Dawn of War Mods

/tg/ loves it some Dawn of War. This goes without saying. Unfortunately as has been widely documented, Dawn of War is fraught with problems; the way the game plays is hideously unbalanced, the factions don't play anything like they should (Eldar being both swarmy and utilitarian, for example), and as such, this has left a lot of players out in the cold, asking obvious questions: Is there a way to fix this? Is there anything that makes this game better than it already is?

The answer to both is yes, and the answer comes in the form of Mods.

Mods in DOW range from conversion and add-on packs to add units, to mods to re-work the game to play more like vanilla Dawn of War. They can completely revamp how the game handles, or simply re-balance gameplay to more-clearly approach something resembling actual balance.

What Modding Can And Cannot Do

Modding in DOW can do a lot of awesome things. It can re-add slashed content (such as the Flamers for the Imperial Guardsmen, or optional weapon upgrades for the Imperial Guard Sentinel), it can make better use of existing resources (making weapon and tech-tree upgrades that make sense, for example), or it can mod how some units operate to make them closer to their codex equivalents. Alternately, they can change weapon and damage algorithms to make the game more balanced, ratchet back overpowered units, or add whole-new-units or factions! All of which, it needs be said, is Awesome.

On the downside, there's an extent to which Modding can do. A lot of DOW's more infamous issues are hard-coded into the SDK and cannot be fixed without extensive modification to the interface; for example, until it was patched, there was no way for modders to fix the targetting bug possessed by Tau Broadside Teams and Imperial Guard Heavy Weapons Teams. Sometimes, modders can make clever work-arounds to bypass existing issues, but this is not always a hard-and-fast rule. Idiotic nonsense like how DOW handles terrain (and letting units shoot right through it, for example) can't really be fixed with any level of modding, no matter how advanced. Except the Titanium Wars mod does do exactly that, fixing the terrain bullshit LOS to true LOS. Shame it's a mod you have to pay for, ahem I mean "donate" to access, but that's life.

Dawn of War Modding

Dawn of War is arguably one of the least mod-friendly games that actually allows mods. There's a number of reasons behind this, but the general gist is that the developers did not go out of their way to embrace the modding community (despite constantly touting supporting it), and never released things like the engine coding or SDKs to the public. This, paired with the fact that no mod auto-updates in Dawn of War, did a lot to make all the various mods available in the Dawn of War series fight with one another for community spotlight and run-time, with each mod having a small but bustling community attached to it. Because there's an enormous population of fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls who still play Dawn of War, there's a sort of disconnect and general stigma against the modding community, when they've arguably handled a lot of issues better than the original developers.

But that's neither here nor there. You want to know about Mods, and that's why you're viewing this page.

• GameWatcher's List of Mods

Favored Dawn of War mods of /tg/

The Following are some of /tg/'s favorite mods for Dawn of War. This is by no means a comprehensive list, and needs to be updated by the community so they can add their own entries. It's highly encouraged that you check them out; they range from the epic to the lulzy. Almost every mod has its drawbacks, as well; Firestorm Over Kronus, for example, tends to use a lot more resources than regular Dark Crusade, whilst Dawn of War Pro's slower gameplay and more literal scaling tends to put a lot of players off - but that's part of what makes them enjoyable. Try them out and see which one(s) you like. People worked hard on these goddamned things, and it shows.

Anyway, here's the list that would probably enhance your life by many notches:

• Firestorm over Kronus/Firestorm over Kaurava/Purgation of Kaurava - An epic mod for Dark Crusade, Firestorm Over Kronus ramps everything up about the game and then some. Sick of fighting with the limited battlegroups Dawn of War enforces? Want to fight with entire goddamned armies that remain faithful to the Force Organization Chart? Pissed that Chaos lost most of its weapon upgrades in WA? FoK does all of that, and even adds the Black Templars as a playable faction! One of several mods that /tg/'s Dawn of War veterans will heartily recommend. Available for Dark Crusade and Soulstorm.
• DoWpro - Dawn of War Pro is a mod that is dedicated to re-creating the feel of Vanilla Dawn of War with the new mechanics and units added in the various other games. Adding most of Dawn of War's slashed content (and there's a fucking lot) and adding some new goodies and techniques to each play style, Dawn of War Pro has a little something for everyone to enjoy if you were a fan of the original Dawn of War (pre Winter Assault).
• Ultimate Apocalypse Mod - Another very prominent mod which introduces Titan and epic-sized units, expanding with more Advanced Buildings and a shit ton of new units for every race and making everything fucking epic. Massive battles with hundreds of units smashing into each other, very CPU intensive, but only when it wants to work. Soulstorm exclusive. The music is sort of buggy for the main mode, with only a few bits of the soundtrack playing. This will lead you to quickly turn off the music, load up youtube and play some other songs when you get tired of generic epic music. It also adds character leveling and campaign wargear, though they haven't quite gotten it to work with the Tyranids yet. Also adds the ability to build walls and superweapons, the later in the form of nuclear strikes (IG, SM and SoB, along with a death Ray and EMP), various warp or psychic powers (Chaos and Eldar), WAAAAGH, raping your enemies souls (Dark Eldar), FUCK HUEG particle cannons (tau), tons of RAPE in pyramid shape (Necrons) and biological bombardments (tyranid). It also allows you to deepstrike Baneblades. Currently merging/adapting daemonhunters and Daemons.
• Titanium Wars Mod (Also available for Dark Crusade) -(Unless you're russian, you will have quite a hard time looking for a place to download the mod) The godfather of Titan-like mods which adds a good repertory of Titans for every race at the same time it keeps it fluffy and crunchy. Also the only mod fully compatible with the campaign. But it does't end there, no. First it merges soulstorm with daemonhunters mod, witch hunters mod and tyranid mod (which the later mods developers did not like so much, read: banspam over moddb), and adds a good bunch of New units to every faction apart from titans. Furthermore, the mod makes all races more or less balanced (by giving all of them a couple of so overpowered units that can blow each others base along with your computer in a HUEG fucking fireball), although removes air units. In its last version the Administratum was (oddly) added as a faction, based around throwing loads of PDF soldiers and old vehicles while begging for help from other factions through a radio beacon (you can ally with Chaos, smurfs, tau, Inquisition or IG). An Alternative download link if you don't feel like reading Russian is available. [1] The torrent is not password protected.
• Codex Mod - Another cool mod for those who felt disappointed by Firestorm over Kronus mod. while the mod does add new armys there a bit lack luster with lacking tool tips for most of them and some army's like the grey knights feeling too similar to regular marines. Also alters existing army's to keep them related to their respective codex and army sheets. Currently in the process of updating the Necrons to their 5e status. However what makes the Codex mod so highly recommended is that the mod can be easily edited to allow different race mods to work in the same game including superior versions of the Chaos Demons, Choas Renegades, and Daemon hunters. Use this mod as a hub for other mods to get multiple races working together along with updated versions of the base factions. mods marked with a "*" are compatible with Codex.
• Battlefleet Gothic Mod - Considering how many terrible mistakes Games Workshop made by shutting down Specialist Games, a group of modders decided to undertake the very heavy task of turning DoW into a computer game version of Battlefleet Gothic. Considering that a big-name game studio's doing something similar as of late, one can only wonder just how the two stack up (if this one even gets done)...
• Witch Hunters* - Before the Sisters of Battle were added in Soulstorm, a modding community got together to add them to Dark Crusade, and good god, were they successful. Notable for having models far more delicious than the SoB models Relic/Iron Lore put out for Soulstorm (seriously, the canoness seraphin induces HUGE thoughts of heresy). The Witch Hunters Mod was once no longer updated, since the team behind it has disbanded, leaving only a beta, but it was a fan favorite and was eventually updated for Soul Storm and given a full release.
• Inquisition Daemonhunt* - A magnificent race mod which adds the Ordo Malleus Daemonhunters, one of the Inquisition branches as a playable army (Pre-Matt Ward dickery), totally recommendable if you like them. If your having trouble finding a working download look in the comments on the front page of the Moddb page for a location.
• Armageddon Steel Legion Mod* - Oh, fuck yes. Tired of just having the original Imperial Guard to fight with? The ASL Mod adds the manliest of Ork-killers, the Armageddon Steel Legion, who play significantly differently than the other Imperial Guard force. With tons of units to play with and better scaling than the original, the Armageddon Steel Legion Mod's biggest drawback is how bad it (arguably) makes the actual Imperial Guard in Dawn of War look by comparison. Whereas the Vanilla Imperial guard is based mostly on the 3rd ed codex, this one is largely based on the 5th ed one with some IA options and the removal of things like Ogryns and Fliers. The A.I here, like the Tyranid mod, is fiendishly difficult and loves to drown it's foes in bodies whether on the defense or on the attack. Better pray you brought lots and lots and lots of anti-vehicle options because whether it's in mechanized or armored flavor the Steel Legion is going to have all the vehicles. No air units though, so thankfully you won't have Vendettas hounding your ass.
• Tyranid Mod* - The title says it all. The Tyranid Mod adds the Tyranids to Dawn of War! Naturally, this includes new units for this race as well as an unique gameplay dedicated to swarms and controlling your units through synapse. Be warned, the Tyranids are a fiendishly hard A.I opponent and will drown you in corpses. You're going to need a lot of flamers to stem the tide of bodies. And they don't need power, like at all, though they do have an alternative resource that works like Faith for the Sisters of Battle in the most recent versions. And did you bring anti-vehicle weapons? Well they'll all be useless. Not a single Tyranid has vehicle armor of any kind! Although many have Daemon armor.
• Daemons mod* - Exactly what the title says; Daemons Mod adds motherfucking Daemons as a playable faction, complete with their own unique units and abilities. Also of note is the ability to summon fucking ANGRON to the field.
• Black Templars* - Angry about 6E canning the Black Templars as an individual army? This mod, which is made by the FoK boys, is just for you. Giving the Templars things like Vows for the Emperor's Champion, a Castellan in fucking TERMINATOR ARMOR and the Land Raider Achilles, this is definitely a mod to play!
• Dark Angels* - Probably the mod that finally got the Dark Angels' organization down, this mod gives them three different and balanced ways to play: Deathwing, which gives all your commanders Termie Armor (and Belial), Ravenwing, which gives everyone bikes and Sammael, and the regular mode, which gives you Azrael, the other major guys, and the ability to use either of the other two forces as you may.
• Dark Prophecy/Black Crusade: A MASSIVE mod that adds shittons of new stuff for the Imperial and Chaos factions. Space Marines can now emulate certain famous chapters and Chaos can also emulate certain traitor legions and warbands (including the Fallen TRAITORS THAT HAVE NO RELATION TO THE DARK ANGELS WHATSOEVER). The Sisters are overhauled too, now being the Inquisition with access to all three branches that can summon Sisters, Grey Knights, and Deathwatch depending on which Ordo you select. It also adds in backported DoW2 Tyranids. Current progress is...uncertain at best, as the mod is being done by one no-doubt overworked fellow who is building absolute fucktons of models for extra-specialness.
• RAGE: World Eaters Warband*: Adds in the World Eaters and their armies of Khorne Berzerkers to DoW1. Noted for being very dedicated to Khorne with tons of melee combat and an economy that focuses more on how much you kill rather than how many listening posts/generators you spam. Yeah, Khorne be happy with this. Notable for the little details thrown in such as how most of the units even come in units of 8, just like Khorne wanted.
• Soulstorm Bugfix Mod: The unmodded Soulstorm is riddled with bizarre bugs, problems, inconsistencies and typos. The bugfix mod fixes pretty much everything a mod possibly can without messing up game balance and incorporates the Dawn of Skirmish AI mod to make the computer not play like a total retard. Very strongly recommended for any LAN games or single player games of Soulstorm. The Bugfix mod also offers some additional mini fix addons, such as fixing the AI Necron Lord, who otherwise refuses to use either the Nightbringer or Deceiver forms, and for repairing some long-standing broken armour piercing values on some weapons and abilities, whose brokeness suggests that Relic forgot how their own engine worked/Iron Lore had no goddamn clue what they were doing.
• Renegade Guard*: based on the the Renegades and Heretics army from Imperial armor V-VII. Bit of a mixed bag this mod. On the one hand the infantry models all look excellent and they use autoguns not lasguns to help make them more unique, the buildings all are versions of the imperial guard with chaos decorations but there traitor guard so it fits the theme. But all the sound files are from the regular Guard force meaning your chaos madmen are still praising the emperor, and the mod uses regular Leman Russ not Malcadors, but that's a nit pick. Over all we give it eight strangled kittens out of ten and a recommend.
• Salamanders*: As you can expect the Salamanders play a lot like regular space marines except there slower, have more health and have better melee thanks to a 'non codex' squad of thunder hammers. overall not bad but don't feel like you need to run out and get it now.
• Harlequins*: Lets you field the Harlequins as there own factions. Notable for going to old lore let you field Mimes, and all of the harlequin leaders like Death jesters, Shadowseer and their own jet bikes. Only time will tell if this will get a 7E facelift...
• Thousand Sons*: This mod was in production for literally almost a decade, and NOW it is finally out! Copious amounts of mind-bullets, daemon summoning, and walking dustbins are to be expected, and Ahzek Ahriman himself can be summoned, able to fire a metric fuckton of spells.
• Adeptus Mechanicus Explorators: A rather homebrew-centric army, this takes some mobile servitors and armed tech-priests protecting a giant tank that acts as their HQ similar to the Necrons. There is a second AdMech mod out there that attempted to be more FW-friendly, but there's not as much progress there, while this one has a beta out.
• Combiner Mod: Allows you to play a number of different mod races in a single game with minimal effort. Not exactly balance friendly since many of these races were not meant to run together, but you'll hardly care once you start throwing Black Templars against World Eaters in a glorious, low resolution slaughter. NOTE: may not be working as this editor had trouble getting it to function. If Combiner does not work, the Codex mod can be edited easily to get most of the different race mods to work together.

Dawn of War 2 Modding

Oh hell yes. There's plenty of mods here, too, but, like the case for Dawn of War, they haven't been widely supported. They include things like mod packs that add the dreaded weeaboo space communists or stupid sexy evil space elves.

Dawn of War 2 mods:

• Elite Mod - A must-have for all of those who felt a big let down with Dawn of War 2 Retribution and how it was left for death without fixing many of it´s problems. Re-balances many things and also adds some new units; plus you have the possibility to play as the Grey Knights.
• Codex Edition - Don't confuse it with Codex Mod from DoW1 as they are quite different. Codex Edition adds many more new units and adds realistic damage. Worth to take a look.
• Space Hulk mod - HOLY SHIT ITS SPACE HULK FOR DAWN OF WAR 2, COMPLETE WITH ANGRY MARINES!!
• Warp storm over Aurelia - Adds fluffy crunchy codex stuff but doesn't change gameplay much otherwise. Definitely worth checking out.
• Destroyer 40k - Adds some really pretty Grey Knights and lots of new upgrades for Marines and Chaos.
• Stratagems - Features specialized Victory Points and other capturable assets on a 6 Player team battle map for DOW2 Retribution Multiplayer and Skirmish.

Please add more mods to the list.

Try all of them out. You'll be glad you did. I guarantee it.