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.

 

4,162,307 views 1,794 replies
Reply #376 Top
more importantly (joking) what does the superweapon look like? is it a sleek subtle and modest device or is fairly clear which is the end of the thing you dont want to be at?
Reply #377 Top
Well in any situation you learn fairly quickly what end you don't want to be at the first time it is fired.

"The best weapon in the world is the one you only have to fire ONCE." Tony Stark.
Reply #378 Top
The concept of the Titan itself I haven't finalized yet, but broadly speaking, its outer shell will be an ovoid or an oblate spheroid, with many holes in its surface and a wide open central core. The spheroid will have several gigantic "spires" extending and curving above and below the central space.

The superweapon itself will be represented (at least I hope I will manage to pull it off) with several "stages":

-initially a small central swirl with particles dropping from various points on the spires and falling into the central vortex
-second stage will look like an expanded vortex sucking in more particles. A subtle light flare will emerge coupled with glowing gasses escaping the forming singularity event horizon
-third stage will have massive electric surges striking the central vortex from the spires, and a large maelstrom will form in the middle with bright rays of light escaping

And then ka-boom! A huge gravity shockwave will sweep over the entire sector, mowing ships, stations and everything unlucky enough not to have the Xin shield generators which can nulify the gravity impact on their ships, leaving them intact amidst the wreckage of their enemies.


In other news, I'm going for a little trip these days, but I have taken some time this morning to put together a little "wallpaper-like" image featuring the newest ship in the fleet, the mighty Xin Tyrant, a full-fledged battleship.



Enjoy!
Reply #380 Top
the Xin Tyrant is quite possibly one of the best ships ive ever seen


3rd for me, but the Tyrant is giving 2nd and 1st quite a bit of hell :D 
Reply #382 Top
A lot of the implimencations your adding will definantly keep me coming back here even if I get bored of vanilla sins, This may be a little over the top but, Do you think once a ships shields go down and its basically just mitigation stopping it from being ripped apart, could ships take area specific damage? Like the engines are damaged and for a set time the ships speed is reduced or some of its weapons are damaged or disabled. I mean you couldn't abuse it since ships are ranged from massive to small and hitting a specific target would be very hard + the chance of it happening would be random, but if under heavy fire more likely.I think it would be cool if A) The damages were passively repaired if the ship wasn't moving or B) Repair bays acctually have a purpose and repair damages or C) The support cruisers that usually repair shields or hull do it, or all 3 :). Also I don't know if this was mentioned, but what about cloaking devices for smaller ships like frigates and scouts? Also cruisers that make small gaps in radar so medium to bigger ships are cloaked. There could be ships that have stealth detectors or a small stealth detecting tower that could be built on planets to counter this. Just like to add my thoughts to the mod since you are really receptive to suggestions.
Reply #383 Top
The Xin Tyrant is quite possibly the best looking capital ship I have ever seen
Reply #384 Top
what are 1 and 2?


1) Covenant Assault Carrier


2) Halcyon-Class Cruiser


Gotta love the classics :D 
Reply #385 Top
I absolutely love the Covenant Assault Carrier design and the Halcyon is my 2nd favorite unsc ship right after the marathon. But we probably shouldn't hog up ManShooter's post...
Reply #386 Top
Ahhh man.

Committing Grand Theft Forum is fun, and as far as I know, you can't even get a ticket for it.
Reply #388 Top
I rank the Tyrant 3rd just until I know what its capable of. Thats half the beauty of a Capital Ship, its destructive power.

Sorry for hijacking your thread, ManSh00ter. Keep it up :CONGRAT: 
Reply #389 Top
frome the way it sounds it looks like the xin are kind of part protoss from starcraft and part vong from starwars am i right?
Reply #390 Top
david, you beat me to it; the Xin do seem to combine protoss elegance from starcraft with the creepy biotech of the yuuzhan vong from the star wars NJO series. that said, this mod is starting to look like the perfect storm of awesomeness: new race, new gameplay mechanics, new outposts...great! i can't wait for its completion!
Reply #391 Top
ManSh00ter, outstanding work! Actually I was pretty sure that it's going to be cool!;)
Reply #392 Top
I hope this mode comes out soon!
Reply #393 Top
Ships look to much like the advent.
Reply #395 Top
im back from india!

well done manshooter, so i stopped drawing concepts cuz u said u got em nailed. instead, im gonna try finding a dev for u at my moms dot-com company. i'll get a secure way for u two to communicate, so yeah.....

the xin ship looks wicked awesome, but just wondering, is it a capital ship? what are the other cruisers (heavy, 2 support, minelayer, carrier)? lol

keep us posted and freakingly awesomely awesome FANTASMICAL (fantastic astronomical) WORK! AHHHHHHH!!!!! :HOT:
Reply #396 Top
So... thus far, the Xin have been accused of shamelessly stealing their design ideas from:

-Vong
-Protoss
-Space Whales
-Advent
-Apple (the company)

:p

Their response:

SO WHAT? WE STILL LOOK COOL. AND UR GONNA GET PWND ANYWAY.

Jokes aside, for the curious, the Tyrant is armed with:

-4 capital-grade plasma launchers
-4 high-yield particle beam emitters (electron variant)
-1 main gun

The main gun fires through the central axis of the ship, is capable of delivering one massive energy bolt capable of breaking smaller ships in half and giving a really bad time to any capitals hit by it. It consumes 60% of Tyrant's antimatter reserves (which are huge and need a lot of time to replenish).
All weapons are front-mounted. The main gun requires precise alignment with the target.

The ship can also use 50% of its antimatter reserves to activate special shield regenerators which are capable of rapidly restoring the shield envelope.

Flankers, the smaller cruisers are the Minelayer and Swarmer (carrier). And a lot of assault drones in front. The Assault (or Heavy) cruiser has had its head cut off in a freak design accident and is currently being rebuilt (I didn't like the look of its front so I'm sort of hacking and slashing at it). The Xin engineers swear on their frozzlims that the new version is going to look even more impressive and will undoubtedly strike even more fear in the hearts of whatever happens to be on the menu for the day! And it should delay the invasion deployment for only a week or so!

;)
Reply #400 Top
Nope, just an ordinary frontline battleship. Expect to see these spearheading large fleet movements. Of course, they are appropriately expensive too. :p

A Titan... well, let's just say that when you see it there won't be any doubt about its size class.