I spot a somewhat classic Soviet civil registration number on that shuttle. I say somewhat classic as I know that type of system was used before/around WW2, though not sure if or for how long it was in usage afterward. I'm assuming you've figured out how to code in multiple shuttles (aka. with different registration numbers)?

Do excuse the nitpicking... I just really like that pic of yours. >_>

Individual markings on ships are highly unlikely, given how Sins engine works. But that's a minor detail.

Again, very nice work, I love the detail on the textures and how crisp they look!

Look out Sickle-Two-Two! You nearly crashed into the crazy neon orbital thingies!

Very nice. Detailed smoke trails (would they even look like that in space? Hmm...) and nice models. BTW just asking from looking at the quality of the screenshots, are we going to need to turn our settings right down to be able to run this mod?

Maybe if it's a chemfuel booster, a la the Space Shuttle or the Saturn V. A plasma drive of some sort would leave a trail, AFAIK; OTOH, I don't think it would be visible to a human eye. Generally speaking, you get "plumes", but not trails, AFAIK.

IIRC the mod team have said that we'll need somewhat beefier systems than normally run Sins. That said, I'd say that if you have a computer capable of running, say, Dawn of War 2 at mid to high settings, then you're set.

I think the particle limit would prevent the smoke from ever causing some kind of a slowdown. My computer is not exactly optimized for sins and particles start vanishing long before they cause a slowdown.

it's a good thing the particle limit is quadrupled in user.setting during installation then

o rly? You can raise it?

... Why did no one tell me?! Time to start throwing numbers!

The sheer awesomeness of that picture is unable to be expressed by myself.

So I'm going to instead offer to play your mod slavishly, upon its release.

edit: nm i found out the answer from your other forum.

After what Soviet soldiers have taken to calling the “Hundred Hour Offensive”, Red Army representatives today announced that over 105,000 Soviet reinforcements have taken position in Braken City, ending any hopes by the German High Command for a swift capture of the city. 

 
Gagarin Class Landing Ship

Anti-aircraft fire has lit up the skies for the past week as thousands of Red Army and Red Navy transports have descended upon Braken, sometimes even into the midst of heavy fighting. Perhaps the most dramatic moment of the battle thus far occurred in the early morning of the 16th when German tanks appeared on the runways of Braken International Starport even as Soviet transports were landing. 

 

Ferocious fighting centered on the airfield occurred over the next 24 hours as Soviet reinforcements took up positions in a hastily constructed defensive perimeter, sometimes only minutes after exiting transports that had been fired upon. 

 

Braken has been transformed into a city of nightmares as it now seems to be the focal point of the entire war. Massive smoke clouds from the orbital bombardment in the southern provinces have finally reached Braken, covering the city in a nearly 24 hour darkness. How anyone can survive, let alone fight in this environment is unfathomable. 

If this was single player id wet myself. hey cant someone mod this mod to single player?

And thus begins a long series of video games focused around this universe, with space-based RTSes, ground-battle RTSes and even FPSes from the view of military personnel from the various factions.

If only...

There isn't really a public release available, unless you apply to be one of their alpha testers. And their main goal is to turn this into ultimate space war simulator, probably with their own custom maps where each battle has an influence on the outcome of the war. Thus single player really has no use for them besides perhaps a testing ground, though even then they'd probably prefer playing with their teammates.

And as we keep saying, to accommodate the AI we would need to remove all our biggest features to the point where you might as well just play Vanilla sins. 

Still, either or, impressive....

Awesome.

I think my biggest question on this front is:

Will trying to play the AI with your mod cause an insta-minidump?

Otherwise, I am in awe of your modding awesomeness.

Yeah, i know you have implemented some new mechanisms but one could still have the new research, ships, sounds etc and play with AI and that dont sound like nothing to me. Maybe it would be tricky to do but would be nice if someone would take on the project. It would be the equal of any other mod pretty much so saying that we might aswell play regular sin for that sounds a little strange to me.

Their ships don't necessarily have set roles, if I am seeing this correctly, and that makes AI modding difficult.

The actual gameplay functions of the units may not be defined in cookie-cutter style a la Sins (not that that's a bad thing, mind you)......however, each unit will need to have an entity-defined role in order for the unit AI to function.

A frigate with the colonize ability isn't going to colonize stuff if it isn't a colonizer roletype, IIRC.

No. You can't. People that have absolutely no idea what they're talking about need to stop approaching this like it's some sort of project to be undertaken and that we're too lazy to simply make it work - if it were, we'd do it, especially if we could get a challenging AI going, and it's pretty condescending. The only people that can fix the AI is Ironclad (such as making the AI take black market prices into account before bankrupting themselves over and over). If anybody tries to take on the "project" of ripping apart something I and others have put years into developing to play with really awful Sins AI that won't even play a challenging game anyway or worse yet Vanilla Sins With Railguns I will have their goddamn head. 

If there are minidumps, it's going to be something that dumped in vanilla Sins - no dumps with the AI, no dumps turning things to max settings, etc etc. You can play single-player fine, but the AI won't be much of a challenge since they don't expand. Theoretically you could use the planet militia templates we made and create a map with a series of militia groups to roll over if you wanted a challenging SP experience, which might be pretty cool.

And yeah, some roletypes (along with stuff like research stations) needing to exist is an enormous pain in the ass, but having the AI not work very well in the first place lets us play with them a little bit since we don't have to be too worried about breaking it (although obviously auto-use for abilities and stuff has to work properly). 

Even if the AI sucks, being able to start a game verse them (from your last post sounds like you'll be able to but is not recommended) is cool. People like to try and learn the ins and outs of the how the game plays with the mod without the competitive pressured  environment that is multiplayer. 

I now have a project for when your mod is released. A series of SP-oriented skirmish maps, centering on the conquest of rebellious, fractious territories.

Oh yeah.

We I should go bug Ironclad about this. You're quite busy enough as it is.