[MOD] Galactic Civilizations of New Eden (EVE Online Mod)

I, personally, can not wait for this. I am very happy to see this. I spent quite a bit of time with Eve and will be speechless to use your mod. I am not sure if you will be able or rather it would be a good idea to keep the factions to their preferred weapon type although you could go outside those easily if you wanted in Eve so naturally you could here(possibly make the preferred weapon of the faction cheaper than the other branches or the modules). I am sure unique tech trees and modules could do this easily and I suppose the equivalent would be carrier modules for the Gallente(this would most likely be the most difficult balancing if you are going that far). In short, I am saying keep up the work, I am very looking forward to this.

P.S. was a Minmatar Brutor that after the fact may have been better off starting Caldari I wonder if my account is still there.....

edit:

P.S.S I actually recall the last time that I played. I lost a PvE(as i like most) Sleipnir to a low sec flagged guy in high sec space. Shouldn't have been playing that drunk and should have popped his ship but he came back out of the station with a battleship and I was running way too large of a Sig Radius for PvP so yea....

@Moogle65535

I can't wait either!  :D  I too love(d) EVE, and bringing that universe into this game has been a really fun project.

Regarding racial weapon types:  I'm not sure if it will be possible to force the factions to model their weapon/defense choices totally after EVE--at least right now.  To do so in the most straightforward manner, I will need to write custom blueprint definitions (the lines that determine which modules are loaded on which ships), but as far as I know that isn't possible in the current build of GC3.  If/once it is, then this becomes a possibility.

So until I know I can do otherwise, for version 1.0 the factions will all be equipped with ship rosters that rely on the stock blueprint definitions in GC3.  Wherever possible, however, I am assigning each modded hull design to the GC3 blueprint def that most closely follows the role that ship plays in EVE.  The Drake is the Caldari medium missile ship (equipped just like the stock Terran Ranger), for instance.  The Ferox is the medium rail boat (like the Terran Frigate).  The poor Caracal, howerver, ends up taking the beam weapon role (the Terran Corvette).  This is a little off from the ideal, but one good thing about it is that sticking to stock blueprint defs (for now) limits any interference in balance or how the AI handles its ships.

the best part of that horrible last experience was that my ship didn't drop the modules he wanted even though I am sure it was easy for him, I shouldn't have even been on at that point but oh well, actually want to recover my acct, seems lost atm. I know it has changed alot since i left but still one hell of a game

edit: note the last edit that was before your response maybe

@Moogle65535

You ought to!  The game is still going strong from what I can tell with lots of balance improvements across the board since I last put it down in 2012.  I always favored faction warfare for small gang PvP.  Many great fights back in the day...  :)

Awesome cant wait to see it completed. 

For the race specific weapons couldn't you just delete the other weapons in the tech tree?  I've made a few eve races myself and that's what I did, though I did notice that one race sometimes had another weapon type.  I just assumed it was using the base weapons from the first tech that gives you the three starting weapons.

@ladyarcueid

That may have the intended effect.  I'll definitely give it a try!

An update on progress over the last week: the tech trees are coming alone nicely.  What players will find when they pick up one of the New Eden factions and start a new game in this mod is that the entire tech tree has been rewritten--along with colony improvements, starbase modules, and ship equipment modules--to fit the universe of EVE Online.  Names and icons are pulled straight from EVE, and as you advance your faction's technology, you will find yourself unlocking more and more powerful tools that any EVE player will be able to identify right away.

This immersive flavoring will be especially present in several of the major factions upon release of v1.0 in the form of race-specific names and descriptions for technologies and improvements.  The Gallente Federation, for example, will be able to research Quafe (a universally popular beverage in New Eden) and construct Quafe Distributor colony improvements, increasing both gross income and tourism income.  A Caldari State player, for example, will find that their Technological Capital wonder is instead the headquarters of the Ishukone megacorporation.  An Amarr player will have some choices to make moving down the tech tree as to which of the five royal families to show favor by installing their Heir as Imperial Chancellor, and should they stick to malevolent ideological choices they will find that the original Death Furnaces improvement (called a Penal Colony for other New Eden factions) is in fact the Ardishapur Family Capital.

I think little details like this can make or break a total conversion mod, so I'm pulling out all the stops to put in as many as possible.

Really can not wait for this! Downloading your caldari mod now, looking forward to flying a mega again pm your eve pilot name and il send some iskes over

o7 , safe flying pilot!

Cpt Santino

@CptSantino

Thanks for the encouragement! I'm strictly out of the pod these days though, so hold on to your ISK.  I'm just wrapping up the Gallente ship set this weekend and put the Mega and Kronos together yesterday, in fact.  Here's a sneak peek at the Gallente roster...

Wow, those look absolutely amazing.

And here's a look at the Caldari ship set, in case you haven't seen it in the separate Caldari State faction mod. A few small tweaks and improvements have been made to this for the larger overhaul mod than what originally appeared in the Caldari State standalone mod.

Very nice work. For installation is this one where I can just drop the entire mod in the mod folder of will I have to add each faction (FG,BG portraits and such) one at a time?

Excellent btw!!!

Thank you!

@Larsenex

Once I'm at a beta/full release point, the mod will most likely be packaged in a .zip with two groups of files. The first group you'll drop in the mod folder (all of the race/tech/text configs) and the second you'll drop in the GC3 program folder (mostly ship designs, art, and icons). Everything will be in place from there. Still a good 4-6 weeks from release though.

A question; Have you considered (or will consider) a "lite" version with the shipstyles and factions but no new tech trees or major overhauls for maximum compatibility? I really love this but want have them work well with the base game.

@TheHordesman

Certainly. A stripped down package with just the factions and ship sets is very easy to cook down from the full mod. I'll be sure to include such a version.

Thanks for the great news! You've done a great job on these, and I can't wait to see them populating the universe!

I'm continuing to make progress on this mod, bringing more components of the v1.0 features list toward completion.  

Rogue Drones were recently implemented as replacements for the stock space pirate faction with an abbreviated (and appropriately drone-ified) ship set based on Gallente designs.

Starbase redesigns are also in progress, and the full range of Caldari stations have now been implemented.  These replacements include shipyard designs as well as each type and tier of starbase.

The tech tree rewrite has been a gargantuan project and involves renaming every technology in the generic GC3 tree and writing new short (what you see on the research tree screen) and long (what you see when you complete research) descriptions that mesh with the lore of EVE Online.  I have also added about a dozen new late era and 'age of victory' level technologies to better round out the warfare tree and provide a range of additional very high level techs for late game research.  The unique tech trees for each faction will be based on this master tree once all that foundation work is complete (and it's around 66%).

Shooting for a partial content release in early October that will let you play with the revised and new ship and starbase sets for half of the factions while I continue to develop the remaining ship sets, tech trees, and other flavor items that will complete the total conversion.

Wow! Nice work!

*drool* can't wait! looking beautiful

oh one thing I noticed on your caldari mod that confused me a bit was the naming of the badger, as you used that name for all 3 transport ships with a single letter after the name which to me didn't say what type of ship it was.

Other than that I really enjoyed the models on that mod very well done, very impressed

Cpt S

@Frogboy

High praise! Thank you!

@CptSantino

Gotcha re: the cargo hull naming convention. I'll make those clearer. Thanks!

I have updated the original post with a link to the now-released Alpha Content Pack.

The Alpha Content Pack is a preview of the as yet unreleased full mod and includes:

• Two ship sets based on the ships of EVE Online: revised Caldari ship set and all new Gallente ship set
• New starbase designs based on the stations of EVE Online: Caldari and Gallente
• Five major factions from the complete GCoNE roster of twelve for your testing and enjoyment: Caldari State, Gallente Federation, Guristas Pirates, Intaki Syndicate, and Serpentis Corporation
• Six minor factions from the complete GCoNE roster: Achura, Intaki Prime, Jin-Mei, Mannar, Mordu's Legion, and Outer Ring Excavations

I have run a few tests, and so far I can report this:

Good stuff:

-It is awesome!

-Tested with Gauntlet's Race Mod. Works seamlessly. Minor races appear together with no problems along with the vanilla ones.

Bugs:

-The new GC3_Strategic_Icons.dds is not updated for the Mega Events dlc as it lacks a space monster icon. I also feel that this is a bit of an iffy thing to change (a base system file) and should be in optional content.

-The shipstyle viewer does not show the proper surveyor ships. Intentional?

-Some factions start with an extra scout ship instead of a colonizer.

I will make more reports if I find more things worth mentioning unless someone beats me to it. Also, I feel we might need to nag Stardock some about adding a scrollwheel to the shipstyle list.

@TheHordesman

Thanks so much for the quick feedback!  

You're absolutely right about the strategic icons.  Those should be in the optionals folder and will be moved.  

I chose the Ferox and Brutix for the ship style viewer intentionally even though they are not the default starting survey ships.  

And yes, some factions start with two scouts instead of a colony ship, but have 2.5 more population on their homeworld and a single higher class homeworld in their starting system instead of two lower class planets.  Do you think this will be too imbalanced?

I suspected there was some reason behind it as the factions with this made sense. However, I always feel that an empire with two worlds will always beat one with only one as they have more space on the map, more space to construct improvements and are generally in a much better position. To balance this out is a very difficult undertaking indeed. While it is always possible to build a colonizer, the starting colony rush is a hectic and often frustrating bit on smaller maps, so I am not sure if there is really any way to add diversity to starting units in terms of balance. Perhaps a better quality world?

Galciv has never been about 100% balance however, so maybe this just adds to the challenge playing them?

It is a precarious balancing act given the importance of the early rush.  As envisioned right now, I have the following factions set up with these starting conditions:

Angel Cartel, Blood Raiders, Guristas Pirates, Sansha's Nation, Serpentis Corporation

1 survey, 2 scouts

1 class 14-16 world (w/ 10 pop) in home system

vs.

Amarr Empire, Caldari State, Gallente Federation, Intaki Syndicate, Khanid Kingdom, Minmatar Republic, Thukker Tribe

1 survey, 1 scout, 1 colony ship (w/ 2.5 pop on it)

1 class 8-10 world (w/ 7.5 pop), 1 class 6-8 world (uncolonized) in home system

Anyone familiar with the EVE universe will notice that the first group is composed of the true pirate factions, while the CONCORD powers and peripheral states are in the second group. Perhaps by adding a tiny or small combat ship to the first group's starting set up, they'll have enough of an edge to justify the lack of a free colonizer (and reinforce their warlike nature from the very start)?