Final Liberation?

[fastjack]

On second thoughts, I'm not even sure they dumbed it down "on purpose" :
Among the changes, many may have been forced by the subject :
Going from hexagons to squares (which I hated) might have been done in order to make iso 2D require less assets (as in smaller sprite sheets). Steel Panthers used a top down view which made this irrelevant.
The lack of an interesting camo/detection rule may have to do with soldiers routinely using very bright colors in this universe. Stealth and camo would go against the fluff and its overcolored Space Marines.
I don't remember the other changes, but except maybe for the experience rules, I am not sure there are that many that were done just for the sake of simplifying the game. Now I completely agree that the game system was better with hexagons and detection rules, but I don't think it was only to make it playable by a 8 year old.

Creating a Windows 98 guest in VirtualBox (my personal preference when it comes to virtualization software) is pretty much the only way to make it run correctly these days.

Thanks. Managed to make it run under a Windows 98 guest. Chaos Gate might be a better game for the first playthroughs, but the scripted campaign makes it not very interesting to replay.

Both games really lacked contents. They screamed for more campaigns and factions which never came.

I thought it was a straight (except for maybe the squares instead of inches?) port of the epic 40k table top game?

 

[Galdred]

Not really, it factored unit experience, the casualties were assigned one trooper at a time (so the Volcano cannon, instead of vaporizing a full squad would only kill one soldier in a squad), and if I remember correctly, the to hit rules had more different values than in epic 40k.
The penetration values were not the same either, the close combat rules were based on Space Marines (the edition before epic 40k).
I think the suppression rules were based on Steel Panthers too, but I am not too sure.
Basically, it was a mix between Steel Panthers, Space Marines, and epic 40k.

 

[fastjack]

Not really, it factored unit experience, the casualties were assigned one trooper at a time (so the Volcano cannon, instead of vaporizing a full squad would only kill one soldier in a squad), and if I remember correctly, the to hit rules had more different values than in epic 40k.
The penetration values were not the same either, the close combat rules were based on Space Marines (the edition before epic 40k).
I think the suppression rules were based on Steel Panthers too, but I am not too sure.
Basically, it was a mix between Steel Panthers, Space Marines, and epic 40k.

In that case, sir, I've been hoodwinked by some abandonware review years ago

 

[Galdred]

Actually, that was one of the strength of the game : the battles would play the same as in Epic 40K, even though the rulesets were different.
Same for Chaos Gate : its rules were very different from WH40K, but it still conveyed the same feel.
On the other hand, Rites of war played like its fantasy cousin (fantasy general), and did not feel 40k-y that much (except for the unit sprites used which were gorgeous).

Edit : I just starting replaying the game and I was wrong on a few points : going from hex to square makes no sense at all, as you need more animation frames, because every unit can have 8 different facing.
And even though smurf marines use no camo, there is no reason to have accuracy not depend on range at all.
The game was indeed dumbed down for the sake of dumbing down, which is a very weird decision in the first place.

 

[Galdred]

There is a patch to make it work under Windows 10:

https://af.gog.com/forum/final_libe...ution_for_windows_10_may_update?as=1649904300

1)After downloading and installing Final Liberation remove all the compatibility settings from the Epic40k executable.
2)Download DDrawCompat 0.3.1 from https://github.com/narzoul/DDrawCompat/releases
3)Extract it in the Final Liberation folder.
4)Download the movie crash fix patch (fl_highcolor_patch.zip) from http://bitpatch.com/fl.html
5)Extract it in the Final Liberation folder and run the movie crash fix patch (FL_HighColor_Patch.exe)
6)Run the game, it should work fin and the overlay will not make it stutter.

It just worked under Windows 10 for me.

 

[Galdred]

sperg time:
So, I played a few battles in the campaign, at max difficulty level.
These figha bommerz are no joke. They made a mockery of my AA guns, by plastering my siege mortar battery, 1 tank and 2/4 AA guns at the cost of 2 fighters bombers.
So I had a pretty bad campaign start. I waited for a few turns to replenish my forces (I lost the 3 Leman Russes on top of the siege mortar battery), but Commissar Holt was unhappy, so I eventually assaulted the orks to retake the Astropathic relay (and get Space Marines!).

I modded Space Marines to make their infantry and tanks more resilient, but more expensive.
Tanks are very easy to kill because the armor values are just average, but there is a good chance they will get hit on the tracks (1/6 for most tanks, but 1/3 for Land Raiders) where the armor is abysmal, so any infantry unit can "kill" a tank (as mobility kill are only counted for superheavies, tanks get destroyed on a track hit).

I'm thinking about revamping the tracked vehicles armor values, because that makes them super weak.