No worries, still working on it... there are some pretty big issues to work around and I'm trying to make everything work as I want it, which coupled with a LOT of RL work lately makes for the lack of updates.

Hey ManSh00ter, are you going to wait until Diplomacy is released to complete the mod? 

Not sure. Probably not. Because I don't want to force people to buy an expansion just to enjoy the mod, however, hopefully Ironclad will lift or relax the hardcode restriction which are currently bugging me in all versions and not just Diplomacy, so that I can make the mod work as intended on vanilla versions as well.

Ah, I see.  Thanks for the info.  What kind of things are you unable to execute on until the hardcode restrictions are removed?  Just curious because it sounds interesting.

The biggest issue is the instability when you exceed the mesh limit (too many models loaded) which means you can't have a completely new race without introducing instability into the game. As I envisioned the Last Stand to be an expansion mod, this presents a bit of a problem for me. We'll see when the mod goes live how it behaves, but in the end I may be forced to scrap one of the vanilla races to "make room" and that's something I wouldn't like to do.

how did 7ds add so many more races? can you get them to share some info?

I'm guessing you haven't gotten the "7DS is horribly unstable and prone to random crashing" memo.

mmmm, nope, always works for me 

That's the thing, its unpredictable. I have a fairly generous amount of memory and CPU power, so even if it works fine on my end does not mean it will work fine for everyone else as well.

There is not secret about it... first, vanilla starbase are modified in a way to use only one mesh in place of 6 or more... 3 starbase modified these way can mean a new race... Second, Dan try to limit the number of unique ship by race to 13... mean that some ship and/or structure are common between races...

The real problem is not the number of races, specialy when you have more that 10 races since any game don't allow more that 10 playber... the real problem is that sins load everything, same the thing not used for a game... let say that you have a mod with 100 races to choose... the bigger game will only use 10 of them... but sins will load the full 100... very few files in sins have a "loadondemand" tag... having these tag for everything related to a races will resolve  lot of problem... if you wish play a 1vs1, Empire ( starwar ) against Vorlon ( B5 ), why in the hell sins need to load the 3 vanilla race, the rebel, the minbarin, the shadow, the EA, the...

if you wanna run 7DS fully it's best to have a very high end computer that has a lot of ram and CPU power otherwise if you try to play it with everything set on high and on large maps then your game will crash and burn. Plain and simple

hm, i have a pretty crappy machine, but it still runs 7ds just fine.

That's what I'm trying to do right now. The idea is to "unify" the various meshes, for example I will very likely merge the mines into one mesh, extractors also into one mesh, fighters and bombers will look the same and so on. Hopefully that will enable me to release Episode I as intended and Ironclad will relax the hardcode limits in the future patches so Episode II and III will not have this problem.

Will there by an "un-unified" version for people with faster computers?  If I understand correctly, it sounds like the memory-leak issues would affect slow-down more on weaker computers...

Well, you can always grab the "beta" version when it comes out - its basically going to be the release version without the stability tweaks. IC said they're looking into the hardcode limits anyway, so perhaps those tweaks won't even be needed. My priority is actually finishing the mod, getting it out and seeing how it behaves on lots of different computers - its the only real way to test stability and performance.

This mod blew my mind so thoroughly that I felt the need to enter an internet forum for the first time in my life.

So many questions (and probably many of them have already been repeated in the past 1300 posts, but please, indulge me):

1. Entrenchment kind of stole your thunder with the whole "starbase" idea. Do you intend to keep outposts as an option in Last Stand? Or have you varied their functionality to avoid redundancy?

2. How does the galaxy described in your lore interact with the original Sins universe? (If we're allowed to know yet... I have the obvious guess ^^)

3. Dynamic combat... I found out about this from watching your youtube video at least a dozen times... And while it's extremely aesthetically pleasing, I haven't grasped the tactical advantages of movement yet. it just seems like it would be an organizational pain. Will there be a toggle function for using evasive maneuvers, such as when one assaults structures? Additional command options, offering group movement formations, etc.? Perhaps a tutorial?

4. So, you're doing this alone? I can't think of a good way to word it, excepting Ryan Reynolds' quote from Harold and Kumar: "But why?"

Finally, props. This shit is crazy and awesome. You have my complete approval, whatever it's worth to you =P

My girlfriend asked me what I want for Christmas.  I said "The Last Stand".  She's confused.

1. Manshooter mentioned that he'll keep outposts as new races will not have starbases. Instead, they will have titans. Old races won't be changed.

2.  There's a nice timeline linked. Basically the idea is that the current SINS story takes place in a small insignificant backwater part of the galaxy and now the big boy galatic powers are showing up to the fight^^ Mansh00ter gave the example of how the race that's chasing the Vasari are actually running themselves from the XIN, much like how at the end of the Roman empire, many of the armies taht decimated the empire were themselves on the run from bigger badder guys.

3. The DBS really just adds fighter style movement to certain frigates and cruises. The tactical difference lies in changes to dmg and shield pwr mansh00ter made, and the fact ships aren't firing nonstop as they now need to position themselves in line of fire of their target.

This means potentially:

1. It may be better off to have groups of frigates simply attack whats in front of them, rather than Focus on 1 target as they would straffe the target, then waste 10 secs turnign around to line up the target again.

2. It'll be harder for hard counters to, well hard counter. Ex. LRM's are very effective against LF's. In this mod, LRM's are stationary and turn slowly. LF on the other hand straff and move past targets. This greatly reduces the ability of a line of LRMS to pummel a line of LF's.

3. Aginst certain fleets, Cap ships w/ weapons across many arcs may be better than Caps with all mostly frontal arcs. This is because they'll always have LF's, HC's swarming around them as opposed to vanilla Sins with everythi8ng nicely lined up in front of it.

I'd like to take a look at the strafing patterns of ships more. Do they attempt to attack stationary vessels from the rear? Because if they're just doing fancy turns in the frontal arc of the LRMs, it shouldn't be as effective as I'd like. 

I'm also thinking of the effects this will have on the usefulness of existing cruisers like the Vasari Subverter and the Advent Guardian. All of a sudden, the Subverter becomes primarily used in freezing static ships, to which light frigates are already sort of a counter, and the bubble ship's repulsion field loses its effectiveness as a tool to break up the formations of enemy ships, since formations are being mostly done away with.

Is there a list of static and dynamic combat ships i could look at? Like, where do the anti-strike craft frigates fall in? I think I've seen a vid of robotics cruisers in dynamic combat, whereas I've always exclusively used them to support a capital ship under fire.

Basically, this mod fucks with almost every tactic I came up with for vanilla sins.

And there are still a few unanswered questions in my previous paragraph, if anyone would like to answer them ^^

And a few more:

5. Will there be player portraits for Xin, Hegemony and Remnant forces, like how they have the spiffy TEC admirals' face you can pick from as your commander avatar? 

6. Will there be voice acting for new factions' ships? Because that would be badass.

7. ETA yet? Estimated percentage of completion? =P

You can just DL the DBS mod which is stand alone and play around with it. 

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/341567/page/12

mansh00ter would need to answer the rest

*picks up jaw*  This is a spectacular mod and the Xin ships look really impressive, good luck to you.  Integrated DBS should help keep things interesting too (especially if there are mines around)!

Just a note, after watching the latest video, have you considered making the ships bank a little bit as they turn?  I understand the areodynamics in air are different to those in space (well, there are none, as there is no atmosphere) but it just seems a little odd that the ships turn on a perfectly flat plane.  You'd think they might bank just a little bit in order to take advantage of the strong pitch controls to make a sharper turn (assuming of course, that like an aircraft, the strongest forces on it are pitch and roll, with the rudder applying the weakest force).

@  Locust:  I think if you set the offending ships to "Hold Position" they won't go flying off after other ships (as fighters don't move in "Hold Position").

To answer some of the questions (thanks to Banthracis and CrazyElectron for pitching in):

 1. Entrenchment kind of stole your thunder with the whole "starbase" idea. Do you intend to keep outposts as an option in Last Stand? Or have you varied their functionality to avoid redundancy?

The new races will have Starbases (they will not have static superweapons, that's what Titans replace). Only they're called Citadels and are much more expensive and powerful. You would build them as an ultimate show-stopper. Especially because a Citadel has an anti-Titan weapon...

In addition, each new race will have a smaller deployable Outpost, which can be dropped pretty much anywhere where a ship can fly.

2. How does the galaxy described in your lore interact with the original Sins universe? (If we're allowed to know yet... I have the obvious guess ^^)

For background, if you haven't read it yet, you can read the Pangalactic War Timeline which describes the galaxy at large and the events which lead to the mod setting. Gameplay-wise, the link is mostly limited to lore and some of the visual design choices. For example, the structure I am working on now, the Capital Aperture, is designed to look like a sort of a huge "stargate" (only instead of shimmering surface you can actually see a portion of the Lost Hope, a giant citadel system from which Xin are staging their invasion) through which capital ships "materialize" instead of being "built".

3. Dynamic combat... I found out about this from watching your youtube video at least a dozen times... And while it's extremely aesthetically pleasing, I haven't grasped the tactical advantages of movement yet. it just seems like it would be an organizational pain.

In short, yes, working as intended. The idea behind DBS is to simulate, among other things, the chaos of battle. If you ever watched one of those documentaries about massive fighter plane dogfights in WWII, something like that. You've got fast moving ships all locked in a furball and, once the fighting starts, you better hope you came prepared.

The planning phase is limited to the pre-battle conditions. You can then pick your fleet composition, set your groups, arrange the initial formations etc. Once the battle starts, your micromanagement capacity, just like in a real "furball" scenario, goes down. There are ways to take advantage of that. Many of them depend on you being more prepared and organized beforehand than your opponent. If you have set up fire groups which you can direct from the overview, and your opponent hasn't, that's a major plus in your favor now. If you attack with a unified front, you can deal some good damage before the dogfighting begins. If you stagger your attacks so that the assault ships move in first, engage the anamy and then you move in your long range ships to focus-fire hard targets, you will have a much better result than if you tried to do all of that at the same time or just let them "do their thing". And so on.

Not all ships have dynamic movement. Long range ships and siege frigates typically don't move. You use them for busting capital ships, or structures - using them as a primary offensive weapon simply doesn't work anymore, even more so because they are weaker in shields and armor.

The ships that do move, do strafe. Which can produce all kind of interesting and even cinematic effects.

5. Will there be player portraits for Xin, Hegemony and Remnant forces, like how they have the spiffy TEC admirals' face you can pick from as your commander avatar?

Yerrs. Hope you like squid faces. Actually, I am also making a Xin portrait for the loading screen. So you guys can see the... nemesis.

6. Will there be voice acting for new factions' ships? Because that would be badass.

Yep. I am also implementing my "talents" in the field of sound mutilation so that a full range of (for the Xin) gurgles, squeals and intelligible grumbling can be heard from their ships as you order them to shoot hot plasma death at your enemies.

7. ETA yet? Estimated percentage of completion? =P

ETA - you know the answer, when it's done. I'm done with ship models, currently working on the structures and the various paraphenalia of the mod, such as icons, sounds, particle effects, research trees, abilities. Once the modelling is totally done I think release date will be announced as the coding doesn't take nearly as much time.

4. So, you're doing this alone? I can't think of a good way to word it, excepting Ryan Reynolds' quote from Harold and Kumar: "But why?"

Because I can? Nah, there are advantages to having a team working on a mod, and there are disadvantages. This way I have my own pacing, can implement my ideas and vision promptly and directly. The drawback is that I have cartloads of stuff to do myself, which is sometimes trying. But since I love doing it, I don't mind.

What Mansh00ter actually means is that he's planning on a simultaneous release with Half Life 2: Episode 3, Diablo 3 and Duke Nukem Foever.

Unfortunetly on that day the world will explode from the sheer epicness...either that or a leviathan having a bad day, we're not sure which yet.

Duke Nukem Forever IS coming! You'll see! Haha! You'll see!!!

wait, all the ship models are done...yay!!

can you take one big screeny of all of them together so we can see the scope, scale and whatforth.

(and yes, i said whatforth)