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

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

Previously known as "The Last Stand"

from Sins Forums

 

 

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.

 

modding
4,160,095 views 1,794 replies
Reply #1051 from Sins Forums Top

*inserts a shameless plug*

 

"Donut! Quick! Combat Detail!" XO :rofl: XO 8O XO

Reply #1052 from Sins Forums Top

seriously manshooter, with talent like that why aint you working for a game company already? stick this stuff onto a resume NOW and get yourself an awesome job where you can let your creativity and talent soar

 

the reason is game companies that are big dont like inovation. they do pretty much the same thing drawn differently every time. so if he went now all of his creative ideas would be suppressed by the company and the money would drown him. so be quiet and happy that he is still not in a big overpriced gaming company. v_v :grin:

Elemental: Reforged
Reply #1053 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting _Vampir_, reply 2

seriously manshooter, with talent like that why aint you working for a game company already? stick this stuff onto a resume NOW and get yourself an awesome job where you can let your creativity and talent soar
 

the reason is game companies that are big dont like inovation. they do pretty much the same thing drawn differently every time. so if he went now all of his creative ideas would be suppressed by the company and the money would drown him. so be quiet and happy that he is still not in a big overpriced gaming company.

lmao very fair point, unless it's a good company like stardock or ironclad :-"

Reply #1054 from Sins Forums Top

Yeah, SD or IC should probably snap him up.

Reply #1056 from Sins Forums Top

yea seriously, didnt i address this a few pages back though?:typo:

Reply #1057 from Sins Forums Top

Here we go, an update at last!

First things first. I promised a video of the new Xin outpost, and here it is! This recon footage was captured by a spy ship lurking on the fringes of a remote cluster of stars where random sightings of strange and unindentified ships have been sporadically reported by merchant and private traffic. It's not long, but it seems to indicate that the newcomers have the ability to, according to the visual analysts and science experts, create stable black holes. Theoretically, these black holes do not rotate at extreme rates as is usually the case with naturally occuring ones. This would make is possible to actually transverse the event horizon without the spiral stretching that pulverizes any object getting too close to the black hole.

By what can be seen in the footage, this appears to be exactly the case...


The Last Stand Mod for Sins of a Solar Empire Videos & Audio - Mod DB

 

More about the Chimera: this ship is intended as a support vessel for Xin fleets. It is completely unarmed by itself, though it sports the thick armor and strong shields typical for Xin vessels. It can also deploy a number of specialized attack/defense drones - these are frigate-sized and accordingly powerful and difficult to destroy. However, they are completely dependant on their mothership and cannot operate on their own (i.e. hyperspace). The number of these drones increases as the ship gains overall experience. At high levels the Chimera should be able to put up quite a fight on its own.

Its main abilities are, however, tied purely with supporting the other capital ships and vessels in Xin fleets. The Chimera is the only Xin ship which can provide non-combat support. For example, it can provide shield boosting to replenish the powerful but slow-to-recharge barriers on other ships. It can also provide limited but constant repair service to any ships in its area of influence. Naturally, it can also colonize new world, just like the Seeder Pods.

But the most powerful and valuable ability the Chimera has, once the appropriate research has been completed, is the ability to deploy specialized graviton beacons. These minuscule structures serve as a housing to a dedicated Singularity Engine designed to entice the formation of a stable Black Hole. This in turn opens probably the fastest mode of travel possible, enabling the transportation of huge objects across great distances instantaneously. In Chimera's case, that object is the Sentinel Outpost.

 

 

The Sentinel is designed to be primarily a tactical tool; it cannot therefore be upgraded or modified as is the case with Starbases. It is, however, meant to be deployed in larger numbers. It can be deployed anywhere a Chimera can fly, including enemy sectors, though that may prove to be very difficult to pull off if there are any targets or threats nearby - failsafe mechanisms prevent the ship from deploying a very expensive but also very fragile beacon when the ship itself perceives danger. Should the beacon be deployed none the less, even a single stray shot would probably be enough to destroy it. Considering it takes almost thirty seconds to form a black hole of sufficient stability for the Sentinel to come through, releasing the beacon in a middle of a firefight is very unwise.

The outpost is heavily protected, and also very well armed, both with long-range capital electron rays simmilar to those seen on the Tyrant battleship as well as with scores of Xin Multipurpose Fighters, attack drones capable of acting in both anti-fighter and anti-ship roles.

 The Multipurpose Fighter can be spotted in this comparison render next to the Impaler Drone.

 The Sentinel can also make use of a number of abilities which serve to enhance the reach and (poor) flexibility of Xin fleets, or provide the same with the tools required to trap an enemy force and annihilate it. The most powerful of these is a wide-range interdiction field, preventing ships from phasing out. The second is the ability to act as a remote wormhole stabilizer node, same as those commonly built throughout Xin held space to accelerate otherwise slow interplanetary travels speeds of Xin ships. That way the sphere of influence of the dreaded Xin wormhole network can be strategically extended, a most useful tool in the hands of a cabale warlord.

 

This much for now, coming up next: Capital Shipyard and the formidable Wyrm Dreadnaught.

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Reply #1059 from Sins Forums Top

Amazing - keep up the good work!

Oh, and not to bug you, but is there a rough date for a release of episode 1? (feel free to make up a date to appease me and any others like me. Thanks)

Reply #1063 from Sins Forums Top

on reading your main post i think i can find a way to incorporate that "Refuling" system you speak of.

It involves the antimatter restore rates of the ships. If you make the restore rate of a frigate say something like .5 per sec, than you can use the refueling ship to give antimatter. the only problem i see with this is the abilities that the ships might use if they are still based on vanilla specs.

Reply #1064 from Sins Forums Top

Just DLed the PDF for the background, based just on reading the two pic images you have, it's sounding VERY intresting.

 

Edit "Yeah, SD or IC should probably snap him up."  Maybe this will be the 3rd micro expansion.... :rofl:

Reply #1065 from Sins Forums Top

Damn your greatness, ManSh00ter!

Your mod has some serious graphical muscle.

Reply #1066 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting CanadaMan777, reply 15

Damn your greatness, ManSh00ter!

You have some serious modeling and texturing skills

Reply #1067 from Sins Forums Top

Actually ... if the second expansion is in and of itself the diplomacy expansion that they've talked about, that would leave this expansion as the third and final expansion. It would fit into the storyline very well ... O.o'

 

Manshooter, would you call this the truth, or a conspiracy theory? :X

Reply #1068 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting boshimi336, reply 17
Actually ... if the second expansion is in and of itself the diplomacy expansion that they've talked about, that would leave this expansion as the third and final expansion. It would fit into the storyline very well ... '

 

Manshooter, would you call this the truth, or a conspiracy theory?

Thats what I said lol B)

Reply #1069 from Sins Forums Top

just some constructive critisizm, it might be cool if instead of the black hole appearing out of nowhere if i had the effect of literally ripping a hole in space... and then turning into a black hole... :grin: }:)

Reply #1070 from Sins Forums Top

The effect will be tweaked a bit... probably have a really fast inflate affector, so that it appears to grow explosively to a certain size, instead of just popping up. Will look better. :)

As for expansionZ, I am looking forward to seeing what will IC come up with in the "big one" that is probably coming. It must be something badass... but is it badass enough to beat the space squids? *insert suspense music*

 

Reply #1071 from Sins Forums Top

If it is a story mode, then i have to say yes.

then again, you can now play the Evil Cephlapods from the galactic void in the story

Reply #1073 from Sins Forums Top

Sorry if we've already been over this, but will TLS work with entrenchment?

 

Korgan0

Reply #1074 from Sins Forums Top

Yes it will. Since Dynamic Battle System will be an integral part of the mod, it may end up actually requiring Entrenchment to run... but I'm not there yet. I'm waiting to see if IC will port the fighter physics to the vanilla sins as well. And even if they don't, I do plan on having support for vanilla in any case, the vanilla-compatible version might just get released a bit later.

Started work on the Wyrm, should be done soon(ish). :) Had some technical issues to fix up on my computer, which caused a delay.