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[MOD WIP] Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 (updated 01/10/09)

[MOD WIP] Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 (updated 01/10/09)

Featured (by a small mention) in the October edition of PC Gamer magazine

Candidate for Mod Database's 2008 Mod of the Year

This is the OLD "Work in Progress" thread for the Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 mod.

The new WIP topic is here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/342747

The "Release" topic can be found here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/322473


The mod is intended to be a hommage, and tribute to the original Sacrifice of Angels mod for Homeworld. It will use many of the same models, and effects created for that mod by the Trekmods team. Like the original SoA mod SoA2 is set during the Dominion War era of Star Trek. Using both canon, and non-canon units to recreate those battles with Sins "empire building" mechanic added. Like in SoA you can fight battles in SoA2 using hundreds of starships. Sometimes thousands if your computer can handle it ;)

While the mod was not intended as a "Total Conversion". That is exactly what it is winding up being. There is much about the Sins engine, and mechanics that we still need to learn. There are some hard coded stumbling blocks we have to overcome.

The factions will be the Federation, Klingons, Romulan, and the Dominion (with Breen, and Cardassian ally units). The main factions seen in the Dominion War. With a "Surprise" as the Pirate faction.

Factions like the Borg "may" be added in the future. LokiGodofMischief is working on a very good 3rd party Borg add on for SoA 2. It is very possible his add on may be merged with SoA 2 at a much later time.

The current version of SoA 2 is  0.03b   "The Second Dominion War". Look for it here  https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/322473

0.03b only works with Sins versions 1.1, 1.11, and 1.12.

All previous versions of SoA 2 are obsolete, and will not be supported, or hosted anymore. All older version downloads will be removed.

We will NOT port SoA 2 over to Entrenchment until after Entrenchment is out of beta, and released. Along with proper forge tool updates.

I am working on the models mostly ALONE so it may take a while for any new ship model updates.

Darkshimmer is the Balancing guru, Code monkey, and Master at arms. We do have other contributers, and the best 3rd party work from the finest artists in the trek mod community to help make SoA 2 the best it can be.

Status of Demo 0.04  "The actors are in place" 

Will update when i have news.

General Changes:

Manshooters Volumetric Explosions mod will be included as of 0.03a

May include Sins Plus (planets), but ill need to see how much that mod needs changing to incorporate into SoA 2.

SoA 2 0.03 and above is now patch 1.1, and better compatable. Sins patches 1.11, and 1.12 only address balancing, and online exploits, and have no effect on the mod.

Ships will have some anti stike craft weaponry.

Ships are still being added and balanced accordingly.

More re-balancing so that one faction is not overpowered over the other.

The Federation:

Faction is complete. Only structures left

The Klingon Empire

Faction is complete. Only structures left.

The Romulan Star Empire:

Faction is complete. Only structures left

The Dominion:

Faction is complete. Still needs balancing work.

Pirates:

They were going to be the Borg, but that idea failed. So we are looking into Random multirace ship spawns.

Planetary Defenders

Basically "Ships of the week" like the Maquis, Sona, Ferrengi, Tammarian battle cruisers and the like.

Balancing:  Darkshimmer has the Federation, Romulan, and Klingon Empire, and Unified Dominion balanced.

Gameplay: We now have a working Cloaking Device! Check the ModDB page for the WIP video. Cloaking will not be fully implemented in the mod until version 0.04

Art: We are working on an LCARS style UI, adding proper icons, and pictures for all of the new units. The UI is going to take a while to do, because of all of the redundancy of the Sins UI. SoA 2 uses 2 sets of UI textures. Instead of the standard 4 textures for buttons, and 2 textures for icons. SoA 2 uses 8 textures for buttons, and 4 textures for icons which IMO is a major waste of resources, because sins loads all these textures at startup. Unfortunetly i dont see any other way to do it. What is kind of cool is that we dont have to use the same HUD for each faction. It is possible to have unique HUDs, but again the perfomance hit, because of the extra drain on resources could be big, and not worth it.

In Planning: (No promises, or guarentees, but we will try to add these if possible.)

Troop Transport effects.

Planetary invasion animations

Tractor beams. (need a code monkey for this)

Whatever else we can think of and are capable of doing.

Future Updates:

SoA 2 0.04 is now in planning, and will be focused primarily on Proper research trees, Ability's, and adding proper Structures. More than likely demo 0.04 will be the last demo. After that then the full mod should be ready.

SoA 2 0.05 will be the final spit, and polish of the mod. It will focus mainly on re-balancing if needed. Also final artwork changes will be made here. Which will include some ship model re-builds, and re-texturing.

The Full SoA 2 1.0 mod will be released "When it is Finished". We are doing this on our own free time. We aren't getting paid to do this. We have no set schedule. We have no time limit. I want this one to be good. So it wont go online until we feel it is ready.

*NOTE: Much about Sins as we are all now realizing is hardcoded. SoA 2 is going to be far from a perfect "trek" mod due to these hardcoded issues. However we will try to do the best we can with workarounds, and compromises to get it as close as possible. Like i said some things wont be perfect. Some things cannot be done at all. Enjoy the mod for what it is, and try not to be too "nit picky".

SoA2 will be hosted on Mod Database once it is ready http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-trek-sacrifice-of-angels-2

This main header will be updated when i have news to post.





4,110,422 views 1,754 replies
Reply #427 Top
When it is done is when it will be released.

We are having some MAJOR issues with shields and weapons. The no aft firing beams is tossing a monkey wrench in the mod.

anyways least i fixed 'black ship syndrome"



i have no internet access where i live, and have to drive 25 miles to the closest starbucks to use internet so this is not helping matters much, but at least the Trekmods shipyards are going full steam now. Here is the 1st NEW model for SoA2. The SoA2 Ambassador class Yamaguchi refit. wheighing in at 2800 tri's. She is proof of concept that a model doesnt have to have uber poly counts to look good.

Once we have weapon and shield issues fixed we can release something. till then ill post news as it comes
Reply #429 Top
What kind of shield and weapon issues? Maybe we can help. :) I have a unit in my mod which has 360 degrees beam weapon coverage, pretty sure it can fire aft as well.

And nice job on the models. Good to hear you fixed the issues with those!
Reply #430 Top
I have been a fan of Stardock and it's products for a long time. This is the first game I've ever tried, which I just bought yesterday, and was curious about mods for it as I've been playing around with the map construct program all day. When I saw this forum post about the ST mod being a matter of simply not "if", but "when", I nearly shit myself. This game in and of itself is awesome, but to think that you guys are putting this much time and effort into making a truly great 4x RTS ST game....I'm having trouble forming words to my roommates about it! Needless to say, I'm going to be telling everyone I know about this mod, and I'll be checking back quite often!
Reply #431 Top
My god... you've found a place on Earth that has no Starbucks within 25 miles? I didn't think such a place existed.

PS - awesome ships. Just need the Galaxy and we'll have 1701-B through E! And hey, at least if they can't do aft phasers, it will give the ships a reason to maneuver slightly in combat. If they can fire 360 degrees, they'd never move at all unless they have to close to firing range!
Reply #432 Top
Here is the 1st NEW model for SoA2. The SoA2 Ambassador class Yamaguchi refit. wheighing in at 2800 tri's. She is proof of concept that a model doesnt have to have uber poly counts to look good.T
... -tear- X-(
its... just so BEAUTIFUL! I'm pretty sure that's the prettiest thing I've ever seen!
Reply #433 Top
Ingame shot of the Klingon Bird of Prey (Work in Progress). Still got some bugs to iron out, but we're making progress in getting ships ingame now at least.

Reply #434 Top
have you found a way to make ships like the bird of prey more mobile? Or do they still just stop and fire when they engage the enemy?
Reply #435 Top
Ingame shot of the Klingon Bird of Prey (Work in Progress). Still got some bugs to iron out, but we're making progress in getting ships ingame now at least.This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 1024x768.


Damn that looks nice, Bird of Prey is one of my favorite ships :D
Reply #436 Top
Mrbo13, Stress, Darkthunder GJ!! there all exellent models, I was surprised by Mrbo's model, that probebly got Stress thinking/dreaming of his old mod idea for a TOS or Full Era mod. Very quality once it gets cured of "darkshipism". Good to see another pic from Stress showing he is still alive out there in the apparent bush country he lives in (if +25 minutes away from starbucks you must be over half an hour from running water, and working toilet :P ) and then BAM the BOP shocked me, so much talk about Fed ships i wasent expecting the #1 alien ship in ST. Which BOP is that? the Fighter 20 crew old version or the newer 200 crew (frigate?) BOP? and which role are you putting it in? figher or frigate? or both...

Good Job on all the models/pics was a nice update havnet trolled the thread in a while...
Reply #437 Top
its the B'Rel class 150m 2 x Triple fire distuptors and 1 x Photon launcher. The B'Rel will just be a basic friate for the klingons. not a threat in singles but in groups they are deadly as they are in the trek world.

I'll get some more WIP pics of various thins i have updated for this mod. as of right now we have 3 ships actually in work, should have 4 or 5 by the end of next week.
Reply #439 Top
Just over 2k. But the Bird of Prey we've got ingame is primarily there as a placeholder. We have a better model which will be used for the final version :)
Reply #440 Top
sweet... question in the way of gameplay not really related to Trek at all... Do you guys have any plans on changing Planets/phaselanes/etc, not just in the way on naming and textures, but perhaps in abilities and (please!) size? Maybe something like combining the Sins Plus planet types (appropriately remade for Trek) with Cybdevil's planet sizes or perhaps HammerSun's moons? I really wanna see gameplay where large fleets actually have to maneuver in the gravity wells, they don't just take up the entire well. Just want to say again that I am super psyched about this mod, and fyi, I still REALLY want to join this team, so if you've got room...
Just my thoughts,
Keep up the good work!

Ezraeil
Reply #441 Top
right now we're just concentrating on getting the ships in along with the sfx, fx, and theme music.
Reply #442 Top
here's a few pics for starts





Reply #444 Top
Indeed. Darkshimmer does great work. Just wanted to add a clarification that he's done the work on getting the Bird of Prey ingame, not me. I just posted a WIP image of what Darkshimmer had done :)

Off Topic: Is it possible to make the image below as a signature on these forums?
Reply #445 Top
Hey I know you said this will be realeased when it is finished but i'm not one who checks forums often is there anyway to (or like any site) that i can set up so could get an e-mail of like when it is released or soemthing?
Reply #446 Top
Feel free to use the music and sound effects I did, you can change them or whatever you want, no credit neccessary.

Sovie looks great by the way, wish I was playing with it... =P

Adm. Cobbs
Reply #447 Top
I didn't see it but if it hasn't come up, your best bet for a carrier is the Akira, it is more or less one huge shuttle bay.
Reply #448 Top
the kira will be coming soon, just added the romulan warbird , the map i played on sucked for pics, too many stars giving off light.got to work on the warp, looks great on all the ships but the warbird. even to scale its just huge.
Reply #449 Top
got the warbird in here's some pics









Reply #450 Top
I can't wait! :d  :d  :d  :d