Gauntlet03 Gauntlet03

Babylon 5 Mod Ideas

▼

Babylon 5 Mod Ideas

from Sins Forums
So since it should be inevitable for a B5 mod to get made, i figure it couldn't hurt to talk some about it, and perhaps maybe plan and get a team going for it.

Major Major Questions...

1. How many playable races to attempt, and which ones?

2. How many ships per faction, should ship roles/designs and numbers be based off the existing Sins races or not care?

3. Which general era of ships to use for the Earth Alliance?

4. Should capital ship mechanics remain the same? IE should the current game mechanics be kept in more or less the same condition?

My personal ideas is that the general game should play about the same, but that many ships should be condensed into one for some races, or expanded for others, notably I am in favor of maintaining only 3 Capital ship choices, as I think finding 5 for each major race would be quickly silly.

I would say for the beggining 3 balanced major races would be best, in general I view the technical/qualitative tiers being as such

Lowest: League Worlds, Early EA, Dilgar
Medium: EA, Centauri, Narn
High: Minbari, Drahk
Godish: Shadows, Vorlons, Additional Ancients

The mod would preferably come with several maps, one of which would represent the B5 universe just before the shadow war, it would be nice if a timer was included so that perhaps 3 hours into the game 2 special pirate worlds (the Shadows and the Vorlons) launch massive and mean pirate strikes... regular Raider Pirates would otherwise conduct themselves normally.

Other special maps/scenarios: Dilgar EA war... Earth Minbari War, and Narn Centauri War (The Shadows should/could be present here as well.)

While some races would be playable in these scenarios, for example in the Earth-Dilgar war you could play these or the League worlds, as the Early EA faction would be balanced with them; but the Earth Minbari War should be a 2V1, with the Minbari being powerful enough to take on two players.

This means that in the generic game, the balanced races would be EA, Narn and Centauri. The Minbari, Drahk and League worlds would all be special militia or pirate forces, we could easily design new planets that corresponded to these races and would spawn with special militia units, thus you wouldn't have Minbar being guarded by Raiders or Drazi.

Ship wise, the most important is obviously the Capitals- My personal choices for the 3 main powers are as such, with the TEC similar ship noted.

EA: Omega Destroyer (Kol) Posideon Super Carrier (Sova) Nova Dreadnought (Marza)

Narn: Bin`Tak Dreadnought (Kol) G`Quan Heavy Cruiser (Dunov) (Third????)

Centauri: Primus BattleCruiser (Dunov?) Octurion Battlship (Kol) Balvarin Carrier (Akkan?)



Additional Scenarios: Psi Corp Rebellion, EA Civil War, Mars Rebellion, The Centauri-League War (with Drahk as Pirates?) The list goes on and on.

Oh and for the EA, I would use Hyperions as the basic combat unit, to give fans an iconic mainstay for their fleets, as opposed to the too awesome for Frigate Omega, and the lesser known Olympus, Tethys, Saggitarius, or Oracle... (or the others   )
modding
481,778 views 311 replies
Reply #101 from Sins Forums Top
Its just a bunch of dudes bouncing idea's with some demo footage & mod work atm so please speak up if you have something to contribute.

FYI : I have posted some additional video material on a thread Im running on the TFL clan forum:

WWW Link
Reply #102 from Sins Forums Top
@Talynsun - Thats cool. It is the way to do things as well. Being pro active is what it is all about in my opinion.

Anyway, welcome to the community!

@BBT - Sweet!! A nice demo video. You are making progress to be sure. Additionally for a few seconds I sort of felt like I was looking at a real scene from the show.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #103 from Sins Forums Top
Very nice demonstration! The crabs movement speed and grace is akin to the show.
And yes, glad to see progress so early on. :CONGRAT:
Reply #104 from Sins Forums Top
Just looked at the clips. Nice!

B5 fan myself. Tried modding B5 in a different game a few years back, let's just say I'll keep my day job (non-programmer)!

I do have some background material based on a minatures game (B5 Wars by Agents of Gaming) if anyone needs/wants it.

If needed, I can test. I have Beta 4.
Reply #105 from Sins Forums Top
If any one has played Star trek Armada 2 you would recognize that there is a b5 mod there. It's pretty well balanced and the number of races is very much thought through; not only that but the different sides one could choose when picking a race, i.e. Dark vs. Light side to every race, and the pros and cons that come with that, made the game very dynamic, and this could fit the different play styles of people.

Think this would be a good start at least.
Reply #106 from Sins Forums Top
I found quite a good screen grab of a Minbari battlegroup today, it shows a fair ammount of detailed features and textures on the Sharlin War Cruiser which will come in handy for the graphical uplift on the Sharlin I have in game.

Not an in game SoaSE screenshot this time  (:(  

WWW Link
Reply #107 from Sins Forums Top
Cool nonetheless. Sins can do that just as well with the right models I think.
Reply #108 from Sins Forums Top
I would like to remind you shadow ships turn around and then attack.
Reply #109 from Sins Forums Top
I thought they were going backwards
Reply #110 from Sins Forums Top
yeah spartan that can be done just depends on how many diferent types of gun its got cos thats alot of stikey outy things on the front
Reply #111 from Sins Forums Top
Yep that is true.

I truly hope one day, soon, someone from IC contacts JMS and seriously talks about an X-pack. Hell I would even do it for them but I'm not an authorized agent. I truly think Sins is the first game that can do justice to the B5 universe.
Reply #112 from Sins Forums Top
i think the iron engine is the engine to do justice to alot of space based games/movies/shows never actuly seen B5 but i know BFG is gona work famously and im sure that alot of other IP could to
Reply #113 from Sins Forums Top
That is so true. Hell IC could make a lot of money just doing franchise X-packs. It would be the birth of a market to boot. Food for thought...
Reply #114 from Sins Forums Top

I thought they were going backwards

End of quote


Yes they were but if you watch the show they travel fastest backwards and turn around to attack.
Reply #115 from Sins Forums Top
BTW, just to throw it out, but when doing a conversion you don't have to stick with the unit mechanics the game has -- for example, you don't have to have 5 distinct capitol ships all the same in price. It should be possible -- from what I understand of the map files -- to disable the "first capitol free" thing, so you could have several capitols, each with different pricing (and possibly research reqs...) instead of the current system.

This could be really helpful in creating distinctions for races that might not otherwise have them.
Reply #116 from Sins Forums Top
That is a good idea Ron. I guess you are useful for something after all. :d
Reply #117 from Sins Forums Top
you can definatley mess around with how the cap ships work diferent prices diferent cap requirements (i think) and im sure there is a way to set up a requirement for it. im just trying to figure out multiple requirements at the moment if il keep everyone informed i wana see as many mods for this game as possible because as stated earlier its a great engine
Reply #118 from Sins Forums Top
The X3 lads have released a new video demonstrating some area's of progress on their B5 mod.

Its good, really good.

WWW Link

SoaSE should be able to handle epic battles better than X3 purely on game design & UI, but X3 will provide a better simulation of a B5 universe, offer missions and far more depth all round.
Reply #119 from Sins Forums Top
Not bad but Sins should blow X3 away for sure.
Reply #120 from Sins Forums Top
Wow, Those models made by Amras are work of proffesional. Does he make textures as well?

That looks great...I just might pick up X3 game becouse off that mod :) ...I hope Amras and devs of that mod will allow their modells to be imported to B5 mod for sins. Anyone knows how many polygons per ship is allowed in the game?
Reply #121 from Sins Forums Top
Nice thread :)

<-- huge B5 nut.

Sins will provide the epic/frantic format that most of the B5 battles seemed to represent. With the space battle format, fighting over star systems...even would allow for "EA delay missions" against a Minbari assault.

A main advantage for B5 is the number of races and 'Empires' that are in the storyline. Take the EA for example: They did fight the Minbari hard for two years, despite being what, a thousand years behind? Then 15 years late, albeit with some outside help the Warlock-class is created. Anything can happen in B5!

Any lore/information I'd be happy to help with, my modding skills are...well...I can draw stick figure spaceships!
Reply #122 from Sins Forums Top
I hope Amras and devs of that mod will allow their modells to be imported to B5 mod for sins.
End of quote


I approached the subject with them, and they politely pointed out that they are busy developing their models for their B5 mod which is quite understandable. Once the X3:B5 mod is made public then that is probably the right time to ask so they get the credit and appreciation they deserve for their mod before considering other projects.

Altenatively you could just build the models from scratch (or use other sources) for SoaSE but why re-invent the wheel when can you can co-operate I say.

btw: my initial tests to date suggest a poly limit of 20-25k per ship, though there might be other reasons why my high poly models failed to import. The SoaSE engine seems more geared towards lower poly models with higher res textures & maps. I guess that makes more sense when you consider the scale and numbers involved.
Reply #123 from Sins Forums Top
I thought Blair stated that it was able to handle very high counts before. I think we will simply have to wait for the release of the final version to be sure.
Reply #124 from Sins Forums Top

btw: my initial tests to date suggest a poly limit of 20-25k per ship, though there might be other reasons why my high poly models failed to import. The SoaSE engine seems more geared towards lower poly models with higher res textures & maps. I guess that makes more sense when you consider the scale and numbers involved.
End of quote


Nice, I guess that more or less standard these days. I could not help but notice that some models of Amras there were acually Turbosmoothed, since games cant read turbosmooth he must have collapsed it, before continuing editing. Pretty smart on his part, otherways it would be hell making making shadows and minbari vessels.

Babylon 5 in first episodes had only 6-7 thousand poly count :LOL:

Reply #125 from Sins Forums Top

Babylon 5 in first episodes had only 6-7 thousand poly count
End of quote


But some pretty impressive textures :D