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Babylon 5 Mod Ideas

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Babylon 5 Mod Ideas

from Sins Forums
So since it should be inevitable for a B5 mod to get made, i figure it couldn't hurt to talk some about it, and perhaps maybe plan and get a team going for it.

Major Major Questions...

1. How many playable races to attempt, and which ones?

2. How many ships per faction, should ship roles/designs and numbers be based off the existing Sins races or not care?

3. Which general era of ships to use for the Earth Alliance?

4. Should capital ship mechanics remain the same? IE should the current game mechanics be kept in more or less the same condition?

My personal ideas is that the general game should play about the same, but that many ships should be condensed into one for some races, or expanded for others, notably I am in favor of maintaining only 3 Capital ship choices, as I think finding 5 for each major race would be quickly silly.

I would say for the beggining 3 balanced major races would be best, in general I view the technical/qualitative tiers being as such

Lowest: League Worlds, Early EA, Dilgar
Medium: EA, Centauri, Narn
High: Minbari, Drahk
Godish: Shadows, Vorlons, Additional Ancients

The mod would preferably come with several maps, one of which would represent the B5 universe just before the shadow war, it would be nice if a timer was included so that perhaps 3 hours into the game 2 special pirate worlds (the Shadows and the Vorlons) launch massive and mean pirate strikes... regular Raider Pirates would otherwise conduct themselves normally.

Other special maps/scenarios: Dilgar EA war... Earth Minbari War, and Narn Centauri War (The Shadows should/could be present here as well.)

While some races would be playable in these scenarios, for example in the Earth-Dilgar war you could play these or the League worlds, as the Early EA faction would be balanced with them; but the Earth Minbari War should be a 2V1, with the Minbari being powerful enough to take on two players.

This means that in the generic game, the balanced races would be EA, Narn and Centauri. The Minbari, Drahk and League worlds would all be special militia or pirate forces, we could easily design new planets that corresponded to these races and would spawn with special militia units, thus you wouldn't have Minbar being guarded by Raiders or Drazi.

Ship wise, the most important is obviously the Capitals- My personal choices for the 3 main powers are as such, with the TEC similar ship noted.

EA: Omega Destroyer (Kol) Posideon Super Carrier (Sova) Nova Dreadnought (Marza)

Narn: Bin`Tak Dreadnought (Kol) G`Quan Heavy Cruiser (Dunov) (Third????)

Centauri: Primus BattleCruiser (Dunov?) Octurion Battlship (Kol) Balvarin Carrier (Akkan?)



Additional Scenarios: Psi Corp Rebellion, EA Civil War, Mars Rebellion, The Centauri-League War (with Drahk as Pirates?) The list goes on and on.

Oh and for the EA, I would use Hyperions as the basic combat unit, to give fans an iconic mainstay for their fleets, as opposed to the too awesome for Frigate Omega, and the lesser known Olympus, Tethys, Saggitarius, or Oracle... (or the others   )
modding
481,777 views 311 replies
Reply #201 from Sins Forums Top
Release in stages.

Earth Vs Minbari
Narn Vs Centauri
Babylon Vs Earth
Vorlon Vs Shadows
Of course a "Third Space" just for fun
Coalition (Narn, Terran, others) vs Shadows

You have a hellish task before you, I pray your friends and family still recognize you when you emerge from the computer room  ;) 
Reply #202 from Sins Forums Top
any one know a good divorce lawyer?  ;p 
WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #203 from Sins Forums Top
awsome some of the screenshots are awsome..


anyway of topic i never did understand how come that 2 shadows can have killed Kosh
if you see how much trouble 1 kosh give by even try to destroy their armor
Reply #204 from Sins Forums Top
g`kar and londo in elevator
"what is so funny? you going to die too,yes but i get too watch you die hahahaha"
best scene ever wel guys you got my support on this wish i could help but know nothing
about modding so i wish you the best of luck :CONGRAT: 
greetz a b5 fan
Reply #205 from Sins Forums Top
I would try not to make it too cookie-cutter with ships. The races in the show were never mirrors of each other. I would have EA ships be more expensive, but allow more cap ships. If there is no signifigant price/population difference between a smaller ship and a cap ship, you build cap ships. EA always fielded large numbers of Omegas (think Sheridan's attack on Mars) and other cap ships with a few smaller ships as support. Mimbari would have really expensive ships, but they would be powerful. Again, you could build several smaller ships but they would not equal the power of 1 Sharlin. Cheaper ships for when economy is slow and before advancement, but weight it so that a player will want to just max out with Sharlins. Centauri would be flexible with the option of swarms of light ships or a few powerful cap ships. This type of set-up would give a more interesting feel, but it would be much harder to balance. I personally think that the games that pull this off are more fun to play than just getting to use the B5 ships.

This would also make some races like the ISA interesting. I would want them to initially have to buy white star fleets. Expensive, but you get a lot of ships initially. Also limit this to one or two batches, so maybe a better handled more like research. This would make a single white star hard to replace; you have to wait for your losses to merit (and open up enough population points for) buying another fleet. Make their capital ships ridiculously expensive and require high research so that they intead have to buy allied fleets, simialr to Dark Fleet effect, but with money. A whole research branch could be wooing league members to gain access to their ships. I've tried to figure out a way to pull this off, but I only dabble in modding and programming.
Reply #206 from Sins Forums Top
A B5 mod would be the greatest thing ever. Here are my thoughts...

As great as it would be to be Minbari, Vorlon, or Shadows, how could you balance them? Any of these 3 declare war on you its over :). I would suggest one release with the younger and another where you can duke it out with the elder powerful races. One could argue that a fleet of younger races can and did fare pretty well vs a fleet of Shadows, but I would counter the Shadows didn't fight to win, they fought to further the agenda of advancement through conflict. When the Vorlons went insane and broke out the big guns... well you see what I mean

My idea would be 2 factions, one Vorlon, one Shadow, where you vie for control over the younger races. As you gain influence over a race you gain access to their tech/ships. That would fit nicely as they are engaged in a neverending war of ideas and use the younger races for the dirty work.

Just a friendly suggestion, good luck!

KP

Reply #207 from Sins Forums Top
Part of an EA Omega Destroyer in this thread:

WWW Link

If anyone can help figure out how you can apply the same lighting and shader effects to a mesh in the particle effects (the middle section of the ship in this case) as the whole ship model/mesh I would appreciate the advice.

UPDATED: more than part, now you can see a demo vid of the EA Omega Destroyer with moving central section! Note the model used in the vid is a 5k poly varient of the screenshot incase you're wondering about quality. It takes ages to form the mesh using higher poly counts so its not worth it whilst experimenting on account of the frequent changes.

enjoy...
Reply #208 from Sins Forums Top
I'm currently experimenting with frigates with multiple weapon systems for Kin of the Stars. I hope to have it working in the next day or two.
End of quote


Therax, I'm guessing Kin of the Stars is the same as "Crest of the Stars", which was an excellent series - would love to see a Crest of the Stars mod for SoaSE :)

Reply #209 from Sins Forums Top
Finally got around to reading through this, and I just want to throw my hat into the ring. I'm a huge B5 fan and while I don't have any modeling, texture, or graphical skills I do have some experience with balancing and coming up with stats, etc. So when it gets to the point of needing those, feel free to PM me about it.

Here's hoping this mod goes places!
Reply #210 from Sins Forums Top
I would love a B5 mod of this game. I was a huge fan of the Agents of Gaming version B5Wars, and I still have all my books for it. Omegas building Starfuries (fighters) and Thunderbolts (bombers) makes me tingly.

As far as ships for EA:
Omega
Poseidon
Nova
Earth Explorer? Lots of special abilities, you could take the phase gate ability from Vasari and use it to represent them building jump gates.
Later era, Warlocks would be sweet!
Reply #211 from Sins Forums Top
Mmm, Babylon 5 mod... Remember that lovely "Babylon Overture" special in the 5th season DVD... excellent source of music clips (and it makes me weep like a schoolchild).

Anywho, I just want to give a big two thumbs up to this idea, like near everyone else has done - altho, like most before me, I cannot offer much in the way of nitty-gritty development. When the mod is finished, however, feel free to know that you will probably end my chance of graduating with anything resembling a passing GPA... ;-)

A few people before have mentioned the Babylon station having its own gravity well - what?! Have you forgotten Epsilon III? The Great Machine? I think that the station itself should be useful in its own ways, but not as a planet - however, costly "exploration" of the planet below can yield useful results, such as the intelligence capacity of the Machine, added tactical benefits of the defense systems...


I was wondering though - do you plan on having the Jump gates play a vital role? Obviously, they can be used much like the phase lanes of SoaSE (delightfully handy!), but with research or just costly antimatter-ish prices, ships can enter Second Space on their own power. An idea for the era-style game play many people seem to be leaning towards could be accomplished using a leaf from that old, leathered, well-worn, and highly successful MOO2 book: "Beginning" era, at the start of the series' timeline-of-lore, "Middling" era, maybe First season? Minbari war? And lastly, "Advanced" era, with the Ancients all ablaze in their splendor of war, and the IA desperately trying to hold together the order and peace of the Babylon legacy.


Might B5 fans be enjoying hidden easter eggs, such as passing fleets of techno-magi, or those strange creatures from Hyperspace? Little details...

If you want to focus on dichotomy gameplay (Good vs evil, Vorlon vs Shadow), I think you should go with a third model: Vorlon and Shadow War, Interstellar Alliance in the center, and each player can "join" a side.

*(To the poster who mentioned Mr. Morden, which, by-the-by, to the poster who mentioned Mollari and G'Kar's elevator scene - I beg to differ: Clearly, Vir Cotto waving at the decapacitated head of Mr. Morden was the very best scene of the entire series - but I digress: "What do you want?" was a primer for Shadow infiltration, just as Kosh's "Where are you going?" was a primer for Vorlon infiltration. Lorien revealed the questions of the other race's: "Whom do you serve/Who do you trust?" "Why are you here?" etc. Basically, the whole theme there is super-hyped religious fanaticism. Care to explore that theme more? Wiki it. I for one shall go back to giggling happily at Vir's conclusion of an inter-episodical idea.

In Valen's Name, my friends, best of luck to you all, and certainly a speedy and bug-free design phase!
Reply #212 from Sins Forums Top
I didn't read the entire thread, and it has been several months so maybe someone commented. But in all of the videos, the Shadow Battlecrabs are flying backwards....
Reply #213 from Sins Forums Top
easily changed, the B5 footage I was looking at showed them flying in that direction was all.
Reply #214 from Sins Forums Top
The main Shadow Vessels did often fly backwards (I've been rewatching the series over the last couple months). They also seem to go backwards when entering and exiting hyperspace, and turn around for attack.

re: the question of EA cap ships, people so far are mostly on the ball. Thankfully each ship has a pretty direct corollary in Sins:

Kol > Omega (heavy, durable destroyer)
Sova > Poseidon (carrier, nuff said)
Akkan > Explorer (colonizing is a bit of a stretch, but it fits pretty well with the Explorer's exploration/jumpgate construction mandate)
Dunov > Cotton-class tender? Not pure canon but from the RPG (according to B5tech.com), would fit the repair/support role of the Dunov
Marza > Nova or Warlock, since both are designated for planetary assault. I'd prefer the Warlock since I've always thought the Nova looked ridiculous with all the oversized guns, but that's just me.

The problem I see is filling in the "rank and file" ships. I don't know about a whole lot of EA vessels (besides the Hyperion and Olympus) that are really below capital-ship class, and honestly this seems like an issue that ALL the major races would have to deal with. We just don't have a ton of ship classes for each race.
Reply #215 from Sins Forums Top
Shadow battlecrabs naturally flew forward, with their spikes pointing forward. However since they are in space they could fly in any direction, up, down, left, right. ANY ships in Bab 5 could, and sometimes did. However like all ships, they had a standard "forward, left, right, and back". The shadow battlecrabs front was where it's spikes pointed forward.

I was watching footage and the beam was in the center/bottem of it. So it could shoot in any direction except upwards. And the top part of it was used to launch fighter-balls. So perhaps you could give it an ability to deploy fighters, and have it "stand" on it's spikes like it did against the Narn cruisers, and launch it's fighters that way.

Also as for them entering/exiting hyperspace backwards, they entered/exit in a multitude of ways. Some times they flew forward, sometimes backwards, sometimes left/right. But unlike every other race, they simply cloaked and vanished. So they didn't need to enter at a certain direction. I'm not sure if you could code that in, but it would be cool for all shadow vessels to have a cloak, and so you don't know they're there unless you deploy energy mines (Like the narn) or they de-cloak.
Reply #216 from Sins Forums Top
Controlling the motion of the ship mesh is as far as I am aware done by the game engine, so unless IC hint at how it can be done or someone stumbles across the method things like having the Battlecrab spin or stand on its arms are unlikely to happen.

It will either fly arms forward or arms back.

Cloaking ability might be possible, its quite hard working with the SoaSE particle system as very little detail has been released on what is quite a complex subject.
Reply #217 from Sins Forums Top
*BUMP*

cause we don't want to lose track of such a cool mod!
Reply #218 from Sins Forums Top
A B5 mod would be the greatest thing ever. Here are my thoughts...As great as it would be to be Minbari, Vorlon, or Shadows, how could you balance them? Any of these 3 declare war on you its over . I would suggest one release with the younger and another where you can duke it out with the elder powerful races. One could argue that a fleet of younger races can and did fare pretty well vs a fleet of Shadows, but I would counter the Shadows didn't fight to win, they fought to further the agenda of advancement through conflict. When the Vorlons went insane and broke out the big guns... well you see what I meanMy idea would be 2 factions, one Vorlon, one Shadow, where you vie for control over the younger races. As you gain influence over a race you gain access to their tech/ships. That would fit nicely as they are engaged in a neverending war of ideas and use the younger races for the dirty work. Just a friendly suggestion, good luck!KP
End of quote




how about this make 4 different set of pirates cos 1 the drak 2s the raders 3 volons and 4s the shadows or you could have them change to them possibly these are suguestion only lol
Reply #219 from Sins Forums Top
My WIP so far...currently it has 140 polys, have to figure way to optimaze it, without acually using optimase button...





Reply #220 from Sins Forums Top
I cant remember if I posted in this thread earlier or not, but I am putting my self out there if you guys need help for code writing, I have the free time and all to write up and go through to make all the ships entity files.

I have all the table top B5 books so I was thinking about organizing a system that uses the stats from the books to ingame sins to try to keep the balance from the table top to this mod.

If you dont need me to write the entity files, i am here if you need stats on a ship, like # of weapons and such.

Currently I am modding an ability (no visual like effect yet) of the Narn Energy Mine. Its a high damaging ability of course that does splash damage. Trying to give it a miss factor but havent figured out how to do that yet.

*edit*

Also I am making a couple other abilities, they are passive.
one of them which is for the Minbari is called stealth, im thinking all thier ships get it, it causes a reduced chance to be hit by 10%? For cap ships this will be able to be upgraded to 20% and then to 30%?

Another passive ability is called Dodge, this is for the agile ships in the B5 universe. Just like stealth it reduces the chance to be hit by a smaller amount and will most likely not be on cap ships.

These are a couple of things I got going.
Reply #221 from Sins Forums Top
I'm too lazy to post links, but GalCiv2, Homeworld, X3 Reunion, and a few other games have many 3d B5 models, that I'm sure are free to use with the correct permissions of course. Albiet, most of them have way to many polygons, but some, like many GC2 models, should be the easiest to work with if you're trying to reduce the count. At the very least it could save you some time with a few of them.
Reply #222 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks for the offers, put simply (now that I am a bit more experienced with modding) because of the scale of the B5 universe and how long it takes to accomplish even relatively small steps I think we are going to have to adopt a more open policy with both the B5 and SoaSE community.

I need to discuss it with some of the others first.

What would be REALLY useful is someone who understands HLSL (High Level Shader Language), as I personally believe that the answer to some of the graphical modifications lies here. I am trying to grasp the basics myself...
Reply #223 from Sins Forums Top
Here is my idea for the General concept of what I think would be best.

Races: EA, Centaury, Narns since the other races are overpowered or to week.

Pirates should be replaced with the ISA. Players should not be able to put bounty on and other players. Instead bounty will accumulate on who ever is destroying the most stuff. So the ISA should be attacking the player with the most enemy ships destroyed.

As for the raiders you probably should model the Raider carrier and have it work like the TEC insurgency ability. But raiders should only appear in system with trade ports and prefer to target trade ships. A sort of embargo ability on the raider carrier would be interesting.
Reply #224 from Sins Forums Top
okay for the races.

EA
Centauri
Narn
Minbari

to balance the minbari, just make thier ships cost more and take more fleet slots, easy way to balance.

Also, since I saw the question on what era for the mod, why not do all of them?

The research tree kinda enables this. For example, have the military tree 6 deep. the first 2 can be the early years (hyperions, olympus etc..) the 3rd and 4th the third age (after minbari war, omegas n such) and the final two could be the crusade era or pre-crusade. doing it this way you have the ships you want per side, but you have to research to unlock the different age ships. So for EA, thier starting ships are for the frigates would be an olympus, a colonizer and a scout? cruiser would be the hyperion and the cap ship would be a nova. Then they can research up the tiers to unlock the other cap ships, cruisers etc..

Just an idea that would work.
Reply #225 from Sins Forums Top
I think that keeping the races limited would be a waste. Granted, the Vorlons, Shadows, and Minbari would wipe the floor against the EA, Centauri, Narn, or League, but going by that design seems like a waste of good potential for the sake of realism. Balancing is a big issue, obviously, but is something that everyone can help with once there's a beta.