Oh man, thank you! I was bashing my head against the monitor, somehow confused trilobites with troglodytes and couldn't remember the proper name! Now I can sleep well again. 

And the charge weapon is *really* short-range. Melee, allmost. But omnidirectional. The Sentinel Drone is no replacement for a dedicated anti-fighter ship.

Starting (finally) work on the Overlord... the biggest, baddest ship the Xin have, aside from their Titan class...

The Tyrant wasn't epic enough?!

i thaught the hammerhead thing was the second biggest they had, the huge on in the first trailer...

The Tyrant (hammerhead) is big, and tough, but the Overlord is a tad larger and actually can bring more firepower to the battle with its full complement of plasmids *and* the frontal big guns. The Tyrant is built for taking on big ships and duking it out face-to-face. The Overlord is built for overall firepower and the ability to pretty much be a danger to everything. Its not as well armoured and shielded as the Tyrant though. So it basically boils down to survivability vs. damage/versatility. The side point-defense pods of the Overlord enable it to virtually decimate enemy strike craft by itself, for example, while the Tyrant is totally unable to defend itself from such small attackers.

<----Trilobite

...ok

Could you just give a short summary of this race and how it will be different?  It would be quite useful.  Also I can't see the video you put up.  I have no idea why it just isn't there.

The Xin: ruthless, totally alien and unrelenting. They sport advanced technology (far more advanced than any of the existing factions) which reflects in their ships - they are tough, very well armed - but expensive to make and maintain. The Xin are meant to be defensive in nature, that is their ships and structures are geared towards dishing out massive damage and soaking up the same, but they are slow and difficult to adapt to a flexible foe. This is especially true when it comes to their home turf vs. enemy or unclaimed sectors; while they have the technology to build a sort of wormhole network between all of their owned systems which enables them to zip around pretty quickly between their worlds, their native slow sublight and phase speed means they struggle when it comes to hit and run tactics or facing down a more speedy foe.

Also, playing with the Xin you have to be careful not to suffer a catastrophic defeat, as they have smaller fleets of powerful ships which, if lost, take time to replace. Fighting on the defensive, however, the Xin excel - they are meant to very tough to root out once they've had some time to fortify a sector.

So to summarize:

-powerful vessels (roughly 2x equivalent amongst other factions, in the case of the Remnant, its 4:1 in the favor of the Xin)

-expensive to build and develop (you will need a lot of resources to run them smoothly)

-slow ship speeds both phase and sublight (painfully obvious with the mod's expanded gravity wells)

-technology allowing for extremely quick travel between owned gravity wells, does not help with sublight speed though

-cool looking ships

... cant wait... is there any possibility that we will be able to defeat them on their own turf however... only with ships so overpowered that they can destroy a ship with a single shot, or overwhelming them with so many units it will make the computer go crazy... 

The Xin are slow, period.  Slow phase, slow sublight, slow turning.  Hitting them in their flanks or rear will REALLY cause them grief since they can't turn for crap and they have little to no guns in those arcs.  So sneak attacks + micro will win you the day.

P.S. ManSh00ter, when you introduced the Hegemony as showing up and showing the other races how to wage real war, well whenever I think of them I can't help but be reminded of this vid:

AMOC Intro Vid

Gamerking, sure, especially if there will be some code improvements in Entrenchment, namely those which will allow for all ships to move in combat. Since most Xin ships have slow speed and turning rates, and can fire their weapons only in the frontal arc, this would make them pretty vulnerable to being flanked. But even without the aforementioned code improvement, some micromanagement, or even just a combination of larger fleets and strategic outflanking can win you the day. The Xin ships are tough, but not impossible to beat. Usually it takes 2 ships of equal class (heavy cruisers, atack frigates etc.) to match one Xin ship. In the case of the Remnant, which will have weaker ships than usual, that ratio climbs to 4 Remnant ships needed to match a single Xin vessel.

Naturally, Remnant ships will be very low poly (but still high quality), so you do not have to worry about your computer going crazy. That's one reason why their theme is technical and blocky - you need far fewer polygons for angular models than for curved ones!

SpardaSon21, the Hegemony intro will be cooler than that. The guy in that vid sounds a little bit pissed off. The Hegemony *never* gets upset. After waging a pan-galactic war for ten thousand years I think, if they tended to get upset at having their worlds razed to the ground, they would have all died from stomach ulcers by now.

Yeah I know he's pissed.  Its just from what you told me the Hegemony remind me of "insert arrogant ancient race here".  And it was just that whole intro thing when he says "Real War is Coming" that reminded me of the Hegemony and them showing up to show everyone else how wars are fought.

now i really cant wait, will the xin have a lower ship max than the other factions?

I'm sure he's mentioned that fleet cost will take into account ship power, it only makes sense.

Yeah, Xin ships will have lower fleet capacity (their ships cost more fleet supply), their ships will also be more expensive and take longer to build.

First of all, I'd like to say that I've been here pretty much since this mod started, albeit in the shadows and not active on the forums or on your new(er) ModDB profile. I was a huge fan of the feeler, as well as Mr. Space Whale, heh. I love how far things have come from then, myself being part of a few mods in the past, I commend the sheer amount of effort (or, if it's not a matter of effort for you) the sheer amount of SKILL you have at pushing full steam ahead, churning out new things at a constant rate and not backing down from your goal. Never give up with this mod, so far it's proving to be even greater than most full games that have recently come out! In many respects, your additions, revisions and overall implementations are beginning to dwarf Sins in and of itself.


I envy you, "ManSh00ter" and wish every modder, myself included, had the zeal and dedication you seem to possess so fully.


Aside from bowing to you and marveling at your work thus far, I came with a bit of an offer. I know this work of yours is a solo project, to which I am amazed, though if anything I can offer could benefit you in any way I'd give everything I could. I have absolutely no modeling, coding, or texturing skills whatsoever and have never even touched a 3D rendering program. However, as I said, I've been part of a fair number of mods as a Lore, Infocard, Story and campaign designer. Essentially, I write the things that the player finds themselves immersing themselves in, the storyline.. the plot.. the underlying background and lore that, while not inherently important, allow the player to truly lose himself in the experience. If you would like, I'd gladly offer my skills in whatever way I could to you. Perhaps (depending on the time until full release) I could help you in creating a full story-like campaign between the Episodes which would chronicle the arrival of the Xin, and the sheer destruction that follows after (possibly including specific engagements, dates and the gauging of the devastation this new menace brings with it).


Either way, I've made this post far longer than I should have.. Keep up the phenomenal work ManSh00ter!

Well, thank you for high praise ShadowKain666!

Now, as far as the lore goes, I have that pretty much fleshed out in detail (I also place great importance on background lore and overall immersion in a game, from infocard descriptions to unit design itself), but - at one time I was thinking on including a sort of quasi-campaign for the mod and consequently dropped the idea as not to cause further delays. The idea was to create a series of maps, preferably geared towards multiplayer as well as singleplayer, which would set the stage for a sort of "milestone" battles and events which would in turn further flesh out the story of the Xin invasion during the "First Contact" episode. With smart design and some cooperation from the players setting up their game, there could be alliance battles, free for all chaos engagements over particular systems, Xin vs. everyone else "see-if-you-can-survive" maps etc. Plenty of room to get creative, I just don't have the time to do it myself with all the other stuff I'm doing.

So if you are willing to get intimate with the Galaxy Forge and would like to set up this sort of campaign, let me know and we can work out the details, I think a pre-made campaign map pack would be a nice addition to the mod!

OMG

I am still playing vanilla Sins but if I ever get a chance (read time) to try a Mod - this will be THE one!

Man! I prefer your models to the original game ones!

This simply looks amazing!

Is this mod available yet? I mean at least some alpha / beta version of it or something?

Sorry for my ignorance but this is first time I see this page

sooo, any percent comlete updates... or just plain updates?

The next update will be a fairly big one, I'll have a couple of capital ships and some smaller ones to show off. Along with more actual action shots, instead of just models. But the past week has been hectic for me, haven't had much time to work on the mod plus I have to finish Volumetric 1.0 by tomorrow so after I'm done with that I'll get back on working on the Last Stand.

@Nephilim, glad that you like the mod! There is no downloadable version yet, keep checking this thread for updates though. I won't release an alpha because at that stage I don't really need testers, and I do not believe in releasing half-finished works. But a beta is definitely scheduled and will be released as soon as the core of the mod, that is the art/unit assets and basic research tree, are done. I plan on this mod being multiplayer friendly so it will require exstensive testing before it passes beta stage.

A little prod so that the thread doesn't sink too deep.

As the work on the mod continues, here is a small eyecandy - the WIP HD render of the Overlord, the Xin carrier class capital ship.

It, along with as of yet un-named capital class and several yet unseen ships and structures will feature in the next teaser video for the Last Stand mod. When I get this one in game I will also post action screenshots featuring the nasty plasmids doing what they do best, though you really need to see them in motion for full effect.

Man that looks awesome! I assume you were going for the "squidy" look when you did its rear end?

where da hangesr?  

good lookin ship tho

Yeah, the whole whip is designed after a squid.

The hangars are on the bottom side of the ship. All eight of them.

Eight?  As in eight squadrons of attack drones?  Oh my god that is just excessive.  In a good way.  I can't wait to see what you are going to work up for the masters of tactical warfare, the Hegemony.