ManSh00ter ManSh00ter

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

[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.

 

4,168,550 views 1,794 replies +8 Loading…
Reply #1101 Top

Oh man the wyrm looks sooooo sweeet

 

 

Man this thing is gonna be badass

 

 

*can't wait till Kreeargh is finished the Liberty Superdread model*

 

it will be fun to see one of these wyrms pitted against one of my Liberty's.....

 

although, the liberty would probably win due to its sheer firepower

Reply #1102 Top

*dibs on being a testing subject!!!* :D (We'll see how the vasari match up against the Xin!)  :andrew:

Reply #1103 Top

Mansh00ter,

Just dropping in to say "hi" and thanks for commenting on the "ASK" thread.  I appreciate your help.  Any word yet on a Xin vs Atlantian War?  Hehehehe....would love to see that my friend.

Good luck, keep going, and let me know if you need anything.

DANMAN

Reply #1104 Top

xin vs. atlantian... yuck.

Reply #1105 Top

O deer, You've gone and made the PDTH canon. Nothing good can come of this, mark my words! :hrmph:

...

On a more (MOAR) serious, yet nipicky note, I've never fully understood the fascination with singularities.

... Yes, its cool to be able to make black holes on command, and shout I KEEL YOU WITH BLACK HOLES NAOW! at your enemies, but a gravity gradient less steep - something that will produce say, a neutron star given enough matter - is far more damaging in the short term; all the matter you're eating away from your target is there in super-compressed form giving away piles of hard radiation and other violent stuffs, rather than handily stored away wherever matter in singularity goes.

Turning your enemies into superheated degenerate matter and letting it explode back at them has always seemed for more ... stylish than simply playing hungry hungry hippos with their consittuent atoms. ^_^

... yeah, just thought I'd share that, ain't ya happy. :P

Reply #1106 Top

Oh, so you don't think having a small black hole burrow in the center of your ship then slowly eat it whole is scary, do you? :p

Dunno, it sound a lot scarier than a simple boom. Besides, you can stop matter with shields or armor, nothing can stop a black hole.

Reply #1107 Top

Having an aritficial gravity gradient strong enough to pull your ship/station/blah into atoms thrust onto you would you make you piss with yourself with fear (for a very short amount of time) no matter how strong it is, I don't think there's any argument there.

I think it would be more destructive to have the matter pulled from your target remain in the real world, spewing out lots of energy at it as it eats it. With the sort of reactions you're looking at in those cases, you'd be blasting everything in the area with a pretty full-on energy blast.

I think I'd dig very much going "blip" on an enemy frigate and turning it into enough superheated matter and energy to ahnilate the shields and melt the superstructure of anything inside x kilometres. I can see that being a very effective anti-blobbing weapon. Frigate spam? Not any more!

You get that with a black hole as well, but you have to wait for it to completely evaporate to get the final, apocalyptic release, and exact time when that happens is related to how much it ate.

... mind you, according to wiki a 1-second black hole has a mass of 2.28 × 105 kg, so in sins terms it would probably release all it ate as radiation as soon as you turn it off or near enough as to make no difference.

... isn't fanta-physics fun? :D

... also, pre-petitioning to have the black hole weapon do an AoE anti-shield damage effect centered on target when it swiches off :drool:

Reply #1108 Top

Quoting Soor, reply 7

... mind you, according to wiki a 1-second black hole has a mass of 2.28 × 105 kg, so in sins terms it would probably release all it ate as radiation as soon as you turn it off or near enough as to make no difference.
End of Soor's quote

Well, as E=228000 kg of matter x c^2 (c, light of speed) means 1,8*10^15 Watt of thermal power if the black hole evaporates in one second. It is one hundred billion less powerful than the sun and around 4 thousands kilotons of TNT, which means around a little bomb H, if the blast was lasting one second of course as power is different from energy.

Still seems quite a lot for me for just a little Cobalt fregate though. By the way, these figures make TV serie like Battlestar Galactiqua looks funny : even a north korean atomic bomb could destroy the famous battlestar galactiqua that survived many nuclear blast from the technology advanced Cylons ;P

Reply #1109 Top

Well, that was just the wiki figure for the mass of a 1-second-lifetime black hole, but yeah, what you put in eventually (very eventually in terms of stellar black holes, let alone primordials) comes out after a direct mass->energy conversion.

To name it brutal is to be exceedeingly euphemistic - blackholing a cobalt and then letting the micro blackhole evap probably produces enough gamma rays to wipe out the shields of a whole fleet, turn all of the hulls facing it to molten slag, and irradiate any biological entities in the ships which havent been thermally cooked hard enough so that assuming they dont just die instantly, they probably will not be living very long anyway and what life they'll have will be excruciatingly painful, assuming their nervous system doesnt simply shut down.

... direct mass-energy conversion of entire atoms produces truly catastrophic amounts of energy. Stellar Hydrogen fusion makes do without converting any particles.

Reply #1110 Top

that's why i am in a school to become a nuclear ingeneer !  :grin: Creating civil reactors would probably be less fun but still, E=m*c^2 is just such an impressive equation when applied to nuclear reactions. 

Reply #1111 Top

Yah, but here comes the "Game Needs" hammer. I already have a ship that can one shot a cruiser and then some. So, the Wyrm is supposed to replace the Tyrant battleship, and act as a filler for the tactical weakness of the Xin, which is that, compared to the other upcoming factions, they are not very well geared for offensive. Oh sure, their ships can eat puny TEC tincans for breakfast any day, but the Xin favor thick armor and strong shields as opposed to big guns - like the ones Remnant have. Not to mention the Hegemony.

So what I need as a special ability for the Wyrm is something that can nuke a ship in one shot - but not so that it renders the Overlord Siege Ship obsolete. Hence the black hole (nevermind that it would probably go straight through and out on the other side and cook the ship in the process). Its like a curse. Once embedded in a ship, it will slowly eat it up until its structural integrity fails or the singularity evaporates. Lets just say you're going to need quite a few wetnurses for that stricken ship if you want it to survive after being hit. And there it is -  a nasty, unique sounding weapon that's fun to use and is not a reiteration of the Mighty Smiter that is the Overlord.

Now, if I could only add a buff which acts as a channeling reverse Repulsion.... :p

Reply #1112 Top

Manshooter, are you working on the Leviathan now?    o_O

Reply #1113 Top

Not yet. This weeked I'll pretty much have my hands tied doing websites, so I'll probably start on that sometime next week. Got the Wyrm up and fighting, need to do a few more particle effects and sounds and its all set!

The lack of a dev version for Entrenchment 1.02/SoaSE1.16 is really starting to bug me. Can't test stuff properly without it.

Oh and sorry for not saying hi Danman,  got a head so crammed with this stuff I'll forget my name next. ;)

Reply #1114 Top

Good luck with the Xin ManSh00ter.  I'll be looking forwards to the big gun, small ships Remnant as well.  Swarm tactics FTW!

Reply #1115 Top

I only found this Mod yesterday but read through all 45 pages of it. I looks far better than anything else I've found. Awesome Job. Absolutely Mepic!!!

Reply #1116 Top

I did the same thing too Draconi when I first find this Mod haha.  We'll have to wait until we play it of course, but just from viewing the images it looks as genuine as a company-produced expansion, probably even better!  And all by one person.  Phew, truly a marvel.

Reply #1117 Top

Holy crap!  Great work!

Reply #1118 Top

Thank you, thank you, doing my best. And kudos for actually reading through 45(!) pages of it. I really should update the opening post... :)

Reply #1119 Top

Quoting ManSh00ter, reply 18
I really should update the opening post...
End of ManSh00ter's quote

Mmmmmaaybe?

Also, noooo, my gamma pulse! /o\

Reply #1120 Top

Am I right to assume this mod won't be for vanilla sins?

Reply #1121 Top

Actually, that remains to be seen. I always intended to introduce some actual core changes to the game which go beyond just new models and visuals. Dynamic Battle System is one such change... minefields and starbases introduced in the Entrenchment also make it a lot easier to place a lot of my originally planned features in the mod.

However, I also want to avoid "forcing" people to purchase Entrenchment just to play my mod, even though that has been an accepted practice in the modding circles if the expansions brought in a better overall experience and enabled a higher level of content for the mod (and even though I personally think Entrenhcment is very much worth the ten bucks pricetag).

Right now, I intend to release an open beta which will be for Entrenchment only. But, I also plan to release a modified vanilla Sins version of the Episode I as a sort of a thank you for all the support I had over the last year.

Episodes II and III will, however, very likely be Entrenchment exclusive.

Reply #1122 Top

Quoting ManSh00ter, reply 11
Yah, but here comes the "Game Needs" hammer. I already have a ship that can one shot a cruiser and then some. So, the Wyrm is supposed to replace the Tyrant battleship, and act as a filler for the tactical weakness of the Xin, which is that, compared to the other upcoming factions, they are not very well geared for offensive. Oh sure, their ships can eat puny TEC tincans for breakfast any day, but the Xin favor thick armor and strong shields as opposed to big guns - like the ones Remnant have. Not to mention the Hegemony.

So what I need as a special ability for the Wyrm is something that can nuke a ship in one shot - but not so that it renders the Overlord Siege Ship obsolete. Hence the black hole (nevermind that it would probably go straight through and out on the other side and cook the ship in the process). Its like a curse. Once embedded in a ship, it will slowly eat it up until its structural integrity fails or the singularity evaporates. Lets just say you're going to need quite a few wetnurses for that stricken ship if you want it to survive after being hit. And there it is -  a nasty, unique sounding weapon that's fun to use and is not a reiteration of the Mighty Smiter that is the Overlord.

Now, if I could only add a buff which acts as a channeling reverse Repulsion....
End of ManSh00ter's quote

Actually I did just that with my Black Holes, and I have been working on a Black Hole Generator for some time now to make it into a weapon.

I would be glad to share with you the files if you want them, and save you the work of reinventing it.  Totally up to you.

Quoting ManSh00ter, reply 13
Not yet. This weeked I'll pretty much have my hands tied doing websites, so I'll probably start on that sometime next week. Got the Wyrm up and fighting, need to do a few more particle effects and sounds and its all set!

The lack of a dev version for Entrenchment 1.02/SoaSE1.16 is really starting to bug me. Can't test stuff properly without it.

Oh and sorry for not saying hi Danman,  got a head so crammed with this stuff I'll forget my name next.
End of ManSh00ter's quote

Not a problem my friend.  I am in the same boat you are, with my head spinning.  Let me know if I can be of any help.  I want your mod out as the rest of these guys do.

Good luck man.

DANMAN

Reply #1123 Top

Episodes II and III will, however, very likely be Entrenchment exclusive.
End of quote

 well maybe by then the three mini-expansions will come out in the handy little single expansion everybody wants and will be available in stores...

Reply #1125 Top

Just a quick update, got a lot of work doing websites this week so I had to put off the Leviathan - I'll try to cook up some sexy renders by the end of the week.

Danman, sure thing, if you want to send me a copy of your entity files for the black hole effect, I'll send you the workable black hole which destroys ships when they get too close (because that's what Leviathan's superweapon basically is).

Gamerking, considering that the Episode III should be out sometime by the end of next year, I'd say it a pretty good bet that the big all-in-one bundle is going to happen by that time. ;)

Oh, and before I forget, a couple of screenies of the Wyrm ingame, busy shredding a Kol to pieces. ;)

Excuse the fugly yellow texture on the spine, its gonna get a little beautified when time allows, but the priority is to actually finish the Episode I, then worry about cosmetic touch-ups.