Soulstorm metamaps - the planning
The following is a brief glimpse at the development of the Dawn of War: Soulstorm metamap. Whether the maps were made by Relic or Iron Lore and who drew them in what is unknown, but what is known is that they're almost certainly "work in progress" designs and can be found in the game data, in-keeping with their previous inclusions.
The final product
In case anyone hasn't seen the metamap in Dawn of War yet, here is the final version that you get to play on:
The metamap includes four planets, three moons, six warp gates, and an extra gate for the Dark Eldar. Each planet holds at least two of the factions, and the moons around the left-hand planet can be attacked from two territories.
Previous incarnations
The following are previous incarnations that were found in the Engine.sga archive - the same place as the original Dawn of War's army painter mock-up.
Each map is titled "DoW: FR metamap". What the "FR" stood for is unknown but is probably an internal working name. The meaning (if any) of the symbols underneath the key is also unknown.
Final draft
First up is what is presumably the final draft of the map, as it most closely matches what was actually put in to Soulstorm. Each of the planets has a matching number of territories, all of the separated territories have the same number of routes across water or through space, and the HQ locations are definitely set. The only visible difference is that the Blood Raven HQ territory drifts away from the rest of the continent by the final map.
Quite what happened to the image, why the colours are so strange and stripy, and why there is a horizontal shift in the image I don't know. The originals were Targa images, so they could be quickly made scans of drawings or similar.
Earlier draft
The following appears to be the earlier draft of the map. All of the armies are still in about the same places, but each planet has one or two less territories on it.
In terms of absolute changes, it was made more difficult for the Blood Ravens to directly capture a moon, the two sides of the planet gained some outlying islands, one territory on the Chaos world seems to have been shrunk while the neighbouring territory split in half and became its own island, the Eldar/Necron planet was padded out with additional a bigger territory and a small territory, and the Sisters were giving an extra territory to fight the Guard over before conquering their planet.
