[MOD WIP] Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 (updated 01/10/09)
Sins Forums
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.
So good luck and thanks.