Yes, I read the news release from the UA team today and my little mammal ears perked right up. I figured 1.74, the next major release for the Ultimate Apocalypse mod was not going to be due for close to a year. But it seems like funding has caused the mod to move quite rapidly in completing the work they began with the revamp in 1.73. I thought the races in 1.73 were very well balanced, nearly perfect even. But they did away with two races, one that I liked in particular, Inquisition Daemonhunters. They also subtracted the Chaos Daemons from the list of choices, as the race had not been balanced as the others had when 1.73 came out. Fuck. It was nearly released without Dark Eldar in it.

Anyway, the single-player campaign is of no use to me. I don’t care much for the scenario based RTS approach. I like games to be balanced. No strange objectives to accomplish, other than kill your foe. The plot-based scenarios don’t inspire me. Frankly, I could care less about the Warhammer 40K universe these things come from. Their fictional back stories are irrelevant. It makes them no less than what they are when I build them, able to do what I want them to do. But I’m glad that they will be making some sweeping changes to the game soon. Frankly, mixing it up every once and a while can’t be a bad thing. They released a damn near perfect product in 1.73, but now they might even incorporate the fan patch changes into the overall re-tune of the skirmish mode. I know that battles against Daemonhunters are extreme. Will used them in addition to Chaos Space Marines,  and I grew rapidly to hate the Inquisition’s commander unit. In the unbalanced pre 1.73 era, he was not destroyable. At all. His shield never went down and he killed everything I set near him. But that’s going to be different this time around. Now they will fully balance and embellish the two races left homeless after 1.73 was released. 1.74. I never thought I would have to be talking about it so soon. I remember waiting for 1.73. In December I was telling Will how they were going to release it soon, And then April showed up and we still had no mod. But thankfully, an April fool’s premier was just what we were hoping for. And we got the mod and it was good.

1.74 might end up being one of the last major overhauls of the mod altogether. I can’t see them tinkering with it much beyond adding back the lost races, balancing them, and then completing the single player campaign. That’s the whole game folks. There’s not much more to it, and honestly, skirmish balance is the hardest part of all of this work. It takes skill to make the races somewhat even, so that individual style and build order can be developed. I can’t wait to see what minor changes will be done to the other races. They are adding new units to Tau Empire as well, already started on a new battlesuit to debut in 1.74. Obviously, we’re all out here getting excited about the mod and the continued work being done to perfect it.

You guys just keep doing what you’re doing. I have zero complaints. I’ve noticed a few minor bugs in the help text, but that’s got to be about it. I’ll be on the lookout for news relating to this wonderful mod that just keeps getting better.