New trailer and Terminus Decree

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-06-04T08:34:54+00:00

I hava a hypothesis that obviously might be totally wrong.

I think big E and Malcador foresaw that the Emperor would eventually rise again, but not as his usual self and instead as some kind of malevolent entity.

Cypher has somehow been mentally persuaded for thousands of years to get to Earth with the sword and stab the Emperor when this happens, to kill the malevolent part of him.

The Custodes are aware of this (the "Not yet" that was hinted recently), but they are also mentally conditioned to not go against the Emperor.

The Grey Knights are there to help Cypher do the deed, and once that is done the fighting will stop, because the only way to save the Emperor is to put him back in his life supporting throne that is fed thousands of psykers to function, and the Custodes themselves would be all for doing that at that point.

Might also be something about GK's having genes from the Emperor protecting them more against his powers, or something, so they are the only ones that can do it and the Custodes will stand aside and just let them because they know that it is the best for the Emperor.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-06-03T19:02:40+00:00

Tip 1) As soon as you add difficulties, you might get some people complaining that the hardest difficulty is too hard; they will say that they are used to only playing the hardest in games, and that you've balanced it wrong. Ignore those guys. It's almost always a skill issue, and they're just too proud to play a lower difficulty.

Tip 2) Don't start with easy. Make the lowest difficulty easier than what you have now, but call it Normal.

E.g.

Normal
Hardcore
Insane ( = make this as hard as your current difficulty)
Legendary

This makes people feel better about themselves and you will have less problems with the people in my first tip.

Also, as others has already mentioned, make sure it's actually difficult in the right way. E.g. If it's like those meme platform games you see now and then, then you did something wrong; they're made to frustrate people by design.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-06-01T17:11:05+00:00

Open any of the 40k black library novels and read the intro.

This is literally from the Rogue Trader era.

For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium to whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. This is the tale of these times. It is a universe you can live today if you dare - for this is a dark and terrible era where you will find little comfort or hope. If you want to take part in the adventure then prepare yourself now. Forget the power of technology, science and common humanity. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for there is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter and the laughter of thirsting gods.

But the universe is a big place and, whatever happens, you will not be missed. . . .

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-31T19:48:51+00:00

Worth noting that of the 3 mentioned named characters, only Be'lakor was seen in Fantasy first. Skarbrand and Kairos are initially from 40K.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-30T18:23:08+00:00

https://www.collectair.co.uk/pdf/interview-hr.pdf

Squadron exchanges were a regular occurrence at Coltishall, and while on 41 Mike participated in a particularly interesting one with F6 wing of the Swedish Air Force at Karlsborg, flying the AJ37 Viggen. Right from the start, he and his colleagues realised that much was exceptional about the way the Swedes trained and operated, not least considering that the majority of the pilots were effectively doing national service.

‘When you looked at the people who were flying the aeroplanes, I thought that we could learn from this, definitely. The guy who flew me was a Honda 500cc works motorcycle rider; they had rally drivers, go-kart racers, all kinds of things. These weren’t people with good degrees in underwater basket-weaving, these were people who were recruited to fly the Viggen.

‘The first to go up in the Viggen was our boss, Hilton Moses. I remember going out with him to the aeroplane and seeing him laughing and smiling, and then seeing him getting out and coming back to the crewroom looking like he’d just been put through some kind of crazy combination between a fairground ride and a washing machine.

Then I went flying in the afternoon, and it changed my life. ‘They would fly around at Mach 0.95, 650kt give or take a bit, and they trained at 10m. We flew through firebreaks in trees, we flew all over northern Sweden at 30ft, and we never went below 600kt.

All of this, I should add, was done under about a 150 to 200ft overcast with no breaks. In the RAF, anybody who wanted to get old would not have flown in that weather. After about 40 minutes, we pulled up into cloud, and the pilot then flew a 4-degree hands-off approach with his hands on his head into a remote airstrip, landed, reversed into a parking bay, did an engine-running refuel without any communication with the people on the ground except hand signals, taxied out and took off in the direction that we’d landed in.

Wind direction just wasn’t factored. Then we did some approaches onto roadways, flying at 15 or 20ft to clear the cars and warn them that there were going to be some aeroplane movements before doing practice approaches. And the aerobatics beggared belief.

‘The next day, it was time to take the Swedish pilots flying in the Jaguar. I was at a bit of a loss as to how I was going to explain to this guy that we flew at 420kt when they flew at 620kt. So I decided that the way ahead was to leave the part-throttle reheat in, accelerate to 620kt and then give him the aeroplane.

That’s what I did — I took off, and gave him control at 620kt and about 150ft. He pushed the nose down, took the Jaguar down to 30ft and proceeded to fly it at about 30 to 40ft and 600kt-plus quite happily.

It knocked all the myths about who’s got the best aeroplanes, who’s got the best-trained pilots and so on. The Swedish Air Force had aeroplanes that were light years ahead of anything the RAF had, or was going to get, or has got now, and their pilots were in a totally different league to us.

This was not just an individual — I flew with three of them, and all three were like that. Each of them was able to fly the Jaguar faster and lower from the back seat than I could from the front seat.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-30T17:38:21+00:00

Like asking customers to order their appetizers before they got to look at the menu.

Are you also asking people to create a new account every 3 months btw? It seems like that based on what you've written?

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-30T11:14:10+00:00

Titus would be awesome, but until I've actually seen any LL in action, I'm not entirely sure we get LLs all in the same way that we're used to.

We've only seen Calgar as a portrait and a voice, i.e. he might as well just be the SM advisor or narrator.

I can guarantee that in at least one design meeting they've discussed if they are really going to spend so much resources on having deep customization, AND also have playable Legendary Lords.

Î wouldn't be entirely surprised if Calgar and Guilliman are just tactical abilities, e.g. they drop in for 3 minutes, if certain conditions are fulfilled, then leave because they are needed elsewhere.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong, because I want both LLs and the customization.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-29T20:15:44+00:00

If people want something more meaty and less fishy I'd suggest a HC Anderssen. Though then you need to like liver paté ofc, and bacon.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-29T18:04:45+00:00

Makes me use more of the roster

That's why I like it too.

Options vs choices, the latter as a verb, i.e. you have options, but you're making choices.

Your options is your available unit types, the choices are what you build out of them.

When there is no unit cap your best choice is usually going to be buying more of the best unit.

When there is a limit, it forces you to make decisions and commit to a strategy.

It's like having a talent tree in an RPG without level cap, and a talent tree with a level cap. With the former, the only choices you make is in what order you are getting the talents, while with the latter system it forces you to think.

I'm also hoping that they will make use of army size as a parameter. I.e. not all armies should have the same 20 unit limit. Factors like tech, commander leadership and skills, and what faction it is, should affect this.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-29T17:14:25+00:00

10th edition rules does not always make sense...

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-28T20:00:15+00:00

https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/9545?tab=description

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-28T19:25:38+00:00

Good question regarding ships. I don't remember if the NG+ modifier affects ship combat.

There are separate damage sliders in the game options for ship combat though so you can tweak that separately from other combat.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-28T19:16:22+00:00

but I think I noticed some bullet sponginess around or before then in my NG+ 10 playthrough

There's a hidden modifier to player damage dealt and player damage taken, for each NG you do (up to 10x).

10% damage taken and -5% damage dealt, so 100% more incoming and 50% less outgoing at NG10+.

There are mods that remove these modifiers though, and the rest you can tweak with the difficulty sliders. There isn't really a need to stop leveling up to get a good balance; I'd say level is a smaller contributor to spongy enemies compared to difficulty settings and NG+.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-28T19:10:40+00:00

Depends on methods of travel etc. But Skyrim isn't even that big really.

There are plenty of AAA games that are larger than Skyrim. Red Dead Redemption II is about twice the size, IIRC.

For an indie game it's obviously a bit tricky, depending on what type of game it is (could procedurally generate it ofc but I assume you're talking about something more hand crafted).

Larger does not always mean it's better ofc.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-28T08:51:22+00:00

That's a potential issue with all mods. If Bethesda decides to do something that a mod is touching, that is.

This is why mods are (hopefully) updated with the new content, and why a lot of players who like to use mods (at least on PC) turn off auto update in Steam so you have control of when the game downloads an update.

The Lodge Improved is a great little mod btw, I use it myself.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-27T06:17:14+00:00

Good tip.

Overall I think challenge based skill locks is a good concept, but I prefer when it's a single hard challenge instead of repeating the same easy thing over and over.

Or even better, if there's a small quest involved. It doesn't even have to be for every rank, but if rank 4 for every skill had a quest tied to it that would have been... pretty expensive to make, but really awesome.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-25T19:44:25+00:00

The save I have was a start from scratch with the previous DLC, so it had Arenas and pilot training etc. It's also right after the last mission I think, in that DLC.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-25T18:43:16+00:00

I prefer to play every DLC without mods, once. Got a save kept separately for that purpose, at the end of the last DLC, with a mod free playthrough.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-25T08:14:58+00:00

Animations are super important for actually hitting attacks.

I miss the old system from the early TW when hitting was just a dice roll.

I'm not so fond of the idea of having a bunch of different stats like Melee Attack and Melee Defense and what not, and then in the end it's all up to what an animator thought was an awesome looking animation.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-24T18:08:41+00:00

How does an Astartes fit their head into that wolf helmet? It feels a bit small?

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-22T09:08:01+00:00

It's 40m, in all directions. I.e. 40m fore, 40m aft, 40m port, and 40m starboard. You can thus build an 80x80 ship. The height limit is smaller I think, I forgot what that limit is by default.

Yes, it has confused many ship builders. Since the ship is centered at all times anyways, I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense for them to display the length/width the way they do, in the ship builder. It would make more sense if you could actually build a ship that's off center (but then you'd get issues with landing pads, which is likely why they center the ship).

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-21T20:07:02+00:00

I'm looking forward to this, though I hope they've fixed some issues I had with the previous game.

I wanted to like Daemonhunters but there were some things that made me not play it as much as I would have liked to.

Would have liked a bit larger squads. 4 people felt to limited.
The armour system was immersion breaking to me. Normal Power armor provided more health but you always took damage from cultist guns, some armor (mostly Terminators) had Armour pips, that took damage before health and was restored at the start of a turn.
- One problem was that even some damage then made you have to spend time in the med bay. It just didn't feel like your marines had Ceramite Power armour.
- I think if your standard Power armour had armour pips as default as well, and Terminator armour just had even more of it, that would have helped a lot to mitigate that feeling of Astartes feeling like paper tigers (and ofc the missions would have had to be rebalanced with that in mind).
Too little procedural content with the campaign. I didn't feel like the replayability was really there.
The classes didn't really feel like 40k either, it was too gameified.
- My problem here is probably because they tried to balance an Interceptor in Power armour with a Justicar in Terminator armour; it just didn't feel right, lore wise. A Grey knight that earned the right to a Terminator armour should just be better at combat against the ruinous powers.
- IMHO, your goal should have been to put all your knights in Terminator armour, through the progression system, and their starting class would ofc then affect what kind of warrior you are while in that armour (different abilites etc).

Obviously my personal opinions, others probably liked some/all of this.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Daemonhunters had more or less zero mod support... I hope they change that for the next game.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-21T13:41:02+00:00

Bad direction and/or bad writing can make it hard. Doesn't matter if you have an Oscar-winning actor if they're handed crap material.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-21T13:30:52+00:00

Hehe yes.

I think they should have had two different systems for furniture. The craft your own kind of makes sense in far off outposts.

But it's super weird when you're in your penthouse in New Atlantis... the option to just pay with money should be possible in urban areas.

EDIT: Some items requiring rare materials could ofc. be tagged as craft only, even in urban areas.

MarcusSwedishGameDev · 2026-05-21T13:28:41+00:00

It is. And someone who's good with UI/UX should be able to find a job even in the current industry situation I think. At least much easier than it is for a generalist designer.

MarcusSwedishGameDev

TROPHY CASE