Hello everyone!

Its been a while since the last update, and while its not necessary to go into details, lets just say that I have experienced some technical difficulties which considerably slowed down my work on the mod. But, all this is about to change as the Episode I slowly draws to final stages of production!
Soon you will be fighting desperate battles against the encroaching Xin, or wreaking havoc across the galaxy while doing your best evil laugh imitation (optional)!

To tide you over until the next teaser trailer showing the ingame action in all its glory, here is a bit of information on the mod's biggest ship class - the Titan.

Leviathan CGI render

A Titan class ship is the most powerful unit a player can build in the Last Stand. The requirements are enormous, from research costs and time to actual building times and resource needs. They easily dwarf Entrenchment starbases in production costs, but on a plus side, a Titan can eat a starbase for breakfast, then burp flaming debris to incinerate the planet below. Proverbially speaking.

Each new faction, the Xin, the Clans Remnant, and the Hegemony will have one Titan class ship available via research, each having a unique approach to combat and utility. The Leviathan, the Xin equivalent, is built for one purpose only - to wipe out the enemy as quickly and decisively as possible.

Built from five separate modules, each larger than even the largest Xin battleship and easily dwarfing even smaller ships like TEC or Vasari battleships, the Leviathan is an immensely tough behemoth, designed to wade into the thick of action and detonate its most powerful weapon, an artificially created and maintained black hole.

Possibly the only machine in the known universe which can create and maintain a phenomenon of such awesome potential, little is known about the actual methods by which a Leviathan can maintain a full-fledged black hole in the narrow space at the center of its superstructure without instantly collapsing under the enormous gravitational pressure. The five identical modules are themselves autonomous, held in place relative to each other by the same forces they help put into being. In fact, it is speculated that the sole purpose of the modules is to provide the platform for whatever mysterious machinery controls the black hole.

Being so large, the Xin Titan does not have effective ship-to-ship weaponry. Instead, it relies on massive hordes of various assault and defense drones to provide point defense emerging from its ten enormous hangars, each of which could easily accomodate a cruiser or two. While this makes the large ship vulnerable to well prepared fleets which carry a lot of weaponry dedicated to taking out the drones, its most valuable ability lies in the fact that it can "excite" the black hole it maintains, creating massive assymetric gravity surges which not only suck all free-floating objects towards the gargantuan ship, but also obliterate any objects which stray too close, making the Leviathan potentially capable of wiping out an entire sector completely.

But, such awesome power takes time to unleash. It takes approximately six minutes to create a powerful shockwave guaranteed to wipe out the entire sector. While the minor shockwaves emanating from the tormented space-time in the center of the structure are potentially deadly to any ship, a determined fleet has an option to try and take out the behemoth before it can obliterate them - a timed race with only one possible winner.

Ultimately, your best bet is never to let your opponent build a Titan. Because if you do find yourself squaring off against one of these, you better come prepared and then some. When fighting a Titan, there is no room for second tries.

Its...its... BEAUTIFUL!   You never cease to awe us, ManSh00ter! I can't wait!  

im speechless, i definetely do no want that thing in my solar system, and the tec, vasari, and advent need to have a new weapon to cope with this, perhaps an anti-titan torpedo structure that can only be built on planets and not move... what about that?

do you have any idea on when it is going to come out?

P.S. great looking mod

*note to self, remind Danman to make the stellar converter stronger*

Epic looking titan dude

So... can enemy fleets retreat during this six minute period? Or are they held within the gravity well by the massive gravitational force created by the black hole? If not, perhaps that could be a second weapon... designed more as a logistics move to trap an enemy fleet somewhere...

Also, will the shockwave also destroy the planet, or just ships/structures? Just wondering, since I know of no vanilla sins weapon that causes both types of damage (unless of course you are adding several types of damage into an all purpose AOE weapon).

Enemy ships can escape during that time period, however the Xin have access to a specialized utility Spider Cruiser, which can render phase drives unusable in a large radius, so with those in tow the Leviathan can easily trap enemy fleets and prevent them from escaping.

Also keep in mind that the secondary shockwaves will start happening allmost immediately, and those can do a lot of damage on their own as well.

Whether the weapon will do planetary damage remains to be determined when the beta comes out. At launch, only ships/structures will be targeted.

is this for entrecnhment or vanilla sins?

Superfleet, Episode I only will have versions both for Entrenchment and vanilla SoASE. Episodes II and III will require Entrenchment to be installed.

i thaught epsode one was called the last stand, and did you give any thaught to my anti titan defenive weapon idea?

Gamerking, the mod itself is called The Last Stand.  The first episode is known as First Contact.

Hmm, it looks like the uber starfish of doom wants to give my fleet a hug! Hi there! Hey, that's not ni..!

I'm guessing that the only Vanilla race that would stand any chance is the Vasari, and even then they'd need a starbase and a full fleet.

I honestly have to say...

I've been around mods for various games nigh on 6 years now, and every single one I've played fail in comparison to yours. This is a work of art that I'm 100% positive even Da'Vinci would be proud of. I cant wait for the first release because I want to do my own evil laugh while I wreak some serious destruction with the Xin. Can't wait, keep up the great work, and "don't stop, beleeeivin..." hahaha

Kipples, thanks.

Vp21ct, the Titans will be indeed very hard to stop, but a well rounded large fleet should be able to at least drive one away. They represent a significant investment of time and resources and are comparatively powerful.

But there are drawbacks. A titan requires so many fleet capacity slots that having one means you will need to downgrade the total number of your ships by a large margin. Basically, you can have two large fleets, or one large fleet and a titan. So a Titan-wielding player will place themselves at a significant numerical disadvantage.

I reiterate that the Titan itself does not have any direct ship-to-ship weaponry. Just a crapload of drones - so sending one in alone would be most unwise. Sending it with a fleet escort, on the other hand, increases chances of a major victory, but also makes you vulnerable to flanking attacks and places most of your fighting force at risk.

Choices, choices...

Good, I was having a nightmare about my fleet of TEC Capships named after the WW2 greats getting but raped by just one of those things.

WOW looks great... cant wait till i try this mod

.... nice mental pic, thanks.

lol

A couple of ingame shots of the Leviathan, for comparison. Note that the Last Stand will feature planets roughly three times the vanilla size present on the first image.

This mod is so well crafted and designed that I'm being left in complete awe!

can i assume that in the future you will have a particle effect in the center counting as the Black hole? Otherwise, a cool model. Nice work.

Mr_Blunt3d, yes, of course. This was just a quick test shot to show the size of the Titan ingame.

So, if the Xin are comprised of part biological lifeforms encased in armor plating, thus creating the ships, what biological lifeform then, is the Leviathan? is it like... 5 sentient beings representing 1 being as a whole or something? Not to say that it would matter, I was just curious.

Actually, yeah. The Leviathan, like the Wyrm elite battleship, is a 2nd generation genome creation, meaning that its bioform is completely engineered to fit the role, instead of the 1st generation where existing biological entities were engineered into starship cores. In addition to that, it is composed of five separate bioforms, which share a hive conciousness. All ship systems are reiterated five times, which is one reason why the Leviathan is so notoriously difficult to destroy.

One other example of a 2nd generation genome ship is the Hive Cruiser, ingame screenshots coming soon. Oh yeah, some of the older models were replaced by newer, better ones as my skills increased a lot since when I first made them, so I took a day or two to remake them.

Since the mod has been more than a year in making, now that ships are more or less done I will do a series of "Unit recap" posts, starting with full-action shots of frigate class drones this week.

Does this mean that Episode 1 is closing in on launch.