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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.





4,108,208 views 1,754 replies
Reply #1501 Top

LOL Baldy = Picard...did the Enterprise also have phasers?

 

I know. I just prefer to call him Captain Baldy.

 

And of course the Enterprise had phasers. They were just ineffective and they needed a more powerful weapon.

 

Did you even see 'The Best of Both Worlds'? They're easily the two best TNG episodes.

Reply #1502 Top

dchan this is a Work in Progress. There is alot of things that are hardwired into the game and that cannot be changed. The time period for this is the Dominion war  that happened throughout DS9. Stress said before the Connie was put into the game as a colony ship just to be in the game because well he wanted it there. What version of this mod are you using exactly?

Reply #1503 Top

Hey I've got a suggestion for the MOD. Make the capital ships cruisers, all of them except the sovereign, neghvar, dderdix and enslaver, those would be the only buidable cap ships and the strongest of all in the fleet.  My reasoning for this is two fold: one it forces the AI to build more of people favorite ships and would help to solve the problem of all of your cap ships in a battle being targeted first.  With just one cap ship the AI doesn't seem to focus all of it's attacking fleets attention to it, thus it would survive longer without needing to be uber'd up.  Of course if you roll into battle with a bunch of sovereign's then it's not much of a change. 

Anyway I came to this conclusion after "tweaking" Stress and Shimmers mod a little bit (I won't spread it and respect the authors rights).  I started by combining my favorite Romulan, Federation and klingon ships into the Fed race, a total of 27 ships with 9 frigates, 9 cruiser and 9 cap ships.  i played against the Dominion like that for while and then turned the Borg on and made them a playable faction.  What i realized when I turned on the Borg is that the AI doesn't want to build unless they have at least one Cap ship, so I gave them one just so they would expand and expand they did!  They built several of the single cap ship i gave them and they also built all of the frigates and cruisers (except the coffin for some reason).  next I decided to experiment with the Fed's and klink's. I gave them each just one cap ship and the same thing happened.  The problem I keep running into is i still haven't figured out how to make the cap ships in the game cruisers, still looking through all the files to figure out what needs to be edited.  but what I'm getting at is you could make the cap ships cruisers and move them into the frigate factory, there can be a max of 9 slots so that would absorb the extra ships. 

The last reason for my idea is the AI usually only builds a couple different types of cap ships.  Sometimes it will build all of them (mayabe) but generally just one of each.  So this would throw a little more variety into the mix.

Ok so in closing I just want to say that this is a suggestion only and not a complaint.  The game plays great the way you guys made it and if I or anyone else is just not satisfied then i guess I'll just have to learn to MOD myself!  Thanks for the game guys.

Reply #1504 Top

Quoting Jaster7lid, reply 2
dchan this is a Work in Progress. There is alot of things that are hardwired into the game and that cannot be changed. The time period for this is the Dominion war  that happened throughout DS9. Stress said before the Connie was put into the game as a colony ship just to be in the game because well he wanted it there. What version of this mod are you using exactly?

latest

 

a quick question...

What if I just replace/add the files from the mod into v1.0 will it work?

Reply #1505 Top

Version 1.0 of what?

Reply #1506 Top

a quick question...

What if I just replace/add the files from the mod into v1.0 will it work?

 

From the first post, which is also repeated on every page:

 

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

Reply #1507 Top

version 1.00 of the game...

 

Also, I would like to make this consideration before judging this suggestion.

I think that the Federation should be Tec because

  • the federation is build of several planets and races
  • the federation buildings and ship are more angular than the other races
  • Klingons and other races ships are manned by their own races where the federation is manned by serveral races, valcans, bajorans, people with blue skins (don't know who they are called), betazoid

Also for the buildings, this my suggestion

  • when building research facilities, federation research should be on science vessel
  • the federation ship building should be much bigger to be able to house them, or build a star dock instead
  • for repairing, there should be large docking ports, and should take a while
Reply #1508 Top

Quoting greyfoxthemighty, reply 6




a quick question...

What if I just replace/add the files from the mod into v1.0 will it work?





 

From the first post, which is also repeated on every page:

 



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

what i meant by this is that i would place all of the files into the c:\Program Files whether into the gameinfo, sounds and etc. would it still work?

Reply #1509 Top

Quoting dchan1936, reply 7
version 1.00 of the game...

 

Also, I would like to make this consideration before judging this suggestion.

I think that the Federation should be Tec because


the federation is build of several planets and races
the federation buildings and ship are more angular than the other races
Klingons and other races ships are manned by their own races where the federation is manned by serveral races, valcans, bajorans, people with blue skins (don't know who they are called), betazoid
Also for the buildings, this my suggestion


when building research facilities, federation research should be on science vessel
the federation ship building should be much bigger to be able to house them, or build a star dock instead
for repairing, there should be large docking ports, and should take a while

the guys in blue are bolians, like darkshimmer said when the mod is complete it wont matter if the feds r advent or tec they will have there own research and structures as will the other races.

Reply #1510 Top

Quoting icemanA84, reply 9

Quoting dchan1936, reply 7version 1.00 of the game...

 

Also, I would like to make this consideration before judging this suggestion.

I think that the Federation should be Tec because


the federation is build of several planets and races
the federation buildings and ship are more angular than the other races
Klingons and other races ships are manned by their own races where the federation is manned by serveral races, valcans, bajorans, people with blue skins (don't know who they are called), betazoid
Also for the buildings, this my suggestion


when building research facilities, federation research should be on science vessel
the federation ship building should be much bigger to be able to house them, or build a star dock instead
for repairing, there should be large docking ports, and should take a while
the guys in blue are bolians, like darkshimmer said when the mod is complete it wont matter if the feds r advent or tec they will have there own research and structures as will the other races.

It is just mearly a suggestion, no need to nuts about it

Reply #1511 Top

Well I was able to do what I suggested in my previous post a few replies up on this page.  I was able to make all the Cap ships cruisers or "heavy frigates" except the Sovereign, Neghvar, DDredix and Enslaver which I left in the Cap ship factory.  I moved them into the frigate factory, saved and fired up the game.  It works great if you have it on Hard or Unfair.  The AI built lots and all of the new cruisers and built the other ships as well.  On a medium map it would typically build only two Capital ships so you might only have two Sovy's running around.  I removed the level up ability from the new cruisers so they would not become more powerfull than an actual cap ship.  The process was easy once I figured out you could just use a HeavyFrigate entity file as a template and copy paste the necessary info. 

Anway so what I'm getting at is the fights were more diverse, the single strongest cap ship that can level up is still a force to be reckoned with on the battle field and now that you have other powerfull cruisers as targets the AI doesn't force it's entire fleet to fire on one ship and the balancing still works great.  So i'm sure I'm probably not the first person to try this but I didn't see any other post's on the subject and thought it might be worth the MOD makers to take a look at if there interested, it is there MOD regardless.

Reply #1512 Top

I think the majority of us are happy with the cap ships as they are, i have heard no complaints : )  This is Stress and Darkshimmer's baby, dont hyjack the thread with your home project.  Keep it to yourself, they have put a ton of work into this, altering their files and posting about it in their thread might be a bit tacky and insulting (if you mean it to be or not).

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Reply #1513 Top

Hey tenhunter, if you had actually bothered to read the part where I said it was only a suggestion and that I also said " I wont spread it and respect the authors rights" I guess you wouldn't be pointing out my actions as "tacky and insulting".  I think your quick to judge attitude is "tacky and insulting".  I must ask if you have ever offered any suggestions to the MOD creators?  Thats who my comments where directed to, not you, your name doesn't appear in the credits.  If the MOD creators want to slam me then they have every right to do so.

Reply #1514 Top

As an afterthought I realized that maybe tenhunter didn't completely read my last post where I said

Well I was able to do what I suggested in my previous post a few replies up on this page

Maybe he didn't scroll up and read my first post?  So to end any confusion I'll just quote a few lines:

Hey I've got a suggestion for the MOD

(I won't spread it and respect the authors rights)

Ok so in closing I just want to say that this is a suggestion only and not a complaint. The game plays great the way you guys made it and if I or anyone else is just not satisfied then i guess I'll just have to learn to MOD myself! Thanks for the game guys.

 

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Reply #1515 Top

HEY >:( . I will not tolerate fighting in this thread.

 

Not that I can do anything about it, I just won't tolerate it. :P

Reply #1516 Top

Quoting tenhunter, reply 18
Explosions are animations that the ship creater simply puts into the .entity file.  Loki will probably put in bigger explotions but all of the actual SOA ships seem good for now.

Got it.  So is it possible for the explosions to deal damage to nearby ships?

Reply #1517 Top

I would assume that you could add a splash damage ability to each ship that comes into effect when it dies, or you could only add it to ships that seem like they would have that much destructive power in their reactor.

Reply #1518 Top

 

Got it.  So is it possible for the explosions to deal damage to nearby ships?

 

i dunno if its possible or not, you might have to ask Manshooter or another resident Sins Code monkey on that one.

 

o and feel free to argue on, i'm getting a kick out of it, Its better than throwning in a sandwich into a room of hungry people. It can be quite entertaining.

Reply #1519 Top

Most of you dont understand how difficult it was to get the mod to this point. Despite all of the hardcoded nonsense. While the suggestions are all cool and whatnot you also have to think about if it "can" be done. Most of whats being suggested we already thought of, but could not do. Sins is very picky about how things work. We had to bend the ships to work with sins not make sins into trek.

As far as i knew the balancing was up to date before i packaged, and uploaded 0.03b if not shimmer can give the numbers and they can be manually corrected by the users. Im not at my home system nor do i have any way to reupload the mod at the present time.

We didnt get to the explosions we are using manshooters mod for that. We are currently working on research, structures, abilitys, fighters, and more tweaks just like the main topic says.

The current shiplist is staying as it is. Shimmers balancing will only be changed to correct what is needed. Cardies dont use torpedoes on its ships, but they do on thier stations (ds-9/nor station). Hey i didnt write the show.

I am almost done with one of the new fed stations. 0.04 is well underway. In the meantime im gonna sit back and watch the ungrateful fight over nonsense... :p

Reply #1520 Top

Don't worry guys, you've still got loyal fans who love the way the mod is going, and appreciate the hardwork you guys have put into it and are continuing to put into it. In the meantime, popcorn anyone?

Reply #1521 Top

You guys are right.  I apologize for bringing a fight to your room.  It was rude of me.  From now on I am just a spectator and will keep my "suggestions" to myself.  The argument is ridiculous as my suggestion to change an already fantastic MOD. 

v/r

the now silent fan.

Reply #1523 Top

hey um for 0.03b i halved all the weapon damage but the dominoins since there caps where already half damage, also i added at least vanilla abilitys to the caps, also made the pirates borg only,  plus i increased the turret defens platforms to fire the whol grav radius as well as doubled there damage, the whole thing works real nice and made some maps for it, was wondering if u guys would be ok with me posting it to see what people think as well as add something tell u guys get out 0.04

Reply #1524 Top

Quoting devancio, reply 22
 Do you mean that you going to put DS9 in your mod?

what building will it be?