New Map Released!

from Sins Forums

Hello!

I decided to release an early version of a huge map I have put together to get some feedback, for future improvements. It is primarily designed for reasonably equally matched players to play over a number of sessions, rather than in one sitting.

Comprising of 30 odd stars and well over 400 planets this map does away with the ability to jump from one star to any other, by not having any in-system phase lanes to stars. Rather, systems are interlinked via wormholes and when all of them are viewed from the right angle, the map resembles the three star constellations on which the map is based; Centarus, Crux and Vela.

(Galaxy Forge uses a reverse bird’s eye view and this is the perspective at which the constellation is marked out. It won’t be identical as the stars are randomly (?) distributed on the z axis too).

As there are no worm holes connecting any of these constellations other routes have to be found, and these are in the hands of the pirates!

I also chose to increase a couple of the map’s variables such as ‘metersPerGalaxyUnit’. The net result being that travel times are greatly increased and I’ve found this to make sins play a lot more like chess!  You may have to turn down your GFX settings as more of the map becomes visible and the best way to get a quick idea on how the map will run on your system is to hit surrender and keep playing. Just to give you an idea, although I get low FPS on my rig (E6600, 2GBram, 7900GS) @ medium settings the map is, imo, still very playable.

(On a related note I also had issues with getting the scouts to automatically explore in some systems)


So, please give it a try out and if you can spare the time report back with your thoughts (particularly regarding pace and how the map features effect play) and any bugs you may find!

Link to Map --> https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?skinid=96&libid=70





14,813 views 16 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Great Looking map man! Can't wait till you finish it completely.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Now... you give chance for those 10000+ supply mini-mods.
Great work... There's a lots of thing to discover... WHERE NO ONE GONE BEFORE
WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks for the initial feedback guys. This is the first in a series of maps. Although this series will be a set of separate maps, they will all be a part of a wider campaign system. Expect a basic map (like this one) for the three constellations Puppis, Canis Major and Columba in a couple of weeks. It's smaller than this one so should have better performance. Releasing some of these maps now is to kinda test and get the balance right, including stuff for a possible mod to enhance these campaignesque maps.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
thats the right map for the weekend :D
will use it with my fleetcap mod

...100planets - around 100 tradeports x 5 tradeships giving each 10 shipslots
+ the same with refinery ships = 10000 shipslots ... sounds reasonable for an empire this size (and thats the reason why this game needs multicore support)

In the skat, shaula and mira systems there are homeplanets for each 2 players while some have no starting player in there.
Me thinks that the players with a neighbor would have a major disadvantage at the interstellar scale after fighting through the local neighborhood although if they win they have quit a nice home system.

Thank you for this map !
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Dari, it might be a bad idea to increase the fleet cap. Primarily due to the huge FPS drop due to so many planets, even on the lowest settings and screen resolutions.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Just played your map Fandangdo - with my evil expensive-tradeship-give-fleetpoints-mod

The map works still quit good considering the really huge dimensions of the map.
(At least on my rig : intel E6750@2,67GHz - 3,5GB usable Ram - 8800GTX)
Slows a lot down if you use the 4xtime multiplier or more.

Big fleets (around 3000 points) doesn't seem to be much of a problem - but then i reduced most of the gfx details except the planet textures and didn't watch the battles.

The map is especially funny if you like killing pirates (on another note - i already spent more than half million credits on bounties )

this leaves me with a few wishes: need another key that doubles your bid at bounties and marketplace

Thank you for the nice map !
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks for the comments Dari. How long did it take u to complete the map? Was the ai on hard or teamed up? If so how many per team? I am really interested to find out how this map plays in multiplayer!
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
I didnt complete it - just made a pause after 6 hours to make a few comments and rest.
Player setup was : 10 players FFA random normal AI, locked teams, speed and research normal, resources set to low or normal (dont remember - but i have more than enough)

Normal AI is really bad at economics - at least they seem to build insane fleets.
Even after 2/3 player were wiped out (one of them my unlucky neighbor ;) i was still ranked in fleet as No. 9 !
only two of them could made high income rates - its bad to lost to a biding war if the bounty increment is maxed at 500 per click and your price on your head is over 90000credits.

As of the 6 Hour Point i have 30 planets - capitals maxed out - fleet is worth around 3000 point - only very few techs are not maxed out - and although i got a culture building at most of my planets my galaxy culture rating is at 3%!

For multiplayer i think there need to be VERY patient people with good machines !

But for single player its a very good epic map - sometimes i have lost my way through the systems with multiple fleets in different systems and thus my expansion rate slows down - almost like it would be in reality.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Very nice beta Beta. I suggest including a readme file with install instructions as well as changes and what not for your next update.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
what do you mean by "in the hands of the pirates"?

if i kill them, the routes are revealed?

i like your real-world approach. no green stars right? lol
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
at some (rather majority) grav wells that have a phase lane/wormhole connection to other systems are either a piratefleet or even a piratebase

use your scouts and use lots of them
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
Gonna try it now. This is the kind of epic map I've been looking for, should do for at least 40 hrs gametime I should think. Gonna do normal settings, maybe fast research because I find it pretty slow, and pirates inactive so I don't have to worry about outbidding people who have access to tons of credits when I can only increase bounty at 500cr increments (unless you hold shift...or am I wrong? Maybe that would have helped DARI). My machine consists of an E6550 Core 2 CPU @ 2.33GHz, 2GB RAM, and an ATI Radeon X1900XTX 512MB vid card. I'll let you know how it runs and how long it takes me to finish. Thanks for this map, must have taken a hell of a while to create.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
have fun hitting 200+ times your mouse while holding shift to outbid the 100k bounty on your head :LOL:
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
Hey cool map. It is cool to see larger maps.

I have a question. How did you get the wormholes to work in the GalaxyForge?