[MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.)

ManSh00ter

Join Date 02/2008

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[MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.)

Previously known as "The Last Stand"

Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION is an addon project aiming to expand upon the existing universe of the Sins of a Solar Empire, providing original and high-quality content on top of the original game. Aside from the new content, the addon will also include multiplayer-friendly gameplay changes as well as reworked or new visuals/sounds.

ETA: To Be Announced

Planned changes/content will include:

A new playable race, created to the highest quality standards. The Xin are a race of utterly alien origin, and the massive fleets of their living, semi-sentient ships have been ravaging the galaxy for millenia. Countless races have perished under their onslaught - and now TEC, Advent and the Vasari will have to face this terrible enemy and win - or die trying.
Assume the role of the defenders and try to stem the tide of death and destruction, or take command of the invading armada and destroy the impertinent insects wherever they choose to make their last stand.

Volumetric Explosions & Damage Effects, providing not only greater excitement to your space battles by transforming all explosions and persistent damage effect into true 3D affairs, but also better visual cues as to how the battle is going, enabling you to spot at a first glance the hotspots and even the level of damage on particular ships.
Dynamic Battle System, where each ship class' strenghts and uses are not determined only by its stats and abilities, but also by its flight characteristics. Certain ship classes will be able to move during fleet battles, which, coupled with the reworked stats of all ship classes should prevent "cookie-cutter" or "spam" strategies.
New Ship Classes for the new faction, ranging from specialist ships such as the Warmaster or Emperor Battlecruiser all the way to Titans acting as mobile superweapons capable of facing down an entire fleet on their own or even destroying an entire gravity well in one powerful surge.
Reworked Balancing, aiming to further focus various ship classes on their roles, removing any overlapping advantages which ultimately make one ship type or the other the ship to produce. Changes will also include increased gravity wells as well as greater class difference in turning rates and top speeds in order to further accentualize fleet placement, strategic positioning of forward bases and other such details which a great admiral make.
New Planet Types, which will also be visually enhanced, primarily by increasing their size in order to make them a true centerpiece of a given sector. New planet types will provide greater variety without providing game-breaking advantages to players.
Enlarged Gravity Wells which, coupled with the dynamic nature of space combat, will challenge players to an even greater level, requiring careful placements of planetary defenses and orbital structures, as well as fleets.
Unique Structures for the new faction, ranging from formidable Heavy Defense Batteries to deployable Outposts which will be capable of guarding even sectors around otherwise uninhabitable astronomical bodies such as stars or gas giants.

==MEDIA SECTION==

==SCREENSHOTS==

==TRAILERS==

DRONE SPOTLIGHT I

A short ingame exposition of the Scout, Assault and Siege drones.

==BACKGROUND LORE==

Pangalactic War Timeline

Clicking the above link will lead you to the download of a .pdf document detailing the rich and dynamic history of the factions which will play a major role in the Last Stand mod, so if you are into background lore, be sure to check it out!

==UNIT INFORMATION==

Pending.

modding

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Sobekeus
G_Bison
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Distorted Truth
brummyuk
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Haha, I hated the damn Sisters (my orks repeatedly bashed their green heads against their plate armor to no effect), but yeah, that's one example of a high quality mod getting a leg-up. CounterStrike, Day of Defeat, Portal etc. are some of the others. Which gives you a pretty good idea what kind of quality you need to aim for to make an impact.

In the meantime, I fixed and enhanced the textures on the Chimera, screenies coming soon(tm)!

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I think everyone can agree with me when I say that this one can be worthy of that.

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wow i just started playing sins and i come to the fourms and see this type of mod and im like WOW this guy is realy on to something, i cant wait to try it out

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Quoting boshimi336,

reply 22

Perhaps this has been asked ... but has there been ANY communication between you and Stardock as far as them picking this up as an actual expansion to the game? THAT would be very worthwhile and rewarding. Have you tried contacting them at all?

Nooo, dont say that, then we will have to ... PAY FOR IT... that would defeat the whole purpose

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lol gamerking345! I was just making sure it wasn't just shoved aside. The quality of this mod (at least in graphics and depth, I have not played it) strike me as something very very similar to production quality. And in response to your comment mansh00ter, lets hope it gets many many downloads. Many many indeed.

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Quoting vp21ct,

reply 2

I think everyone can agree with me when I say that this one can be worthy of that.

In-frekn-deed!

Can't wait

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Thanks folks, I appreciate the support.

Here's another of my... khm... "sketches" depicting a Capital Uplink, probably the largest orbital structure for the Xin (and considering the Xin are 9 meters long squids, and have accordingly sized ships and structures, probably the largest structure in the Last Stand).

The sheer size of this thing will make it a challenge to texture, simply because there's so much visible surface calling for texture space. But it will make for a good excersize for Titan creation (and nah, Titans are a wee bit smaller than that). This will probably have more than one texture set. I feel megalomaniacal.

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speaking of orbital structures, have you designed a orbital defense gun?

The picture above looks awesome, I can't wait until it is textured.

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it looks awsome, but willl it be a circle/ sphere structure like the frigate uplink? i think it should, but thats my opinionmaybe like this only with a huge ring around it and a huge sphere in the senter where the ships materialize.

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Well, the above picture is simply a rotoscope reference, the final model usually ends up a bit different, depending on what I like and what not in 3D. But the idea is that it will look sort of like a flower, with an area in the middle (roughly where you can see the ship) where there will be a brilliant portal/wormhole, sort of like what I have for the Xin jump animation, and that's where the ships are going to be materialized.

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OK the way you put it, sounds awsome, cant wait!!

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Hey Mansh00ter,

Great job with the mod so far. The ships look great, and the textures are awesome. I can’t wait for the final release of Ep1, let alone the full chronology.

Anyways, I was using the volumetric explosions mod, and I noticed it didn’t have a bunch of the other cool stuff in Bailknight’s graphics mod. Could you make a merge-friendly version of those two mods combined that I could then use for other cool mods like Sins of a Galactic Empire?

Final Comment: Considering it’s taken you a year to reach the almost-releasing point for ep1, you should probably find a team to help you using either MODDB or just the normal soase forums.

Thanks a ton Mansh00ter.

-Flankers1010

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what the crap?!!! k, html is seriously acting up.

LOL!

Oh well....

Well good luck finishing the mod Mansh00ter, I greatly look forward to it!

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Don't worry about the time it took me so far - the fact is this is my first serious modding project and I had to learn how to effectively use a ton of tools, including XSI and Photoshop, not to mention Z-Brush. So effectively, I've been working on the mod for some five months - the rest was spent honing my skills on the aforementioned programs.

So in other words, you can expect Episode I within the next two months, and Episode II before the end of this year. Bar, as usual, unforeseen circumstances.

(and the reason why I prefer to solo this one is one, because its doable and two because its actually more effective - volunteer teams often hit snags when team members run out of free time or motivation)

As for the Volumetric mod, there already is a merge-friendly version included in the download, and you can use that to incorporate my explosion and damage effects in any other mod you see fit! Unfortunately, its not possible to create a merge-friendly version including full Bailknight's mod, since he changes a bit more than *just* effects. That's why I only took a selection of his changes, namely the visual enhancements he did.

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I have a question that may or may not have been anwered somewhere in this thread ... I've been watching it for awhile but my memory isn't the best.

With the introduction of Titan class ships and other late(r) game structures and/or units (especially after the first release and you start thinking about incorporating Entrenchment), have you put any thought into late game technologies or abilities?

I think Sins has a very "balanced" late game, but not a very progressive one. What I mean is in a game that can run for hours and hours on the bigger maps, most of the research and building is done within the first. I don't really think it necessary to expand the tech tree, but was just wondering if you had some other things in mind to go along with the civ-like "Wonder" projects like I'm assuming a Titan will be; i.e. projects that take a lot of planning and resources.

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Well, that will depend on the feedback I get from beta. I try to avoid the "feature creep" that is the bane of many mods - continuous adding of new and interesting features which prevent the mod from ever being actually finished.

What I had in mind is altering the tech tree to allow for more steps in a technology topic, or perhaps simply increasing the time it takes for a particular technology to be researched - forcing the player to think harder about what he wants to spend valuable research time on.

The Titan construction will be an involved process however, that should occupy most if not all the end-game (since, unless your opponents have managed to find effective countermeasures, it IS going to be the end game for them). Not only you have to complete expensive and lengthy research projects, but you also have to actually build the ship, which itself will be a lenghty process, and quite an unstable one - so a well-timed raid against the Titan portal will be able to shatter its delicate balance and require the Titan building player to set it up all over again.

This is just one of the reasons why in the Last Stand the lowly scout frigate is going to be one of the most important ships - knowing what your enemy is doing will be essential. Preventing your enemy from doing the same - no less so.

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will the titan be stoppable? and can you build more than 1

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A titan will be stoppable, but it will not be easy. Unless a player who is facing one has the ability to amass very large fleets with high damage capacity, they will likely not be able to resist a titan-supported attack. And even then, the titan's superweapon creates a deadly risk for any such large fleet attacking - should it be somehow tied up in that battle (perhaps through interdictors) and too slow to destroy the titan, it will virtually be wiped out when the superweapon fires.

So yeah, you can stop a titan, but you'd be much better off preventing your enemy from ever making one. Or build one of your own.

And yes, you can build more than one, but the fleet capacity cost is so high, it will mean you will have much smaller conventional fleets (if any). This would make any player with several titans very vulnerable to flanking maneuvers. The superweapon will also likely incur a moderate cost in resources as well, so you will need your colonies intact if you want to use the titans to their full potential.

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I like that idea of it's super weapon cast costing resources. It makes it a bit more realistic for such a powerful weapon. Along with the downtime of it as well.

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how do you intend to balence it if the vanilla factions dont have a titan, because as you said, the best way to take down a titan is not letting it get built or with your own titan?

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Maybe he intends on creating new titan class models for the vanilla's as well?

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Hi Manshooter, I would like to start by saying congrats on the mod so far it looks amazing, I give it . I love your point of view on the titans role in the game, you created a "holy shit i'm fucked" type of unit in the game, but the best part of it is the strategy concept behind it. You have all this power but with great sacrifice, in theory you have a unit that can practically blow through your enemies territory like a run away train and you can build more then one but at a cost, you have to sacrifice fleet availability and territory defence, along with resources. I would also like to ask, you said that you're considering creating an entrenchment compatible version, what type of strategic concept are you thinking of between star bases and titans? Because now you have two massive unit types in the game that can create an epic showdown to be remembered. And I was wondering if u could change up or add some better cruisers for the T.E.C., because their cruisers are probably the worst ones in the game, let's face it the Kodiak is practically just an armor buffed light frigate it's weapons hardly do any damage. I understand that the T.E.C. are supposed to be the most underdeveloped faction but even their light frigates and strike craft kick more ass than their cruisers. I also have some ideas that are not huge time consuming works but will help in the strategic gameplay of titans.

Feel free to private message me,

AncientEmperor

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this mod goin to work with beta 2.5

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no, not gonna work with entrenchment

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First, here are some ingame shots of the Chimera. Full unit update when I finish the deployable Sentinel Orb, which is the Xin equivalent of an armed outpost, and the Chimera-only drones. Probably by the end of next week.

To answer some of the questions:

I have no plans on adding new ship types for vanilla races - the existing units will be modified where necessary to allow for new abilities such as interdiction. When it comes to balancing the vanilla races against Titans, they (the TEC, Vasari and Advent) are actually meant to be the underdogs in this mod - played by people who enjoy a challenge of playing a basically inferior race against a powerful nemesis, or a huge interstellar empire. That said, it will not be impossibly hard to play against the new factions as one of the three old ones - just harder than usual.

New factions also will not have any orbital superweapons, nor will they be able to deploy super-tough orbital structures like the Entrenchment starbases (though they can deploy smaller bases like outposts, and they can do it in any sector regardless of ownership). To offset that, they have the Titans which basically can pwn all, though as I said before, they will cost you, both in resources, time and fleet flexibility.

How will a showdown between a Titan and a Starbase look like? I actually have no idea. I'd bet on the Titan, if only because of its doomsday weapon. But I wouldn't send a lone Titan against a supported starbase, that's for sure.

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