Major Stress Major Stress

[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.





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4,112,454 views 1,754 replies +2 Loading…
Reply #1201 from Sins Forums Top

The 1.11, and 1.12 patch have no effect on the mods so yes it will work from 1.1 to 1.12.

Reply #1202 from Sins Forums Top

HI i wanted to suggest a voyager mod but it is only one ship but being in the gamma quadrant leaves alot of possibility

 

Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #1203 from Sins Forums Top

HI i wanted to suggest a voyager mod but it is only one ship but being in the gamma quadrant leaves alot of possibility

 

Reply #1204 from Sins Forums Top

Voyager is already in I believe.

Reply #1205 from Sins Forums Top

I question your trek taste, and your sanity for "wanting" a Voyager mod lol. My question is... Why?

Nevermind, I have to understand the average age group here is around 14-25, and doesnt know what real trek is ;) They only know the regurgitated crap known as killer b trek (Voyager, and Enterprise). DS-9 is killer B as well, but it was their only "good" project.

Regardless of taste the Intrepid is in the mod (against my wishes). However NO delta quadrant races will be in. If i wanted to see window lickers with bad hair and bad makeup i just have to look outside my front door :p

Reply #1206 from Sins Forums Top

Hey Major Stress I checked out the cloak video. Is it just the Phase Out Hull ability?

Reply #1207 from Sins Forums Top

Its a combination of phase out with armasitce. That mist effect has been removed since the video was posted. The code is posted a few pages back. Look around for it. It is more cosmetic than anything, but it is effective. In TNG cloaked ships could be detected. There were several episodes where the scanners would pick "something" up. In the mod the cloak will be used more as an escape a bad situation mechanism, because it is not a "perfect" trek cloak. It is impossible to do a prefect trek cloak in sins due to the hardcoding, but what we wanted was the ship to "fade out", Be able to move/jump. Not fire, and Not be fired upon. We succeded with those goals. You will know what ship it is due to not being able to mod the UI (hardcode). You just cant target them.

Reply #1208 from Sins Forums Top

I also wanted to know if the Stargazer class ship is in the game.

Reply #1209 from Sins Forums Top

I wonder if the Entrenchment mines will let you pull off the cloak the way you want. I haven't actually tried them yet, but they appear to be invisible to most ships (except scouts). If that could be applied to a ship in a toggleable ability, it might be what you're looking for.

Reply #1210 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Major, reply 5
Nevermind, I have to understand the average age group here is around 14-25, and doesnt know what real trek is
End of Major's quote

Lol, I'm actually in that age group. My idea of real trek though is TNG or original series. I understand what you're getting at, just wanted to let you know we're not all on that page :grin:

Anyway, back on topic, looking good and can't wait for next release!

Reply #1211 from Sins Forums Top

I am in agreement an the age group of Dragoon

Reply #1212 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Major, reply 7
. Not fire, and Not be fired upon.
End of Major's quote

Does this mean cloaked ships will be invincibl?

Reply #1213 from Sins Forums Top

The way sins cloak is coded yes the ships have to be invulnerable for them not to be targeted while cloaked. If anyone can code a better solution please feel free to do so, because this is the best we can do right now thanks to sins hardcoding. I have repeatedly said over, and over that the cloak is not going to be perfect. I guess some just like to watch me repeat myself every other reply :/

The current cloak is barely functional. It is timed, and it doesnt last very long. It has a bit of a cooldown time too. Last i know of it we are having an issue adapting it to more than 1 ship. Darkshimmer is working on this so i am not sure of the status right now. The code itself is beyond my comprehension. Its all greek to me. I am a modeler not a code monkey.

What matters is it does what we want it to do, and that is it makes the ship sorta dissapear (still working on the effect). You can move, and jump while cloaked. You cant shoot, and You cant be targeted while cloaked. This is more than we could have asked for a few months ago when the mod almost shut down because we couldnt make a cloak at all.

In order for it not to break the game we gave it a short time limit as to how long it can stay cloaked. I prefer using antimatter but Shimmer is the balancing guy and he has a plan. I am not sure how many ships will have cloak in 0.03. It depends on how well it is working. We may only have a couple ships using it as a test. Again its up to Shimmer.

BTW 0.03 will use Manshooters Volumetric Explosions mod. We have our own plans for how stuff blows up, but thats one of the last things we will work on after all the ships, structures, research, etc. etc. is in the mod.

Reply #1215 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Ultimate_Trekkie, reply 14
Hey so guys, is the Constellation class ship in the game?
End of Ultimate_Trekkie's quote

Look through the pages of this thread. I'm sure somewhere along the line, you'll find your answer :P

Reply #1216 from Sins Forums Top

I know it is a pain in the ass to search the 1100+ post's in this topic, but 99% of the questions being asked right now have already been answered in those posts. Plus if i named every ship in the mod there is no point for any surprise huh?

Yes the Constellation is in the mod. There is a screenshot showing it several pages back. All your usual canon TNG era Fed ships are in, along with some TMP favoretes. Some ships that we planned got the axe because of lack of room to put them. The UI only supports 15 combat slots per faction despite the new increase in ship slots, or it just did not make any sense to have them, because they never played any major role other than being a ship of the week (nova , and prometheus for example).

while 15 slots may not be enough to showcase the federation, It is way too many slots for the other factions. I had a hell of a time hand picking non-canon units that made sense plus looked good to fill the blanks for the Klingons, and Romulans. The Dominions problem was solved when i merged the Cardassians and Breen with them. Combined they fill the 15 slots. If it wasnt for the UI's limitation we probably could add more, but i am more than happy with the way it is right now. I dont understand why more ship slots were added, but the UI wasnt corrected to support the added slots.

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Reply #1220 from Sins Forums Top

i just watched the vid your balancing is unreal darkshimmer it must of bin a nightmare to get them like that, your turning sins in to the star trek game i always dreamed of thanks to you all :congrat:

Reply #1221 from Sins Forums Top

Really looking good guys, can't wait to try this out. Oh and thank you for all the hard work you guys are putting into this. Wish I could help in some way but have never modded before lol, so... Thanks again, and looking forward to this!

Reply #1222 from Sins Forums Top

This is gonna be fun! And I am happy to hear all of the ships you are going to have too!

Reply #1224 from Sins Forums Top

Yeah, I keep trying to zoom in to see what ships are where  ^_^

 

Stress- So is the next release going to be for patch 1.11 and 1.12 or are you going to wait for entrenchment to release its mod files in January?  What is the plan for Entrenchment compatability.  Will it have any affect on balancing?

Reply #1225 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting tenhunter, reply 24
Yeah, I keep trying to zoom in to see what ships are where 

 

Stress- So is the next release going to be for patch 1.11 and 1.12 or are you going to wait for entrenchment to release its mod files in January?  What is the plan for Entrenchment compatability.  Will it have any affect on balancing?
End of tenhunter's quote

this question i'll answer since its a balancing issue. Right now unless they change something drastic, it will not have an effect on the balancing. we are moving toward incorporating and supporting entrenchment. We are currently using 1.12

 

the last parts that need to be done are actually things i need to do with the mod, i'm hoping to finish up today and put it into online testing this week, if all goes well you'll see it sooner than expected, with a very special twist!