ManSh00ter

Join Date 02/2008

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

Previously known as "The Last Stand"

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

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Sobekeus
G_Bison
4rearo
Distorted Truth
brummyuk
Banthracis
starratt
The_Regicide

A nice preliminary objective outline. It looks like you will have your work cut out for you as a one man project. Personally speaking I think projects like that purely from artistic viewpoint.

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I feel like the added 'modes' would overcomlicate the game.

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Dude, if you could make some of those ships look better, then i would download your mod. Also, if you could add some kind of unit formation buttons or something similar and add bonuses for flanking or attacking from two sides and such. I would imagine that is toooooooo complicated, but hey, i'm just speculating, you know? And the titan class ships, hell yeah man, it was kind of dissappointing that there weren't any ships that were the size of small moons that could fight an entire battle by themselves. Then there would be HUGE clashes between two titans where they would just pummel each other with rocks, lasers, bullets, nukes, whatever.......wow...that would be awesome. overall, your mod sounds awesome, lol.

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Update:

I've been working on enhancing some effects, mainly explosions, with the aim to diversify between factions. The goal is to have each faction explode differently. The vanilla explosion effects, I feel, are best suited for TEC ships, while other races should reflect the fact that they use different materials/technologies/fuels in the vessels.

To show off what I made so far, here are a few screenies of the new Vasari explosions. I felt having their doom tinted green would fit well with the overall theme.

A close-up view of the core (just as the explosion happens)

Another close up of the same explosion after it has unfolded a bit.

And finally, a sequence to better show how the explosion looks.

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Very nice explosions. How much do they change requirements? I would assume a decrease in preformance. How much does it decrease?

Interesting mods, outposts are a good idea, almost like having space stations. A titan... recreating the capital ship on another level eh?

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Indeed.

I feel that having a supercapital ship adds to the variety, and with outposts it creates interesting choices. An outpost itself is a formidable defense battery, able to block off entire sectors with its wings of fighters, missile and projectile batteries and even the ability to generate a phase inhibition field. However, they will cost a lost in supply - so the more of them you have, the smaller a fleet you can support. Its a question between mobility and formidable, but static defense.

As for explosions, they do not affect performance at all. The effect was achieved by making new particle textures, which are the same resolution as the old ones, and adding one more particle emitter for the extra bright shrapnel. In all other respects, the effect is identical to the old one.

I should add that I am paying attention not to turn the mod into a system hog, we all like big battles. No sense in adding high-poly models or extra-high res textures just to have the whole thing turn into a slide-show when the game should be at its peak!

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seems ur trying to do too much with this mod. i doubt u will finish it but hey prove me wrong. good explosions

. what about a vid?

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Love ya ideas of this, especially the mines, would be interested how you planned to have them deploy and used?

As well as that, with say that scout ship for the new race you could have it tag say an enemy ship and it gives you the ability to see what that ship sees for say next 15 minutes or until that scout ship is destroyed or something, as tec has the ability to deploy sensor drones, why not one that locks to a ship instead?

I like the idea of the outposts, but maybe have them expandable? for example a basic outpost, then you can either upgrade it to a trading outpost or into a defensive battle station, or a shipyard? to give you a range of what you can do with it, i'm not sure how you could do this but just a thought

Just a few thoughts, but sound's like it could be an amazing mod and i look forward to see what you do with it

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Bob211, don't worry, I know how much work I've cout out for myself. Besides, I plan to release this mod in "modules"... for example, when I finish the effects overhaul, they are going to be available as a separate mod. Same with game mechanics changes, and finally, when I finish the new race, the whole package will be released.
That way people who maybe only want or like the new effects or gameplay additions, but not the other stuff, can install what suits them.
I'll put up a short movie of the explosions once I touched them up and finished the other races so people can see how they compare.

Nick, I don't know if the outposts can be made expandable. Right now I know a way to put them in, but whether they will be upgradeable... maybe. Perhaps a modification of how capital ship levels work. We'll see.

Mines. In essence, they will be deployed the same as some siege capitals deploy those bombardment modules. You will have a "minelayer" ship and, after you tell it where to park itself, you will then select the "Drop Mine" ability, which will then spawn a static mine. The mines themselves will be able to detect when an enemy ship enters their damage zone and detonate, destroying themselves and damaging everything in the damage area. Including other mines, so placement will have an impact. Clustering several mines together may have a cumulative effect, but may also waste a lot of mines on a passing scoutship.

I was toying with the idea of "tagging" an enemy ship to use it as a spy, but unfortunately as of now I have no idea if such a thing is even possible. Once I learn more, if it is possible I would certainly consider having that in the mod.

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This Mod looks awesome, many great ideas.

I do hope that more than one titan class ship can can be created for each race, for it would really be helpful on playing on larger maps with multiple stars. I really hope you can find a way to create the outposts, especially differnt versions. It would be great to have a different model for placing one near a star than the same that would be next to a gas giant (i really hate that you cannot guard these areas as of now). The new explosion effects look really good so far, it makes sense that an alien culture's technology should explode differently since it is made of alien material. I also hope that you can increase the size of the capital ships a little, it is always more fun to see a truly terrifying dreadnaught approach the battlefield, and the current caps could use a very slight bump in size.

Possible ideas for electronic warfare ships: Minelayer, EMP/Missle Jammer, Mobile Repair, Mobile Shield, Anti-Matter Drainer, Tractor Beam/Immobilizer

Good luck with this mod, seems like great so far.

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That's fair enough, i was jsut suggesting, i'm not very experianced with modding beyond playing around with numbers and stats, so i wasn't too sure what the engine is capable of.

But i'm sure an outpost would be good either way, upgradeable or not, it would help give more tactical choices.

And the mines sound good, that would be something i look forward to seeing, one thing i did enjoy in homeworld was laying mine fields to bottle neck the approaches people can take to a specific location, so the ability to lay minefields would be nice.

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mines really spark my interest. i remember how they were very well implemented into nexus. would be cool to have them in sins for sure.

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You play Eve don't you?

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Everybody love Titans

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Titans Rule.

But honestly, can you have a huge galactic conquest without Titans? You simply got to have them, they are every emperor's favourite toy.

And yes, I do play EvE.

Don't worry, these titans won't cost that much.

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Hi manshooter, I like the ideas you have and I was wondering if you would like help. I have been looking to modding the game in anyway. You can respond here or just email me at Dtime35@beyondbb.com. I would go more into what I can do etc, but I will see first if you are even looking for help in anyway.

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@Man - a very cool looking update.

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Thanks Spartan, I'm very pleased with how the new effects are turning out. Should have the other explosions and shield effects set up in a few days.

Tempus, thanks for the offer, but for now I'm working solo on this, primarily because I am still in the experimenting stage so how I envision and implement stuff changes daily so it would be difficult to synchronize with a team. But hey, if it turns out the project is too big for an one-man effort to cover, I'll be sure to drop you a call if you don't turn out to be busy doing other stuff by then!

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Here is a little update: the first model I created for the new race. The textures need a bit of touching-up here and there.

The name of the race will be Xin.

Top:

Bottom:

Front:

A bit of lore.
The ship in question is the Xin "Feeler" Scout Analog. This is actually the only Xin craft which flies completely without crew. Instead an autonomous creature is gestated at a Breedery, then provided with an artificial exoskeleton, armor plating (in addition to its natural scaled hide resistant to the rigours of open space) and propulsion. The creature is several times the size of a whale for comparison. Long crystalline feelers (hence the nickname) that protrude from its body on the unarmored sides of the "head" serve as highly sophisticated sensors, able to detect all kinds of occurences, including mass detection. Another large crystalline protrusion is embedded right above what serves for the creature's brain - surrounded by knotted tendons and hard tissue, this glowing dome represents the "eye" of the creature. Capable of incredible magnification and observation of a large spectrum, the Xin Scout can even "see" radio waves and other electromagnetic, infrared and visible spectrum emissions, helping it to hunt down and pinpoint even the most elusive targets with relative ease.

Unlike most Xin vessels, this "ship" is neither well shielded nor provided with a dedicated weapon system. Instead, the creature inhabiting the exoskeleton posesses a natural ability to emit magnetically shaped gobs of superheated plasma via a dedicated organ protruding through an opening left in the armor plating on the underside of its flat head. The plasma however dissipates before long, and while individual hits are relatively damaging they do not have much of a reach, nor can the creature expel them at anything faster than a snail's pace.

This leaves the Scout allmost useless for frontline combat, and although it is faster than other ships of its class, like all Xin craft it lacks in the department of engines. However, even though its shields are nowhere near as strong as the Xin standard, they are capable of taking more punishment than any other reconaissance vessel currently known to the other races.

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i cant seem to find where to download the mod... sounds good

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Just because, the mod is not released yet!

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The mod is still very much in the works. I estimate it will be another week or two until the first pack (partial graphical overhaul and core gameplay changes) is ready for release. I'm taking it slow to ensure that the system is as balanced as possible. System testing phase is pretty much complete, I now know 90% of what I need, the rest is simple manual labor.

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Gap generator good sir! Either as a tactical defence or for your electronic warfare ship.

For those who haven't played RA2, the Gap generator hid the units within it from radar scans. I was thinking a unit which could hide ships within it's radius for a certain amount of time at a cost of anti-matter. The structure could use passive hide within a certain radius.

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I was thinking about something like that, but so far couldn't find a real tactical use for such a unit. Unless you could completely cloak a fleet and sneak past fortified planets, but then the whole point of enhancing static defenses would be void. However, I do plan to implement mines which would be great as a countermeasure for cloaked fleets, and if that works out all right, I might try to tinker with units to make something like this, but coding it into AI behaviour, making mines able to detect cloaked ships and detonate, making cloaked ships not be detected while phase jumping etc. - not even sure if that can be done. Time will tell.

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i read up above about outposts. That would be awesome. They could be formidable defensive forts that you can build anywhere along a phase lane connected to a planet that you have settled. Similarly, i think it would be just awesome to be able to plant fleets in mid-phase space for ambushes on unsuspecting invaders between planets. That would really make people send out scouts every time they phrase jumped in fear of getting butchered in some horrible ambush situation. Ah, the things that this mod could become. Regardless if any of this is even possible, i am looking forward to whatever you may throw out there into the modding community. Cant wait for some higher quality visuals as well; explosions look great

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