I have returned with more questions, once again presented in a convenient list format. Only this time, to avoid potentially trifling amounts of confusion, I will use letters:

A. With the decrease in the feasibility of micro comes a decrease in the effectiveness of some abilities, and the support frigates and capital ships that rely on them. How are you tweaking abilities in Last Stand? More passive abilities? Less AoE abilities, or ones with longer range?

B. As the Advent, I am always outresourced in the early game, and I make up for that difference by careful guardian/drone host/illuminator micro until I tip the money scales by sheer abundance of planets (most of them the enemy's, if I do the clicking right). But as I lose my micro advantage over the TEC players (whose ship strategy lies mostly in building the right combination of ships, meaning lots of repair bots and cruisers, rather than getting to place those guardians in fun, divisive, inhibitive bubbles), I find that the game becomes increasingly centered around the struggle for resources to churn out more light frigates, which the TEC wins hands down. What does the economy look like in Last Stand? Should I be worried about my favorite psychic bitches becoming extinct at the hands of the space age robber barons? (Though I can still see the potentially extreme effectiveness of guardians in disrupting the very delicate strafing patterns of light frigates ^^)

C. Both Titans and Citadels are supposed to be really, really big and expensive, and we've seen lots of other late-game technologies (such as the Xin impaler drone, which I seem to remember is considered a late-game-type frigate). Naturally, It will take lots of time to build up the resources for appropriate research, more time to execute said research, and even more time to earn the money to spend a veritable fuckton of time constructing these mind-boggling wonders. Does this rake the original Sins races together in a category of "rushing/early game offensive" races? What does the early game look like for Last Stand races? How often on mid-sized maps will a Last Stand race crank out a titan?

D. From watching dynamic combat videos, it becomes clear that dogfighting frigates do not attack at the precise moment when their weapons recharge, since they need to readjust their courses first. This would make for slower combat, and since combat is the basis for all expansion, how will this affect the duration of games?

E. WHEN DO WE GET TO SEE REMNANT AND HEGEMONY SHIPS

F. Not really a question, but I totally fucking love squid faces. Davy Jones ftw!!!!!!11!1!

g. ...I've remembered and forgotten this question about four times, and I'm pretty much over expending the mental effort go exhaust myself with the cycle once again. But I DID have another question, even if I made the "g" lower case'd to indicate its relative unimportance. Chances are, I'll totally remember it about thirty seconds after I post >.<

As always, perpetual support and many boners over this mod's juiciness, accompanied with the general frustration that I can't experience this until 2010 that kills some of the boners. I was serious about seeing those other ships.

Cheers!

-Me

g (for "goddammit!"). Yes, I read the plot summary, and I heard from someone above that the main Sins game deals with that new spatial anomaly in the relative southern of the galaxy. How many points am I awarded?

H. Will ships reflect sunlight and stuff? Will they have somewhat dirty-appearing textures, like I noticed on some Entrenchment ships today?

A/B

Re: the Dynamic battle system changes, just go download and play that mod and see for yourself. It's already out

Re: Advent balance, manshooter actually had to nerf illuminators bigtime because their multiple firing arcs made them so OP with the furballs we have.

C. If you mean if we play this online with the way ppl currently play sins online, then no. Doubt we'll see any titan's. Citadel depends on the tech level and cost, but you do see starbases in online play. I'd actually be interesting to see some good online players use the DBS and comment on how it affects gameplay.

Bear in mind though, manshooter is drastically increasing gravity well size, so it should slow down game speed a lot and make rushing less effective. We'll see how it turns out after he releases a beta i guess.

D. Manshooter also roughly doubled the dmg on all weapons to compensate for decreased firing time.

E. Well, as I mentioned earlier, First Contact is gonna be released simultaneously with Half Life 2 Episode 3, Diablo 3 and Duke Nukem Forever, so I'd imagine we'll see remnant ships some time after that, assuming the world survives exploding of course.

F/G. Um...100 points?

H. The sins engine is not capable of real time dynamic lighting, so I'd imagine no.

PS Sorry for jacking the questions from you mansh00ter, slow day at work

Sweet. In regards to H, a quick perusal of the image galleries reminded me once again that this game will be just as orgasmic as the original.

No sweat Banthracis, you pretty much answered everything as I would have.

Regarding Citadels and Titans. I want those to be endgame, and I want them to make your opponent (or yourself if you are on the wrong end of it) cringe when they realize you've got one. I do not want them to be unbeatable, certainly not the I-Win or you-can't-touch-me kind of weapon. So right now I think they'll be as attainable as orbital superweapons for vanilla races, while Citadels are going to be a tad easier to get, since they're basically only good for defending.

All this will probably change when the mod goes live and people start complaining about bugs and inbalances, which is the inevitability of online play.

And now, a couple of images of the reworked Tyrant (the main Xin battleship) - these are test high sub-d renders for the animation short I'm doing for my portfolio (and for the Episode I intro), ingame shots coming soon.

Holy crap that looks awesome!

can we get a befor and after shot. i forgot what the original looked like.

cheers

What sorts of techniques do you use for making the textures you use? I've been looking for some good tutorials on this.

Gamerking, an old version of the Tyrant can be seen in the "Xin Homeworlds" wallpaper, the middle image in the top row in the OP, or you can see it in motion in the old teaser trailer released over a year ago:

ZigZag, I use a fairly complex method involving XSI, Photoshop and Z-Brush. To put it in a nutshell, I design the geometry of the ship and UV-map it in XSI, then cut the model into one symmetrical half (actually I model only one half, but I frequently check how the whole thing looks), cut that half into sections, and then export so sliced half-a-model into ZBrush, where I rearrange the sections into manageable groups which I then polypaint on. After I'm done, I export color and normal maps from those groups into Photoshop, where I combine them into one continuous texture which Sins can read. I also do any needed texture modifications or minor repairs in Photoshop.

Then I go back to XSI and symmetrize the model - that way I get around the problem with ZBrush which requires all UV's to have their own unique space (which means you can't use overlapping which is a popular method for saving texture space when making game models).

And that's it!

I would pay 50 bones, easy, for an expansion of this quality.  If I were you, I'd charge people for this!

your not supposed to tell him that!!

cheers

New tyrant looks great. Always thought the old one looked a little pudgy around the middle.

Though now it does look like a hammerhead w/ a goatee  

And manshooter reposting an OLD trailer  got me all excited over nothing!!

Its a good thing we modders are the ultimate communists of the digital world...

Plus I think Ironclad and Stardock would get slightly vexed if I did that.

Bathracis, the "goatee" makes the ship look eeeevil. As for the old one I always struck me as a flying alien Coca Cola bottle.

The ships in this remind me a bit of the Seraphim concept in Supreme Commander Forged Alliance, and also the Liir in Sword of the Stars.

ManSh00ter, will you please, please stop this annoying habit of given us awesome visuals and updates in the thread, but fail to update the OP with your new candy? Please!!!

That or give us the link to your website again, which I believe is also buried in this thread somewhere

I really need to sit down and update the OP, you're right... I know! I'll do it Soon(TM)!

Wireframe render of the new Xin Citadel model:

Looks great! Going for the evil giant jellyfish?

Yep.

what's its weapons?

Lots of heavy attack drones, plus the PAL - Plasma Accretion Launcher. It's an Anti-Titan weapon, really slow to fire, but really powerful. Can take out a capital ship in one hit.

Citadels are more useful for the various buffs and bonuses they give than for their weaponry.

God dang it mod still isn't out yet?

You'll release this when Ironclad releases Sins 2 lol

Quality requires time. Keep in mind this mod will add more new content than both Ironclad expansions put together so I think I'm keeping pretty good time considering its only a hobby for me and I'm doing it all by myself.