With whole “Atoma is main producer of best Leman Russ tanks due to it’s “gooderer” ore” story and the one and only reason this city hasnt been erased by Inquisition - it’s quite strange to not see any boss battles, involving fighting a tank.
Players asking for chaos space marine boss, but that’s not logical from lore perspective. Not only a space marine would wipe the floor with us. But also there are no reason for a single chaos space marine to be here. As they move in squads.
And fighting a single captain. Or even two such captains. Is boring and easy. So here we are, with a concept of a captured Leman Russ tank. This concept must fulfill many criteria to be logically added into the game.
Let’s start from story/lore perspective:
We already have voice lines with Commadore Alice Hallowette and Sire Melk talking about some “unregistered” tanks in the area during the missions. So cultists DO have Leman Russes in possesion. Would be weird for them not to have them on a planet, that manufactures those.
So one of the captains commanding such would be a great addition to the game. As all missions consist from 3 leveles separated by “elevators/doors” - each one of the levels will contain some objectives.
Our task is to locate and lure out said captain and eliminate him.
First level will be us stealing some powercells and loading them into some sort of machinery.
Second level will be us hacking with interrogator into some cultists vox-transmissions and luring out said captain into certain place.
Third level will be a boss fight. Arena with 2 floors. In the middle will be enemy boss. And we moving around between 2 floors.
Now we move to game mechanic perspective. Such fight must be within possibilities of developers to make it with minimal effort and minimum ways to mess it up with bugs:
Tank will be sitting in the middle of arena, turning its cannon and shooting us. Similar to how snipers operate. Long wind up and heavy shot. Enough to down any player, even chunky bois-ogryns. Hiding behind pillars as classical mechanic. On hardest difficulties said pillars may be destroyed to force players to act fast.
Additionally captain itself can pop out of tank hatch and shoot us with regular plasma pistol. Both cannon and captain target players separately.
Obviously waves of enemies also spawn to fight us.
Tank immune to damage. Captain will hide back if his shield destroyed (finally a boss you can shoot, instead of melee). And pop back up after some time. So if you dont want to dodge his plasma shots - you can burst his shield.
On borders of arena, on second floor, will be several heavy lascannons. Which we must load with powercells (which we were stealing in first zone of the mission). Those powercells can be taken from machinery on first floor and then carried up to the second one, loaded into lascannon and then lascannon goes “wshhhhwhoooosh!” and hits the tank. 3-4 shots and tank destroyed.
after tank destroyed the captain gets out of it and fights us on the ground. He has no shield and lower health than regular ones. So it’s just an easy finishing move, as to give us ability to actually kill boss with our hands.
So this fight fullfills story and lore criterias. As it expected to fight a Leman Russ tank on a planet that makes said tanks. We cannot handle tank ourselves, so we use heavy lascannons which are capable of destroying a tank with several shots.
It fullfills the “ease of implementing” criteria. As developers dont need to make an entirely new boss from a scratch. They can use mechanics already existing in the game.
And most importantly - it fullfills the “fun” criteria. As we not only fighting a fragging Leman Russ tank. But also using mechanics, like covering behind the pillars and teamplay and interacting with objects on arena to win this fight. Like you know that on Carnival you can actually close the gates to reduce amount of spawned enemies, but nobody does it because no point of doing that? In this boss fight you HAVE to interact with objects.
Apparently the Moebians have very little tank support and that’s why we’re not seeing any. The Inquisition either still has control over most of Tertium’s Manufactorums, or they’ve sabotaged most of the ones that the Moebians have captured.
We keep repairing the power matrix for one of the manufactoriums and then immediately leaving it in the hands of the heretics, so we have to go back and repair is again, ad nauseam.
primary issue is FS hasn’t done this thing before i would love it, with mission dedicated to vehicles or proividng Co-ordinatines for attacks, where the Squads life is in a Chermia or a Valkyrie you need to escort. along the open fields of Atoma. as there are many varaints to the vechiles they can inculde. but also note it allows for rapid transperver to another location with branching option and segments of gameplay if your vechile fails to get there. along wthi other modes of trasnport like Grav chute insertion from Maurdar bombers.
Fatshark’s done escort missions before, “Hunger in the Dark” (Dreisdunkel Mine) in Vermintide 2 comes to mind, but it’s not nearly as in-depth as what you’re describing.
The problem with Vehicle missions is that they are severely limiting the map scenery.
There are 3 ways I could see a mission that involve a vehicle, that would interest both FS and the community:
Demolisher Escort Mission: Using as example Throneside or Chasm Terminus, we would join up with a Demolisher Leman Russ, that way the main gun isn’t used on the enemies, while the Sponson gun would either be disabled or have flamers, so they would not have too much of a ranged.
That Tank would at some point be separated from the Reject (to make the mission architecture easier)
Valkyrie Export: A mission where there is additional loot that we can/have to load into a Valkyrie and then wait for it to come back so that we can load it some more, or leaving with the Valk to end the mission
Train Surfing: Mission set on top of a train, now some people want to have it, but a mission where we’re on the train for 20~30min would end up being boring, the best way to do it is with the same system that the Orthus mission and the Enchanter’s Lair do, where they separate the game in parts with a cutscene to have the scene change, so here it would be: Start in Hourglass and fight till the train boarding place, cutscene where we jump on the train, fight till a certain objective is done, cutscene where we stop, or even crash the train, then a last moment where we fight on the wreck of the train and then leaving.
As enemy set piece, a “non-walker” type of enemy wouldn’t work as a normal Monster, as they wouldn’t work with verticality (Whereas Sentinels, Powerlifter and Scout for the smaller sized ones would, and offer 2 Scab Monster, which they are lacking atm). They could work but I don’t think they would be the best things to do.
A single CSM wouldn’t wipe the floor with us, we have the means to dispatch them.
But they aren’t needed here, if we look at Lords and Monsters that should happen in DT:
Dreg:
Lord: Sorcerer Lord (Of Nurgle); Herald
Monster: Toxgryn; Plague Toad; Plague Drone (Flying, could cause issues)
Scab:
Monster: Sentinels (Powerlifter and Scout, with Volleygun)
Lord: Primaris Psyker (Rogue Psyker) could be the Witch that Wolfer mention; Commissar and Ogryn Bodyguard…
that really not what i was talking about with escort mission since there are abosulelty no way to progress without it, when say escort you escort the IFV to the Location if you fail then you die or wind up in a different track rather then where you were ment to be like, Hab Drake or or Relay Obsecrum, example be like we are ment to be going to the new hive but we failed in defending the transport so our character vechile has gotten lost or has gone to ground in the Atoma Outback. a decision point in Mass effect but on a mission level.
The scenery could be the yard of a tank depot. How about we go in in one mission to sabotage it and the second mission is our way out, which brings reinforcements in form of the boss tank with his troops.
A Hellhound with a heavy flamer or tox flamer would be interesting (eating a Leman Russ shell would end the assault quickly).
And as tanks are covered by infantry, we get our hordes too.
To make things more fun, the tank tries to tank shock (maybe after taking enough damage so the turret isn’t operational anymore) and ignores any Poxwalkers and such.
Powering and hacking some tarantulas sounds like a fun idea; there are anti horde and anti vehicle versions. Or we get a way to drop mines or some limited air support (Masozi doing a strafing run).
The tank gets damage by explosives and power weapons, everyone else needs to hit the tank commander (who obviously needs to have a sword).
We could also protect such a vehicle from enemy hordes:
Renegade Sentinel boss manned by a scab would be interesting. Could have a few different attacks. Telegraphed Ground stomp and trampling charge attacks to clear melee. Multilaser that suppresses and melts health pools Cover and flanking would be important in this fight. Telegraphed Frag missiles with cool down
Making direct vehicle boss fights is hard. You need to create a full fledged, moving, scripted model. Its a lot of work and, let’s be honest, not likely that would be done by lazy developers, that cant fix a known and simple bugs for months.
Plus sentinel doesnt feel like a mission boss fight. He suits more into roaming boss. But we already have Plague Ogryn that does the ground stomp and trampling charge. So sentinel would be just like Plague Ogryn, but with gun.
Also giving sentinel multilaser AND missile launcher? That’s too much.
Oh yes he will. We MAY damage him enough if we bring weapons like thunderhammer and plasmagun. But within lore powerscaling - he will kill us faster. Not to mention the amount of debuffs a Death Guard CSM will inflict upon us.
From gameplay mechanics it’s also doesnt make sense. Yes, we have means to dispatch them. But, as i said above, you’ll need bring thunderhammers, plasmaguns and weapons alike.
That means weapons like lasguns or autoguns and melee like catachan swords and axes - will be useless on this boss. So you as a player would have to pick specific weapons. That’s bad game design.
We can kill him like i described with the tank. Lure CSM somewhere, where we can use heavy ordinance like lascannons or Valkyre volley. But once again, why would a single CSM roam around without his battle brothers
Multilaser and Missile launcher would be telegraphed targeted abilities that can be dodged. It’s just for moveset sakes and difficulty. Sentinel won’t actively try to face hug you like a plague oGryn would. It would only stomp and trample if you face hug it and melee it where it’s weapons and missiles wouldn’t be able to hit you.
I like this idea.
I just want to add that in Necromunda: Hired Gun there is an entire mission set on a train (Koloss 44). Just like you say, from a technical point of view there isn’t much difference compared to the other missions, because the train is stupidly immense, with carriages the size of football fields, which is why you just go from point A to point B (which is obviously the locomotive) as usual. However, it remains one of my favorite missions, if only for the spectacular scenography and the idea of mechanical power that it manages to convey.
That’s up to debate, gaunt ghost novels features encouter between guards and a single chaos space marines for exemple.
It wouldn’t be stupid to imagine that the moebian are led by a dozen of them acting as an independant group instead of with their legion (or having deserted an otherwise loyal chapter) and one of them could be sent on the planete for an important matter with a squad of elite grunt.
As for fighting them, dan abnett novels show chaos marine being killed with overcharged shot of lasgun or by gaunt being really insistant with his chain sword (at the time).
We would have no change against kharn or huron but a single chaos space marine isn’t that much more powerfull than a chaos spawn (and actually weaker in every game media).
A Squad of 4 Ogryns would clean a standard CSM’s colon out quicker than Taco Bell. 4 Veterans could even potentially get him lore-accurately with an ambush, all it would take is for them to use Plasma Guns and Krak Grenades.
That being said, a Plague Marine on Traitor turf who knows that we’re coming? Yikes, I’m almost certain that we’re not surviving that.
something lighter like a sentinel would be better i think, and sentinels can kick and stomp as melee moves instead of just running ppl over. sentinels also come in the less-armored scout sentinel configuration so it would be more plausible that our weapons are hurting the crew even if we didn’t bring our heaviest stuff
also, since vehicles can become posessed by demons sometimes, it could become a 2 stage encounter as the crew screams, mutates, combines with the sentinel as it becomes a metal-meat monster
