Dawn of War Codex

Hi all,

Why don't plasma devs cost power? Their close equivalent, noise marines, cost power (the upgrade itself doesn't, but the base unit does). It seems like a unit that has anti-all damage should cost some power. I understand that it isn't a hard vehicle counter, but a well-landed plasma shot can still inflict serious damage to a vehicle.

It isn't a glaring balance issue, but from a design perspective I'm not sure what the rationale is for having plasma devs as a separate unit with no power cost, when you could make them an upgrade of the dev squad (reducing their req cost and increasing their power cost).

EDIT - It's been suggested that the lack of power cost was a retail design choice to make up for the fact that SM had no AV setups (no lascannon). With ***chaos rising's addition of the lascannon upgrade, this problem doesnt exist anymore.

Oddnerd wrote:EDIT - It's been suggested that the lack of power cost was a retail design choice to make up for the fact that SM had no AV setups (no lascannon). With Elites addition of the lascannon upgrade, this problem doesnt exist anymore.

http://dow.wikia.com/wiki/Retribution/Devastator_Marine_Squad/Upgrades

I say 50 power for P-Devs. They are very useful.

That is it for me.

From early on in the games design, each race was given a very important tool that was power free. In the case of SM, its power free artillery. For orks, nids, and eldar, it was power free AV.

I think a great reason to jusitify why the Pdev should remain power free is that SM as a race, while having amazing transition AV, also pay out of the nose in power for it. The counter to a person buying lots of upgrades is usually to pump out another squad that said upgrades are ineffective against. Having to counter a mass of infantry with another unit that costs 50 power seems very problematic to me.

Imho SM T2 is very power intensive as it is. So I don't mind them havind a req sink there.

I honestly think they cost a bit too little for how much damage they can do. Especially when they are buffed. I think their req cost could go a up a tad. Like 25 req. Because you can ground target pretty well if you know unit movements or use shouts to shotgun blast a unit to make sure that dev shot hits. And if there is a force commander with sacred standard around...well you get the point.