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Ideas for A Complete Conversion Mod

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Ideas for A Complete Conversion Mod

Questions regarding different ideas for a new mod.

from Sins Forums

The topic has changed considerably from the original post so I'm giving a little update (I've left the original post below for anyone interested in how the discussion arose).

This thread discusses different ideas and possibilities for an upcoming mod I'd like to create. As time goes by I'll update it with more details but here is the main overview:

 

The Plot

The first three are the New Earth Order, The First Republic of Earth and the Liberatis. All three factions are fighting over Earth. The Republic was the original global government that set out to colonize worlds as a united race. Recently a Civil war broke out between the ex general, now self proclaimed Empress and the Republic. Since the Republic had lived in relative peace, the sudden attacks by the Empress were quite successful in overwhelming the remanants fo the Republic. Due to a coincidence of events, The Empress fell near fatally ill and the Republic managed to sign a peace agreement.

The Liberatis are a rebels faction who disagreed with this peace agreement and continued to fight in order to free earth from it's imperial masters and even the Republic when they get in the way.

After nearly 5 years of sickness, the Empress is healed; However, this time the Republic has managed to build a fleet to fight back. The three factions continue to strugle over Earth.

Far before the civil war over earth, one of the Republic's expeditions deep into the Milky Way galaxy encountered a sentient Silicon based species (name pending). They would appear as robots to us but are actually considered a life forms with emotions and individual thought. They in a losing battle to their distant cousins though, another silicon race that lives with a hive mentality. They are of one mind and have set out to conquer all the stars.

Against orders from Earth, the expedition fleet managed to help the Silicons in driving the Hive from their home solar system. Enraged by their loss, the Hive attacked the Republic killing millions of people across Human settled planets. To stop the invasion, the Republic withdrew it's support for the Silicons and the expedition fleet. Eventually the Silicons and this fleet would encounter many races under siege by the Hive and help to unite them into one Federation.

 

In this mod I'm hoping to develop a number of changes beyond just the different races. Each race will have a unique style of play based on their story based situation ie. the Rebels will have ships, bases and abilities based on hit and run guerilla warfare. ALso to note, there will be 4 ship sizes, in order of size S->L: Frigates, Destroyers, Cruisers, Battleships. The cruisers now in sins will be more like the Destroyers in this mod. Cruisers will then be used as a solo war ship to attack behind enemy lines, usually taking on dual roles (sniper/raider, interdictor/tackler, anti ship/building. Battleships will then take on a fleet support role having abilities like the Akkan range bonus. Almost all of their abilities will be area of effect ie. increased damage, fleet heal, weapons jamming etc.

The New Earth Order (N.E.O.)

Fleets will be based on raw force. They will be slow moving heavy hitting ships, mostly battleships, cruisers and some destroyers. Their frigates will be reserved for spreading culture, colonizing and scouting. They will have a strong economy built on slow but strong progression.

Liberatis

Fleets will be be based on speed one hit abilities. They will have fast frigates and destroyers, some cruisers and few battleships. Example of their tactics: cap killing destroyers, these are destroyers that have only one large laser that can only hit capital ships. They will also have an ability that does heavy damage, but with a long recharge time, meaning they will have to jump into a grav well, use their abilities on a capital ship and jump out. Their economy will be based mostly on using non colonizable resources and stealing resources from other races.

The First Republic of Earth

Fleets will be more midranged. They will excel at using cruisers and strike craft (light, medium and heavy carriers). They will have a very strong economy and excel at rapid development of their empire to sustain their fleets.

Federation

A well rounded race using technologies fom all different races. Their main asset will be adaptability due to their wide range of available ships and technologies. Aesthetics, they will be comprised of all different looking ships, except a captial ship fleet that has been designed specifically for the new federation. They will have a strong economy that can change quickly from production to trade.

The Hive

Their fleets will consist of mainley mother ships. They will have no frigate factory and will be completely dependent on their mother ships to generate frigates and destroyers. This race is all about spamming as many ships as possible and overwhelming their foes with numbers. Their economy will excel at producing metal and crystal but will lack the diplomatic capabilities for trade and will have a penalty to credit generation (credits, for canon reason, will be man hours).

Page 5 for more details: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/329761/page/5/#replies

 

Combat Mechanic

Battleships: These will be the heavy hitters that support their fleets through passive ability buffs or area of effect modifiers. ie. an attack battleship might improve damage and rate of fire. A support battleship might improve shield regeneration and mitigation. A electronic warfare battleship might reduce chance to hit on enemy ships and lower their shield mitigation. 

Battleships will do a lot more damage for their costs compared to frigates and destroyers, but have a low chance of hitting them. ie 80 avg dmg (on each side, F,L,R) but 20% chance to hit frigates and destroyers. They will have higher chances of hitting cruisers and battleships ie 80% (cruisers will be built out of capital ship factories to make this work). I'm thinking they may need one gun each that does damage and chance to hit equal to a frigate*

Cruisers: will do have high damage with high chance to hit. ie. 50-60% chance to hit frigates at 50 avg dmg 80% chance to hit battleships and cruisers. They will be faster than battleships but much weaker in structure. Their abilities will be more self centred (gause gun, ion bolt, planet bombardment, shield regen). These ships will be good at raiding behind enemy lines in solo attacks, or hunting down enemy frigates/destroyers in a fleet.

Destroyers: these ships will be support vessels to the battleships. They will be good at killing strikecraft, repairing, hosting small squadrons, They will do low damage but have high chance to hit for their cost ie 5-10 dmg 80% CTH. They will be fairly fast and well armoured/shielded.

Frigates: Frigates will excel at either killing other frigates/destroyers, or infiltrating enemy lines. ie they will have the speed to get into the middle of an enemy fleet and drop an EMP bomb that stops enemy ships from using abilities for x amount of time.. Their damage will be low against battleships and cruisers although with high success of hitting. ie 5-10 dmg 80% CTH.

 

My hope is to create a fleet structure where Battleships are great at killing other battleships and cruisers while being the main support for entire fleets but lacking accuracy enough to kill the smaller ships. Cruisers will be weak to battleship attacks due to their low HP, but excel at killing enemy frigates/destroyers because their guns will be small enough to hit them. Frigates and destroyers will then hopefully do low enough DPS that they won't be able to focus fire kill battleships in an efficient manor but serve their role by killing one another and supporting battleships directly and distrupting enemy fleet abilities.

*This would be to avoid having a battle where battleships can not defend themselves at all versus smaller ships resulting in a complete stale mate. Hopefully having one gun that can hit will make those battles possible but not all that efficient.

 

I'd really like any and all feed back. If you have any ideas that might fit this please share them here.


Cheers!

 

EDIT

These are some links that Relate the topic and discussion below.

Another link for future use

Moving Battles:

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/317641/#1941610

Ships Creating other ships:

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/330426

Modelling (XSI) and Particle Effects:
https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/311916/page/2/#replies

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/305381/page/3/#replies

 Link to Teal's Mod and Research Ideas

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/331735/#1961737

Justin's Mine mod

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/331698

Rescaling in XSI

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/331790

Making Battles more about Fleets rather than a Fleet

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/332389

Modding Pirates

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/332236

Modding Research

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/328126/#1970149

Galaxy Forge stuff

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/174739

Combat Mechanics

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/305565

 StarGates

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/334176

ConvertData

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/320363

         TXT files for Entrenchment

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/334188/#1990795

 

*following is the original post*

 

Hey All, I'm just looking for some feedback from some informed Sins players so that I can then start a modding post and hopefully change the "focus fire" syndrome I experience in most games.

 As I understand now, Shield mitigation climbs the more damage is being delt. After the shield mitigation caps out, all further damage is in essence unrestricted. So if you have 10 ships causing damage and you add another 20, there is no penalty beyond the already maxed shield mitigation. Also, since ships regenerate, any low level damage being dealt to ships is negated.

 What I'm wondering is, if shield and armour regeneration was turned off, would this make spread fire more useful? 

To help direct this thread a bit to the final purpose, modification, I'm gonig to ask this: Is it possible to:

 

A) Turn off ship self regeneration so that repair ships and repair stations can still repair, but ships no longer regenerate. (this is the easiest solution I can think of)

 

B ) Make ships only regenerate when not being attacked.

 

C ) Make ships do less damage when under fire. i.e. if under attack ships damage output is -10%

167,388 views 165 replies
Reply #26 from Sins Forums Top

Yeah he mentioned he had problems because they didn't have cap ship factories.

What I might be able to do is plan the race to be so simple, that just spamming 4 different frigates would be sufficient, so if the AI just simply used the abilities over and over they would still be effective.


This also suites the type of race i'd be building and their style anyways.

Reply #27 from Sins Forums Top

Weel feel free to try it out and see if you like how it works out :P

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #28 from Sins Forums Top

No one else is commenting on my thread Annatar :(

I want ideas!

 

At least I have you... \o

 

Do you know if it's possible to I) change the requirements of research? ie from 2 civic research to 1 civic and 1 frig factory  II) make it so that after you research something, the ability goes into effect, then you have to research it again?  ie the TEC research where random raiding parties stat attacking opponents, I'd like to make it that it happens once everytime you research it, then you have to research it again.

Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top

Do you know if it's possible to I) change the requirements of research? ie from 2 civic research to 1 civic and 1 frig factory II) make it so that after you research something, the ability goes into effect, then you have to research it again? ie the TEC research where random raiding parties stat attacking opponents, I'd like to make it that it happens once everytime you research it, then you have to research it again.

Research requirements can only be number of labs and previous techs, not other buildings :P And once you research it's always in effect, there's no way to make it so you need to research it again.

Reply #30 from Sins Forums Top

Tkins you might be able to make the raid thing some sort of super weapon deal, since you can make abilities cost resources now you might be able to create some sort of "special" building or tower that has the ability that you want, and it will cost a certain amount of resources. Then after a certain amount of cool down or none at all, you could spend the resources again, it would create the same effect of researching again.

Reply #31 from Sins Forums Top

That sounds really interesting. So I could create a building with the research as an ability? Or is it possible to create abilities that spawn pirates?

 

I like that idea!

Reply #32 from Sins Forums Top

Well I was thinkin you could create an ability similar to the research, I am sure there must be some way. OR an ability to spawn pirates would work too, but you have to make sure that balances out and that pirate ships use unit cap, otherwise it would be massively unbalanced in that you could just swarm the enemy with limitless pirate ships.

Reply #33 from Sins Forums Top

Is it possible to give buildings ship abilities?

 

ie. a building with the "clairvoyance" ability.

Reply #34 from Sins Forums Top

Yup. The ability doesn't care :P Obviously you shouldn't give them any abilities that modify stats only ships have (phase jump enable/disable, engine speeds, so on) on themselves, but everything else should be fine.

Reply #35 from Sins Forums Top

The trade thread got me thinking, is it possible to change the mesh of trade ships, the amount of income each one brings in and the amount of trade ships produced?

 

I'm thinking of making fewer trade ships, that are a lot bigger and have more income for each.

Reply #36 from Sins Forums Top

Sure can. Each race has their own entity files, Frigate<race>RefineryShip and Frigate<race>TradeShip

cargoType "TradeCredits"
maxCargoCapacity 50.000000

cargoType "RefineryResources"
maxCargoCapacity 50.000000

And in the trade port's entity:

cargoShipType "FrigatePsiTradeShip"
maxCargoShipCount 5
cargoShipRespawnTime 25.000000

Reply #37 from Sins Forums Top

Oh wow, that looks like I could do some fun changes. I'm thinking if I make them bigger  and slightly fewer, killing them will be a little more worth while. Might be good to just park a battleship in a astroid belt full of trade ships and start killin them.

 

Hopefully the result will be protecting trade routes will become a bigger priority.  If only I could make them NOT go through the pirate bases hahaha.

 

EDIT

 

Is it possible to give them guns?  And can we give buildings guns?

 

And can we make it so that the guns are only added after a certain research?

Reply #38 from Sins Forums Top

And can we make it so that the guns are only added after a certain research?

 

From what I can tell from the video preview I've seen floating around, that does happen in Entrenchment -- whether the code for that is in the current Sins version, I have no clue.

Reply #39 from Sins Forums Top

Is it possible to give them guns? And can we give buildings guns?

Should be able to, the trade ships have an entry for numWeapons that's set to 0, so in theory the engine should be able to accept weapon on them.

The same does not exist for trade ports/refineries, though you should be able to give them weapon-like abilities.

And can we make it so that the guns are only added after a certain research?

Not exactly. It needs to have a weapon set in the entity file, which means it's always there. You can make it have a range of 1 so it can't shoot anything, and then research to unlock a passive ability to increase the range by some absurd percentage so it can shoot stuff. The infocard won't look pretty, but until we see if Entrenchment changes this, it's about the only thing you can do.

Reply #40 from Sins Forums Top

I just went to the washroom and had an epiphany on the throne. 

 

Ok so, I know it's possible to spawn ships from other ships. And certain people have made ships that are just platforms that sit in space. Like mobile defense.

 

Is it possible to make those mobile defense platforms capital ships?

 

My idea is this:

A secret space station that could guard astroid belts, produce ships and stay hidden. This is for a rebel faction I want to make that can survive without planets. If I could make this station produce credits, ships and other colony ships, it would be a cool way to make a race that can hide in astroid belts, dead astroids, or maybe even those plasma or magnetic storms.

I want to make a colonizer ship be able to spawn a deep space station. It would be able to upgrade like a capital ship and hopefully take up cap slots. Really cool to buy new levels to upgrade it. I also want it to have 4 abilities. 1 would be to produce a colony ship, another to produce 2 types of frigates. The last I would like it to produce credits if that's possible.

Also, could I make this ship spawn trade ships like a trade port? Would that work or would they just not go anywhere because there are no trade ports to trade with? If not that, could I then just make it have a passive ability that produces credits?

How does phase cloaking work?  The enemy can see you but can't hurt you?  Without entrenchment, can we make complete cloaking?  Imagine if you could have these secret bases hidden in astroid belts, only found by scouts, but could produce credits and frigates, and guard your astroid belt to keep a steady flow of income. To stop them from being used everywhere, they would take up cap ship slots.

 

Thoughts?

Reply #41 from Sins Forums Top

I don't know if you can spawn capital ship entities. Easy enough to check, just take one of the existing entity spawner abilities (Sova's missile turret or Vulkoras' siege turret) and replace it with an existing capital ship. If it works, then you can.

Spawning trade ships likely wouldn't work since they need trade ports and that's all done behind the scenes.

Also, how does phase cloaking work?  The enemy can see you but can't hurt you?  Without entrenchment, can we make complete cloaking?  Imagine if you could have these secret bases hidden in astroid belts, only found by scouts, but could produce credits and frigates, and guard your astroid belt to keep a steady flow of income. To stop them from being used everywhere, they would take up cap ship slots.

There's been a lot of cloaking discussion in the Star Trek mod threads, so you should probably check there. Last I know, cloaking for ships is a no-go. Cloaking for buildings probably not, either. I don't think it makes them invisible to the other players, which is why it can't be a true cloak.

Reply #42 from Sins Forums Top

Yeah, I'll just have to make the station produce a small amount of credits.

Well, I guess worse case I can just put phase cloaking on for now, but wouldn't that make it so someone could just put the ability on and they could never be destroyed? I might have to wait until entrenchment to finalise that. Well by the time I get started and finished this mod, Entrenchment will be long out anyways haahh.

 

Well Annatar, since you're on the ball today, what kind of "passive fleet boosts" could I add in as abilties?  I want to make battleships fleet supports. So All their abilities will be "adds range and damage" or "heals area" or "raises shield mitigatation and armour" or "increases speed of friendly ships in surrounding area".

Is it pretty easy to modify the abilities already in the sins to make them area of effect and stats booster?

 

Some will obviously have to be antimatter abilities, like shield and armour rep, but i'd like to make a lot more stats boosters like the Akkan's.

Reply #43 from Sins Forums Top

Whatever a ship can do to itself it can do to everything else. Making it friendly-AoE is as easy as modifying the targetfilter in the ability file.

Self:

entityType "Ability"
buffInstantActionType "ApplyBuffToSelf"
instantActionTriggerType "AlwaysPerform"
buffType "BuffIncendiaryShellsSelf"

Friendly AoE:

 buffInstantActionType "ApplyBuffToTargetsInRadius"
 instantActionTriggerType "AlwaysPerform"
 buffType "BuffShieldProjectionTarget"
 targetFilter
  numOwnerships 1
  ownership "Friendly"
  numObjects 3
  object "Frigate"
  object "CapitalShip"
  object "PlanetModule"
  numConstraints 1
  constraint "NotSelf"
 range
  Level:0 5000.000000
  Level:1 0.000000
  Level:2 0.000000
 maxTargetCount
  Level:0 -1.000000
  Level:1 0.000000
  Level:2 0.000000

(constrant is optional, depends on whether or not you want the ship itself to be affected)

What the ability is actually doing is irrelevant and completely separate from who it can be targeted on.

Reply #44 from Sins Forums Top

Muchas Gracias!

 

And is it possible to build non capital ships from the capital ship factory?

Reply #46 from Sins Forums Top

You hate me :(

 

We can make more ships produced from Frigate Factories though right?  So right now I think it's 5 and 4 ships in the frigate and cruisers screens. Can we make room for s 9 and 9?  (not that I necessarily want to, but just checking my options)

Reply #48 from Sins Forums Top

One last question before I go for lunch...

 

Now that we can make abilities cost resources, can they also use up antimatter at the same time?

Reply #50 from Sins Forums Top

How can I get a ship to produce culture?