Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector News

It’s finally time for the news many of you have been waiting for.

First and foremost, we are glad to announce that Warhammer 40.000: Battlesector – Necrons will be released on April 21st.

The Necrons DLC will come with one new playable faction, fourteen new units, new abilities, new heroes and weapons. What’s not to like?

It will be accompanied by a free update, introducing a new campaign type called Planetary Supremacy. It is a single player focused procedural campaign in which you’ll fight other factions as well as minor factions. You can play it as the Blood Angels, the Tyranids or the Necrons (ownership of the Necrons DLC is only required if you mean to play as the Necrons).

In order to showcase what’s coming,we have scheduled two preview streams on our Twitch channel before the release.

The first one will take place on April 7th at 3 pm UTC. Slitherine’s Edmon (community manager) and David Sharrock (producer for the game) will play as the Necrons faction for the first time.

The second preview stream will happen on April 14th at 3:30 pm UTC, when Edmon and David will play the new Planetary Supremacy campaign type.

See you then!

In the last Dev Diary, back in February, we announced that the beta for the Necrons would be starting soon. We are pleased to share that the beta has now been underway for the last few weeks.

We can report that the Necrons are in a good state of development. We regularly bring in new testers, so if you applied and you haven’t received an invite, make sure to be on the lookout and check your email inbox, as you might be among the selected testers for the next wave.

We interviewed some of our current testers, and asked them their thoughts about the new DLC and the new units. We also asked them to share their favourite images captured with Photo Mode. Here’s what they had to say:

Rekker

I really think the direction the game is heading with the Necrons is a good one. They are gonna bring a lot to the table. Overall I think Necrons were a great choice to go with, because they add a lot of flavor to the game. The models look great and really captured the Necron feel.

My favorite unit is the Hexmark Destroyer. It's such a useful unit and the model really represents some of the gritty side of Necrons. I love it. Goes with me everywhere.

Screenshot Courtesy of Rekker

philstat

I’m very impressed with the DLC, Necrons, in my opinion, are by far the best race out of three currently available. The 14 units available are a good combination, nice mix between ranged, melee and heroes.

My favorite unit is the Overlord, he’s a great melee specialist and his ability to fall back and create Necron Warriors every three turns is a nice touch.

Screenshot courtesy of philstat

italiangamer89

I really love this new dlc, it shows that the devs are passionate about the game, the amount of detail in each unit is amazing and it depicts them really well, a slow immortal army with superior technology.

My favorite unit is the Deathmarks, really good at longer ranges, it makes them useful at picking off enemy units before they have a chance to start doing damage to your army, and their ability to teleport out of trouble makes them really survivable, you can also use them to do a good amount of damage to enemy commanders or heavier units, like the Baal Predator or the Exocrine.
Screenshot courtesy of Paradigm_Shift

Thomas

It is a change. It is a change in gameplay, and the way situations work out. Situations where I thought units were safe... now they are not. You want to slowly move forward? You can't. Necrons make the game much more aggressive. With their healing and reanimation protocols you just can't sit around and wait. You need to play aggressive, fast and deadly. That brings the gameplay on a much higher level.

Also Necrons are a good faction for new players. With focus on durability and strong ranged weapons you can go in with just an endless marching fireline from Warriors and Immortals. And when you know that, there are a lot of specialized units with juicy ability to experiment with.

Hard to say what my favorite unit is, cause they are all awesome. I think it is the Overlord. Not only is he a fantastic looking model, but his ability to support troops, spawn new one and fight make him just an awesome unit. Also the Glaive simply makes him 20% cooler.
Screenshot Courtesy of Thomas

We hope you like all the feedback and screenshots from our testers.

We can’t wait to show you more about the new faction and the new Planetary Supremacy campaign. Furthermore, we'll soon be revealing the release date of Necrons DLC - it is not far now, promise. Stay tuned!

Today is a day full of new things for Battlesector, so let's jump right into it.

[h3]New Soundtrack DLC[/h3]
First off, we are releasing the amazing soundtrack as a separate DLC.
It comprises of fourteen beautiful tracks composed by the talented Ash Gibson Greig, known for another soundtrack, that of the previous title from Black Lab Games, Battlestar Galactica Deadlock.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1726490/Warhammer_40000_Battlesector__Soundtrack/

[h3]Slitherine Publisher Sale[/h3]
As part of the Slitherine Publisher Sale, we will be discounting Battlesector at 35% off from February 10 6 pm GMT to February 14 6 pm GMT.
We're also running some pretty significant discounts across a range of other games in the Slitherine catalogue, and you can check them out here.

[h3]Deluxe Edition Bundle[/h3]
We're also launching a new bundle on Steam, containing the base game, the two elite DLCs plus the soundtrack, for a further 10% discount on everything. This discount is applied on top of the ongoing discounts on individual items.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/24556/Warhammer_40000_Battlesector_Deluxe_Edition/?snr=1_5_9__403

[h3]Strategy Bundle[/h3]
We also have a second new bundle coming! Many of you might be already familiar with Warhammer 40,000: Gladius, the only 4X game set in the grim darkness of the far future. Well, now you can get Gladius and Battlesector as part of the same bundle.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/24638/Gladius__Battlesector__Warhammer_Strategy_Bundle/

[h3]Free Wallpapers[/h3]
As part of this week's patch we released new free wallpapers.
You can find them in your Wallpapers folder, in your installation directory (on Steam it'll normally be Steam/steamapps/common/Battle Sector/ Wallpapers).

[h3]New Tournament open for sign-ups[/h3]
We are also opening a new multiplayer tournament for Battlesector.
This one is the second official tournament, after the first PBEM tournament which took place during the Christmas holidays. It will comprise of three different rounds (each showcasing a different Strategic Command scenario), each round lasting one week.

The tournament will begin on February 17th, so you have one week to sign up. There are no prizes this time, except glory and battlefield renown throughout the Imperium, but we intend to start planning for actual Leagues to take place... but we'll revealing more about that at a later date. In the meantime, why not get some practice against human opponents? You can sign up here.

++ Thought of the Day ++

Victory is not yours to celebrate. The Emperor already knew this battle was won;
your reward is a lifetime of faith and service in His name.

Last December, we announced that the Necrons are coming to Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector in 2022. We can report that work building the Necron forces is progressing well, and we expect to start beta testing soon. Back in December when we first announced the Necrons DLC we had assumed we would be able to start the beta in January. Unfortunately, it will have to start a bit later, in March. We have received so many applications and we're currently going through them. If you have been picked you will hear from us, so make sure to be on the lookout and check your e-mail inbox during March.

Flayed Ones

We also announced a new style of campaign that will be available alongside the Necrons faction pack, and the good news is that this is also progressing well. It’s still a little too early to share details, as some things are still in flux and subject to change, but we’ll share more information as soon as we can.

For this dev diary, we thought we’d go behind the scenes and talk about the process we use to bring a unit from Warhammer 40,000 into Battlesector.

If you are at all familiar with the game development processes, you’d know that the first stage a character usually goes through is concepting. This is when the character is designed, outlining the attributes that describe the character. Development art is generated to express what the character looks like.

Because the units we are adding to Battlesector already exist, we have a basis to work from. We’ll review the relevant codex, and explore how a unit is used in the tabletop so its attributes can be mapped across to the gameplay requirements for Battlesector. As Battlesector has its own ruleset, and digital games are very different from tabletop games, a lot of interpretation is required.

As for concept art, we get that in the form of Games Workshop Citadel's miniatures!

"They're behind me, aren't they?"

Our art team will use Warhammer miniatures as a reference and create a high poly sculpt of the unit and its weapons. These sculpts are made up of millions of polygons and are very detailed, including scratches and battle damage.

High-polygon sculpt of a Necron Warrior.

Next, we use a process called retopology to make a version of the unit with a lower polygon count that is suitable for use in the game. A 3D artist creates a new model to fit over the top of the high-poly sculpt.

From there, it’s on to texturing, where the iconic colours of the miniatures are added. The fine details from the high-polygon sculpt are embedded in the texture maps, bringing out the details.

Necron Warrior with texturing

The unit model is now ready for animation. All units have a minimum set of required animations, for idles, movement, being hit by enemy attacks, and ranged and/or melee combat. For most of these animations, we’ll create several variations so that each model in a multi-model unit moves slightly differently. In addition, there are unique animations for special abilities.

Necron Warrior being animated

With the 3D aspects of the art process complete, it’s now time to get the unit into the game engine. We’ve got a number of proprietary tools for configuring a unit’s statistics and its art and animation.

Necron Warriors in-engine.

Whilst this is going on, the artwork is also being generated for unit portraits, and weapon and special ability icons - these are all hand-drawn using digital art software.

In addition, there are audio requirements. Voice overs for barks are written and recorded, post-production effects are added. Sound effects for all aspects of the unit’s utility are created, such as movement, weapons fire and using special abilities. These sound assets also require configuration in the game engine to ensure they trigger at the right time.

This process can take several person-weeks (or months) to complete for a single unit. Along the way, we are sharing progress with Games Workshop, to ensure that the units are as authentic and faithful to the miniatures and the lore as possible.

Finally, when all of this is done for all of the units in a faction, balancing can start. Based on internal playtesting, adjustments are made to a unit’s statistics, and if required, any aspect of the unit that isn’t working out how it should be is revised.

We then enlist the assistance of beta testers, who put the units through their paces and give us feedback on what’s working and what’s not. Based on this feedback, we’ll further iterate on the balance of the units until everything feels about right.

We hope you’ve found this peek at how a faction is added to Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector interesting, and if you would like to participate in the beta test for the Necrons, you can still apply here. Thanks for your continued support!

- The Black Lab Games team

Hello Everyone,

We're releasing a new update for Battlesector with multiple bug fixes!

Warhammer 40,000:Battlesector Changelog 1.00.14:

Bug Fixes
• FIX: Async games are ending prematurely, and scores are reported incorrectly
• FIX: Winners bonus not included for Exterminatus matches
• FIX: Purity Seals display above weapon UI when using a gamepad
• FIX: Cannot change unit selected after performing an action in some circumstances
• FIX: Game is unable to run when using Thai calendar
• FIX: Tutorial prompt does not go to the third tutorial
• FIX: Some Tyranid models are slightly distorted at long range