DP, but I wanted the bump, because I finally finished the feature list (you've seen the ships section before):
-SHIPS:
Chaos: (ships generally are fast, with heavy ranged firepower, strong cruisers)
-Planet Killer
Battleships:
-Despoiler Battleship (carrier battleship with ferocious prow lances if you want to risk closing)
-Desolator Battleship (fast battleship with powerful lance broadsides and heavy prow torps)
Grand Cruisers:
-Repulsive Grand Cruiser (powerful broadside weapons batterys and prow torps joined by lances close in)
Heavy Cruisers:
-Hades Heavy Cruiser (Murder cruiser with lances that can fire to the sides as well)
-Styx Heavy Cruiser (heavy carrier with light lance armament)
-Acheron Heavy Cruiser (lance boat with heavy lance armament supplemented by prow weapons batterys)
Cruisers:
-Carnage Cruiser (good ranged combatant with all weapons battery armament)
-Murder Cruiser (cheaper Carnage with prow batteries replaced by fixed forward lances)
-Slaughter Cruiser (fast heavily armed cruiser with short range, excels at flanking maneuvers)
-Devastation Carrier (excellent carrier with long-ranged lances to suppplement its )
Escorts:
-Infidel Raider (lance armed escort)
-Idolator Raider (torpedo boat)
-Iconoclast Destroyer (fast weapons battery armed escort)
Imperial Navy: (ships are well armored, powerful battleships, and copious torpedoes)
Battleships:
-Retribution Battleship (fast linebreaker battleship with prow torpedos and a mix of weapons batterys and lances)
-Emperor Battleship (carrier battleship with potent long-ranged firepower off one broadside at a time)
-Oberon Battleship (Emperor that sacrifices half its capacity for lance firepower)
-Apocalypse Battleship (heavily lance armed linebreaker with nova cannon prow)
Battlecruisers:
-Armageddon Battlecruiser (lunar with twice the lance strength and battlecruiser range)
-Mars Battlecruiser (nova cannon armed support ship with good armament and capacity)
-Overlord Battlecruiser (sacrifices power for battleship range, long ranged but cruiser power armaments)
Cruisers: (all except the dominator have powerful prow torpedoes)
-Lunar Cruiser (well rounded ship with weapons batterys and lances)
-Gothic Cruiser (potent lance armed cruiser)
-Dominator Cruiser (nova cannon armed cruiser with a weapons battery broadside)
-Dictator Cruiser (well armed for a carrier, designed for close support)
-Tyrant Cruiser (weapons battery armed cruiser sacrifices power for battlecruiser range)
Light Cruisers:
-Dauntless Light Cruiser (excellent ship with ferocious prow lances and good broadside weapons batterys)
-Endurance Light Cruiser (decent weapons battery armament for its size, slow though)
-Endeavour Light Cruiser (decent lance armament for its size, slow though)
-Defiant light cruiser (escort carrier, slow for its size)
Escorts:
-Sword frigate (escort armed with weapons batterys)
-Firestorm frigate (lance armed variant of the sword)
-Cobra destroyer (ultra-cheap fast torpedo boat)
-Falchion escort (better armored than an orca, lighter torpedo load but heavier weapons battery armament)
Tau Empire: (very strong bombers and ferocious frontal armament, but weak from the flanks)
Battleships:
-Explorer battleship (unbelievably cheap, but woefully undergunned carrier with very little defensive strength)
-Custodian carrier (more expensive carrier than the explorer, but decently armed for its size)
Cruisers:
-Hero cruiser (powerfully armed ship with heavy lances, torpedoes and a small capability)
-Protector warship (well armed ship similar to a hero, but weaker)
Light Cruisers:
-Merchant... erm, merchantman? (weak light cruiser with relatively potent firepower, can carry orcas)
-Emissary envoy ship (well-rounded light cruiser with torpedoes and decent firepower)
Escorts:
-Defender escort (sluggish heavy torpedo boat for long range sniping, has mediocre weapons battery strength)
-Castellan heavy escort (more maneuverable torpedo boat with stronger weapons batterys and weaker torpedoes)
-Orca gunboat (light, maneuverable gunboat armed with weapons batterys and lances
-Warden carrier escort (like an orca, only these belong to custodian carriers)
-Messenger utility ship (boosts the firepower of nearby allies)
-BUILDINGS
Chaos:
-resource buildings (of course)
-Summoning circle (factory equivalent)
-Temple (culture building)
-Some way to get troops (explanation of troops will follow)
-Some form of research building (or maybe get favor of the gods with temples)
As of now, they're purposely light on buildings to cement the feel of a raiding race, but they may get additions
IN:
-resource buildings (of course)
-Shipyards of both varieties, although cruisers might work better coming from the capitol shipyard
-troop training facilities
-requisitioning/research buildings
-cathedrals (spread the culture)
-inquisition stations (stop the other cultures from muscling in)
-trade ports
As of now, they have a robust selection of buildings, but must defend their bloated gravity wells to avoid losing effectiveness. Also, they have a lot of defenses available, and they're relatively affordable.
Tau:
-resource buildings (of course)
-Shipyards of both varieties, although cruisers might work better coming from the capitol shipyard
-fire caste training facilities (troop facilities)
-water caste forward bases (facilitate black market trade and diplomacy to nearby planets, spreading culture and getting income)
-trade ports (really good trade ports, gotta encourage the production of the things because they're so tau)
-earth caste labs (research facilities, probably of both varieties, but tau will have a very strong tech tree)
The tau are a faction that only achieves its true power later in the game, so an investment in infrastructure is necessary, making them rely on structures like the Imperials.
-PLANETS:
-Hive (lots of giant cities, generally good industrial abilities)
-Asteroids (nice resources, not much income)
-Deathworlds (really fast troop production, hopefully we can work that out)
-Forge (lots of industry available to help you keep your fleets running and repaired)
-Feral (not much of interest, but pretty good places to get troops)
-
-ADDED FEATURES:
-Troop based planetary conquest.
Unlike in standard sins, planetary bombardment will only play a small part of planetary conquest. Unlike standard sins, Infrastructure is renamed to Garrison (or something like that to reflect troop strength), and instead of troop ships, you have transports, which are fragile but much cheaper. However, to use them, they must be filled with troops taken from your own planets (antimatter for abilities, the ships will have no antimatter regeneration and must be recharged at planetary structures). There are currently two possible ideas for the execution of this. The first is to have the troop buildings or transports (removing the troop buildings) use an ability that restores their antimatter and decreases the garrison of the planet. The other option is to reduce the rate of garrison growth considerably, and have the troop buildings be able to use their antimatter to add to the garrison strength or to refill transports. By making transports the main siege units and making filling them have considerable opportunity costs, it discourages squandering them while still making them cheap enough to see use.
-Torpedoes.
Torpedoes will hopefully be in the final draft, an entity that can be shot down like fighters that can be shot into any patch of space you want, and if their path crosses that of a ship, then they try to damage the ship after its turrets shoot at them. Fighters and ships' turrets will be able to shoot down torpedoes, but otherwise, a salvo of torpedoes will be a deterrent to maneuvers through the terrain.
-Multi-arc weapons (hopefully)
Some ships will have weapons capable of firing in multiple arcs, such as the Emperor battleship, which allows them to have disproportionate firepower for their size/role at range, but leaves them weakly armed at close range if they are attacked form both sides. This will force ships to keep at range to maintain their firepower superiority. The tau also have weapons that can fire in multiple arcs, but because of their configuration, this leads them to favor keeping their enemies in front of them, and allows them to use their relatively weak overall firepower more effectively. These weapons will create a very distinct tactical use for all ships.
-MAIN GAMEPLAY ELEMENTS:
-Maneuver based battles
Hopefully we will be able to add a minimum speed to the battles so that we can make a more faithful translation of the tabletop game, where the cunning use of maneuver allows you to concentrate firepower on one enemy ship at a time and do crippling damage. If this works, the superior use of maneuver will win battles, but the pace will be slow enough that it doesn't devolve into a clicking contest. Hopefully sins will play nicely and I won't have to mess with the AI too much. Instead of the focus on battles being against maximizing the damage dealt and smart use of abilities, the focus will be on applying the damage to an enemy while keeping the enemy's firepower from being concentrated too heavily on you.
-Increased character for each side
In contrast to sins, where each side has very similar structure and much more ability to function in any way the player desires, in the BFG mod, the races' differences will be much more pronounced, and the focus will be shifted to using the tools the race you're playing has. For example, chaos is a very aggressive fleet, so trying to hang back and set up a trade empire for your resources won't work, for reasons including the fact that you have no trade ports. Therefore, you need to gain ever-increasing amounts of territory to keep your war machine going. Additionally, your defenses are very weak, so you might as well attack while your opponent is distracted by your culture abilities. The IN of course turtles and builds their war machines behind their powerful defenses while their various buildings help them keep strong in the face of attacks, and they slowly expand after beating their enemies in defensive battles, giving them fleet superiority. The tau generally use the power of their trade and culture to defend themselves while they research the better ships they have. Eventually, after trading territory for time, they can use their better ships to conquer their enemies. I'll talk about the other races in later releases.
