Phew, lots of posts since I was here last time!
Well, I'm back from my vacation in Scotland, the weather was nice and so were the midges. Where is an AoE fireball when you need one... reminded me of that certain little mob you get to fight in Lord of the Rings online...

Anyway, to try and tackle the inquiries & comments that have accumulated (sorry if I accidentally miss any questions or comments), but first, glad you guys like my work so far, if all goes as planned I've plenty of goodies in store yet!

Gamerking:

Whether Titans will have strikecraft or not will have to wait for me to actually make and "devtest" one, but so far I'm leaning to no, simply because a Titan should have at least one exploitable but believable tactical hole. If I could I would make it so the Titan can use its huge guns only on capital ships and have fighters for point defense, leaving it vulnerable to mass attacks of smaller vessels, but right now that's not doable so I might just go with the "death-star syndrome" and make the big bad boy vulnerable to small fighters instead.

***

SpardaSon:

Thank you very much, and I do plan on releasing a mini-mod containing certan special effects like explosions. I think BailKnight nailed most of the weapon effects pretty well on, so my mini-mod will likely come in the forms of a stand-alone, mod-addon and modder resource containing volumetric explosions and associated destruction effects. However, untill Ironclad releases 1.1 change files, I cannot incorporate different explosions for different races, and of course, the mini-mod will not work with any mods which change vanilla units (hence the modders resource for those who want to merge it in manually)

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And to clarify a few things:

The official name for the Xin is "Xin Domains".
The ModDB page has an article containing a little lore about the alien race, of which here is an excerpt:

The Xin are a reclusive race of amphibian predators which evolved on an oceanic world nestled in a pocket of densely packed stars on the other side of the known galaxy. To this day very little else is known about their pre-spaceflight history, partially because of their reclusive nature, but mostly because any who ventured inside the Xin-held space either returned with no new knowledge or not at all.

The Xin are exceptionally aggressive. Their space is divided amongst groups of most powerful and able warlords, who constantly seek to expand their holdings - be it at the expense of neighbouring worlds or at the expense of each other. They command vast fleets of uncrewed drones and semi-organic warships of varying sizes, the greatest of which are fully sentient beings, housing thousands of Xin warriors and bio-engineers.

You can red the full article by going here.

A few further notes; parts of this will be included as lore in the official site when it goes live.

..the Xin have conquered a vast region of the same galaxy Sins of a Solar Empire takes place in. Some might imagine they are the "hidden menace" the Vasari are running from, but all such speculations are ultimately just that - fancies of imagination. Nobody knows whether they truly came from that oceanic world or not, though the Hegemony's best exobiologists and exohistorians claim their simulations of the known Xin expansions suggest that planet as the point of origin.

The Xin Domains have been involved in a brutal genocidal war with another advanced empire spanning countless thousands of star systems, the Hegemony. The war has lasted for ten thousand years, most of it contained along the vast stretch of solar systems known as the "Bulwark Line" or simply "The Wall". As neither side has been able to push the other from their entrenched positions along this galaxy-wide border, most of the war has taken the form of a bitter stand-off.

Until now. It has long been speculated that the Xin are on the verge of discovering technology which would enable them to cross huge distances in an eyeblink using artificially created wormholes. It now seems this has come to pass, as the alien menace invades a seemingly backwater and uniportant pocket of stars - at the back of the Hegemony space and far beyond the Bulwark Line.
The Hegemony has reacted by sending the entirety of Clans Remnant, its "Fist of the Stars" to the troubled regions.
But it will take a long time for the Remnant Fleet to reach the rapidly flaring battlefield, until which time the TEC, Advent and Vasari will have to fend for themselves.
And the Remnant Council, free from the proximity of its Hegemony overseers for the first time in centuries, has plans of its own...

This much for now, more to come soon (hopefully), including the unveiling of the official forums for the mod with some exclusiiives! :p

I thought the Hegemony was the Vasari and Advent combined.

sooo, the hemogeny has a civil war brewing along with the war against the xin, the xin can travel through space at lighting fast speeds, and the remnant is the third new faction....BOOOM....[topples over in excitement for this epic new mod.

Epic is the order of the day.

And Badwolfwho, yeah, originally Hegemony was meant to be Vasari and Advent combined, but as the story evolved I figured since I'm making a completely new race with the Hegemony, why not make it all the way so.

Besides, I thought it would be fun to sort of "marginalize" the epic conflict between the TEC, Vasari and Advent by placing them smack dab in the middle of a war which literally dwarfs anything their own conflict ever entailed. Suddenly the three powerful factions are reduced to the role of utter underdogs forced to hang on by their fingernails for their very survival... and still have to duke it out between themselves too. Fun, fun! They wanted war... now they can have it for real. :p

Awesome, pure epicness

So the spamming faction is no longer the TEC and is the Remenant?

Brain melting..... Overdose of awesome...... Must have more.....

ManShOOter - glad to see your back - I missed reading your posts. The mod is beyond beautiful, wonderful, tremendous, and (insert accolade here). Thanks for all your utter commitment.

Best

 

That's straight almost out of the "Halo Wars" Trailer, but I find it particularly apt.

whooooooooooossssssshhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

too much good stuff.........priceless!

 

just wondering, are any of the new factions human?  If so, how did humans get involved in the Hegemony?  A cool thing would be if the Hegemony was really a group of human/advent/vasari who during the initial encounters between the original SOASE factions banded together when they secretly discovered the Xin, and are therefore trying to protect the three original races and instill peace.

 

Oh, and how do u make ur ship models and and how are u going to make the character models for the leaders of the civs?

I have recently upped the ante on model quality by finally including ZBrush in my tool palette. So now the usual workflow is creating a model in XSI, then refining it in ZBrush (the Xin as an organic race benefit particularly well from this), then touching up the final texture in Photoshop if needed.

When it comes to character models, pretty much the same method will be used, only this time with high-poly models so I can go crazy on the detailing. :p But that is the lowest priority right now as those characters are only used for cosmetic purposes, whereas ship and structure models are needed for actual gameplay. I can always plug in a temporary high-poly ship render if a character is not ready by the time everything else is and can be released.

Initially, one of the new races was supposed to be human. You can guess which. It might still turn out that way, I still haven't fleshed out that part of the backstory.

is the od out, if so what page is it on.

No.

 

Am I right to assume that there is no demo available for this yet? If so, please let me know. If not then...well...I'll have to be patient.

No demo and the first version released will likely be the finalized Episode I. I don't really believe in mod demos since what you actually get feels like a half-finished jumble and not a taster of a finished product. If you want to check out how the mod looks like in action and you still haven't seen it, the teaser trailer is a good place to start; also coming up soon is more media to show off progress.

If all goes well, Episode I should be released around Christmas this year, so its not that long of a wait.

Man...I just spent my evening looking over this forum and you're various concepts. And well like everyone else stated...I am completely astounded by the quality of the work!

I don't know if you plan on also remodelling the entire technology tree and what not! But when you get this mod out, which I hope...will be sooner than Christmas, even though it would make quite the present ...whoever will download it, will feel obliged to name you Best Modder Alive! Imagine the statue of yourself on Broadway in a few years %_%, being Bill Gates idol for creating the perfect game...having every company drooling for your attention in modding...

Just to say...THIS ROCKS...it's like 10.000x better than 7 deadly sins!

Keep up the good work in turning this extraordinary game into a technological wonder !

 

Well, try this AND 7 Deadly Sins, all in one epic package.  ManSh00ter, please allow a merge.

anything new and shiny to report ManSh00ter?   we need  updates, were like parasites!

If only we could help

Just by reading all this...I'm thinking about trying my hand a modding myself (though I aam quite sure it'll be a complete disaster)!

One question ManShOOTer, how long have you been modding games?

 

 

 

The Last Stand is my first true public project. Aside from that, I've done some private mods for Star Wars: Empire at War (realism), Company of Heroes (realism and oh yeah, first to find out how to slow down the game *dances a jig*) and Silent Storm (realism - notice the trend?)

SpardaSon21, I am a bit particular about merging with other mods due to the unique IP and the fact that the mod will be released in episodes; Danman and I had discussed the possible merger and I expressed the desire to keep the Last Stand "unmerged" until the release of Episode III, and I'm glad to say we're both cool with that. That said, there will be a few notable elements of this mod that I would be more than happy to share with the rest of the modding community, such as all my artwork and particle setups for volumetric ship explosions, as well as some of the niftier features I hope to realize, which will remain a surprise for now (and keep me from embarassing myself if I fail to pull them off).

And an update is coming soon. Shiny one too.

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

 

 

Epsiode 3 will be like Star Wars Epsiode 3.  4 years after Episode 1 at this rate.

 

But don't worry.  I'll be playing Epsiode 1 anyways.  Even if it were merged it seemed a shame to mix the Xin and his mod.  Just wouldn't feel right to me.

Actually, I am trying to streamline my workflow so that I can attempt to finish Episode III within a year. Anyway, we shall see, eh.

if that whole, the world could end tomorrow post is right, we may never even get episode 1

 

but i'll bet they are wrong

It looks quite interesting and if I may add very hard. But you know what you are doing an amaizing job so far. Just so I could add a few ideas. For a superweapon(by that i mean for the TEC tey have the Novalith Cannon) the Xin could have like a wormhole generator which would put any ships in a gravity well to another. Or some sort of acid cannon that would on damage the target planet and gravity well as well as anything in its way. Not to be annoying or anything I just have one more superweapon idea. A creature that can control gravity and redirecs steroids or Comets(something new) at a target. Good luck with the project. If you need any more ideas you know where to look.

They don't need another superweapon, one is enough, and the one they have moves around too

YEAHHHHHH! The ship with the 4-phase firing sequence right? The big one with the circular hole in the middle...which reminds me of Star Wars Death Star attack (GOD I would soooo love to have those in the game instead of the Novalith..which I find is a complete waste of time and ressources)!

BTW if you need idea's or help on anything (except modding), I can always try to help you!!! It's the least I can do for such a marvelous project!!!

!Bows down in complete submission!