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[MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.)

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[MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.)

Previously known as "The Last Stand"

from Sins Forums

 

 

Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION is an addon project aiming to expand upon the existing universe of the Sins of a Solar Empire, providing original and high-quality content on top of the original game. Aside from the new content, the addon will also include multiplayer-friendly gameplay changes as well as reworked or new visuals/sounds.

ETA: To Be Announced

Planned changes/content will include:

  •  A new playable race, created to the highest quality standards. The Xin are a race of utterly alien origin, and the massive fleets of their living, semi-sentient ships have been ravaging the galaxy for millenia. Countless races have perished under their onslaught - and now TEC, Advent and the Vasari will have to face this terrible enemy and win - or die trying.
    Assume the role of the defenders and try to stem the tide of death and destruction, or take command of the invading armada and destroy the impertinent insects wherever they choose to make their last stand. 
  • Volumetric Explosions & Damage Effects, providing not only greater excitement to your space battles by transforming all explosions and persistent damage effect into true 3D affairs, but also better visual cues as to how the battle is going, enabling you to spot at a first glance the hotspots and even the level of damage on particular ships.
  • Dynamic Battle System, where each ship class' strenghts and uses are not determined only by its stats and abilities, but also by its flight characteristics. Certain ship classes will be able to move during fleet battles, which, coupled with the reworked stats of all ship classes should prevent "cookie-cutter" or "spam" strategies.
  • New Ship Classes for the new faction, ranging from specialist ships such as the Warmaster or Emperor Battlecruiser all the way to Titans acting as mobile superweapons capable of facing down an entire fleet on their own or even destroying an entire gravity well in one powerful surge.
  • Reworked Balancing, aiming to further focus various ship classes on their roles, removing any overlapping advantages which ultimately make one ship type or the other the ship to produce. Changes will also include increased gravity wells as well as greater class difference in turning rates and top speeds in order to further accentualize fleet placement, strategic positioning of forward bases and other such details which a great admiral make.
  • New Planet Types, which will also be visually enhanced, primarily by increasing their size in order to make them a true centerpiece of a given sector. New planet types will provide greater variety without providing game-breaking advantages to players.
  • Enlarged Gravity Wells which, coupled with the dynamic nature of space combat, will challenge players to an even greater level, requiring careful placements of planetary defenses and orbital structures, as well as fleets.
  • Unique Structures for the new faction, ranging from formidable Heavy Defense Batteries to deployable Outposts which will be capable of guarding even sectors around otherwise uninhabitable astronomical bodies such as stars or gas giants.

==MEDIA SECTION==

 

==SCREENSHOTS==

 

==TRAILERS==

DRONE SPOTLIGHT I

A short ingame exposition of the Scout, Assault and Siege drones.

 

 

 

==BACKGROUND LORE==

Pangalactic War Timeline 

Clicking the above link will lead you to the download of a .pdf document detailing the rich and dynamic history of the factions which will play a major role in the Last Stand mod, so if you are into background lore, be sure to check it out!

 

==UNIT INFORMATION==

 Pending.

 

modding
4,165,983 views 1,794 replies
Reply #176 from Sins Forums Top
There will be eyes and chunky cyber-meat-stuff flying around.


LOL I can't wait!!!

Reply #177 from Sins Forums Top
sweet, man. the suppor cruiser looks awesome! can't wait to see some shield effects. that is one of a few things i wish Sins already had. keep it up
Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #178 from Sins Forums Top
And now you can compare the glory of the raytracing, global illumination using render with that of the game engine - I spent an hour or two tweaking the specularity, glossiness and reflectiveness to try and capture the metallic sheen, and I think I've come as close as one can get with the engine. Personally, I am satisfied. Not exactly on the level of X3 stuff, but then again, X3 can't render a 400 ship battle either.
And to think this baby weighs only 5000 polys...

Screens:


Reply #179 from Sins Forums Top
sweet merciful jesus thats the coolest thing ever made ever
Reply #180 from Sins Forums Top
dude...oh my god...awesome...it baffels me that there are such talented graphic artists out there that don't work in the gaming industry. this is the only mod for any game i have ever seen that is truly living up to its expectations. wonderful job on that ship. it will be one of the coolest ships in Sins, bar none.
Reply #181 from Sins Forums Top
And to think this baby weighs only 5000 polys...


I think 5000 polys for a single cruiser is little bit much for this game(devs use approximately 1500~2000 polys for cruiser class)...well most of your ship models use way too high polys, especially seeder pod(this things are need to spam for it`s role :SURPRISED: ). Still this is your MOD and I`m just worry about possible slowdown  ;) 

Still good job as always.
Reply #182 from Sins Forums Top
W
And to think this baby weighs only 5000 polys...I think 5000 polys for a single cruiser is little bit much for this game(devs use approximately 1500~2000 polys for cruiser class)...well most of your ship models use way too high polys, especially seeder pod(this things are need to spam for it`s role  ). Still this is your MOD and I`m just worry about possible slowdown   Still good job as always.


Well I think the high polygon count is somewhat diminished due to the factr that there will be less Xin ships in play at any given moment due to their race characteristics. Slowdowns might be a factor though.
Reply #183 from Sins Forums Top
My god, that is freaking INSANE! That is some amazing work you're putting together there.
Reply #184 from Sins Forums Top
Nice stuff man, no really, thats some good work. However, what is your ETA for initial release?
Reply #185 from Sins Forums Top
Dam dood! What does the ship do?
Reply #186 from Sins Forums Top
Is there some repository where we can see all of your work so far without having to sift through comments? It would be nice to see all the pictures and mechanics in one clean, organized place.

Ben
Reply #187 from Sins Forums Top
Azeltir, you are right... I'll reorganize the first post so that all the images are attached at the end of it. That way they'll be available at a first glance.

Polygon counts... actually, Acolyte173 got it right, I factored in the fact that due to the supply and cost of most Xin ships, any player will be able to field roughly half the number of big ships as other races, so the overall polygon allowance is increased.

The difference are the drones, which are actually going to be of average cost but also balanced to be present in average numbers. The seeder pod *is* too high poly right now actually, nice catch there Bailknight. Thing is, I came up with the whole spam idea only after I actually saw the end result in game and the model needs polygon reduction for sure, given its intended role.

Anyway, some models are in their "beta" version, some textures need touching up and so on. I slated all that untill after I finish making core assets for the mod.
And, to be honest, the system requirements for the Last Stand *are* going to be a bit higer that the vanilla game, though primarily because of texture resolutions... for example, most of the textures are 1024x1024 resolution, even for frigates. Some ships, like the Yarlok, use 2048x2048 resolution.

In the end, however, I gauge the system requirements and possible slowdowns by stress-testing (read: spamming lotsa ships) on my own machine, which is probably what you would call an average, maybe a notch above. And I do plan on releasing a "low spec" version for the people who don't mind a bit grainier look. ;)
Reply #188 from Sins Forums Top
P.S. Just checked - the Yarlok is not actually 5000 poly heavy, that was me readin' vertice count and being tired. Actual count is also a bit high but not that much: 3650 polys; 2788 quads, 862 triangles.

Stress test revealed that on my machine (2.8GHz Dual Core, 3.0Gb RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS) the magic mark of 30FPS (anything below that I consider a slowdown) was touched when there were a total of 90 Yarloks on screen.
Reply #189 from Sins Forums Top
seriously ManSh00ter, Ironclad should hire you, those ships are absolutly professionel work.
They are as good as the advent style, simply outstanding.
Ironclad should take you in their team and introduce those in an exanpsion as 4th race. :D
Reply #190 from Sins Forums Top
Ironclad should take you in their team and introduce those in an expansion as 4th race.


Things like that do happen! With DoW Soulstorm, the Sisters of Battle was originally a mod in progress but the mod team was hired to make the sisters of battle into the game!
So if you like the Sisters of Battle then thank the skill of independant modders!
Reply #191 from Sins Forums Top
Cool. It`s always great pleasure to me waiting next update  :CONGRAT: 
Reply #192 from Sins Forums Top
Things like that do happen! With DoW Soulstorm, the Sisters of Battle was originally a mod in progress but the mod team was hired to make the sisters of battle into the game!
So if you like the Sisters of Battle then thank the skill of independant modders!


well hell, look at counterstrike! some great things have come from modders; things that are known throughout the gaming world. maybe this will be one of them. maybe ironclad will give you a ring sometime, lol. but anyways, im glad to hear the benchmaks with 90 ships on screen. that sounds acceptible to me.

i have 8800gts 512, intel core 2 duo @ 3.4GHz, and 4 gigs of ram, so i am not really worrying about slowdown. in fact, i can't wait for these higher poly ships, as well as the super high resolutions that SD/IC promised us in the 1.1 update.
Reply #193 from Sins Forums Top
Ugh I just can't wait till this mod!

P.S. ManShooter:

Was just wondering if you've got any news or ideas for the Titan ships, if you don't have any ideas (other than the ones stated in the original post) I would be glad to help think some up! :CONGRAT:
Reply #195 from Sins Forums Top
Discontinuous:

why are all races techs, resources the same? when one conquerors a planet one should over time absorb techAlso what about spys with seekers, etc.

Random, unbalanced is the way of the world (universe). just like some playing in teams but acting like individuals online.

life is discontinuous and so is science/knowledge.

Reply #196 from Sins Forums Top
life is discontinuous and so is science/knowledge.


but would that make a good video game? what is a game based on chance developments on random planets? more luck would be involved than skill, and then you would just have Neverwinter Nights. this is the entire purpose behind balancing. (unless i am mistake as to what you mean by that post)
Reply #197 from Sins Forums Top
by the way ManSh00ter, i love having the opportunity to look at all of those screenshots when i am scrolling down to see the latest messages, lol.
Reply #198 from Sins Forums Top
Its nice, isn't it. All those pretty images... so pretty... nghhhh... :p

Seriously, I am thrilled that people judge my work as professional-quality, you can't have greater praise that that. Thank you everyone.

Kiedjor, in the fuss I ended up forgetting to reply to your question: the Yarlok support cruiser is the heavy "tackler" for the Xin fleets. It can project both a phase-inhibiting AoE field which prevents phasing and a tractor beam (that one is still in experimental stages) which slows or immobilizes a single ship but uses no antimatter to do it.

There will be another support cruiser, the logistics ship which will deal with on-field repairs, bolstering defense and deploying mines.

As for the ETA for release, I can say with absolute certainty, and with no undue exageration that the mod will be released as soon as it is finished, and no later than that!

:p
Reply #199 from Sins Forums Top
a tractor beam (that one is still in experimental stages) which slows or immobilizes a single ship but uses no antimatter to do it.


I am going to assume you want a visual aspect of the tractor beam. If so, this should be pretty easy. Use the cleansing brilliance ability as a guideline. Have a chargeup buff that results in a beam activation buff. This would, in a sense, be what "holds" the ship. Along with the Activation buff, add the entity modifier for engines disabled and there you go. Of course, I don't know exactly how you want it, but that's my two cents.

-I don't know if you'd be able to attract the enemy ship to the friendly ship using the ability, though. Isn't there an ability out there that causes fighters to collide with some capital ship. You might be able to use that in some way. I don't know though.
Reply #200 from Sins Forums Top
I envisioned the tractor beam as a simple "hold 'em" device. So the ship will be slowed down (but preferably not completely stopped), but it will not otherwise move the target. This is primarily used for catching fast scouts at a chokepoint so you can prevent them eyeballing what you got deeper in your empire with their little spies. It can also be used as an alternative to the phase inhibition field if, for example, the cruiser is out of antimatter. So you can snare that big fat high-level capital and *then* see if their pals are going to be so eager to just leg it out of there! ;)

Visually, the concept calls for a continuous stream of faintly visible energy extending from the cruiser to the target, with expanding, undulating strands of energy dancing about the said target at the same time. If you ever played EvE Online, think a (prettier) tractor beam effect combined with the webifier effect.