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[MOD WIP] Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 (updated 01/10/09)

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[MOD WIP] Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 (updated 01/10/09)

from Sins Forums

Featured (by a small mention) in the October edition of PC Gamer magazine

Candidate for Mod Database's 2008 Mod of the Year

This is the OLD "Work in Progress" thread for the Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 mod.

The new WIP topic is here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/342747

The "Release" topic can be found here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/322473


The mod is intended to be a hommage, and tribute to the original Sacrifice of Angels mod for Homeworld. It will use many of the same models, and effects created for that mod by the Trekmods team. Like the original SoA mod SoA2 is set during the Dominion War era of Star Trek. Using both canon, and non-canon units to recreate those battles with Sins "empire building" mechanic added. Like in SoA you can fight battles in SoA2 using hundreds of starships. Sometimes thousands if your computer can handle it ;)

While the mod was not intended as a "Total Conversion". That is exactly what it is winding up being. There is much about the Sins engine, and mechanics that we still need to learn. There are some hard coded stumbling blocks we have to overcome.

The factions will be the Federation, Klingons, Romulan, and the Dominion (with Breen, and Cardassian ally units). The main factions seen in the Dominion War. With a "Surprise" as the Pirate faction.

Factions like the Borg "may" be added in the future. LokiGodofMischief is working on a very good 3rd party Borg add on for SoA 2. It is very possible his add on may be merged with SoA 2 at a much later time.

The current version of SoA 2 is  0.03b   "The Second Dominion War". Look for it here  https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/322473

0.03b only works with Sins versions 1.1, 1.11, and 1.12.

All previous versions of SoA 2 are obsolete, and will not be supported, or hosted anymore. All older version downloads will be removed.

We will NOT port SoA 2 over to Entrenchment until after Entrenchment is out of beta, and released. Along with proper forge tool updates.

I am working on the models mostly ALONE so it may take a while for any new ship model updates.

Darkshimmer is the Balancing guru, Code monkey, and Master at arms. We do have other contributers, and the best 3rd party work from the finest artists in the trek mod community to help make SoA 2 the best it can be.

Status of Demo 0.04  "The actors are in place" 

Will update when i have news.

General Changes:

Manshooters Volumetric Explosions mod will be included as of 0.03a

May include Sins Plus (planets), but ill need to see how much that mod needs changing to incorporate into SoA 2.

SoA 2 0.03 and above is now patch 1.1, and better compatable. Sins patches 1.11, and 1.12 only address balancing, and online exploits, and have no effect on the mod.

Ships will have some anti stike craft weaponry.

Ships are still being added and balanced accordingly.

More re-balancing so that one faction is not overpowered over the other.

The Federation:

Faction is complete. Only structures left

The Klingon Empire

Faction is complete. Only structures left.

The Romulan Star Empire:

Faction is complete. Only structures left

The Dominion:

Faction is complete. Still needs balancing work.

Pirates:

They were going to be the Borg, but that idea failed. So we are looking into Random multirace ship spawns.

Planetary Defenders

Basically "Ships of the week" like the Maquis, Sona, Ferrengi, Tammarian battle cruisers and the like.

Balancing:  Darkshimmer has the Federation, Romulan, and Klingon Empire, and Unified Dominion balanced.

Gameplay: We now have a working Cloaking Device! Check the ModDB page for the WIP video. Cloaking will not be fully implemented in the mod until version 0.04

Art: We are working on an LCARS style UI, adding proper icons, and pictures for all of the new units. The UI is going to take a while to do, because of all of the redundancy of the Sins UI. SoA 2 uses 2 sets of UI textures. Instead of the standard 4 textures for buttons, and 2 textures for icons. SoA 2 uses 8 textures for buttons, and 4 textures for icons which IMO is a major waste of resources, because sins loads all these textures at startup. Unfortunetly i dont see any other way to do it. What is kind of cool is that we dont have to use the same HUD for each faction. It is possible to have unique HUDs, but again the perfomance hit, because of the extra drain on resources could be big, and not worth it.

In Planning: (No promises, or guarentees, but we will try to add these if possible.)

Troop Transport effects.

Planetary invasion animations

Tractor beams. (need a code monkey for this)

Whatever else we can think of and are capable of doing.

Future Updates:

SoA 2 0.04 is now in planning, and will be focused primarily on Proper research trees, Ability's, and adding proper Structures. More than likely demo 0.04 will be the last demo. After that then the full mod should be ready.

SoA 2 0.05 will be the final spit, and polish of the mod. It will focus mainly on re-balancing if needed. Also final artwork changes will be made here. Which will include some ship model re-builds, and re-texturing.

The Full SoA 2 1.0 mod will be released "When it is Finished". We are doing this on our own free time. We aren't getting paid to do this. We have no set schedule. We have no time limit. I want this one to be good. So it wont go online until we feel it is ready.

*NOTE: Much about Sins as we are all now realizing is hardcoded. SoA 2 is going to be far from a perfect "trek" mod due to these hardcoded issues. However we will try to do the best we can with workarounds, and compromises to get it as close as possible. Like i said some things wont be perfect. Some things cannot be done at all. Enjoy the mod for what it is, and try not to be too "nit picky".

SoA2 will be hosted on Mod Database once it is ready http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-trek-sacrifice-of-angels-2

This main header will be updated when i have news to post.





modding
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Reply #477 from Sins Forums Top
Dang that's... a lot of torpedoes
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lol you should have seen the first tryout, all 15 ports fired 15 torps, it was a festival of torps, did you guys know i hold one in every mod  ;p 
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #478 from Sins Forums Top
That is great! I am glad to see that it is coming together! Festival of torps? lots of ports? Sounds lovely tee hee. Have you guys been able to nail down the aft firing issue yet?
Reply #479 from Sins Forums Top
yes i have to an extent. The weapons on the Akira helpped me to solve this one. Weapon-0 and Weapon-1 are assigned phaser points. Weapon-0 Forward and Aft and Weapon-1 Left and Right. Now it works properly,

***please note the Akira does not have any aft Phaser points in any canon specs, it was added for testing only***
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Reply #480 from Sins Forums Top
It actually worries me a little that there are that many torpedoes flying around. While it's technically accurate according to the ship's specs, I fear it will look cluttered in practice. Have you considered giving the Akira a torpedo burst special ability with a moderately long recharge time? That might keep the number of torpedoes on screen at a time from reaching crazy levels.
Reply #482 from Sins Forums Top
It actually worries me a little that there are that many torpedoes flying around. While it's technically accurate according to the ship's specs, I fear it will look cluttered in practice. Have you considered giving the Akira a torpedo burst special ability with a moderately long recharge time? That might keep the number of torpedoes on screen at a time from reaching crazy levels.
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Yes and no. Yes the torps will take a long time to reload. right now it takes about 32 secs to reload torps, on the akira that would be 320 secs to load all 10. Becuase of the Null limits ive cut it down from 15 to 10. No there not be any quantums on this version. There might be an ability later on the help cut down the reload rate.
Reply #483 from Sins Forums Top
While Shimmer has become our "Master at Arms" for the mod. I have been busy during my internet blackout times in the trekmods shipyards refining the final models for SoA2.

these shots were taken on my laptop so forgive the lack of fsaa.
1st the Soveriegn, and Excelsior finally cured of "black ship syndrome", and properly tangented, and VERY angry :D


Next is the final model of the Centaur with some cookie cutter placeholder Miranda's. Sovvie, and Excelsiors in the background.


We are now working on the factions which i managed to get all 6 factions to work. Cardassians and Dominion are being worked on as i type.

Cloaking is proving to be a challenge. We need to find a way to make ships move and jump while cloaked. Once we have a few ships in for each faction and the annoying issues fixed we will have a minimod to release.

Some issues we may not be able to fix. Like weapons firing thru their own hulls, and no aft firing beam weapons. We will try to improvise on those.

Otherwise i am most impressed with what we do have.

BTW our goal is to have literally hundreds of ships in a gravity well slugging it out. So our poly counts, and textures must match closely to sins original standards.

Will post more news as it comes.
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Reply #486 from Sins Forums Top
funckin awesome!....


cant w8 till this mod comes out.
Reply #488 from Sins Forums Top
Those look great and I am glad to see that you brought up the textures. I was wondering about that. If you have the settings maxed out on everything, were the screenshots done on those settings? I am just trying to gague perspective. I am glad to see that you got the black out issue with the excelsior fixed and the aft firing issue *whew* what a relief! That could have really hurt gameplay. The pics you have look awesome though! Keep up the great work! I would like to understand better what you are doing to make the starships with? I have always wanted to texture ships and actually design them.
Reply #489 from Sins Forums Top
This is really cool. I'm looking forward to playing this. Keep up the good work! Cool models.
Reply #490 from Sins Forums Top
I wanted to bump this to the top, where it belongs!

I wanted to talk about music. Already, the preliminary mod released by EzraeilBeatus has shown that music will be rather flexible. I have some suggestions for Trekkie music that is not necessarily from Star Trek itself. The music listed below would really add to the feel of this mod and add lots of variety to the music.

Soundtrack from Star Trek: Bridge Commander: Great score that captures the feel of Trek perfectly, IMO.

Soundtrack from Star Trek: Starship Creator: crappy game, but a good sound track that never exceeded 2 minuets for each track, with some that are 30 seconds long. Good for quick incidental music.

Soundtrack from Star Trek: Legacy: Already in Ogg format, and once again, crappy game with epic soundtrack! The music, especially the opening theme, are classic IMO.

Soundtrack from 300, track #25 "Remember Us": This track is pure Star Trek, if you have not heard it, then here is a legal link to IMEEM.com: http://www.imeem.com/vivienne85/music/rwpVclxQ/soundtrack_remember_us/

Soundtrack from Advent Rising: This soundtrack is from a rather obscure and not very good game, but the soundtrack is worthy of some sort of award! Truly epic and beautiful, it would complement SinsTrek very well.

Soundtrack from Hegemonia: Legions of Iron: Very intense battle music and errie opera-esq ambient themes. The game is hard to find, but it is worth it.

Soundtrack from Call of Duty (1,2,4?): Although some of this soundtrack does not fit, other parts are perfect. This is a very cinematic score that has excellent battle and epic parts.

Soundtrack from Supreme Commander (not Forged Alliance): In particular, the 8 battle themes from this game are really epic, a bit short, and really get the blood pumping. Great for Klingon battle scenes!

Soundtrack from The Da Vinci Code (by Hans Zimmer): This soundtrack is subdued, but intricate. It has epic, sad, dark, and intense action cues that would blend beautifully alongside fleets of ships tearing each other up.

I have many more suggestions, but that should get you started thinking about things. Many of these soundtracks have to be extracted from the game itself. I have all of them, and I own the games involved. I even think some of the original Sins music should stay in as well. Only some though. And of course true Star Trek music should be included, that is a given. Sins has over 3 hours of original score, so why not our mod?
Reply #491 from Sins Forums Top
On the subject of music I think a lot of the choices you made are good. I think most of them have a starfleet quality to them.
Reply #493 from Sins Forums Top
this mod looks awsome do you have a prediction of when it will be out and please say it is exe file
Reply #495 from Sins Forums Top
grr i shouldnt have gone to sleep I found a federation ship (official cannon) that is classified a carrier! (Called a "Thru-Deck Carrier Class") True you dont need to follow the role slots, however i do think you need a carrier cap, or atleast try for it when you can. Other than the feds-maqui who uses fighters anyways?The USS Shelly from DS9 Episode "A Time to Stand" (I think the first large Dominion War battle with many fighters shown.) Here is the pic if someone whats to take inspiration from it. Mighty be a possible replacement for the aging Miranda.This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 560x560.Would it be ok with you guys if i do some "research" for the other races? You guys obviously know what you want to do with the Federation and have most of it in place. I like playing as the Rommies (Other than the Scimatar and an Advanced Warbird what other capitol ships would take up slots?) and i wouldnt mind figuring out a few options for the ship slots of some of the more obscure races. I was curious what your ideas where for the special ship abilities. I think their nessicary as their really your only of doing anything as a player in a battle in Sins. Maybe just move the current ones around with renaming? I think it could be really good to see all the abilties renamed and on different ship slots giving rise to new combinations and new tactics. So if i rememeber the race list is FederationKlingonsRomulansDominionCardassiansBreenI see the bottom 2 as the most challenging. I got two days off, do you guys want me to look up stuff on them? The Breen i dont know if it can be done totally cannon as i think only 3-4 of their ship types where ever shown but i will see what i can dig up. I can include pictures for inspiration, and Bibliography of where i got it from and in what episode or movie it appeared in (Cannon).
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I recognize that design. It comes from a book released in the late 80s or early 90s with several ship schematics. Though I'm 95% sure that the book is in no way considered canon, despite having a couple canon ships within it. They're also TOS-era while this mod is due to be TNG-era.

Considering that carriers don't really carry that many fighters in Sins, you could just as well use the Galaxy or Nebula -class for it. Schematics of the saucer section (the same for both classes) illustrates a huge shuttle bay area. One being general-purpose and one being scientific, neither class offers a speciality that would warrant them being used as a capital ship, anyway. Well, I guess the Nebula class could be a utility vessel with high-tech skills.

Reply #496 from Sins Forums Top
Those pics look amazing. I've put the game down for now. Its hard for my laptop to run, and the lack of singleplayer campaign has made it slightly less engrossing. But still waiting eagerly for this mod.

kudos for the hard work and great designs.
Reply #497 from Sins Forums Top
Dang that's... a lot of torpedoes
End of quote


Actually if you've ever looked up the tech specs on a miranda class ship they're pretty impressive. I think the soveriegn class can volley about 4 torps/sec or something like that. It's been a WHILE since pored over ship specs.
Reply #498 from Sins Forums Top
http://www.st-intelligence.com/

There's an ok site for some more technical info on the ships. I'm trying to find one that was supreme.

Hah!! Found it, http://www.ditl.org/. Enjoy :)
Reply #499 from Sins Forums Top
Sry for the tripple posting... THIS FORUM NEED AN EDIT BUTTON! At least, I don't have one. :(

But you can't really leave out the borg. Look at this, http://www.ditl.org/gpgm/GMapGalaxy.jpg. They're just frickin expansive. And yes, the vast majority of the info on that site is cannon. They were also encountered off and on during the dominion war era. Why not have them be the pirates? :P

Sweet... I only see an edit button for this post. Odd.