Hey,

I was thinking about IL categories for this game for a long time but couldn't decide on the rules and stuff. Here is my idea so far:

Individual levels are the individual strongholds. The leaderboard would have a list of all 7 strongholds and all 7 factions so there be a total of 7 x 7 - 7 = 42 "levels" to choose from. The problem with the missions is that it is hard to define rules in a way that all have the same starting conditions. There are two ideas I have:

1. The player is not allowed to have any wargear, honour guard or special map bonus. This sounds good on paper but when you start think about it more you have 2 problems: the AI-honour guards vary dependign on how many areas the AI controls and the stronghold reinforcements vary on how many turns it takes you to get to the stronghold before the run. While the last part could be solved in that you can define a rule that the "defense number" must be 15 (whcih is the highest possible) the first one can only be solved by conquering all the areas from that AI oponent before starting the run.

2. The player is allowed to have as many wargear, honour guards and map bonuses as he wants. Aditionally I would say that the defense of the strongholds must be 15. The downside of this would be that you need a long preparation phase where you conquer the whole map and get 5000 kills for all the wargear before even attempting a run. The good thing is that one (me ;-) ) could prapare savegames for everyone to use where all the wargear is present and the whole map apart from the stronghold you want to run is conquered.

I personally like the second idea more as it would also lead to faster times and more interesting strats. With all the honour guards and the forward base you can tech really fast while also start to go at the same time.

If you have any ideas on how to improve option 1 or 2 or have an entirely new idea in mind, please let me know!

ps: One thing I haven't foudn a solution yet is how to control the AI's wargear progression. Does the AI even get wargear as the player does?

If Save games can be shared then i would go for option two, reminds me of doing the individual levels in Dawn of War 1, naturally that is if your willing to put forward the effort , i know i wont getting around to running these categories for a while but i would be keenly watching as it might prove useful in cutting time on some of the longer strongholds (eldar ,tau and chaos).

if we were to do option one i would prefer to allow honor guard as most stronghold your immediately leapt upon and it would really be hard to even get your base off the ground, god knows that your hero if not upgraded cant take the first wave alone so i would recommend a middle ground where HG are allowed but cap at 500, 750 or 1000 rec , also gives options and strategy for what is the best HG in a given mission.

Savegames can be shared as far as I know. Maybe we can try that out some time. I don't think they can be shared over different versions though. If I feel like it I will prepare a savegame and some runs to show what I was aiming for.

What about the wargear of the AI? Did you ever notice the AI having wargear on their heroes?

I never really looked for it as i shot myself like a missile towards their HQ.