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[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

 

3,137,396 views 1,119 replies
Reply #126 Top

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 123
I should have know I could summon you boshimi with the words "New Random Encounters".

 

Just think of me as a Magikarp with a weakness to Random Encounters! :andrew:

Reply #127 Top

Well, its been exactly one month since I've released this mod, and I'm proud to say it was the most downloaded on Wincustomize the last 30 days, with over 500 downloads. Granted most major mods run from their own site or ModdDB, and that is the only place you can download it, but still pretty good I think. ;) I hope to release a developer journal video of the 1.2 release by the end of the weekend.

Reply #128 Top

Cool--congrats.  Now hurry and do mine.  I'm sending you the schematics telepathically now.

Nice innovation--that's why it's popular.  It isn't bloated, broken or a mod clone.  Actually has original concepts.

Reply #129 Top

Sinperium why arn't you on TS?! I'm trying to make my own mod based off the 4X mod and I need your telepathic prowess for help!

 

Quoting Sinperium, reply 128
Nice innovation--that's why it's popular. It isn't bloated, broken or a mod clone. Actually has original concepts.

^ This!

Reply #130 Top

And here it is.

By the way if you guys like the skybox, I can throw it in the mod as well. Its just a recolor I made of the green skybox as a separate mini-mod.

Reply #131 Top

I actually do like the skybox.  I may be 'cause I don't see colors well but yeah still. (wife snoring--woke up).

Reply #132 Top

Quoting Sinperium, reply 131
I actually do like the skybox. I may be 'cause I don't see colors well but yeah still.

Oh yeah, I suppose the all blue skybox would help with that... I could set it up to replace the old green one too.

Reply #133 Top

All your missing is Planet specific passive abilities. 

 

Looking forward to the new update.

Reply #134 Top

This might be a bad idea posting right before a update but here I go anyway.

So I've been trying too get the researchable pact upgrades from over in the Sins of the fallen mod too work with this one but i'm having no luck at all :annoyed:  

Any tips/suggestions?

Reply #135 Top

Quoting ChaosMaster130, reply 134
This might be a bad idea posting right before a update but here I go anyway.

So I've been trying too get the researchable pact upgrades from over in the Sins of the fallen mod too work with this one but i'm having no luck at all  

Any tips/suggestions?

GoaFan77 probably hasn't had a chance to look at that. Off the top of my head I re-sized the diplomacy window in each of the PlayerXXX.entity files, added the expanded diplomacy options to each PlayerXXX.entity research options and make sure the entity.manifest is updates for the new entity files.

It'd probably help for you to describe what no luck at all means as well as providing a zip with ALL of your changes to get more practical help.

Reply #136 Top

Ah that would be the problem then, I was just messing with the Research files alone.

Seems I have too change some entity files as well huh, gonna have too mess with them too get it working it seems.

Ok gonna be a bit as I mess with stuff and see if I can figure it out. X|

 

*edit* ok I think I figured out what too do but I got a mini-dump when I tried loading the mod... So I think I hit a hard-coded wall when trying too fit in both the pact bonuses and the espionage research. You think I did?

Reply #137 Top

Quoting ChaosMaster130, reply 134
So I've been trying too get the researchable pact upgrades from over in the Sins of the fallen mod too work with this one but i'm having no luck at all

I have been meaning to take a look at that eventually... for all the talk Zombie and I do about "experimental" modding, I really should take a look at his mods more often. Maybe because he has it in so many different pieces I'm not sure where to start. ;)

Quoting ChaosMaster130, reply 136
*edit* ok I think I figured out what too do but I got a mini-dump when I tried loading the mod... So I think I hit a hard-coded wall when trying too fit in both the pact bonuses and the espionage research. You think I did?

From what I noticed if you try to put two researches into the same "square", it doesn't minidump but you can only select one. So I'm going to guess that's not what is causing the crash issue...

Reply #138 Top

Ok yeah did some more tweaks and still a mini-dump.

Guess i'm gonna give up on this for now till I know more about how Sins works.

So here's a RAR of the file anyway http://www.mediafire.com/?lr7lnw9j7i2pt1h If you can go through it and find what I did wrong that would be nice O:)

Back to waiting for 1.2 then it seems. Its looking good Goa k1

Reply #139 Top

Quoting ChaosMaster130, reply 138
So here's a RAR of the file anyway http://www.mediafire.com/?lr7lnw9j7i2pt1h If you can go through it and find what I did wrong that would be nice

I don't know if its the link or my computer but I couldn't get to the download page...

Reply #141 Top

Quoting zebramatt, reply 140
When might one expect an update, if all goes well?

I really have no idea. A lot of stuff has come up IRL since I made that video, so progress has been slow. And I haven't exactly drawn a line at "okay, this is all the stuff the next version will contain", as I'm still messing around with artifact powered special abilities.

Reply #142 Top

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 141

Quoting zebramatt, reply 140When might one expect an update, if all goes well?

I really have no idea. A lot of stuff has come up IRL since I made that video, so progress has been slow. And I haven't exactly drawn a line at "okay, this is all the stuff the next version will contain", as I'm still messing around with artifact powered special abilities.

On artifacts I ended up with two new ones in Sins of the Fallen.

Artifact:Origin - These are artifacts that only show up on starting homeworlds granting small bonuses currently to trade, build rates, tax rate, culture and allegiance. While losing the planet is not an overwhelming loss it will put you at a disadvantage to those maintaining an Origin class world.

Artifact:Pirate King - Conquer the pirate base and become a Pirate King. Currently allows you to summon a Pirate armada from any frigate factory. Not really anything earth shattering, just a fun little perk for occupying a pirate base.

Reply #143 Top

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 141

Quoting zebramatt, reply 140When might one expect an update, if all goes well?

I really have no idea. A lot of stuff has come up IRL since I made that video, so progress has been slow. And I haven't exactly drawn a line at "okay, this is all the stuff the next version will contain", as I'm still messing around with artifact powered special abilities.

 

Roger roger.

Reply #144 Top

I like being able to stack this with bailknight's.  However, all the planet mods I've found have extra research and other items that don't like being stacked with other mods.  Also, they would break the random encounters.  Would you consider integrating the SinsPlus planets (or another planet mod) in the next release? 

I find it rather sad that the developers only put four planets in the original game (I'm not counting gas giants since they are essentially asteroid fields with an impassible object in the middle of the gravity well).

Reply #145 Top

Quoting Peter1x9, reply 144
I like being able to stack this with bailknight's. However, all the planet mods I've found have extra research and other items that don't like being stacked with other mods. Also, they would break the random encounters. Would you consider integrating the SinsPlus planets (or another planet mod) in the next release?

Yeah, for the Requiem mod I do I've developed my own little (and in my opinion better balanced) extra planet mod using some of the planets from Sins Plus, Celestial Bodies and Axel Dude's mod. Many of the new planet bonus are adapted versions of the ones from Sins plus as well. The only thing I'm not sure on is if this should be built into the main mod, or as an optional planet back. It would be easier just to build it into the mod, but if there are people who would prefer the vanilla planets I can keep them separate.

Reply #146 Top

You should include them into the mod and have a 'planet removal pack' that brings them back to standard. :-)

Reply #147 Top

Quoting boshimi336, reply 146
You should include them into the mod and have a 'planet removal pack' that brings them back to standard.

Yeah I suppose that would work better since I only have one download link to use.

Reply #148 Top

Including extra planet types fits entirely with the theme of this mod - it would seem weird them being an optional extra, even.

 

I say just chuck 'em in!

Reply #149 Top

If the new planets aren't going to change gameplay at all, I'd say just release a single version that includes the planets...as Zebra said, if someone is playing your mod, they are inherently looking for new content, aesthetic or otherwise...

If the new planets are going to have new stats, then it really depends...when I did PE way back when, I had two separate versions and it was kind of a pain to update both of them simultaneously...nevertheless, both versions got equal number of downloads and those planets hardly changed gameplay at all...

Reply #150 Top

Quoting Seleuceia, reply 149
If the new planets are going to have new stats, then it really depends...when I did PE way back when, I had two separate versions and it was kind of a pain to update both of them simultaneously...nevertheless, both versions got equal number of downloads and those planets hardly changed gameplay at all...

The new planets are fairly different but with what I think are fairer population/resource asteroid distributions, with the occasional unique planet. Its really just a GSD file change to disable them in the map generator, so I'd probably do that instead of having two downloads with one having the new planets and the other completely missing them.

That said, if this is something absolutely everyone wants, I won't even bother with that.