Major Stress Major Stress

[MOD RELEASE] Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 0.03b Released (updated 01/10/09)

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[MOD RELEASE] Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 0.03b Released (updated 01/10/09)

from Sins Forums

This is the "Release" topic for the SoA 2 mod. Candidate for Mod Database's 2008 Mod of the Year.

SoA 2 0.03b adds the unified Dominion (with Cardassian, and Breen units) as a playable faction. It is the second part of the 0.03 series. You do not need 0.03a3 to play it. The 0.03b is complete. Delete any previous version of the mod and replace with the new version.  This is still a "Ships Only" Release. Structures, Defenses, Research, and Ability's are schedualed for the 0.04 update.

The SoA 2 "Work in progress" topic is here  https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/173883 All News, and updates will be posted there. Any non known issue bugs post over there.

Here is the Mod Database page. You can download the mod from here.  http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-trek-sacrifice-of-angels-2  If the download is not there yet. It is still processing. Keep checking. It takes a while for ModDB to process new files

 

Here is an alternate download link for 0.03b. The link will be removed when ModDB has the file up. http://files.filefront.com/SoA+2+003bzip/;12933985;/fileinfo.html

SoA 2 0.03b "The Second Dominion War" is the second of a two part release of 0.03. All four main factions are playable. We merged Manshooters Volumetric Explosions mod into SoA 2. While still a demo we are no longer going to use the term, because SoA 2 is starting to shape up into a full blown total conversion.

You MUST be running Sins version 1.1, 1.11, or 1.12 to play the mod. It will NOT WORK ON ENTRENCHMENT! or any other Sins beta. It also will not work on any versions of Sins before version 1.1

Read the Readme file for important installation instructions.

If you have an older version of SoA 2 just delete it from your mods folder, and replace it with the new version.

For best results install the SoA 2 mod on a clean install of latest update of Sins of a Solar Empire (version 1.12 as of this release).

Before you run the game for the first time after a clean install of Sins. Delete the "Ironclad Games" folder in c:\documents and settings\"your user name"\local settings\application data\. For Vista users its C:\Users\"your user name"\AppData\Local\.  BACK UP any other mods, and screenshots BEFORE you do this. This will ensure there are no stray older version, and/or beta files are in your sins installation.

Disable "Ship Mesh Highlight Filter" in your options\effects Otherwise you will see some wierd lighting problems with modded ships. We have not had time to adapt the modded ships to use this feature yet.

Disable any and all Team Color settings. There is a bug in how Sins renders team color in 1.1. It affects both the mod, and the default sins models. The Team Colors bleed through on the entire mesh. Both vanilla game ships, and modded ships are affected by this. Ironclad switched the specular, and team color shaders with the 1.1+ updates, but it seems like they failed to implement the code to render them correctly. Turn team color on and off to see for yourself. The mod doesnt use team colors anyway so you do not need this feature enabled. Ill post a bug report about this later.

The mod has been tested only on the US English version of sins. Other languages may, or may not work. If you are using a language other than English rename the "English.str" file in the mods strings folder to whatever language you are useing. Example: "German.str" if you are using the German language version.

Future planned updates:

SoA 2 0.04 will concentraite on adding all of the factions proper Research trees, Ability's, Structures, Defenses, and balance tweaks if needed.

SoA 2 0.05 will be the final spit, and polish of the mod before going into the final version. Anything that we couldnt get to do in the previous versions will be done here. Model, and texture tweaks, effects, sounds, more balancing, etc. will be all be refined if needed.

Enjoy the latest release of SoA 2 :)

Major Stress,

Darkshimmer,

Trekmods,

Digital Underground.

modding
1,524,528 views 525 replies
Reply #301 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Major, reply 25
For the next update ill make sure all the ships have focus fire set to true since it does seem to have an effect.

Aye, I somehow don't see any SoA2 factions fielding support cruisers anytime soon - unless there's something you have'nt been telling us? :D

Reply #302 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Major, reply 25
For the next update ill make sure all the ships have focus fire set to true since it does seem to have an effect.

Aye, I dont see any SoA2 factions fielding support cruisers anytime soon - unless there's something you havent told us yet? :p

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #303 from Sins Forums Top

I did see the AI build several Enslavers when I was playing against an unfair AI. It sure took the Klingons a while to build a Negh'Var, though they eventually got around to it.

Reply #304 from Sins Forums Top

Aye, they tend to stick to the cheapest ships - seems the AI is tuned to Sins costs, and that makes it consider even the cheaper SoA 2 cruisers prohobitively expensive. Since they all have the same role, it just stick to the cheapest unit.

In all honestly, SoA 2 ships are extremely expensive, compared to Sins ships.

It would be fine, except that roid mining rates are unchanged, which makes, for example, starting as a Romulan is incredibly painful, with the cheapest combat ship costing like 3-4 vanilla Heavy Cruiser; scraping together enough cash for an escort ofr your first eilte takes an eternity, and an eilte by itself can't take on a terran planet militia by a long, long way. On some maps, that pretty much means you can't start as Romulan right now.

Reply #305 from Sins Forums Top

Um... what elite are you getting?

 

The Warbird is a badass.  It starts with 150 damage and can get radiation bomb.  Now if you're starting with the Valdore, yeah... ok.  But you're a tard if you're starting with the Valdore.  It sucks monkey nuts.  With 150 damage and 3800 hit points between the six armor hull and the shields, the Warbird is vastly more powerful than the sins capital ships are.  They're only a littleheavier in the hitpoints department, and they've got a fraction of the damage output.

 

I've seen a couple planets that can pop one of them, but planets that well defended are rare.  They can also blow away a vanilla capital ship without even trying.  The Warbird can smoke most of them before it has to leave, at the point it has to come back a second time, you need a small fleet to aid your Kol in taking the place down.

Reply #306 from Sins Forums Top

The D'Deridex of course, I'm not quite senile yet, thank you very much :P

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Reply #307 from Sins Forums Top

...

 

What the hell.  How do I have karma +4?

Reply #308 from Sins Forums Top

Click the +4.

 

:fox:

Reply #309 from Sins Forums Top

Ok, so I don't get karma removed for the bannable offenses I commit on a daily basis...

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Reply #310 from Sins Forums Top

so.....Stress has a few issues....

1) the Cloak.

2) taking out Strikecraft

3)AI and ship cost

 

I AM APPEALING TO THE SINS COMMUNITY TO HELP OUT MAJOR STRESS WITH THESE ISSUES

Reply #312 from Sins Forums Top

GRRR! I knew i forgot to do something before i released the update.. Forgot to remove the damn hanger defenses from all the factions again. It shouldnt matter though because most if not all the ships have at least one weapon that can fire at fighters. If the fighters still pose a problem just go into the factions player entity and remove the hanger defenses yourself.

The cloak has proved beyond my skills to implement. I tried every trick i can think of, and it just aint happening. Sorry guys. :(

I am no coder. If someone wants to take a crack at the sins AI by all means feel free to do so. All of the factions use the vanilla sins AI. Maybe someone can make them NOT retreat.

Movement (specifically the "screeching halt syndrome") = Hardcoded. Aint gonna happen. Again tried every trick, and idea only to meet with failure. The workarounds caused more problems than they solved.

As far as the balance. All of the ships are not in yet, and wont be for a while. Once i get the non canon units in then we can take a crack at seriously balancing this.

Right now i am working on structures. We got the demo ships, now we need the structures to go with them ;)

Reply #313 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Major, reply 1
I stated a few relies ago that i am having trouble with modding in fighters. They just spawn in another universe, and i dont know why, because i am using the latest convertxsi, and dont have the hanger hardpoints anywhere near the mesh. So there may be no fighters in the mod.

I forgot that the AI spams hanger defenses. So to counter this you guys will have to do a bit of editing yourself untill demo 0.02 is ready. You can do one of two things..

1) Change all the mod ships weapons so they can fire at strike craft. Look for the lines in the ship entity files that say "CanFireAtFighter". Change the FALSE entry to TRUE.

2) Remove the hanger defense from each faction. Open each player entity example "PlayerFederation", "PlayerKlingon", etc, etc. They are in text so you can open with wordpad. Look for that factions "planetModuleInfo" then find that factions hanger defense entry Example:

Page:1
            count 6  <------ Change this number from 6 to 5
            entityDefName "PLANETMODULE_PSIORBITALBEAMDEFENSE"
            entityDefName "PLANETMODULE_PSIORBITALHANGARDEFENSE" <----Delete this entire line, remove the spacing
            entityDefName "PLANETMODULE_PSIORBITALREPAIRPLATFORM"
            entityDefName "PLANETMODULE_PSIORBITALJUMPBLOCKER"
            entityDefName "PLANETMODULE_PSIORBITALANTIMATTERRECHARGER"
            entityDefName "PLANETMODULE_PSIORBITALCANNON"

 

It should look like this when you are done

Page:1
            count 5
            entityDefName "PLANETMODULE_PSIORBITALBEAMDEFENSE"
            entityDefName "PLANETMODULE_PSIORBITALREPAIRPLATFORM"
            entityDefName "PLANETMODULE_PSIORBITALJUMPBLOCKER"
            entityDefName "PLANETMODULE_PSIORBITALANTIMATTERRECHARGER"
            entityDefName "PLANETMODULE_PSIORBITALCANNON"

Blammo, no more hanger defense.

This will be all done in the 0.02 demo

 

FYI

Reply #314 from Sins Forums Top


Hi im new to the game i read about the star trek mod and did download it like it says on the forum over and over ok now i did all the stuff that needs to be  done to run the mod on my game... one thing it wont show it no ships no factions not  one thing...

 

Reply #315 from Sins Forums Top

If you read the README file that came with the mod it explains in great detail exactly how to install the mod. At least 1500 people got it right. I am sure you can too. Thats approx how many DL's of the mod from moddb.

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Reply #317 from Sins Forums Top

one question, you mentioned that you forgot to remove hangar defences, does that mean that there will be no fighters and bombers in the mod?

I find the bombers as a very usefull defence method in the 0.02

Cardassians are not as weak as they seems especialy with a 75-80 damage strong main beam. Low upkeep and lot of ships makes a powerful combination if you know how to use it.

Reply #318 from Sins Forums Top

I intended for each faction to have its own fighter/bomber. However with all the trouble modding in fighters that idea may be scrapped.

I have been running into alot of brick walls with this mod. Too many in fact, and it is very disturbing. Part of the reason is i am not a coder. So there are some things i dont understand. Most of everything i did manage to get right i learned through the school of hard knocks. The other is the hardcoded annoyances of the game itself. The cloak, the "screeching halt syndrome", the planets (only one allowed in a gravity well), the phase lanes (cant mod them out), the firing arcs, limited number of weapons, and on, and on. I am beginning to lose interest now because of this. Im not gonna give up just yet, but unless most of these annoyances are able to be worked around, or lifted in a future expansion i dont see much of a future for SoA 2.

Reply #319 from Sins Forums Top

  Hello Major Stress please don't get discouraged with all of the hardcoded limits and annoyances,You did a fantastic job with SOA 2 demo.I look forward to the next release.I'm a BIG fan of your work. Thx for your time                                                                                             

Reply #320 from Sins Forums Top

ya its me again.. look i found out why i cant use any of  the mods .the reason why is that i cant find this v1.05 of for it  me to run the ships it says on the game i have on the mod list i click on it to run the dam thing again i dont know how many times but it wont show up does anyone have a link to where i can downlond this v 1.05 if not then using your mods of my game is a joke to even try

Reply #321 from Sins Forums Top

well i give up i found that v1.05 and still nothing it wont and i give up its not worth the hassle trying to get it to work  im not bothering sorry

Reply #322 from Sins Forums Top

Stress- Oh god, dont give up on this one!  What you have done is great, and if you are limited than the mod will just be a Star Trek themed Sins game.  I am okay with that because I have no interest in the sins factions but your Star Trek factions kind of make up for no campaign!

Great work so far an I wish I could code like a son of a... well you know what I mean.  Keep it up!

Reply #323 from Sins Forums Top

i have the dam mod in my game it even says in the mod list i followed your read me list word for word and still nothing is working no ships no factions not one thing is coming on.. i dunno what  you did but im not getting anywhere i even uninstalled the mod patch and reinstalled like 4 to 5 times .. nothing as i said it wont show up

 

Reply #324 from Sins Forums Top

well i give up i found that v1.05 and still nothing it wont and i give up its not worth the hassle trying to get it to work im not bothering sorry

Dumb question - you did install 1.05 right?

And then copied the mod to the right folder?

e.g. C:\Users\XXX User\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods  (Vista)

Reply #325 from Sins Forums Top

well i was right your mod wont work for my sins game i have tryed everything to get it right and it wont show im sorry but your mod is a joke if it wont load up even if it says its on the game what a waste of my time