icedude94 icedude94

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

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

from Sins Forums
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
123,995 views 258 replies
Reply #226 from Sins Forums Top
I don't know if its related to this mod but its too easy to build massive strike-craft and bomber squads and the game constantly crashes if 2 large fleets collide...
End of quote


Well that's always been true of my mod. The anti-fighter frigates on all sides have been adjusted though to better combat this threat. Fighters in particular are extremely deadly to bombers now because they flight behavior has been somewhat adjusted. I haven't yet encountered a crash like you said. For my fix list I'm putting together I'll add on to increase the tactical slots used by hangar defenses so that there will be less of them.

also the ships speeds are way too slow in my opinion.
on larger maps it takes ages to move fleets.
any fight will be long lost (or won) before backup can reach the place.
End of quote


Well that's kinds of the whole point. In vanilla sins, you could never launched a surprise attack because reinforcements could arrive so quickly. Offensive moves require preparation now. You should invest more into scouts to locate where the enemy fleets are so you know when to attack. With the huge amount of planetary defenses you can build, it should buy you plenty of time to get reinforcements in. I remember when I had 65 squadrons of strike craft sieging the defenses of an enemy planet, it took like 10 minutes before you could see a significant gap in the enemy's defenses because the fighters were taking out a lot of my bombers. So having fleets in defensive positions is far more important. The reduced speed also means you get more time to pick apart an enemy fleet. In all battles, historic and present, armies have always suffered the heaviest losses when in full retreat. This wasn't so in Sins. You could just hit the retreat button and the whole fleet would high tail it out of there usually suffering minimal casualties. I believe that you should do a strategic retreat. You retreat your forces in phases.

I noticed that the Akkan Class Battlecruiser has better stats than the Marza Class Dreadnought. Battlecruisers usaly are weaker then dreadnougts...
End of quote


I increased the stats of all capital ships from vanilla Sins by the same ratio. Who says battlecruisers are supposed to be weaker than dreadnoughts anyways? I think in actual combat, the Marza is still stronger than the Akkan.

Icedude, are you planning on merging your mod with Sins Plus? Uzzi's mod.
End of quote


Yes. I have wednesday afternoon free to work on it. I should have it out then as long as there aren't any problems, along with a few balance changes and changes to the leveling system for capital ships.
Reply #227 from Sins Forums Top
ok, tested it, and reproduced it twice.. i was playing TEC against TEC on a small random map. I destroyed an invading Kol battle ship, and each time i destroyed it, i got a minidump.

I also think the amount of income and xtal/metal asteroids should be left to the normal vanilla amounts.

Drastically increasing income to the game is severly unbalancing alot of things,
WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #228 from Sins Forums Top
Is there a way I could adjust the fleet speeds or ships as a whole speeds? I would love to have just a bit quicker speeds so that way I don't sit there forever.

Basically is there an editor or something that I could do that easily?
Reply #229 from Sins Forums Top
Icedude, I love your mod! It's just plain fun but somehow since using the v1.7, i am experiencing the same crashing problem that sirphoenix has been experiencing. The game work fine for the first 6 hours but once the map got more ships and fleets converge on one planet and fighting the hack out of things. The gmae just crash back to the desktop with no warning message or whatsoever....the crash is realli....smooth? I guess I should say that because it only lagged for one second then jump back to desktop almost as if nothing happened...i already turn down the ship detail, ship texture to medium and low already, is this the problem of my pc or your mod? Can anyone explain to me?
Reply #230 from Sins Forums Top
about the crash.
this is probably a mixed problem with this mod and sins.

I suppose sins does not handle well with 200 modified squadrons + 150 ships hitting each other.

the weird thing is, as soon as I disable the mod and load the exact same game it doesn't crash - but the ships and squadrons are the same.

maybe it has something to do with the way you altered the squadrons attacking each other.
Reply #231 from Sins Forums Top
really?!?! Let me try now, but it's such a sad thing that I have to disable the mod to keep on playing the save file. I will report back did it crash or not, thx for telling sirphoenix
Reply #232 from Sins Forums Top
Well seems like sirphoenix is right, i disable the mod, although the health precentage on cap. ships and the hangar number got messed up etc. but the game was able to run real smooth and I can complete the game..........umm......that's weird.....anyone has any idea?
Reply #233 from Sins Forums Top
about the crash.this is probably a mixed problem with this mod and sins.I suppose sins does not handle well with 200 modified squadrons + 150 ships hitting each other.the weird thing is, as soon as I disable the mod and load the exact same game it doesn't crash - but the ships and squadrons are the same.maybe it has something to do with the way you altered the squadrons attacking each other.
End of quote


You may be right with the problem. It looks like a lot of problems occur when large numbers of strike craft engage eachother.

Is there a way I could adjust the fleet speeds or ships as a whole speeds? I would love to have just a bit quicker speeds so that way I don't sit there forever.Basically is there an editor or something that I could do that easily?
End of quote


I'll change the gameplay files so that setting the game to fast speed will set the game to vanilla sin's normal speed.

I also think the amount of income and xtal/metal asteroids should be left to the normal vanilla amounts.
End of quote


The game's speed really slows down that way. The AI will build like nothing like in vanilla sins. In the beginning, in my mod, you always have tons of resources and not enough money but when you get into the late-game on larger maps, you actually end up with lots of money and not a lot of resources.

With my next release which will have Uzii's mod installed, I'll revert the changes I made to the behavior of strike craft and we'll see if it fixes the crashes.

Reply #234 from Sins Forums Top
What do you think of these changes?

Frigates:
+25% firepower
+10% hitpoints
+10% shieldpoints

Cruisers:
+50% firepower
+20% hitpoints
+20% shieldpoints

Faction specific changes (applies to all ship classes)

Vasari:
+25% firepower
+25% hitpoints
+1 armor

Advent:
+25% shieldpoints
+5% max shield mitagation
+5% culture resist

TEC:
+25% hitpoints
+1 armor
+?% (something else)
Reply #235 from Sins Forums Top
Isothewise, we can not change the base ship stats. If we do, it destroys the entire principal of this mod by beefing up the cap ships. If we beef everything up then, we may as well go back to vanilla Sins.

Basic principal of this mod is to beef up cap ships and planetary defenses, so they stand out from normal ships.
Reply #236 from Sins Forums Top
Not to sounds like a fool, but how might one splice this mod up with the Sins Plus mod. I see at the top of the OP it is do-able. Anyone any idea how?
Reply #237 from Sins Forums Top
I believe he is working on it. Best to wait, as merging can be complex if you are unfamiliar with modding.
Reply #238 from Sins Forums Top
Hey Ice im currious I merged your mod with sins plus and a few others but have not experienced the ctd being reported. Im still testing mine out though. Do you have a rough idea what might be causing this? I have noticed that if sins pegs my ram that I will ctd like people are reporting if that helps at all. But would like to know more if it is something else in the mod that might be causing this?
Reply #239 from Sins Forums Top
I'm pretty sure that my change to the way the game handles strikecraft eats up memory. When a huge number of strike craft launch, for example, when your fleet jumps into an enemy system and you're playing as advent with like 60 drone hosts...

I'm still working on merging my mod with uzii's. The reason why it's taking so long is because there's a problem with the merge. The mod is taking an unusually long time to load(+30 minutes) or sometimes doesn't load at all and Sins just freezes. I'm still working on finding out what's causing this.
Reply #240 from Sins Forums Top
i don't think its related to the RAM usage.
the game took about the usual 0.8-1 GB (1.2GB on "very high" settings) of RAM when loading my savegame - there is no big difference in RAM usage when engaging the fleet nor when i play without the mod.

you can clearly see here:


first the game loads
then the mod loads
my fleet jumps in
and the last tiny bump is when my fighters launch
after that its pretty obvious what happened ;)

i should probably send my savegame and galaxy to stardock so they can look into it.
Reply #241 from Sins Forums Top
Icedude... you need to convert the entities into binaries!!!
That problem came up in my mod too.
Reply #242 from Sins Forums Top
Icedude, love the mod, been a fan of it since its release :D

The only issue I have with the latest version is ships are significantly slower than normal, even with speeds on "Fast". However I did enjoy the tactical element of it, especially when strikecraft were faster than everything else. However I think a 130-150% speed increase is slightly needed. If there is something I can change until the next update, if ship speeds are going to change, I'm more than willing to make the adjustment.

EDIT: Not only ships, research as well. I went through the GameData folder to see if I could speed things up, twas to no avail. If you could point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.
Reply #243 from Sins Forums Top
It's all in the gameinfo folder in the gameplay entity file. Just scroll down. It allows you to increase or decrease ship speeds and research speeds by a certain percentage for each of the in-game speed options.

I'll be spending all sunday converting all the files into binary. If it doesn't work im going to be VERY pissed off.
Reply #245 from Sins Forums Top
how about reducing the upkeep % o f the whole fleet ? i dont like seeing 90 % of income gone like that when i have a big empire , i was thinking around 60 % max

and also can you make a version where fighters and bombers are still in squads ? i like squads ><


and last , can you make the researching and building bar in the icons to something more easier to spot ? yellow is too hard for me to spot while red seems a good idea ?
Reply #246 from Sins Forums Top
It's all in the gameinfo folder in the gameplay entity file. Just scroll down. It allows you to increase or decrease ship speeds and research speeds by a certain percentage for each of the in-game speed options. I'll be spending all sunday converting all the files into binary. If it doesn't work im going to be VERY pissed off.
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Thank you! I wouldn't have found that for the life of me lol.

Once again, thanks for an awesome mod :D
Reply #247 from Sins Forums Top
I have tried the mod, and loved it.

Now my only issue is...

How is the merge with Sins plus going along?
Reply #248 from Sins Forums Top
It's still being worked on.
Reply #249 from Sins Forums Top
Increased priority on building defenses. AI should build a lot more defenses now!
End of quote


A little bit on the overkill with the AI's building overlapping Phase Inhibitors right beside each other. It makes it so you need to scout with an entire fleet.
I had to quit my three hour old game when I finally realized that the turrets were not costing any tactical slots. I realize that you cannot have .5 cost slots since they were probably coded as Integers, but infinite turrets is too much with their increased damage. I ate a moderate fleet with 10 of these and then learned that I could still slap down more than five hangers. ;)

With the huge experience requirements for Capships, I can build a defensive network that can eat anything thrown at it for a minor replacement cost for me while they lose a huge amount. My suggestion is that you either drop their damage to around 20 or increase their hull to match their damage, reinstate the 1 tactical slot cost and increase the resource costs (I prefer this one).

Aside from that it seemed pretty good so I will be back to check it out later.

Cheers!
Reply #250 from Sins Forums Top
Hey Icedude94...any chance you making this fantastic mod work with the new SINS update v1.04??? I love this mod but it keeps crashing with this new freaking update, and its pissing me off....