Looks awesome

@Klentrogen



A god?
Well, I have no divine aspirations, but your wish, so it happens, will be granted at least when it comes to Xin carriers; both the Suryata Swarm Cruiser I am currently making and the capital carrier will have allmost double the number of strike craft deployable. However, for the purposes of keeping things balanced, the Xin "plasmid drones" concept has them as very fast and very fragile. They will be able to be replaced quicker though as they are not actually built, but formed out of energy straight from their mothership's reactors.
I have a very cool idea for their appearance, but it will have to wait actual construction for me to see if it can be done like that.
The end effect should have if feel like the Xin carriers are truly launching swarms of these little buggers, something akin to the Star Wars Tie squadrons... lots of cannon fodder, but don't underestimate them!

lol Yours is the one I was looking for, I searched like 20 pages trying to find it!! Thank you!

Hey manshooter, I was wondering if you could add the two newer sets of images to the top page? I read all the posts in this thread anyway, but when I show my friends the impressive work you are doing, they are not as patient as I am, and want to see the goodies right away.

Keep up the good work!

Yeah, forgot about that, I just plopped the new screens on the thread as I was swamped with other stuff at the time... coming up.

You seem to be working especially hard on your Xin race, and after my initial reaction of not being so impressed I am very interested right now, but what I really am interested in is some of the gameplay changes. Do you have a standing on how far that portion of the mod has come because that is quite an intriguing modification that I would love to see come to fruition.

While right now I mainly am focusing on making the core assets for the new race, all the gameplay changes still stand. I use the time testing new abilities and concepts for the Xin ships to also indirectly test out changes which will affect all factions. So yes, you can expect bigger gravity wells, more powerful and strategic planetary defenses, deployable battle stations (Xin only, they are turtlers after all), interdiction ability for all factions, mines (all factions) and so on.

I think i will enjoy playing as the xin because i am definately a turtler; in every damn game i play. i would much rather sit around and wait to strike than constantly attack. battle stations will be a very, very welcome addition to SINS and something that should have been included originally. btw, thanks for putting those new pictures up there with the others. keep up the good work, looking forward to another update.

Here is my two cents for this. I would like to see more life in the galaxy. It seems like only pirates and the civs have the ability to own ships. It would be cool to see stuff like space crusies, and refugge ships escaping from battle torn planets. This would also add to the pirates thing as well, because they can also pillage this ships. And how about rebels? I know the T.E.C has insurgetns but what about the other races? The advent could have a bunch of religous cultist how think they know the one true path. One last thing, how about polotics take a bigger role? Like maybe a strike happens on a planet and you have some choices on how to deal with it. Another example would be like the indigouis population does not like how it is being treated and revolts, and if you pick the wrong thing the your panet is over thrown. Also when you do think this is comning out?

It would be nice to have smaller civs that do little more than perhaps limited diplomacy with the player. Perhaps if certain cultural influence was reached in their realm, they coule voluntarily ceed control of their territory to you, and you would get all the millita ships. Also, it does not currently make sense to have to millita ships be destroyed and then not rebuilt, so perhaps the mini-civs could have frigate factories, ete. The other suggestions (civil war, random uprisings, etc) also make good sense and would be an interesting addition to the game.

While I agree with most of what CurumoTheDarkLord and Nequa said, right now I have no idea if that's even possible to mod in, given the modding constraints of the game. As it is, I want to provide the players with a betterm more immersive and significant tactical/strategical aspect of the game, as well as improved visuals.
If it becomes possible to script the game engine (it isn't right now), add new entity types, conditions, events etc. then I would certainly consider adding at least some of what was said.

In the meantime, here is a bit of visual candy, a few concept renders of the new Xin cruiser about to be placed ingame:



Lore:

The Suryata Swarm Cruiser is the chief deployment platform for plasmid drone swarms in the cruiser class of ships. Usually deployed as escort for important task forces and evrywhere where a plasmid ship is desired but deployment of the much larger Carrier ship is not, Suryata performs its role with utmost precision and efficiency. Able to deploy either a swarm of hunter-killer plasmids or an equally dangerous swarm of bomber plasmid drones, this ship also presents a threat by itself; armed with four 80-meter long Arc Cannons it is more than capable of defending itself should it be engaged in battle. Even though it is not meant to be deployed without a conventional drone escort or company of other, more directly combat-oriented ships, a task force of Swarm Cruisers is a power to be respected by any field commander fond of their own continued existence...

you know, instead of working on upgrading the weapon's effects by youself, you could simply ask to borrow Balkknight's graphics mod, which is already in version 1.3(almost). Danman is also using it in his 7 deadly sins mod.
You could probably save yourself a lot of work.

Anyway, Good Job!

Oh that I certainly intend to do. I have no desire to overhaul what BailKnight overhauled so nicely, except explosions because I have a few different approaches and solutions.

This however applies only to vanilla units and factions. The Xin use all new assets, every explosion, weapon effect, phasing effect, pretty much everything is made from scratch. I want the new race to be *new*, not something recycled and recolored.

I love the new swarm carrier and



admire your dedication

And here it is ingame, with "special effects" added.
Now if I manage to pull off the effects for Arc Cannons as I envisioned them, this baby will really look spectacular in a fight!



Now as to the matter of mines. This is becoming current since I am working on the ship which will be deploying them ingame.

After some consideration, I have decided to have three types of mines per race. Basically, and for balance reasons, they obviously need to perform similar duties and those are:

-basic mines; typical explosive devices, designed to be seeded along enemy approach lines and inflict damage. They are destroyed upon detonation.

-turret mines; a small turret with an internal power source. Able to inflict only a small amount of damage on its own, these devices become highly dangerous for passing ships and even entire fleets if they are deployed in significant numbers. They will continue to fire until they run out of capacitor energy (and will open up again once they recharge a little) or are destroyed.

-spider mines; designed to be used in conjunction with garrison ships and especially turret mines, these devices are able to project a weak tractor beam upon a single target, thus slowing it down by a fraction. Fairly innefective on their own, if deployed in numbers they could potentially stall an entire task force. They require very little power to operate and can do so indefinitely or until destroyed.

I'm interested in feedback on this. Do you think the selection is good, do you think something is missing or will make the game to difficult, unbalanced, etc.
Feel free to comment!

I thought that hammerhead side was bow until I saw ingame shot   

That's special Xin tactics at work.

"Quick, target their bridge!"
"Err... sir... which end is front?"



Your original assumption is correct - the hammerhead is the bow of the ship. What you are seeing are floodlights, not to be confused with the exhaust of engines (and when seen in motion with them engines blowing out plasma its not as confusing either).

I love the kind of mines, its not a new idea but its fresh in the world of sins.
I hope every race can use them and not onlu xin... can u place them on the tec,advent and vassari ships there is allready there?

I would like to see this on the colonyship just becouse there use is very limited these days

I think he mentioned it was "3 different types of mines per race" but idk if thats for vanilla sides as well. That carrier looks great ingame by the way!

Oh, sry most have missed that, alot of posts here

Yes, as CanadaMan said, all races will get mines, including vanilla ones. The plan is to place them on one of the support cruisers. The other support cruiser (each race has two if I am not mistaken) will get the interdiction ability. This should boost their usefulness by a significant margin.

Cruiser's looking good, it's a shame the skybox is so similar in colour, I thin kti would look even better if it was more strikingly different.
I have a question Mansh00ter: do you have any intentions of increasing the variation between the races? At the moment each race gets the ships at different times, but ultimately every ship has an exact counterpart, even if individual stats/ powers are different. I think this is uninteresting, and I personally think that if you were able to create ships that did different things battles would be more interesting.
Also, how possible is it to make ships move intelligently in battle, for instance, to dodge solid rounds. An example of both of these in action, I doubt it's possible with current tools though (I'll use your names, sorry if they're nothing like you imagine them):
A battle between Remnant and Hegemony ships. The Remnant use kinetic weapons that move considerably slower than the speed of light, giving ships the possibility to move out of the way of shells once they are fired. To counter this, Remnant ships need to move quickly. On the other hand, Hegemony ships use high intensity lasers travelling at the speed of light; there's no option of dodging, but the huge amounts of energy required to power the laser slow it and reduce shielding. The Remnant are therefore terribly weak at long range, but come into their own the closer they get to the target.

Asiriya, I agree that vanilla races tend to follow a sort of "template" when it comes to unit classes and their overall abilities. Though there is some difference, as you said, every ship has its exact counterpart. This is common in RTS games because it makes balancing a lot easier.

The Last Stand, however, aims to do change that. So at the risk of having a few underpowered or overpowered units at release and having to iron them out later on after some public exposure, I will try to make each new faction feel and play completely different, as much as it is possible to accomplish within modding constraints.
This new cruiser is a good example. Vanilla cruisers are unarmed; but Xin ships are balanced according to 2:1 ratio in their favor - every Xin ship should be worth two of its class counterparts (since it also costs a lot more), so the Suryata is armed. It also will have a special ability to launch a swarm of "suicide" larvae plasmids which will home in on enemy ships and gnaw at their shields or armor before dying and falling off. It should look cool and give an extra push in the direction of making this ship feel like it can rip other ships apart with ease, while not actually being overpowered.
Then you have the Seeder Pod, which can also act as a secondary bombarder (I am still working on providing incentive to use Seeders for planet conquest rather than dedicated bombers for annihilation).

Other concepts have stuff like Heavy Scout Frigates for the Remnant, which are tougher that regular scouts, but also (like all Remnant ships) armed with primitive weaponry and able to deploy two Vanguard Gunships, medium-sized fighter craft designed to bolster the HSF. This will make the zerg "rush" tactics even more appealing to Remnant players, since their scouts will be tougher than those of other races. Xin "colony" capitals will not have the ability to colonize directly, but will have the ability to produce some if not most of the basic drones, which will make them a sort of a mobile base and allow a player which has been nearly wiped out to re-emerge. And so on. Some class similarities remain, but purely for practical reasons. For example, you have to have scouts, attack frigates, something long-range and so on.

As for dodging projectiles, right now it cannot be done. Damage is applied either over time or is "backloaded" which means it is applied regardless of visual cues on screen. This presumably helps with lag issues online, in any case there is no "on hit" model and even if there were, the unit movement is hardcoded in entity types right now and cannot be changed. Which is a pity because I would love to modify all smaller ships to actively move about in a battle.

Anyway, as it turns out, you are spot on when it comes to race variation in tactics. Xin will be your classic turtlers. They will be very tough, replenish slowly and will be even tougher on their home turf thanks to their network of Quantum Gates. They will be at a disadvantage outside of their turf though, as they are considerably slower than other races, especially in phase space.

Remnant are the Zerg of this mod. They are cheap, fast, replenish quickly and are at their best when fighting at close range.

The Hegemony are at a balance between the two. I envision them as a well rounded force, excelling with smart combinations of ships and able to adapt to virtually any circumstance. Though the Remnant will always be able to outmaneuver them and Xin will smash their teeth in if they come after them in Xin owned sectors.

Hopefully the system will be fun to play and balanced out, but that remains to be seen.

Oh and...

Cheers for the detailed reply, I'm glad you've already taken it into account, and yup, that ship looks awesome

Hey that ship look mint cant wait and what program do you use to make your own models

DarkStar