GoaFan77 GoaFan77

[Mod] Enhanced 4X Mod (for Diplomacy 1.37, Rebellion 1.98, updated 12/20/23)

[Mod] Enhanced 4X Mod (for Diplomacy 1.37, Rebellion 1.98, updated 12/20/23)

Racial Abilities, Random Encounters, Heroes, Rebalanced Civic Mechanics and More!

Sins of a Solar Empire is often described as a 4XRTS game, or a game that tried to merge the action and tactics packed gameplay of a Real time strategy game with the deep, complex, empire wide strategy of a 4X turn based game. Its up to debate whether Sins succeeded in this goal, but I think all can agree that of the 4Xs of "explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate", Sins is much more focused on the exterminate than on the other three.

This mod seeks to give more depth to the other 3Xs of the game by adding additional game elements or refining the existing ones to reward players who give more strategic thought to the non-combat side of the game. Combat will still be the center point of the game, but players will find that the non-combat options available will be much more rewarding and will need to put more thought into developing their economies. This mod will also attempt to address some other weaknesses of Vanilla Sins where possible, such as increasing race diversity or improving the AI.

Features

Faction Diversity - Exploit all new racial bonuses to crush your enemies.

Hero Units - Lead your race's champions into battle with their powerful new abilities to base your strategies off of.

Random Encounters - Keep your eyes peeled when scouting, new challenges and opportunities await you in the depths of space.

Embassies and Espionage - Friend or Foe, interacting with other Empires will never be the same again.

Ship Upgrades - Customize your capitalships and titans with unique upgrades (Rebellion).

New Planets - Your Empire will never look the same again. Meticulously balanced for competitive play.

New Skyboxes - 12 unique skyboxes provide a fantastic backdrop to your conquest of space (Rebellion).

New Artifacts and Bonuses - The fringes of your Empire hold great power if you know where to look...

New Random Events - For owners of the Rebellion Stellar Phenomenon expansion.

Civics Matter - Almost all civic structures have an impact on your Empire. You must develop your planets wisely to get the most out of them.

Culture Matters - Don't underestimate the ugly stepchild of Sins anymore, its back with a vengeance!

Customization - Play the game the way you want it with a growing library of optional minimods and enhanced mapmaker support!

 

Downloads

WinCustomize (Diplomacy 1.34/7)

Moddb (Rebellion)

Enhanced 4X Mod

 

Latest Version

Enhanced 4X Mod 1.88

 

Credits

People

Axel Dude - For his wonderful planet textures in the Infinite Space mod, most of which is included in E4X.

IskatuMesk - For his awesome library of sound effects released to the community, a few of which are included in this mod, as well as particle forge advice.

SZ0 - A great modeler, several pieces of his work are used in this mod.

Genocyber - For his great looking Repair Drone model!

Sinperium - For making the phase probe mesh and good feedback.

ZombieRus5 - For getting channeling abilities to work correctly (after we ironed out a few bugs) and for his many hours of "experimental" modding that lead the rest of us realizing more things are possible than we thought.

Seleucia - For his thoughtful analysis and for allowing me to use some of his rebalanced abilities.

Ue_Carbon - Intelligent Feedback.

Mods


Maelstrom - Awesome new planet module meshes

Infinite Space - Main source of planet textures and other astronomy related changes, as well as some planet bonuses.

Uzi's Sins Plus - Several planet textures and bonuses have been incorporated from it.

Project Equilibrium - For an awesome set of fun balance changes.

 

Also check out the new Star Wars addon, Star Wars: Interregnum.

Star Wars: Interregnum

 

3,137,333 views 1,119 replies
Reply #1076 Top

Wohooo! An update with the important bugfix and getting mentioned in the release post :-)

Thanks GoaFan!

 

Sadly no post here until now so I start a little late for the new version.

+2 Loading…
Reply #1077 Top

Yes, the anti structure units.

In the games I have tried so far, they are immensely over powered. A few of them wipe out a systems defenses normally pretty quickly, but now they do the same thing to capital ships and titans. And just just one at a time. They wipe out groups of capital ships from range.

Yes they are fragile, but they were consistently killing targets before they could get into range to shoot back.

The AI if fond of bringing a dozen of them at once or more. They aren't limited in the way capital ships are. The other ships engage only a couple targets at a time at most (depending on facing). These are hitting multiple capital ships with apparently equal effectiveness.

I couldn't hardly get a capital ship to level 3 or 4 with the way it's setup and the AI wasn't doing any better. I don't recall seeing a single capital ship that was over level 4. I can only guess the anti structure ships were wiping them all out before they could get further.

I didn't even realize they could hit the smaller ships too.

I used to really like this mod till this single specific change killed it for me. It would have been nice if this was a mini-mod instead of a suddenly "on no matter what" item.

Reply #1078 Top

Quoting dkt0404, reply 1077

Yes, the anti structure units.

In the games I have tried so far, they are immensely over powered. A few of them wipe out a systems defenses normally pretty quickly, but now they do the same thing to capital ships and titans. And just just one at a time. They wipe out groups of capital ships from range.

Yes they are fragile, but they were consistently killing targets before they could get into range to shoot back.

The AI if fond of bringing a dozen of them at once or more. They aren't limited in the way capital ships are. The other ships engage only a couple targets at a time at most (depending on facing). These are hitting multiple capital ships with apparently equal effectiveness.

I couldn't hardly get a capital ship to level 3 or 4 with the way it's setup and the AI wasn't doing any better. I don't recall seeing a single capital ship that was over level 4. I can only guess the anti structure ships were wiping them all out before they could get further.

I didn't even realize they could hit the smaller ships too.

I used to really like this mod till this single specific change killed it for me. It would have been nice if this was a mini-mod instead of a suddenly "on no matter what" item.

Could you post a save or screenshot showing this? I haven't had the same experience myself, though maybe if you're playing on the hardest level AIs they might be able to spam these in such numbers to cause this.

Reply #1079 Top

I usually play capital ships only on hard or very hard and did not yet run into the described problems.

It was much fun playing Sins again, but in my personal opinion the game ran worse than my last game. It has/had hickups every now and then. Could be the new W10 Insider though, looks like big changes for Game Mode.

Reply #1080 Top

I'll see what I can come up with for screen shots. That said; this is the setup. Maybe you can see for yourself.

Mods: Double Supply/Cap, Enhanved AI, Expanded research, max starbase upgrades, more tactical slots, E4X mod

Game setup: Vast map, Vasari with other Vasari as ally on team 1 (Basically Vasari vs All).

Maxed out other enemies that are evenly split between that factions. Player types set on random. Normal speeds.

Set on hard or unfair for all AI players.

Primarily use capital ships with anti-fighter support at first while the planets get built up. More balanced fleets show up in the later part of the game when they can be afforded.

The main offender that i've seen do what I describe are the Advent plasma stars (I forget the name). The TEC torpedo ones don't seem to be as bad or aren't hitting 3-4 targets at once.

The AI in my game quite frequently shows up with 6-12 (on average; frequently more) of the stars and wrecks the whole system almost before I can move to the system. Thats fairly normal. Irritating, but normal. What isn't normal is now it's doing much the same thing to groups of capital ships. This is compounded if there is a fleet along with the bombardment ships as they have quite a enhanced effect on each other.

Now; your right that they are a bit fragile. But their range is such that they are hitting targets from hallway across the planet system and the capital ships are not exactly the fastest units around to close range on them. If there is a fleet rather than just a raiding group (AI seems fond of blocks of these to raid planets solo), this is compounded since to get to the bombardment ships means taking a beating the whole way to them while still under bombardment.

Worth mentioning; oddly enough I seem to mostly end up fighting Advent the majority of the time. Bit odd for random placement, but the TEC usually is occupied elsewhere.

Reply #1081 Top

Quoting dkt0404, reply 1080

Mods: Double Supply/Cap, Enhanved AI, Expanded research, max starbase upgrades, more tactical slots, E4X mod

Those minimods could be making a difference. We cannot guarantee a balanced gameplay experience if you use minimods. We typically only fix truly game breaking exploits (invincible units, free planet upgrades etc) with them.

  • Expanded Research means the Advent will theoretically get +60% damage bonus and +60% rate of fire on Plasma weapons, including those used by the Solanus Adjudicator (AKA Plasma Stars).  This gives them one of the largest damage boosts of any weapon type.
  • Max starbase upgrades and more tactical slots suggests you could be a very defensive player. If you have a lot of planetary defenses, the AI maybe reacting to that by building more antistructure cruisers than normal, which is quite reasonable. 

Solanus Adjucators do deal a lot of total DPS, but they can only focus 1/3 of their firepower on a single target. 2 more targets will be hit, but the exact one cannot be controlled. It may prefer to target capitalships in open battles though because the antimodule plasma weapons only do more damage to titans and space stations.

Quoting dkt0404, reply 1080

Now; your right that they are a bit fragile. But their range is such that they are hitting targets from hallway across the planet system and the capital ships are not exactly the fastest units around to close range on them. If there is a fleet rather than just a raiding group (AI seems fond of blocks of these to raid planets solo), this is compounded since to get to the bombardment ships means taking a beating the whole way to them while still under bombardment.

I am thinking of reducing the antimodule damage against some key targets, but regardless the best counter for this is to have a force of faster light frigates or corvettes that can quickly close the range and destroy these ships. Light frigates deal the most damage of any unit to antimodule cruisers while Corvettes are also pretty good, take less damage in return, and are even faster.

Ideally I would like to have antimodule cruisers essentially serve as a long range artillery unit/siege engine. Their barrages can devastate large, slow targets (mainly titans and defenses), but are extremely vulnerable to agile smaller ships that can quickly dispose of them. I don't claim that the current balance values are currently creating that, but I like to think it's a step in the right direction that will make these ships a useful but not invincible tool for any commander.

Reply #1082 Top

They were a useful tool before.....

Just lost 6+ capital ships inside a minute to what would have normally been an easy fight.

That is after blowing up quite a few of them. Simply doesn't work. They take awhile to kill, even for a dozen or more capital ships and in the time that took, the swarm of them kill the rest before they can even retreat.

I did enjoy this mod before this change but after going through this frustrating again with the bombardment swarm, I'm giving up on the mod. Good luck.

Reply #1083 Top

Quoting dkt0404, reply 1082

They were a useful tool before.....

Just lost 6+ capital ships inside a minute to what would have normally been an easy fight.

That is after blowing up quite a few of them. Simply doesn't work. They take awhile to kill, even for a dozen or more capital ships and in the time that took, the swarm of them kill the rest before they can even retreat.

I did enjoy this mod before this change but after going through this frustrating again with the bombardment swarm, I'm giving up on the mod. Good luck.

Reduced 40%
Original 1920 x 1116


If it helps, if you open the Gameplay.constants file and change these lines to the ones below, antistructure cruisers will basically deal no damage to anything except structures.

DamagePercentBonus:ANTIMODULE:CapitalShip 0.01
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIMODULE:VeryLight 0.01
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIMODULE:Light 0.01
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIMODULE:Medium 0.01
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIMODULE:Heavy 0.01
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIMODULE:VeryHeavy 0.01
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIMODULE:Module 2.0
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIMODULE:Pirate 0.01
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIMODULE:Titan 0.01
Reply #1085 Top

Quoting WardenWolf5549, reply 1084

1.841, Pirate Captain causing crash. Can sometimes be avoided by scuttling him.

It's a problem with Rebellion 1.93. It tried to be backwards compatible but a few things are still broken. For the best experience I recommend reverting to Rebellion 1.92 via the steam betas tab if you can. There will be a new version of the mod when Rebellion 1.94 comes out.

Reply #1087 Top

Quoting WardenWolf5549, reply 1086

. . . so you're not even bothering to fix it for the current patch when there's no ETA on the next one.

With the beta out I'm sure it will be soonish.

And it's not that simple. I have not updated because 1.93 broke some features of the mod beyond what us modders could do to fix them. Rather than remove content for a few months, I would rather tell people to revert to 1.92 for now and wait until 1.94 to release the update for minor factions.

Reply #1088 Top

Enhanced 4X Mod version 1.85 released.

Enhanced 4X Mod 1.85

Reply #1089 Top

Everything seems to be working great on my end.  I am also using a handful of your Mod Mods with it.

Thank you.

 

Quick question GF. -Did you add the pirate owned titans?-

 

 

Reply #1090 Top

E4X is my absolute favorite mod. It adds that element of 4X that seems missing when you've played the heck out of "stock" Sins Rebellion for so long. THe hero units are the best, along with the orbital artifacts to complement the planetary ones.

+1 Loading…
Reply #1091 Top

I keep trying to enable the mod but get a runtime error. 

 

This application has requested the runtime to terminate it in an usual way

Reply #1092 Top

Are pirate bases not supposed to be captured. As my fleets are dying in seconds after arriving. Any advise?

Reply #1093 Top

Quoting tjimagineer, reply 1092

Are pirate bases not supposed to be captured. As my fleets are dying in seconds after arriving. Any advise?

The mod only adds a few units to the pirate base, such as some defense platform, mines, and a "Pirate Captain" capitalship. This will make it a bit harder to take, but it shouldn't be a huge jump in difficulty from vanilla. What kind of fleet are you using that is getting killed?

Worth noting if you can defeat the pirates, you can capture a building that will let you recruit a Pirate Captain yourself, so the reward for doing so has increased to match the extra difficulty.

Reply #1094 Top

I've been playing a bunch of 1v1s against my friend using this modset over the past few weeks. We intend on playing more. 

Feedback

  • Vasari rebel late game sucks, there's not a lot of punch power available, especially when matched against advent. 
  • Vasari loyalists seem OP, with all the extra fleet cap
  • Titans kinda get wrecked by anti structure units
  • Advent drone hosts aren't worth building (too expensive), may as well build a carrier capital ship. 

 

Map settings are usually random tiny competitive or random small competitive. 

Matches

  1. Round 1  -- TEC Loyalists vs Advent Loyalists - https://youtu.be/WbS2Mv_iATg
  2. Round 2 -- Advent Loyalist vs Vasari Rebels - https://youtu.be/625tNblCp-k
+1 Loading…
Reply #1095 Top

Quoting Troyd3247, reply 1094

Vasari rebel late game sucks, there's not a lot of punch power available, especially when matched against advent. 

That's somewhat intentional, even in vanilla, probably to make up for the fact they have crazy phase missiles and can send a fully upgraded starbase to attack their enemies.

Quoting Troyd3247, reply 1094

Vasari loyalists seem OP, with all the extra fleet cap

I do not believe this mod gives them any more fleet supply than vanilla, besides the "Heroic Valor" tech that mainly refunds the fleet supply useage of hero units.

Quoting Troyd3247, reply 1094

Titans kinda get wrecked by anti structure units

Again quite deliberate, Corvettes are a counter to Titans in vanilla, but antistructure cruisers were almost never used compared to carriers with bombers. In this mod they are sort of long range artillery that does more damage the bigger and slower the target is (with small frigates taking almost no damage).

Quoting Troyd3247, reply 1094

Advent drone hosts aren't worth building (too expensive), may as well build a carrier capital ship. 

In an attempt to reduce lag, the stats of strikecraft have been increased, but carriers have been made equivalently more expensive. That's why they are 30 fleet supply, since 1 squad of strikecraft is more powerful than vanilla. Fewer squadrons, fewer carriers, same strike power, less lag.

Reply #1096 Top

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 1095

I do not believe this mod gives them any more fleet supply than vanilla, besides the "Heroic Valor" tech that mainly refunds the fleet supply useage of hero units.




Yup, this usually has 150 extra fleet supply + the 3 crews.

I realize all of the other changes are deliberate. They're observations on the impact of play :) Vasari Rebels do suffer quite hard, we haven't been able to make them work quite yet late game in a 1v1 setting - a lot of their boons are for allies.

+1 Loading…
Reply #1097 Top

I have the mod, and i love it.

I also use the more research and the Endless research mods. And there is a problem with the first it gives you double the research so instead of 2 levels you get 4 levels.

I have encounters a problem.

The Advent Loyalist (don't know about the rebels) get decreased damage taken on planet bombing, in combination with a rellic they have 100% decreased damage taken, so you can not kill there planets...... This in combination with there titan that can Grab plannets that you can not reclaim is game breaking

Reply #1098 Top

Quoting Salvator2848, reply 1097

I also use the more research and the Endless research mods. And there is a problem with the first it gives you double the research so instead of 2 levels you get 4 levels.

That is what that mini mod is supposed to do.

Quoting Salvator2848, reply 1097

The Advent Loyalist (don't know about the rebels) get decreased damage taken on planet bombing, in combination with a rellic they have 100% decreased damage taken, so you can not kill there planets...... This in combination with there titan that can Grab plannets that you can not reclaim is game breaking

They may be getting protected by a shield generator or advent embassy, which you can kill.

Reply #1099 Top

I have taken a look ath the mod filesthey have a starting bonus of 20% reduced bombing damage taken.

So this + thé research and the planet Artifact is enough to make them unkilleble

 

Reply #1100 Top

I understand that this mod has an enhanced AI.  Is this AI available separately from the mod for the Vanilla game?