The lack of shield effects was sort of explained by the modifications they made to block the Jem'Hadar poloron beams, though it was probably more like something they did because a battle scene with a bunch of explosions instead shield flares looked cooler. Generally, they made a lot of compromises to have compelling battle scenes (such as ships exploding in one shot, though you could explain that away by saying that they could have taken damage off-screen) but most of the things you mention are explained:

DS9's shields only flared when a Cardassian ship actually collided with them - the rest of the time they did the explosion effects even though the shields were still up.

The Defiant class ships that were destroyed were the Valiant, which had already taken a severe beating that knocked out its shields, and the Defiant, which had been hit by the Breen disabling weapon. So yeah, neither of them had shields.

The only Galaxy class ship shown being destroyed was the Odyssey, which was attacked with the poloron weapons that penetrated shields - so it effectively didn't have shields either. And a Jem'Hadar fighter rammed it.

The explanation for why many DS9 battle scenes in the later seasons didn't have shields is simple:

At the time, rendering times for 3D effects, especially shields, were much longer, not to mention took more effort. It was simply a matter of money since they were doing so many battle scenes.

People have attempted to explain it using the polaron beams, but this isn't the case because Starfleet did modify their shields to be more effective. Others have tried to explain it by saying that these shield modifications involved implementing close-hull shields as traditionally used by the Klingons which mitigate damage over a longer time rather than trying to completely stop damage for a shorter time as done by bubble shields.

I made a defiant class ship today and used your latest release to make the weapons and so on.

if anyone wants to skin it which I'm terrible at you guys can have it.

just leave a reply here I'll see it.

ds

Maybe (probably) I'm stupid, but I cant seem to get this to work. I've loaded the latest file EzraeilBeatus posted into my SOSE mods folder and activated once I get the game running but I cannot build any of the ships included in the file...am I doing something wrong?

You will need to describe alittle more - "What does the game do?" crash or once built a ship it does not appear? And as how did you exactly install the models? Show us the paths you put them in for folders and sub-folders. Thanks.

I want to say its great someone is doing a Trek mod for this game and it is really appreciated. It would be like a way better version of Birth of the Federation. Regarding the Borg being a race, I don't think that its feasible since if you do make a cube that size and powerful, as would most of the other borg ship will also be, the player using the borg will have a very hard time at the initial part of the game building up the resource to more or less build anything, as even a borg defense turret would be overwhelmingly powerful compared to its counterparts with the different races.

I wish I could give you guys a hand, but the only source of ability I have is being a Trek encyclopedia and have absolutely no modding skills.

I loaded the files into c:/users/appdata/local/ironclad/sinsofasolarempire/mods (the default mods location). The game runs just fine, I can build all the normal ships, not the new ones, no crashing or anything like that.

Are you playing as TEC, building scout, light frigate, and battleship? they don't look any different until you build them, just b/c I haven't had time to change the buttons for them... Sorry for my recent lack of progress, I've just been caught up with the upcoming finals. For some reason, all the professors decided it would be a good idea to put a lot of tests and labs condensed at the end of the semester, even though there was plenty of time last month and the month before when we were doing nothing (see U.S.S. Lakota ). I'll upload the xsi meshes tomorrow for you all to tweak if you want. and if anybody would like to give a hand texturing (hint, hint) that would greatly expedite the release process... I've got one new trek ship mesh, the sabre, a half a new trek ship mesh, the defiant, and one new halo mesh, a CCS Battlecruiser (wtf?). I'll upload them tomorrow, and depending on what kind of response I get to this, either start texturing the sabre, or if someone else is doing that, start modeling something else.
Thanks for keeping the thread alive, even if I'm not!

Ezraeil

Oh, and p.s., I'm going to release an update with gameplay improvements soon, hopefully, so those of you who just want to play, and have no desire to mess with meshes will have something cool to mess with instead.

I've got it working now. I must have had a corrupt download the first time, I re-downloaded it and it worked just fine. Its a fine piece of work there EzraeilBeatus, I look forward to more content! And thanks to everyone who gave me assistance in trying to figure out what the problem was, much thanks!

I have downloaded the latest files you have offered and incorporated the sound/music as well. I must say, for a solitary and preliminary effort, this is stunning! Keep it up. The cube's scale compared to the other ships instantly brought back First Contact in my mind. Very inspiring to see this quality so early in the mod process. Not to mentino that when the cube moves, the other ships AUTOMATICALLY get out of the way with no clipping of the models, which allows for some really cinematic strafing runs. And all for 6 polys!

Also, I thought that the Miranda had been fited with phasers and had the sounds updated, but I only get the Miranda firing the standard light frigate laser pulse (albeit from the "rollbar" as expected) instead of the phaser beams you show in screenshot. I installed the entire file set into a subfolder under the MOD directory. The mod manager works fine, but I think it may not be loading all of the content. Am I doing something wrong?

As for the Sabre, I really like that underrepresented ship and I applaud you attention to more obscure ships. Maybe a Norway could be eventually seen? The Defiant should be easy to model, so that could be a quickie.

Either way, Star Trek gaming is about to enter a new era and for the first time Trekies will have something to truly be proud of as a proper implimentation of Trek.

Anyone ever notice that Modders usually do more justice to the Trek genere than the pros do?

Keep it up fellas!

Sooooo.... I've got some sweet stuff for you guys. I've made a file which contains both the most recent version of the mod and the original XSI files I used, for those of you who wanted them. In this version of the mod, I finally got around to merging my most recent versions of the ships with Admiral Cobb's awesome sound work. I've added some strings, made some loading stuff, added more weapons to the two smaller ships, and added probes to the Lakota. Word of caution, as well as a call for help from you code monkeys out there. The Class 4 Probe has an issue that consistently causes me to minidump. It's not fixed in this version, b/c I don't know how yet . I have narrowed down the cause, though. It appears that if you mouse over the empty passive ability slot on the probe when you have it selected, it auto-minicraps, and it's game over.

you can select and deselect the probe just fine, just don't touch that button... I included it broken b/c I think the idea of probes is just so darn cool.



Hope you guys enjoy, and I'll report back when I've made progress on the Sabre,

Ezraeil

P.S. If anybody would like to contribute some 2d button images, that would totally be awesome, just an idea...

Your problem is most likely with a missing string. Chances are you have the something messed between the String File and the Abilities file.

1.Take a close look and make sure capitalization, spelling, etc. are the same for the Name and Description IDS's.

2. Make sure that if you added a new name and description strings to the String File to change the count and follow the same format as the rest of the Strings. i.e.
StringInfo
ID ""
Value ""

-It's usually something really small. Since you said you added strings, check your string count first. Use Compare It! to compare your String File to the vanilla ones. If your count is right, just copy the IDS_ABILITY_..._NAME from the ability's entity file to the String file as well as for the description.

I can't stress enough how easy it is to overlook a simple mistake. I spent over an hour one time trying to fix a minidump when it turned out I had accidentally added an extra 'a' into the ID part of the String. Our eyes just skip over little things like that so it's hard to see.

Hope I helped and hope you get it fixed.

Ezraeil,

I created buttons as you requested for the Miranda, Excelsior, Oberth, and Defiant. Pick them up here.

Thank you so much for the great work you or doing on these ships! I'm also thankful for the xsi files you put up. They are great for us modeling noobs to use for reference while we are learning.

Please let me know what else I can do to help you with this project.

Thank again,
-Draven

HaHaHa... WAY too much fun! Here are some shots I took....









http://static3.filefront.com/images/personal/l/LRYodaFan/131618/fqwvagiske.jpg
















Hope you like the shots!

P.S. Hey Ezraeil, are you getting any of my private messages man? I have sent you like five over the last week & I havent heard back from you, if you could just let me know if your recieving them or not that would be great!


Adm. Cobbs

let s play some online games

@ADM Cobbs: Why are ure mirandas shooting straigth lasers? Mine are only shooting autocannon shots (Defiant style)

looking forward to this as a full ship pack ... hopefully even the federation as a race, though with regards to the next model there can be only 1 progression from miranda class ... nebula. followed by sovereign and maybe galaxy class thereafter but thats just my oppinion

Voltoth

@MrMit

If you want beam phasers instead of pulse, you can change them in the miranda entity file, just look in another ships file that uses beams and see what you need to change in order to fire the beams instead of pulses.

So, I could not resist taking some Beaut shots of the Excelsior/Lakota. Here are some 1680x1050, ALL MAX SETTINGS (Deep Space Background), 4x Anti-Aliased screen shots with the HUD still in place (how do you remove the HUD entirely for screen captures?). Note that JPEG compression ruins the quality with a fine grain, but the file sizes stay reasonable that way. If anyone wants the original BMP files (6 Megabytes each), just PM me on this forum. Enough text, on to the show!

Which of the 3 files is the rigth one? and how do i edit an dds file?

To get rid of the HUD, it's ctrl+shift+z I believe.

@MrMit

Its an entity file, not a .dds and its in the GameInfo folder of your enabled mod, the TEC Light Frigate. Make a back-up first, just to be on the safe side, then open the TecFrigateLight.entity file and look at the weapons. Its not easy, but its not hard either. Just poke around, but always make back-up's. On the other hand, you could request that they be given beam weapons in the next update.

Good Luck! =P

Another question for you is: Does anyone know where the scripting for the minor races files are located? It'd be nice to maybe leave the uncolonized planets' defense forces as: all pirate, or maybe original TEC ships. It just doesn't feel right taking Starfleet ships against other Starfleet ships.

I'll keep looking
Thanks!

In the galaxy scenario file there are several sections at the bottom of the file that design name "Militia1", etc. Try changing the OverrideRaceName line to Psi or Phase. I have no idea if this will do what you want. If you want them all original TEC, you'll have to create an alternate player file. Just copy the PlayerTech vanilla file and rename it to like PlayerMilitia and set as playable false. Then change OverRideRaceName to Militia. Again, I haven't tried this so I don't know if will actually work. Good luck.

Derbal213,
Those suggestions did not work, however I belive I have found what will, I'll have to give it a shot later, it actually runs about half way up that file, and also runs half way with what you said. I believe a new player/player file must be added, maybe copying the entire TEC information, making them non-playable, then naming them something else, finally editing these lines:
condition
type "PlanetOwnerIsMilitia"
param ""
owner "PlanetOwner"
colonizeChance 0
items 6
item "Tech:Frigate:Light"
item "Tech:Frigate:Light"
item "Tech:Frigate:Light"

It's the Tech:Frigate:Light it's looking for, so editing those should give us the results I was looking for. I'll have to try tomorrow after I get off work, I'll let you know the results.