and 1% crit chance for each mission a unit survives. This benefits units that survive, without making them disproportionately more powerful than their initiate brethren.

106

Those guys at Black Lab are the best, and really know what they’re doing.

107

Finally we’re getting Termies. Plus all the new elite DLC are usable in the campaign - will be interesting to see how they are integrated.

And a new race next month!!

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108

Those guys are ready to make some pulled pork bbq.

109

Hope they sprang for the “whole hog” option, with those talons.

110

So how is this game at present? The reviews seemed somewhere between mixed and somewhat positive - it’s hard to tell. How does it compare to say, the PC version of Deathwatch? (which the appears to resemble, to some degree.)

111

It’s not a 6 year old mobile port for starters. If you like turn based squad tactics games you will like this. If you like 40k stuff all the better.

You can’t do this in Deathwatch

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112

Not on Steam, reviews there are 91%.

113

What is the size of your army? How many units do you typically manage in a scenario? I tend to like the tactical games with small to moderate squad sizes (like 4-6, maybe up to 8) better than the games with larger numbers of units to manage. (I don’t mind if the enemy has a bazillion dudes; killing the hordes of baddies is fun!).

114

I still haven’t been able to commit to this and the lack of ongoing interest or chatter seems a bit of a weak sign.

Here’s a specific question - how does this compare to Sanctus Reach? It turns out I own Sanctus Reach but only played it for 30 minutes. My memory is that I just found it extremely generic. Despite loving turn based combat and WH40K, Sanctus Reach didn’t do much for me.

Or maybe I need to give that another go, since I do own it already…

115

I gave Sanctus Reach a go after playing Battlesector and the comparison did not do it any favours. SR plays slower, looks worse and as you say it just feels like generic W40k game number 382.

Probably not much chat in this thread because while BS is good, its basically the campaign and skirmishes and once you’re done with them, unless you’re into the MP, that’s it. I got a good 30 hours out of it and I’m just waiting to see what the new race is - if another campaign drops I’ll play that.

116

It’s weird in that although Deathwatch was a ported version of a mobile game with a sleazy P2Win Buy Packs model (somewhat improved by the port), I feel like Deathwatch had more flavor than Sanctus Reach and also a much tighter tactical model. I gave Sanctus Reach another try tonight, playing the (pretty weak) tutorial and the first campaign mission and it felt… OK.

Right now I’m thinking Battlesector doesn’t sound like it’s worth $40. Perhaps if I can get it on the Steam Holiday sale for half that…

117

It’s on gamepass so you can play it for $1.

118

The demo should be out there still, and playing that told me a lot.

119

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Necrons! New single player campaign!

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120

Ohhh love that new campaign.

121

Hmmmm. Are the mechanics in this game transparent? Are the rules conveyed to the player? Weighing a buy