icedude94 icedude94

Sins Enhancement Mod v1.7 3/23/08 UPDATED

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Sins Enhancement Mod v1.7 3/23/08 UPDATED

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Sins Enhancement mod V1.7 3/23/08


Download Link:
http://files.filefront.com/Sins+Enhancement+Mod+v17rar/;9876004;/fileinfo.html
Works with 1.03 Sins Plus not yet incorporated

Since you guys can't wait. Here's my mod for 1.03. You'll have to wait a little longer to get it with sins plus cuz I've been having some CTD issues after combining them.
INSTALLATION:
Extract the .rar into your mods folder

For Vista users it should be located at:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods

Changelog:

Diplomacy:
-You now get an hour to complete AI missions. Now it's easier to make AI allies.

-Mission rewards increased to make them more worthwhile.

AI Players:

-Increased priority on building defenses. AI should build a lot more defenses now!

-Adjusted Aggressiveness

Constants:

-Hitpoints of pirate ships increased.

-Jump Angle reduced from 45 to 20. Much easier to blockade gravity wells. You better send a scout before sending your fleet into enemy territory now...

-Pirate bases can support double the population of normal asteroids and can have up to 12

logistics slots as well as 3 extremely rich metal asteroids and 3 extremely rich crystal

asteroids. Now pirate bases are VERY worthwhile to conquer.(beware the gauss cannons)

-Research speed back to default

-Tax income slightly increased

-Half hour between pirate raids

-Increased number of trade ships produced by trade ports.

-Lowest allegiance can get through distance is 35%

-Phase jumps no longer cost anti-matter. It didn't make sense to me that ships with less than 100 anti-matter could still jump.

Fleet Logistics:

-Maximum capital command points: 24

-Maximum Fleet Supply: 5800

-Reduced maneuverability and speed of many ships.

All Ships:

-Auto-join fleet default to off

-Auto focus fire default to off(except for squadrons). Now each ship in a fleet will target the type they are best against. Ships will also no longer focus fire thousands of points of damage on a single frigate. Fleet to fleet combat just became a lot more epic!

-Costs and build times back to default.

-Siege Ships - Siege attack looks more devastating. Now they look like planetary invasions. more work to be done on them soon.(Check out TEC's siege frigate attack!)

Tactical Structures:

-Cost of orbital defenses adjusted for better balance.

-Gauss/missile/beam structures will have damage tripled. Take up no tactical slots.

-Hangar defenses will support 4 squadrons, use less tactical slots.

-Phased Jump Inhibitors will have increase jump time by 2500% and have 1/2 the range. Now you have to place them at the edge of the build range limit as close to the phase lane you want to block in order for them to do their job. Now enemy ships trying to jump to your other worlds will have a MUCH longer jump charge time. I recommend not using it around the phase lanes the AI will use to retreat or you'll find the game to be too easy. Against human players though...

-Repair platform: repair rate doubled



Capital Ships:Now they're the big bad behemoths of the fleet that they're supposed to be.
-Damage,hitpoints,shields tripled

-More squadrons for carriers, start with 6

-resource cost doubled

-Take 7 minutes to build.

-Require more experience to level up.

Cruisers:

-Carriers will carry 2 squadrons

-Repair bots repair rate doubled

Frigates:

-Scout frigates automatically explore after being built.

- Anti-fighter frigates given shorter reload time to deal with the increased number of

fighters.(without focus fire, those turrets can now track multiple targets)


Fighters:

-No longer fly together in squadrons. Should make big fleet battles more epic.

Planets:

-Tax income for planet population raised. Now you'll need those terran worlds if you want to make real money.

-More extractors possible on worlds.

-Extractors can only support one refinery. Each refinery though has a bigger impact on resource rates than vanilla.

For Version 2

-new icons for individual fighters and bombers.

-Adjusted speeds of ships and weapons (I hate seeing a light frigate being chased by a
thousand missiles across a gravity well)

-Balance changes, especially for capital ship abilities to better go along with their new stats.

-Bug Fixes

-Pirates Playable

-New/more reasonable AI quests.

-Ability to toggle focus fire.

I only had time to test it for a couple hours on a 10 player map so let me know of any problems, things I forgot to change that are on this list, suggestions, etc.



modding
123,982 views 258 replies
Reply #126 from Sins Forums Top
Question...

How do you guys use diplomacy? I can never get AIs to offer cease fires or trade agreements. I dont recall them asking me either.

I have offered at various stages in the game, even when i have clear military superiority.
Reply #127 from Sins Forums Top
All sounds very interesting, havn't installed any mods yet as I've been enjoying vanilla SOASE, I think yours will be first.

Question.

Would it be possible to turn a planet from an income world to a fortress world by independently changing it's logistical slots to additional tactical slots in orbit? This would be reversible. ie You capture a new planet on the frontline that you expect will be fought over a lot, so you convert all it's resources to warfare, now you might have double the normal ammount of tactical slots on that planet.

Later on, you capture a planet farther into the enemy and at a good position, you convert the extra tactical slots on the first planet to a more normal layout. In addition, some of the planets in the middle of your empire might be converted mostly or completely to logistical slots, allowign those planets to support the war effort economically rather than through wasting effort building turrets and other defenses.

Trading would become more important through the use of building more trading posts. On inner planets (as it should be!)
Also, would it be possible to make planets with more phase lanes leading to them get bonuses for trading?

I'd like to see a planet that can actually defend itself. As well as inner planets that are wholly dedicated to commerce, and all the inbetween.

To prevent this from being abused, make it cost something signifigant to convert the tactical to logistical or vice versa.
Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #128 from Sins Forums Top
This mod is looking very awesome.

The idea of antimatter being used for weapons, and needing supply ships/planets, has me very excited. Not only does it open up a ton of strategies, but it gives ways to limit fleet size in a more sensible way (using actual logistics) than an artificial cap number.

It also would make me take a second look at some of those "drains antimatter" abilities!
Reply #129 from Sins Forums Top
Quin is totally right, and i too can't wait for that idea to be put into motion. Keep it up icedude
Reply #130 from Sins Forums Top
Latest beta is going through final testing.

Changes include:

AI:

-AI players attack more aggressively

-Build a lot of orbital defenses

Pirates:

-Pirate ships are more durable

-Pirate fleets made much bigger.

-Time between raids increased.

Ships:

-Siege ships have a more powerful looking siege attack(missiles will soon be replaced by invasion pods)

-Raised XP requirements for capital ships to level up.

Economy:

-Very balanced. Makes you consider where you'll spend your resources.

-Refineries made more effective, extractors can only support one now.

Defenses:

-Cost to build orbital defenses slightly increased.



And lots of other changes I can't remember at this late hour.

In my most recent game against a normal random AI, the AI had fortified their home world with 9 orbital defense platforms within the first 20 minutes, ending any hope I had of rushing the ai and crippling their economy with a couple of siege frigates. Meanwhile, the AI had lots of single ship/pairs harassment forces. It sent a couple of light frigates to harass my lone colony frigate, sent a siege frigate to attack my newly colonized world, attacked a small fleet of reinforcements en route to my main fleet. It even sent small strike forces out to attack my structures on my undefended worlds. My main fleet was allover the place trying to defend all my territory. I found myself leaving my capital ships to defend my most important worlds and I kept fast frigate fleets as a mobile defense force.

The game started out with lots of small fleet skirmishes occurring simultaneously on all borders. By mid-game with both sides had constructed a healthy amount of orbital defenses, the small skirmishes turned into major fleet battles. The AI brought in reinforcements during battles. Only saw the AI retreat after losing most of their orbital defenses.
Reply #131 from Sins Forums Top
In reply to the original post as of now: Awesome changes, these should be implemented in the main game. However I'm saying this before actually playtesting, so I'll have to do so and give you a balancing review later. Just looking at it though I'd say you know what direction Sins should go.
Reply #132 from Sins Forums Top

hi all!

i´m a little bit confused, about how to start your mod properly working.

i unpacked "gameinfo" and "window" in my mod folder. (i don´t overwrite the original files in the main folder of Sins, right?)

now, i activate it under options - mods...

activate both files, only one of them? what if i have another, thrid mod, installed? is this one activated also, because it always shows me that i can disable it, for example: lazy sumos minimal mod...


i don´t get it... :-)

please help a newb...


Reply #133 from Sins Forums Top
Correct me if i am wrong, if i fail at a quest i get negative reputation? Can that be removed or drastically reduced?

I should get rep for completing a quest not negative for failing.

As is, i only pay half attention to the missions, and within an hour or so, all of the AIs ignore each other and gang up on me.


Edit.

Can you do a merge with Uzii's planetary mods?

Perhaps make two seperate downloads, one with the merge and one with out.
Reply #134 from Sins Forums Top
We need to develop an auto installer for these things... I do have winzip and make intallers with it... might this make it easier for people?
Reply #135 from Sins Forums Top
Fantastic mod! Thank you for your hard work and the new host, downloaded it no problem! Haven't played it enough to give any useful feedback / bug reports... but I really like the enhanced capital ships, new targeting priorities and my particle bug has been fixed... somehow! Now I see all effects, all the time.

Big thumbs up, thanks again!

One quick suggestion… Include an installation path for XP users as part of your original post / installation guide. That should make things easier for other users.
Reply #136 from Sins Forums Top
Thank you for all the hard work icedude94. I really like this mod. The changes seem to me very balanced. Playing a game now where I'm being attacked by three different races with three completely different fleet configurations. Great work.
Reply #137 from Sins Forums Top
Icedude, thought about adding the planetary mod by Uzzi? Some planet variation will add alot of depth.
Reply #138 from Sins Forums Top
Lots of changes in 1.6. I probably forgot a few in the OP.

Here's an overview of 1.6 features.

-Capital ships: Build time increased to about 7 minutes. Supply cost is back down to 50. Raised the cap.

-Frigates,cruisers: Build costs and times reduced.

-Logistics structures: Slots taken reduced, trade ports produce more trade ships, this is mainly to increase the size of pirate raids.

-Tactical structures: Cost raised on orbital defenses. Slots used by other structures reduced.

-Planets and the economy: Tax rate slightly raised from vanilla. More resource asteroids per world. You won't have a glut of resources but you'll still be able to field a pretty good number of ships with control of a good number of planets. Credits are still the main constraint.

-Research: duration greatly increased.

-Ship speed and maneuverability slightly decreased.

-Siege ship attacks look more devastating.

-Ship debris stays in the game longer.

To make the most of these changes. Play on normal game speeds against either normal or hard AI's. I'd really like to hear stories of how the game plays out in multiplayer with humans vs.humans.

Our garde manger cook in the restaurant burned his cornea with splattering oil. We don't know when he'll be coming back if at all. Until then, this means I'll be spending more time in the kitchen and less time working on the mod. It's going to be a while for me to work in all the new features like the supply system, the changes to planet bonuses, planetary invasions, etc. I just wanted to get this release out with the most final gameplay tweaks.
Reply #139 from Sins Forums Top
-Phased Jump Inhibitors will have increase jump time by 2500% and have 1/2 the range. Now you have to place them at the edge of the build range limit as close to the phase lane you want to block in order for them to do their job. Now enemy ships trying to jump to your other worlds will have a MUCH longer jump charge time. I recommend not using it around the phase lanes the AI will use to retreat or you'll find the game to be too easy. Against human players though...
End of quote


IMO it's a bit excessive...
Reply #140 from Sins Forums Top
It has actually been 2500% since the first release of my mod. I just corrected my changelog.
Reply #141 from Sins Forums Top
I played version 1.6 for about 2 hours on a medium map, 4 player FFA. I got a minidump and crashed after bidding a lot of credits on bounty ( ~ 150k ). My crash could be unrelated to the pirates, but it's worth checking into.

Impressions:

1. Too many asteroids. Apart from the beginning of the game I didn't find myself lacking resources, only credits. But since you can sell all that extra crystal/metal you don't get into money problems easily

2. PJI's are too much for the poor AI to handle. Either make them disable phase jump completely or leave them alone. As it is now I trashed a huge AI fleet that was just standing at the edge of the grav well trying to escape. They never fired a shot, just jumped in, saw they were outnumbered and tried to jump out. It would have taken them 20s at most to destroy the PJI but they didn't...

3. I don't see the need for 24 capital ships unless you play with a lot of solar systems. Actually I liked the previous system more. For their current power, capital ships easily trash at least 100-150 cap worth of frigates. They should be at least 100 cap, and be limited to 10 at most. I like the new build time though, it sucks losing a capital ship now and waiting ages for it to build.

4. Research is maybe too slow on normal. It's not that I don't like it, but some techs are now downright worthless, especially while taking in account the other changes. Example: as Vasari I never felt the need to research mining techs, since they took too long and I already had a lot of minerals.
You should perhaps tweak individual research times more. Returning Armada deserves 450s on normal, but there are some techs which need less time if they are to be useful.

5. Love the new siege attacks for Vasari and Advent (didn't get to see TEC)

6. Please include Uzii's Sins Plus

Don't take my criticism the wrong way though; I enjoy this mod more than vanilla Sins. But it could be better. ;)
Reply #142 from Sins Forums Top
I just have a sort of off topic question because I see you have this listed, Where is the script controlling the pirate raid ships and ships at their base?
Reply #143 from Sins Forums Top
either I screwed up my installation or it's an oversight because I'm having 100 percent allegiance on all my planets regardless of distance
Reply #144 from Sins Forums Top
With the increased money and resources, the rate of research should not be changed. As is, once i get my empire established at roughly one hour into the game, i have a perpetual back log of research items even with 10 civilian and 10 military research stations. Halfway through the game, i had at all times 20 or more technology research items backlogged.

Reply #145 from Sins Forums Top
I totally enjoy this mod,and in the interest of improving it I just want to make the following observations:

1) Like Ammondaris Irake I got a minidump and crash after I put 35k into pirates in order to boost them to the maximum alert level. This also happened on a 4 player medium map.

2) If possible I think you you should increase the size of the militia fleets to reflect the fact that a single capital ship can crush them without breaking a sweat.

3) There really are too many asteroids. After I had 5 planets, I could no longer even come close to spending all I earned without selling it in the market. This was exacerbated by the long research time, which kept me from researching the fleet techs. Overall the extra resources and longer research times are good, I just think they need a little tweaking to keep the game on balance.

I'm gonna go play some more because this mod is totally awesome. I'll let you know if I find any other potential problems/gripes. Great job so far!
Reply #146 from Sins Forums Top
either I screwed up my installation or it's an oversight because I'm having 100 percent allegiance on all my planets regardless of distance
End of quote


That's a change I forgot to list. No more allegiance penalties for distance. Culture can still be used as a weapon for reducing the resource output of enemy worlds though. I just found it stupid that allegiance could get as low as like 25% and how it affected income. It was like people stopped paying taxes and stuff.

I'll figure out what's wrong with the pirate raids. For now, try not to bid so much.

2) If possible I think you you should increase the size of the militia fleets to reflect the fact that a single capital ship can crush them without breaking a sweat.

3) There really are too many asteroids. After I had 5 planets, I could no longer even come close to spending all I earned without selling it in the market. This was exacerbated by the long research time, which kept me from researching the fleet techs. Overall the extra resources and longer research times are good, I just think they need a little tweaking to keep the game on balance.
End of quote


I haven't figured out yet how to increase the size of militia fleets but it's definitely on my to-do list.

I wanted to change the gameplay so that when new ships were finally unlocked, you have the resources to start mass producing them (I also wanted the worlds to feel more populated) and use them to serious effect while your opponent(if he hasn't been doing recon and gathering intel) will have a serious disadvantage until he researches the proper counter. This also makes research stations into a strategic target. The increase in resource income and the decrease and ship cost and build times was to make large fleet battles much more common while making the late-game techs still feel like they're late-game.

I didn't like how in vanilla sins, everybody would just build up a single massive fleet and prepare for one big battle that would determine the winner of the game. I basically changed the way you make your strategies so you have to ask yourself things like:

1. Do I need to send scouts to my opponent's ship production worlds to see what he's been researching and what he's been building?

2. Should I launch raids against his research stations to stop him from getting more advanced ships?

3.Should I hit his capital shipyard while that new cap ship is building so that he wastes all those resources?

4.Which world do I send reinforcements to?

It's new strategies like these that I wanted to implement in 1.6. It really made multiplayer against my friends a lot more fun. We'd be sending reinforcements into a single gravity well, making a fleet to fleet battle last over an hour. By the time it was over, there was so much debris that my high-end alienware actually chugged a little bit. We felt like there were real "front lines" and the sizes and frequency of these battles made it easy to distract and flank(hence the reduced speed and maneuverability). A fleet that attacks another fleet from the flank can deal a devastating amount of damage before the defenders can turn to engage. I really wish the devs put in the ability to select the facing of your fleet.
Reply #147 from Sins Forums Top
2. PJI's are too much for the poor AI to handle. Either make them disable phase jump completely or leave them alone. As it is now I trashed a huge AI fleet that was just standing at the edge of the grav well trying to escape. They never fired a shot, just jumped in, saw they were outnumbered and tried to jump out. It would have taken them 20s at most to destroy the PJI but they didn't...
End of quote


I think I've stated before not to use it against the AI at the phase lane it would use to escape for this very reason. There's nothing I can really do for now about the AI behavior.
Reply #148 from Sins Forums Top
ay, sorry to throw a wrench in the works, but im catching some real annoying crashes over here with this mod. im about 2 hours into the game, i'm leader, against a single normal comp. I crash right when a ship of theirs shows up leaving one of their planets and headed towards mine (psidar). I already turned off the sound, so tahts not the issue as far as i can tell, i've tested it several times, killing off steam, and xfire to maek sure it wasn't them, only thing left is the mod, so any help, or a fix in teh enxt release would be awsome.
Reply #149 from Sins Forums Top
There is definitely an issue with the pirates. Every time play, as soon as the pirate threat level reaches "high" the game minidumps and crashes. It happens mid announcement for the raid.

On the plus side, in larger games all the extra resources help to fuel giant apocalyptic battles, which is awesome.
Reply #150 from Sins Forums Top
It sounded like a great idea but I have to wonder. Why make platforms do more damage if they're just going to be way more expensive? It's pointless. It seems that basically it should be called a more of everything mod and there's hardly ever any scarcity.

I'd like to see it so that ships like the light frigates get taken down by just one shot from a capital ship. Instead of buffing everything and making it more expensive, why not just buff the capital ship main weapons and cut way back on the hitpoints for frigates? Add in smaller bombardment ratings for everything but the capital ships, more damage for the platforms and fewer tactical spots used by the hangers and things would be MUCH more balanced IMO.