Manshooter, this has amazing potential. I can't even imagine that they made this possible in the expansion! Wow, I guess I'll actually have to break down and buy the expansion if only for this once you get the mini-mod available at some point in the future.

P.S. If you upgrade to Entrenchment, you can still play with non-entrenchment players correct? (just without the add-on kicking in?)

also is there a way to make the ships weaker to atks on the sides or rear. This would allow for 2 things to happen give more reason to the mod allowing flanks and such to now come into play as well as give smaller ships a lil boost while they out manuver a larger ship. give you both ups and downs to fleet formation and dogfights

tell me if 1 it can be down and if others agree with it

Entrenchment allows you to enable/disable it at will!

So no more screwing around with 2 sins folders...just open sins (like you would any other time) and click the new icon called, Enable Entrenchment! VOILA! As simple as that!

ENTRENCHMENT FTW!!!

Actually, the ships move roughly half as fast as vanilla. And the big difference is that they continue to move, instead of just standing there pounding at each other a la 18th century tactics. So the battles are, as the name implies, dynamic, instead of static.

When I finish basic setup, I will upload the beta version so everyone can see what its about, help iron out the kinks and yes, see if its their cup of tea.

CursedSpirit, unfortunately, I don't think the game engine differentiates various sides for damage. Although it would be cool to have, weaker side and rear armor probably canb't be done.

oh wow ManSh00ter....  I love you!!!

I love modding Sins, and I've seen people in the past want to try the fleet moving mods. Yet they didn't feel right to me.  Now that they have changed it in the coding so we can do this.  I never thought about it anymore until this! 

 You'r video has me all hyped up.     Take your time making it, but hurry up!!! hahaha

I will say I dislike messing with damage and that too much when it comes to ships, but some might be right with upping it.

After looking at the video, theres also the chance to make ships like the frig just shoot more as it comes in on its target rather than keeping it the same amount and upping their damage. Something to think about.

Anyways, looking good so far.  Keep up the good work.

EDIT:::   One quick thing.  I read where you said Fire Support platforms are capital ships etc. 

I was hopeing to see some of those Caps out there running around shooting other ships. Big slow moving ships making their turns and bringing their guns around.

Wound't they need to keep on the move as well?  Trying to keep up with smaller ships running around them. Just sitting there , they wouldn't turn that great. 

Still damn good job on this so far

The problem with short strafing runs was solved by decreasing the overall flight speed of nearly every ship ingame. As a consequence they do move somewhat slower, with some extreme cases such as siege platforms moving very slowly. The siege capital is now the slowest vessel in the game, and the long range frigates are the slowest frigates.

The LRM frigates and capitals remain stationary during combat, but the capitals now have a much better use for their side-mounted weapons. The LRM's have had their turn rate drastically reduced - it now takes them a while to realign to a new firing angle, which makes them vulnerable to a swarm of common assault frigates. This makes them more sutiable for demolition work or assaults in specialized fire groups against capital ships.

Also, the battle damage is far more diffuse now, with ships automatically reacquiring new temporary targets if the original one is out of range or sight. Focus fire is still possible, of course, by explicitly ordering ships to attack a certain target.

Collision turned up to be an issue, but with an increase to the angular acceleration values, fast moving ships can now turn much more sharply, which enables them to avoid most collisions. Of course, not all of those can be avoided, but it adds to the flavor of the battle, especially when you see ships clump up and tear each other apart with fury.

Tweaking continues, expect a beta to be made available this week, since I will need player input on what works and what does not!

As always, we are excited and waiting. You my good sir have probably just made a LOT of people excited. (maybe even the devs. ^_- )

Nah, roll in aircraft is rotation around the z-axis (one running parallel to the direction of movement). So changing the roll rate and angle controls how hard and fast the ship angles when turning.

Angular acceleration and decelleration control how sharply a ship can turn. You can get some weird side-effects with that though - for example, if you increase the ship mass to insane levels and also give them fighter-like ability to turn about, and then make the linear decelleration rate very small, they actually turn about to "brake". I don't know if they really are using the physics system to do that or if it was a byproduct of a certain situation where they overshot their target and tried to align for a shot, but it was actually a nifty representation of Newtonian physics in action - its how real ships would brake (since you can never outmatch the thrust of the main engines, its always better to just turn the ship around and brake with the mains instead of some braking thrusters on the nose).

Not that I'll leave it in like that. We want dogfighting, not Odyssey 2001.

I imigine roll would be spinning your ship in like spiral, anyone getting sick?

I've rebuilt the combat model with the following changes to core gameplay:

-doubled damage on all ships except siege and LRM
-halved the hull and shield points of LRM frigates
-decreased the angular acceleration value of LRM, siege frigates and stationary turrets to 0.5
-halved the top speed of all ships
-drastically increased angular acceleration values for all ships using fighter attack
-reduced the top speed of capital ships to one quarter of original

The LRM got hit because they were too powerful otherwise, especially against the AI which doesn't seem to think they're much of a threat. As a consequence, the LRM is now useful for demolition work and massed missile attacks against less mobile forces, like capital ships and stations. They *will* lose against an equal force of assault frigates. They don't move, they're fragile and they turn like WWII tanks. They still pack a nasty punch though. I thought these guys were nerfed by IC, I can't imagine the havoc they wrought in multiplayer before...

All ships which use fighter attacks can now turn rather sharply. This may *sometimes* look a bit off, but it allows for two things to come into play: one, the ship inertia is more visible. Two it allows for some very cool dogfights to occur - I've even seen two ships trying to circle-strafe each other until one of them ate a laser volley from another passing attacker. I saw a cruiser latch onto the tail of an attack frigate and smash it to pieces. Cool stuff like that. Makes the battle seem really alive.

Capital ships were always too fast - now they're not.

Increased damage means that sometimes battles can be short and furious. But the overall battle length is somewhere around the original - naturally this now depends on many random factors and not-so-random factors such as the positioning, grouping etc.

Outstanding problems: none major, the combat model looks good and feels good, haven't had the chance to test it on some truly major battles, that's what beta's going to be for. One issue is that ships using fighter attack sometimes hang up on planets or (colonizable) asteroids. This is rare, and giving them move orders solves the problem. Also, can't stop ships hitting the stationary objects they're attacking, like orbital modules and capital ships. Its less obvious with the increased turning speed, but it's still there. Doesn't happen all the time, but it happens... I don't think it can be prevented without also preventing ships from passing each other in a head-on pass, which is essential.

P.S.

Kibbler, this mod is currently for Entrenchment only, as there is no necessary code to allow fighter movement for ordinary ships in the vanilla Sins. Rumour has it that IC might bring that coding to vanilla, and if that happens I will have this mod support vanilla Sins as well.

OMG....I need to update!

Mans00ter my friend, you never cease to amaze me.  This is awesome work.  And if Last Stand includes this....WOW.

DANMAN

 Simply AWESOME!!    Very Cool ManShooter!!  

i would love to give this a try, very nice work!!!  

-Teal

Repulsion field should still work, as the entities themselves were not changed in type, just in behaviour. As for other possible tweaks, I'm interested to know what the "battle ball" is? Stopping engines to increase missile damage actually looks fair to me... you get a real tradeoff for extra firepower (before, when the ships were static, you just lost the ability to maneuver which wasn't really needed anyway during a fight).

Beta should be coming up soon... I can only set up a good-looking flight model, the rest should be tested out by actual players who obviously can come up woth more ways to break the system than I can. Based on player input I can refine the ship stats to achieve fair balance.