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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%

167,370 views 165 replies
Reply #51 from Sins Forums Top

You'll have to give them an ability with something like this:

numEntityModifiers 1
entityModifier
 buffEntityModifierType "CultureSpread"
 value
  Level:0 5.000000
  Level:1 0.000000
  Level:2 0.000000

(taken from BuffCannonShellPsi)

Reply #52 from Sins Forums Top

Ok I thought up a new one over night. Let's see if I can stump you hahaha ;)

 

So right now we have trade ports and refineries. Would it be possible to combine these into a third building?

 

I want to have 3 economic buildings. Refinery (refinery ships travel to mines and extract more resources) Trade Ports (trade ships travel between trade ports and bring in more credits, metal and crystal) and Tourist Traps (Cruise ships travel between tourist traps and generate credits).

The refineries are easy enough, just leave them be. The Tourist trap would just need to replace the trade ships with cruise ships, the mesh of the building and the name. But is it possible to make a trade port that generates either A) both refinery and trade ships or B ) most prefered, Trade ships that generate all three resources? 

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #53 from Sins Forums Top

I think it is possible yes...just combine both entities by adding the "generate income from one" into the later!

BTW excellent idea!!! And destroying those cruise ships would hurt your culture as passengers die and your empires reputation falls :)!!!

 

Justin S.

Reply #54 from Sins Forums Top

That's not really stump-worthy since the answer is no :P

You can't "combine" anything, usually. The engine has certain rules for what each entity is capable of and whenever something can vary, there's always a counter variable so the engine knows. For example, each ship has a "NumWeapons" field, which can be 0, 1, 2, or 3. The engine reads the variable and knows how many weapon definition blocks it needs to expect. So this way, you can add new weapons to ships as long as you don't exceed the boundry (3).

But it isn't possible to just add random lines to entity files because in the actual game code, each entity type has a set number of variables that govern what it does. When the game reads the files, it goes through them line by line and fills in the blanks, so to speak, and so knows what to do with it. In this case, it only allows for one cargo type:

cargoType "RefineryResources"
maxCargoCapacity 50.000000

There's no counter for the number of cargo types, so if you add another cargoType field, the game will go "wtf, that's not supposed to be there.." and most likely refuse to work, either on mod load or when it needs to actually do something with the ship (most likely on mod load).

So general rule of thumb: if something has a counter attached to it (like number of weapons, number of finish conditions, number of effects, etc) you can add on to the list. Otherwise, you can't. Anything "extra" essentially becomes a new entity that the game can't recognize because there's no code for it to know what to do with it.

The easiest example is the Strings file. The line right on top is the counter for the number of strings in the file. If the count isn't accurate, say it says 5000 strings but you have 5300 in the file, the last 300 strings will never get loaded and if the game tries to reference any of them, it will crash :P

Hopefully a little insight into how the engine works. :)

Reply #55 from Sins Forums Top

Hey good idea. I can make the cruise ships generate culture and credits! Brilliant!

 

Could you make it so that your culture is negatively affected upon destruction of a cruise ship?

 

I'll let you in on my other idea.

 

I'm making an Empire race. They will mostly have cruisers (in my mod cruisers will be much larger) and battleships as their main fleet. Their frigates will be scouts, colonizers and The Queens Propoganda Machine aka small ships that fly around spouting "culture". You'd basically tack on 5 - 6 of these on your fleet and have a mobile culture bonus.

Reply #56 from Sins Forums Top

*withdraws his previous post and goes bakc to his mines...apparently the only thing hes getting right :) LOL

Reply #57 from Sins Forums Top

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news :P

Reply #58 from Sins Forums Top

So instead, could I create a new building "the tourist trap" that spreads culture? Maybe the building doesn't spread culture, but if we can make ships spread culture, couldn't we make a trade port that spawns trade ships. But these trade ships wouldn't carry any money but they would have a passive ability that spreads culture.

Would that work?

to make the trade ports produce resources, what if the ships had a passive ability that gave resources? 

 

LOL and Annatar, by stump I meant you couldn't come up with a solution, or alternative. Usually you always have a "no you can't, but you could do this". That's why you're so awesome! HAHAH

Reply #59 from Sins Forums Top

Any building can spread culture Tkins!

rotateSoundName ""
resourceExtractionType "Invalid"
cultureSpreadRate 0.000000
rotateToFacePlanet FALSE
rotateConstantly FALSE
isAffectedBySimilarModuleCostResearch FALSE
ShieldMeshName ""

So no, by my count (unless Annatar stabs me in the back again :( lol)! You're tourist trap should be entirely doable! As for addind cultureSpread to ships...*turns to Annatar* Ask the MASTER :) LOLLL!

 

Justin S. good luck !

Reply #60 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Tkins, reply 8
So instead, could I create a new building "the tourist trap" that spreads culture? Maybe the building doesn't spread culture, but if we can make ships spread culture, couldn't we make a trade port that spawns trade ships. But these trade ships wouldn't carry any money but they would have a passive ability that spreads culture.

Would that work?

to make the trade ports produce resources, what if the ships had a passive ability that gave resources? 

 

LOL and Annatar, by stump I meant you couldn't come up with a solution, or alternative. Usually you always have a "no you can't, but you could do this". That's why you're so awesome! HAHAH

That's a bit weird but it should work. In theory, you could make a trade port clone (or refinery if you only want a 1-jump range for the tourist ships) and a trade ship (or refinery ship) clone. You can change the clone ship's cargo capacity to lower the cash income (tourists pay for tickets, but it's less than ferrying expensive weapons after all!) and give it a passive ability that spreads culture. You can try blanking out the CargoType, but I'm not sure it would work, the game might depend on that field being set to something for the ship AI to know where to ferry the thing. The only issue would be if you made the original spawner building a trade port clone, chances are the spawned ships will go to your new tourist attraction buildings *and* trade ports (shopping detours?). This AI behavior is under the hood, and I'm guessing the game looks at the spawner entity to determine where to send the ships.

Reply #61 from Sins Forums Top

Sorry, I think Annatar has mentioned before that buildings spread culture. I typed that wrong. I meant a tourist trap that spreads culture through trade ships.

 

I'm thinking the destination might get mixed. Like if I have a tourist trap and a trade port, the ships might just intermingle between one another, when they should be going only to their similiar buildings.

Any ideas Annatar?

 

EDIT*

I got ninja'd. AHHAH thanks though!

If you're right and the ships do go to both trade ports and tourist traps, might not be so bad. As long as only one building spawns the ships that spread culture.

 

I can see it now, big cruisers like from the 5th element sailing around the planets stopping at trade ports and tourist traps and getting blown to bits by rainding pirates and enemy capital ships hahaha.

What is the max number of buildings implementable in Sins?

Reply #62 from Sins Forums Top

What is the max number of buildings implementable in Sins?

9 logistics and 9 tactical :P

Also, to add to what I said above, trade ships would probably also go to the tourist traps.

Reply #63 from Sins Forums Top

Oh, and since you challeneged me to be stumped, even though you can't have 2 resources traded by one ship/building, there's nothing stopping you from doing it like the Advent's trade port. It just has an ability to boost resource extraction rates in its grav well. For the Advent it's a toggle so it's either trade or boost gathering, but there's no reason you can't make the ability passive so the building does both at the same time.

Edit: This'll actually probably be pretty good to do, since it should make it much less messy, instead of 3 buildings for the misc ships to go to, you'll just have the tourist trap and the tradeport/refinery mix.

Reply #64 from Sins Forums Top

Perfect..cargo ships bringing all the Tourists acquired goods...just like our good old airplanes bring us exotic food from around the globe!

Reply #65 from Sins Forums Top

Annatar for the win!  That's the solution.

Well the reason I want the third building is to develope different strategies. If you're behind in resources, you can throw out a refinery and boost your mines. If you don't have mines, but need resources and credits, you can build trade ports. If you need just credits you can build tourist traps.  So it would be for example, +1 m +1 cy from a refinery, +10cr, +.25 m, +.25 cy from a trade port, then you'd get +20 cr from a tourist trap (maybe +15 and you'd get your culture spread as well).

I'd have to tweak the numbers, but Refineries would be good for when you actually have mines and you'd benefit more from it. Trade ports are good all around and if you don't have resource nodes. Tourist traps would be for when you have tons of minerals but little credits.

Or you could combine all three to have a good balance of culture, credits and minerals.

Reply #66 from Sins Forums Top

*Likes the idea!

Go get 'em tiger!

 

Justin S.

Reply #67 from Sins Forums Top

I've updated the original post if you guys are interested.

Reply #68 from Sins Forums Top

Any other Ideas how to add to the economic side of the game? We can't add new resources can we?

 

Is it possible to make different kinds of ships spawn from buildings? Like random civilian ships? think it would be possible to have starbases that spawn civilian ships that have population that we could tax?

I have a couple ideas on espionage that might work but they are pretty rudementary. 

 

What about diplomacy?

Reply #69 from Sins Forums Top

Thats also an aspect Id love to tackle!!! Better diplomacy!

BTW! Annatar thanks for the help in everything because after a long time tweaking values and all, I now have mines in-game and they work PERFECTLY!!!!!

I took a video with game cam of a beautiful minefield of mine being attacked by the comps cap ship and fleet which 10 sec later entirely exploded in a BEATIFUL AND GIGANTIC EXPLOSION!!! Only issue is game cam is crap when its unregistered and file got bloody corrupted!!

Starbases..check...mines..check! Sorry entrenchement beat you to it!

As for population ships..if they were a way to TRADE CIVILIANS BETWEEN A FULLY DEVELLOPED PLANET AND AN UNDERVELLOPED ONE would be great!!

Looking forward to tackling this challenge with you ;)! LOL

Justin S.

Reply #70 from Sins Forums Top

Yeah, they would do something like take 20 pop from planet A that is full and drop them off at Planet B that is empty. It would be risky though.

 

Do you know how the population modifier works? Could we create a cap ship that is like Titan AE and has 200 pop or something?

 

Is it possible to make planets spawn ships like trade ports do?

Reply #71 from Sins Forums Top

*points annatar!

I'm still in ability codding...not yet into gameplay codding etc!X|

Reply #72 from Sins Forums Top

Any other Ideas how to add to the economic side of the game? We can't add new resources can we?

No :P

Is it possible to make different kinds of ships spawn from buildings? Like random civilian ships? think it would be possible to have starbases that spawn civilian ships that have population that we could tax?

Buildings have ability slots like anything else, and you already know how to spawn ships with an ability ;) And it should work ok to give a "give credits" ability to those spawned ships..

What about diplomacy?

What about it? :P You might be able to make some different mission types (they all have their own entities, look at the Quest files), but I never touched these so I don't know.

BTW! Annatar thanks for the help in everything because after a long time tweaking values and all, I now have mines in-game and they work PERFECTLY!!!!!

Glad I could help :P

if they were a way to TRADE CIVILIANS BETWEEN A FULLY DEVELLOPED PLANET AND AN UNDERVELLOPED ONE would be great!!

Nope.

Do you know how the population modifier works? Could we create a cap ship that is like Titan AE and has 200 pop or something?

What population modifier?

Is it possible to make planets spawn ships like trade ports do?

Not really. Planets can also have abilities, but they are covered up by the building UI once it's colonized. So they can have passive abilities, or abilities that do fine on auto-cast possibly, but ship spawning probably wouldn't work since once the planet is colonized you can't toggle the ability at all.

 

...

I need to get you guys an Annatar-bell.

Reply #73 from Sins Forums Top

By pop modifier, I just mean the characteristic that gives population. Could that be applied to a ship? Or could we do anything that gives the same effect?

So a ship that when it takes damage it loses population, but will gain it back over time. Like a planet!

 

And planets spawn constructor ships. How does that work? Could we duplicate that so that they spawn their construction ships and also other ships?

Reply #74 from Sins Forums Top

By pop modifier, I just mean the characteristic that gives population. Could that be applied to a ship? Or could we do anything that gives the same effect?

Starting population and increase is assigned to the planet entity, and I don't think there's any ability modifier that can do add any population. Can kill, though!

And planets spawn constructor ships. How does that work? Could we duplicate that so that they spawn their construction ships and also other ships?

That can't be changed or modified, it's in the engine itself, not in the entity files for the planets.

Reply #75 from Sins Forums Top

So... would it be possible to create a moveable planet with no gravity well?

 

what about the neutral nodes? How changeable are they? Are they considered a building?


Could we make a neutral node that produces different things than crystal or metal? Could you give them a population modifier?

 

.. also HAHAh are gravity well shapes changeable? I noticed in the Star Wars mod Eviljedi was able to change some of the shield shapes... could we make a gravity well long and narrow or do they have to be a perfect sphere?