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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 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
123,984 views 258 replies
Reply #101 from Sins Forums Top
Idea here… not sure how hard this would be to implement. I am all for space oriented defenses. How about making a mod to allow StarBases? Essentially, it would be a stationary structure but with similar stats say to a capitol ship and it does not go up in XP levels?

Since it is stationary, the weapon ranges will have to be doubled or tripled other wise attacking units will just fly around it to the other side. Or make it medium sized, so we can build two of them, for each side of the planet.

This would give us something to balance out the mega powerful capital ships once they go up in XP levels. A level 8 cap ship, will be damned hard to defend against.

Mod, 1.52 wise, the resources and money needs to be toned down a bit to vanilla stats. I suggest bumping up by 50%, the researched upgrades through technology for metal/xtals/money.
Reply #102 from Sins Forums Top
Mod, 1.52 wise, the resources and money needs to be toned down a bit to vanilla stats. I suggest bumping up by 50%, the researched upgrades through technology for metal/xtals/money.
End of quote


I like that idea.

It seems like I raised the amount one gains from taxes to be too high an amount. I'll get to work on trying out some lower values. Thanks for the feedback. How's the AI doing with the economy changes. Anybody notice bigger fleets?

I'll try to strike a balance between getting big fleets earlier vs. making the game too easy economy-wise. The next version may have a lot of changes to the costs of things.
ObjectDock - Access shortcuts and frequently used applications from an animated dock.
Reply #104 from Sins Forums Top
The "auto focus fire" feature you mention, the one you turned off by default, is that controllable from the UI in the game? 'Cause I couldn't find it. There's auto-attack but that's not it, is it?
Reply #105 from Sins Forums Top

I'm noticing much larger AI fleets on hard and they are certainly more aggressive but they still flee way to often. In one case, I was surely outnumbered and defending and they even reinforced with a follow-up fleet, but then after awhile, they all retreated. Didn't make sense. I can understand if I brought in reinforcements and scared them away, but my main fleet was in a major attack far off and the defending fleet was half as big as what was attacking my system.

On a bigger note, income is way to huge after you've fully developed some planets and infrastructure. I could nearly forget economy and just build and research at will before long. With the lowering of the Capitol ships cap, and keeping the fleet max's high, I had enourmous fleets. They were dominated by the Caps, but I couldn't really enjoy the game as it started to slow down dramatically.

Things I'd like to see:

1) Tweak ecomony considering fully developed economy so it's still something to look at later in a game. Early on it helps get ramped up quickly, which I like, but it should warrant watching later on.
2) Increase Cap ship max. They take 150 fleet allotment, but with the increased fleet max's, the end result isn't that the Capitols are dominating, they actually get lost in the flood of huge fleets. This might work in theory, but I'd rather see more Capitols of double (rather than triple) strenght) and half the volume of the fleets. It won't diminish the overall fleet feel, or the fact that Capitols are standouts (they shouldn't be the norm) and at least you can see what is going on in the game. Right now fleet volume is a detraction
3) I like the more aggressive AI, the stronger defences, and the increased fighters.

Thanks!
Reply #106 from Sins Forums Top
building on the idea Anomandaris Irake provided (based on Uzi's mod) based on the planetary bonuses would it be possible to add a fleet supply per planet (heard the beta had something like that) not as a bonus but an upgrade (like logistics and tactical)? if you needed it balanced then you could do something like this:

Unupgraded - adds maybe 50 fleet supply
Level 1 - adds 2x fleet supply but reduces income from planet by 33%
Level 2 - adds 3x, but reduces income by 66%
Level 3 - adds 4x, but reduces income by 99%

all these would effect tax only, so players would need to use trade ports on these planets to gain resource

also you should make pirate bases harder to gain, the weapon platforms are easy to out range, maybe add a type of hanger?

hope my ideas help
Reply #107 from Sins Forums Top
I am actually working on lots of new features for the next release.

Here's my list:

1. New planetary bonuses.

2. Increase in cost of defense platforms(not by much but to make it harder to build lots of them early.)

3. Resetting most of the economy to default sins values.

4. Making pirate raids bigger, adjusting their attack priorities.

5. Complete restructuring of the culture and allegiance system. Basically, allegiance won't affect the economy of the planet however if it falls below a certain percentage, rebel ships will start jumping in and attacking. Basically I plan to turn allegiance into a happiness rating affected by many things. It can be boosted by trade, friendly ships in orbit, orbital defenses, etc.

6. (Only if possible) Ability to set tax levels on planets which will affect the aforementioned happiness percentage.

7. Complete re-working of diplomacy. You'll start at peace with all the factions and depending on your actions and what missions you choose will determine your enemies and allies.

8. Complete re-working of how planets are sieged. No longer will the siege ships use nukes or lasers. They'll now deploy landing craft to the planets. These landing craft contain the troops and all the equipment needed for a military operation which includes tanks, aircraft, ships, etc. Infrastructure will be a representation of a planet's ground forces and bases. Boarding ships will primarily just damage the infrastructure(though some civilians will get caught in the cross-fire). Once the planet's military has been defeated and it's government overthrown, the planet, most of its upgrades and its population automatically come under your control. I'll try do do something about the explosions to make it look like military forces are battling on the planet.

9. I'll either lower the amount gained from taxes(probably will by just a little) or I'll greatly decrease the rate of population growth.

10. Attempt to introduce a supply system. Anyone who has ever played another space rts that was a lot like sins called Conquest: Frontier Wars will remember how that game had supply ships and depots that were needed for all military ships. Also in that game, logistics structures were built in a ring around the planet... Basically the way I plan to implement this is to have each shot a ship fires cost anti-matter. Ships cannot replenish the antimatter on their own, instead they need a special supply ship to do this. Even these supply ships have a limited amount of supply and need to return to depots to restock. Ships that are out of supply can still move but will not be able to fire. So look for a new ship and a new station. I'll probably end up using the trade ship and trade port models for this. The biggest challenge will be getting the AI to use this system.

11. Try to balance out the number of capital ships vs. firepower vs. cost.

12. Beef up the defenses of neutral planets. Give them an actual starting population. Overall make it feel like you're invading an actual independent world. Maybe make it possible to negotiate with them. At the very least the ability to trade with them, although I don't know how good it'll be unless trading with independent cultures yields much greater taxes than trade within your own empire.

13. Make the info cards for cargo ships to display their cargo like foodstuffs, medical supplies, construction equipment, jewelry, etc. It'll add to the immersion.
Reply #108 from Sins Forums Top
All of these sound good, except for 10. Please don't introduce this unless the AI fully integrates it. I don't want to walk over all AI fleets because they can't fire at me.

Also, 8 should give a choice on whether to nuke a planet to destroy its population or actually capture it.
Reply #109 from Sins Forums Top
10. If the AI can't use the supply system. I'll make it so that only the player has to use it. There was a reality mod for medieval 2 total war that did just this but it only affected the player. I'll release different versions of the mod for the different sides you can play as. I'll also release a version of the mod without the supply system.

8. I was thinking that capital ships can nuke a planet(the nukes will be more powerful than of course) as they fast way to take a planet.
Reply #110 from Sins Forums Top


Great ideas! Do you have a rough ETA on it? I check your thread daily for when the next update comes out:)

Also.. basic question.. where do i see what missions are available by a player?
Reply #111 from Sins Forums Top
Please forgive my newbness, but after downloading this mod, installing it and activating it in game. I started a new single player game and I did not notice any difference.

How do you get mods to work?
Reply #112 from Sins Forums Top
under options

Make sure you have the mod activated. If its in green, u are good to go.
Reply #113 from Sins Forums Top
Please forgive my newbness, but after downloading this mod, installing it and activating it in game. I started a new single player game and I did not notice any difference.How do you get mods to work?
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I think the easiest telltale sign is the tax income of your home planet is higher.
Reply #114 from Sins Forums Top
Since my next version is going to have lots of new changes and features. I'm going to need some beta-testers to help me get the mod out faster.

Your responsibilities are:

1. Do not leak the beta to non-beta players. I don't want people's computers to crash or make the game no longer fun.

2. Test new features to make sure they don't crash the game.

3. Give general feedback on balancing and gameplay.

PM me if you want to be a beta-tester.
Reply #115 from Sins Forums Top
Great mod icedude. Haven't played vanilla Sins in a while now ;P

Just a suggestion for 8, perhaps nuking a planet should be made like an ability for the siege capital ships that should wipe the planet clean real fast but also renders it uninhabitable for a period of time.

Good luck on finishing this!
Reply #116 from Sins Forums Top

Ok, been playing all weekend long testing your Mod.. Here are some suggestions

1. Experience per level for capital ships needs to be doubled. They have three times the fire power, hence level up faster. Need to make it where a L10 ship is damned rare and powerfull. additional idea, what about added stats or bonus for L9 and L10 ships?

2. Since it takes soo much now to take out a capital ship, alot more standard ships needs to be used to take one down. I say reduce the costs of standard ships by 20%. Takes much larger fleets to take out 1 or 2 capital ships.

3. Econ. Not sure what % you have it at currently, i say it needs to be about double of what vanilla is at. For money and mining. Some games i have tons left over, other games, i used every bit of resource i had to fight off invading fleets.

4. I really like how pirate bases are now, nice bonuses for capturing them.
Reply #117 from Sins Forums Top
The next release already has a balanced out economy. Tax, trade and resource income is slightly higher than vanilla and culture has been tweaked a bit. I'm still working on tweaking the abilities and experience levels of capital ships. I've also fixed the pirate raid crashbug so pirate raids are stronger. I also got new effects for siege frigates that I think everybody will like...
Reply #118 from Sins Forums Top
After playing your Mod all weekend I totally agree with Kreyson on the XP of Capital Ships. They level very fast, and spotting a level 10 means nothing.

Also I'm fairly certain i've found a minor bug with Light Carriers. I've only seen this with the TEC ones, but when your fights/bombers are out, and you warp to a different area, you have to click dock all squads, and then release squads, there do not automatically release.

As to the economy, if you're playing a random map, you're never guaranted decent resources. So sometimes you have a huge stockpile, sometimes you struggle to maintain a fleet. In my opinion this is fairly balanced.

Pirate bases are ace, good work on that.

One other change i'd like to see, again concerning Light Carriers. The AI take advantage of the upgrade to them, and spam them in fleet battles. I would either decrease the amount of squads, or improve the Defence ships.

One other thing. Guardian ships have a skill that creates a bubble type thing around them. The graphic of this is beyond irritating when the AI use it 10x. You can't see a thing and can create alot of lag. Perhaps this is modifiable, perhaps not.

All in all, fantastic mod, keep it up.
Reply #119 from Sins Forums Top
Another point, since we are dealing with more resources and capital ships with three times the health and three times the fire power, hence they are a total force multiplier of X9, so they are much much harder to kill. The oppossing force will suffer higher casualties. If not using cap vs capital ships, this requires a much larger fleet to take out on cap ship.

True we may have the resources, but standard ships take a long time to build and takes a LONG time to build up a big fleet even with multiple factories cranking out ships.

I think the build time on standard ships needs to be reduced by about 33%.
Reply #120 from Sins Forums Top
Well, I enjoy the length of matches on Sins. It takes a while to build up a force, and it takes a while for your force to get crushed. Decreasing build time is one way to do it, or increasing Capital ship building time is another. I personally prefer the latter.
Reply #121 from Sins Forums Top
One other change i'd like to see, again concerning Light Carriers. The AI take advantage of the upgrade to them, and spam them in fleet battles. I would either decrease the amount of squads, or improve the Defence ships.
End of quote


The easy and normal ai's liked to spam light carriers even in vanilla. You get the best experience from this mod by playing against only hard AI's. Anti-fighter frigates have already been given a much faster firing rate to counter the increase in strike craft. It's been perfectly balanced to me so far.


Another point, since we are dealing with more resources and capital ships with three times the health and three times the fire power, hence they are a total force multiplier of X9, so they are much much harder to kill. The oppossing force will suffer higher casualties. If not using cap vs capital ships, this requires a much larger fleet to take out on cap ship.
End of quote


This is why the placement of fleets and capitals within your empire has become much more strategic. I've already toned down the resources for the next release so capital ships become more rare.

After playing your Mod all weekend I totally agree with Kreyson on the XP of Capital Ships. They level very fast, and spotting a level 10 means nothing.
End of quote


The reason why they level up so much faster is because their powerful weapons allow them to make more kills in less time. I've already been adjusting the XP requirements for levels.

Well, I enjoy the length of matches on Sins. It takes a while to build up a force, and it takes a while for your force to get crushed. Decreasing build time is one way to do it, or increasing Capital ship building time is another. I personally prefer the latter.
End of quote


When I first released the mod, I gave out way too many resources. People complained that they were able to spam frigates and made capital ships seem like nothing. Then in the next version I increased the pop cap for capitals and then people said that they could just build fleets of capital ships which made frigates useless and made the game really easy.

In the current beta being tested now, you usually see just 1 or 2 capital ships in a single fleet. They can still obliterate fleets without capital ships, but you'll still get enough time to get reinforcements into the battle.

With the latest economy in the beta, you usually have just enough resources to build or research what you need however you always feel under some economic pressure and thus have the need to expand to other worlds. No longer can you que up 10 research upgrades and still have enough resources leftover to que up an entire fleet.

The pace of the game of the beta feels a lot slower than the current release but believe me, it's way more balanced now.
Reply #122 from Sins Forums Top
So far from the beta-testers, they're saying the latest economy changes "feel just right."

There have been no crashes so far.

The AI builds a decent amount of defenses now but could still do with more.

Trade ports are a little more common but nobody has seen the AI build refineries yet so I'm still tweaking that.

It looks like I'll be able to get the next release out in a day or two. There won't be any ground-breaking new features. It'll be mostly balance and gameplay fixes.

Reply #123 from Sins Forums Top
Let me recap what i was saying about the cap ships and normal ships. Hard for me to test it, but perhaps you will know. Easier if someone can dual against a friend and test out fighting capabilities of cap ships to normal ships.

How over powered are cap ships compared to normal ships? Heavy Cruisers? How much time and resources building normal ships (defensive structures not an issue) to equal the capabilities of one capital ship? Contruction time alone to build a fleet to take out one L5 cap ship will take considerable amount of time. 10 minutes?

Will a non-capitol ship fleet stand a snow balls chance in hell against a capital ship?

What fire power and hit point adjustments will the capitols be in your next update?



Keep up the great work, icedude.
Reply #124 from Sins Forums Top
Let me recap what i was saying about the cap ships and normal ships. Hard for me to test it, but perhaps you will know. Easier if someone can dual against a friend and test out fighting capabilities of cap ships to normal ships.How over powered are cap ships compared to normal ships? Heavy Cruisers? How much time and resources building normal ships (defensive structures not an issue) to equal the capabilities of one capital ship? Contruction time alone to build a fleet to take out one L5 cap ship will take considerable amount of time. 10 minutes?Will a non-capitol ship fleet stand a snow balls chance in hell against a capital ship?What fire power and hit point adjustments will the capitols be in your next update?Keep up the great work, icedude.
End of quote


Frigates and cruisers can definitely still take on capital ships. If you remember what vanilla capitals were like, they were no more than as one player put it,"glorified cruisers." Now in this mod, a capital ship attacking a fleet of frigates and cruisers is like a preying mantis attacking an ant colony. It'll take down a good handful n its own but the combined firepower and abilities of the ships will always overpower the capital. Have you seen how many shots it takes for a kol to destroy a garda? A tiny handful of light frigates can still do a good amount of damage to capital ships.

Remember, the capitals have more hp and shields but I didn't change their recharge rate. They can still be taken down pretty easily through simple attrition.

As to how long it takes to build a fleet to counter a lvl 5 capital ship, that depends on how organized you are with ship production. I usually designate worlds for ship production that always have at least 3 shipyards, usually 4 to build my fleets. In just a few minutes I'll have over 50 frigates out at least. In even less time you can build 10 carriers and load them up with bombers. Now 20 bomber squadrons against a capital ship is deadly. The first pass by the bombers usually takes down the capital's shields by half.

Think about how much territory your max of 9 capital ships can cover on their own. Think about how many frigates and cruisers you can build total with this mod.

Also think about how game mechanics have changed. One reason why capitals went down so fast in vanilla sins is because fleets always automatically focused fire on them. They don't do that anymore in my mod. You have to order them to do that yourself.

Capitals really can't take as much punishment as you think they can.

Now if you really want the math, a kol's beam cannon does just slightly under the damage of 8 cobalts. The kol's beam cannon also takes 3 times as long to fire another shot than it takes the cobalts.

Now if you consider build times, a cobalt takes 24 seconds to build. In ten minutes you can build 25. If you were smart and set up 4 shipyards in a single sector, you can build 100 in 10 minutes. Would it be wise to build 100 cobalts? Most definitely not. You need a mixed force of other support ships to back them up. Cobalts are just the cheap cannon fodder ships anyway.


What is being addressed for the next release is how fast capital ships level up. The experience required is being made much higher.
Reply #125 from Sins Forums Top
Those are some amazing and clever changes, especially the nofocusfire constraint. Personally I can't wait for the playable pirates in 2.0

I played for an hour or two to give this mod a test run and see how it well it fares, I had a friend get the game and I'm looking for something that would allow him appreciate it more than the vanilla aspect which is too slow paced, even with fast options.

So, I went in a 4 players FFA against normal random bots, every options at fast in a map with pirates.

For one, Maybe it was bad luck but I got "ganked" by all 3 bots, non-stop (Whom were in different teams). While I didn't check if they were attacking each other, I noticed their cap ships always being attacking my control points so I guess the main of their force was there.

Then, Being an economist player, I focused on getting a good resource income ASAP like I always do. I was literally levitating in wealth with about 20k of each and my research trees much too advanced after about an hour of play.

Edit: I will try another game soon and see if I'm still being attacked by every bot.