DoWpro

Dawn of War Professional, also known as DoWpro, is a Mod for Dawn of War. The mod focuses on returning to, and enhancing, the gameplay-experience of Vanilla Dawn of War (i.e. pre-Winter Assault).

Features

Dawn of War Professional focuses primarily on bringing the "feel" of the Vanilla Dawn of War to the later expansions - with the slower pacing and more procedural upgrades. Much of the original games' cut content was added in the mod, as well as in general, more toys for each faction to play as - the objective being that the player is generally given more choices as to the composition of their armies.

Dawn of War Professional also implements a number of cosmetic and minor improvements, in an effort to help keep some of the units closer to fluff. As an example, the World Eaters-exclusive Khorne Berserker in Vanilla is replaced with a Black Legion-style Berserker that includes team colors to make it look like a Khornate unit that happens to be in the warband. Other changes were made throughout the various factions' tech trees and on a unit-by-unit basis to re-balance the game mechanics more in-line with Vanilla as well (such as removing the fire on the move accuracy "fix" implemented in Winter Assault). This, however, lead to a series of "pancake-style" tech-upgrades ala 90's strategy-games, e.g. StarCraft. Some factions are changed more than others; Necrons use a unique mechanic where they need to expand their area of control and actually gain resources in an effort to actually force them to take and hold territory and play more like the rest of the factions, as opposed to how they originally played.

DoWpro also implements new content from certain other mods (used with permission).

Resource Mechanics

Critical Locations provide twice the Requisition, which encourages map control or map denial. In addition, ambushes are encouraged as the enemy is lured out to capture them.

Power Generators rapidly scale in cost as you build more, which encourages raiding the enemy Power Generators. In addition, Power Generators explode on death.

Building a second HQ costs a significant amount of resources, but also provide significant resources. There is a defensive trade-off between fully upgrading a Listening Post and building a second HQ.

Building a Listening Post no longer provides a gift of 50 requisition upon completion (essentially half of the principle cost). This encourages destroying the enemy Listening Posts, because the enemy won't break even as fast.

The Requisition resource upgrades were removed.

The Power resource upgrade now has a break even point after a few Power Generators have been built.

Combat Mechanics

Units in combat receive penalties to their reinforcement time. The main exception to this are Slugga boys. The penalty is significantly longer for elite units (like Terminators) compared to troop units.

Fire on the Move accuracy penalty has been significantly decreased.

Units in melee receive a defensive bonus against ranged firepower. This is in addition to the morale regeneration bonus units already get in melee.

Both positive and negative cover reduces line of sight. With regards to negative cover, this is in addition to the usual increase in damage you suffer and reduced movement speed.

The line of sight of most units has been standardized to 25, with select units having (or upgrades providing) enhanced line of sight.

Many weapons, such as Plasmaguns, have a weapon range beyond visual range. This encourages scouting ahead (perhaps with infiltration) to maximize the unit's capabilities.

Many weapons had their range tweaked to encourage positional tactics. For example, Plasmaguns had their range increased from 25 to 28. The Force Commander's bolt pistol range was reduced from 25 to 18, and his plasma pistol from 25 to 22. Combined with the cover line of sight change described above, this allows a player to force the enemy out of cover in a long range firefight.

Like in Tabletop, Morale Immunity in general does not exist.

Loss of Morale reduces movement speed by 10%, instead of increasing movement speed by 20% like in classic.

A vehicle that is reduced to 20% of its maximum hp suffers a 25% decrease in movement speed, until it is repaired. This does not affect certain vehicles, such as Dreadnoughts.

Production Mechanics

For each unit of the same type that you build and is alive on the field, the production time is increased.

Upgrades tend to cost 30 seconds to build, standardizing timing window attacks. For Eldar, however, it tends to take 20 seconds. Notably, certain Tau upgrades are even faster.

With all of Population upgrades and the Second HQ, your army size can reach 26/26. The primary exceptions are the Imperial Guard and Ork, who work differently. Without the Second HQ you reach 20/20, as per classic Dawn of War.

Builder production times have been doubled across the board, making it more punishing to lose a builder due to base harassment or during the repair of assets in combat.

Builder requisition costs have also been increased and standardized. For example, the Eldar Bonesinger went from 45 req to 90, the Chaos Heretic went from 60 req to 80 and the Space Marine Servitor went from 75 req to 90.

The cost for a Builder to fully repair a unit (vehicle or building) has been standardized to 30% of the original cost. This rewards players for saving their vehicles, and punishes players for not finishing them off. In the base game, the total repair cost is 75% for all races except Eldar which advantageously costs 20%. Note also that the cost of repair does not include weapon upgrades (such as the extremely expensive lascannons on a predator). Also, the cost of repair only includes the Requisition cost, not the Power cost.

The rate at which Builders repair units has also been standardized to 30 per second each, with the exceptions of Eldar (25 per second each, balanced by the fact that the Bonesinger can teleport to the vehicle to repair it) and Ork Grots (15 per second each. Remember that Grots come in a squad). On top of this, the commander upgrades improve the rate at which Imperial Guard Techpriest Enginseers repair, which is a faction advantage.

Infiltration Mechanics

Dowpro has four specific types of stealth depending on unit; "invisible when in cover", "timed invisibility", "invisible when not attacking", and "invisible all the time".

True Sight refers to the ability of a unit to reveal infiltrators.

Commanders have a short True Sight radius, encouraging them to gap close (and possibly break formation) in order to kill the Infiltrator units.

Certain other units, marked by an icon in their production facility (such as a Barracks), have True Sight.

Frag grenades, artillery and grenade launchers reveal enemy infiltrators.

Turrets no longer detect infiltrators.

Commander Mechanics

When a Commander dies, all nearby units of the player temporarily lose 66% of their max Morale and Morale regen rate for 20 seconds.

Commander wargear is purchasable so long as you have captured at least one Relic.

Commander wargear upgrades of the same Tier are mutually exclusive until you build a second HQ, upon which the other is unlocked so long as the second HQ remains alive.

Wargear varies between factions, but there are similarities. For instance, there tends to be a wargear that increases the Commander's True Sight.

Fully upgraded Commanders tend to destroy non-upgraded Commanders in melee.

Wargear increases the base cost and build time of a Commander, making it more punishing to lose them.

To get an idea of what commander wargear provides, see the following table:

Space Marine Force Commander Wargear
Wargear	Tier	Costs	Bonuses
Champion's Cincture	1	60 requisition, 30 power	Increases Sight radius by 5 and HP by 100. Enables the Rapid Deployment ability which reduces setup time by 80% and reduces reload times by 15%.
Iron Halo	1	50 requisition, 50 power	Increases Health Regen by 1 per second, HP by 100, and provides 15% ranged damage resistance.
Bracer's of the Righteous	2	100 requisition, 60 power	Enables the passive Inspiring Aura, which increases the damage of nearby troops by 10% and reduces incoming ranged damage by 5%. Increases HP by 150, and Melee and ranged damage increased by 5%.
Heroism's Pedastal	2	80 requisition, 50 power	Increases HP by 350, mass by 50, and enables melee charge.
Master-Crafted Artificer Armor	3	160 requisition, 120 power	Enables the Battlecry ability, which increases nearby unit's damage by 40% and morale by 200 for 10 seconds. Increases HP by 450, and provides melee damage resistance of 20%.
Orbital Relay Link Transponder	3	250 requisition, 200 power	Enables the Orbital Barrage ability.

Unit Scaling Mechanics

Squad sizes increase as you tier up the tech tree. In the case of Orks or Cultists, they can be a dramatic increase in squad size.

Armories or the Tier 2.5 building (such as the Sacred Artifact or Sacrificial Circle) increase the squad members of specified units, i.e raptors or grey knights.

In the Dawn of War expansions, units of the next tier tend to be 50% stronger than previous tier units. In this mod, the power curve is flatter.

In the Dawn of War expansions, the base weapon of units that become fully upgraded (for example, Warp Spiders) tend to deal twice as much damage as non-upgraded units of the same type. In this mod, as each DPS or HP upgrade tends to provide a 20% increase in specific stat, the stat increase is 44%.

Issues

As a mod that focuses on expanding the Vanilla experience, Dawn of War Professional has a number of issues that make sure it most-assuredly isn't for everyone, as well as a number of gameplay issues and bugs all its own.

Dawn of War Professional has a much slower game pace, with a much larger focus on expanding and holding territory as opposed to the much more aggressive fast-tech-and-fight gameplay of Winter Assault, Dark Crusade, and Soulstorm. This leads to matches being significantly longer.

Even though the game is slower in pace, it's also much less forgiving due to focusing on the Vanilla paradigm. Units in general are much more fragile than they are in the originals, especially when it comes to mid-game vehicles and weapons versus the biggest units of the endgame. This ironically makes for a game that while certainly much more varied than Vanilla, also tends to culminate in much more protracted battles over the course of a given match, and can quickly boil down to drawn-out attrition fights of "who makes the first mistake" in the worst cases (Orks vs Imperial Guard on a huge map for example), or games that were technically won halfway through the match.

It also fundamentally changes how the factions added in the expansions play, and not always for the better. Some factions, e.g. the Imperial Guard and Tau, mostly gets new stuff, whereas others, e.g. The Necrons and Sisters of Battle, are changed so as to play like an entirely new faciton, as opposed to how their originally played. Many units are also very different from how they're handled in the basic games, and the mod removes flyers.

Optimizing your units requires that you understand all of the armor type in the game, and roughly how well every unit's DPS performs against those armor types. Incorrectly targeting the wrong enemy unit is often excessively punishing, and encourages players to analyse Damage Per Second spreadsheets.

Dawn of War Professional also changes a number of mechanics. Stealth, for example in Professional is much different from Vanilla "invisible only if not shooting" or Dark Crusade "Always invisible all the time". Even some units which keep fundamentally the same role they had in the original game may be changed in implementation, to the point where their use is fundamentally different in practice.

The return of Hard Counters also means that there are comparatively few generalist units in the game, with the focus being on units doing a specific job a certain way instead.

Jump pack units are less mobile in DoWpro. For example, in the base game at full charge the Assault Marine Squad will have 2 4/9 jumps available, requiring 110 s total to recharge from empty. In DoWPro, it is 1 4/9, approximately. From full charge if you jump, there is a 20 second timing window as you wait for your next charge.

However, your mileage may vary; not all problems are simply a matter of "getting used to the way the mod plays", or "being tactical enough"; it's highly possible to just plain not enjoy the mod for what it is, no matter how well one learns and understands it and how it works. It makes the game as such play differently (the base game plus expansions could be compared to e.g. Starcraft in it's extremely aggressive and strategic play, whereas the mod is more slow and tactical), and it's not simply a matter of "being new or inexperienced". Try it out; some like it, some don't.

Those who want an experience closer to Vanilla will likely enjoy the mod, but those who are fans of how existing factions or mechanics already work or feel (e.g. the uniqueness of the Necrons, which the mod removes) certainly won't enjoy it.

Further, it has a number of unique bugs (some of which might be blamed on the core game-engine), some of which are only avoidable by being aware of them (i.e. have to actively be played around by the player).

Links

• http://www.moddb.com/mods/dowpro - Mod DB page.