An announcement!

Greetings, I am Dr. Fosstus, no doubt you've never heard of me, And I am working on a mod. the problem is I have no idea what I am doing, how to balance it, or how to use any modeling software. In short, I will need shitons of help.

My past experience includes Tiberain Sun, Transcendence, and Ufo2000. Currently, I am just finishing with the planning stage. Now you may wonder why I would post here if I have nothing to show for my current work. The reason is that I need motivation.

Here is the mission statement:

The purpose of this mod is to create a total conversion for the game Sins of a Solar Empire into hard science fiction(1). wapons reaserch will be done by reaserching spicific compaines who may give a variety of bonuses based on that companies wares. this reaserch will be expensive. also availible is government sponsered reaserch, which is cheaper, but does less.
hard science fiction, to be refered to as hardsci from now on. hardsci is science fiction categorized by using only known entitys. most technology is based on extrapolations  of current designs. gameplay wise, no plasma, beams, shields, or other magic. expect railguns, lasers, missiles, cannons, gauss guns, and other modren stuff. the basic rule is, "if you can't explain how it works, you can't use it."

1. scout
2. basic frigate
3. range frigate
3. colony firgate
4. antiplanet frigate
5. advanced combat frigate/ability frigate
6. antifighter frigate
7. basic combat cruiser
8.  ability cruiser
9. basic carrier cruiser
10. advanced combat cruiser
11. noncapship battleship
12. specialized cruiser (unique concept for each faction)

In total there will be 6 playable factions:

Pirate: yes, it's been done to death. Only capships will be able to colonize. weak economicly and culture-wise, they will rely strongly on missions and alternate sources of income. able to trade through black markets, which add to culture. many levels of weapons reaserch, but very expensive. their ships are generally painted black with or hace the look of stealth figthers to them. low ore and crystal costs, but higher than normal credit cost, as they use mecnaries.

"The Culture" Economic Giant, they get a lot of economic and culture research, few weapons research and expensive ships. their basic frigate is stronger, but most of their other ships are weaker. their ships tend to have longer ranges. most of their ships are armed civilian ships, and as such have weak hulls. their stuff is more expensive, but they can aford it because their economic reaserch is cheaper. in order to gain acess to more powerful weapons reaserch, they must reacherch wartime economy, which takes a great deal of time but can be started early. must do reaserch for some capships. they are a very prosperous nation who had not fought or many generations. lots of diplomacy reaserch.

 "confedration of free states": a supremecist nation who has been at war constantly for the past 4 generations. They view it as their duty to eliminate anyone they can, as the weak shall die. in their eyes this is the natural order. they are strong when it comes to bombing planets and damaging structures, and have no mercy about using any kind of weapon. a branch of their tech tree is devoted to unconventional weapons(nukes, bioweapons, chemical weapons, etc). while they share a common hatred of outsiders, they also, when lacking a better enemy, host vast interfaction wars over things like weather slavery or genocide is better. their ships are more accurate due to the large number of veterans crewing them, but tend to lack fighters and antifighter weapons.

The Monarchys: a series of small monarches afiliated only in name, they have been at war with the CFS for a generation. the kings and queen range from selfless to corrupt. their economy is average. there is a warrior tradition dating back thousands of years to the origional colonies of the late earth era. they are strong at fighters, and are outfitted with many gunports on their ships. they tend to cost more, as thir ships are gaudy and regal. their cap ships are more expensive. capships have high culture repel rates.

Earth Colonial Authority: the remains of the origional colonial authority before the Seporate Peace. when the colonies declaired independence, this organization fought valiantly to keep humanity under one banner. functioning like a mix of marine core and navy, they were not spared the splintering that befel the colonies. the loose alliance that lasted since the fall has fianlly cracked under the strain of too many competeing charismatic commanders. they are rediscovering their origional mandate of "one race, one banner". noable for stock ships, which are a little cheaper, of average firpower, but have fewer abilites. noted for a refusal to use WMDs, their planet attack shows troopships departing, which are less eficient. after all, it is about uniting, not killing, right guys? they look like the tec whose newer designs resembel modren aircraft. their older ones are blocky.

Freemen: the usual targets for the CFS, they are the remains of the rebellions of hundreds of rebellions by oppressed ethnic groups. usually losing the battles for their freedom, they escape to fight against tyrany another day. they use weaker ships that move faster through phase space. usually have small caliber guns, large guns, no lasers and few railguns . their fleets are described as a flotilla of scrap. They fight all other factions on the grounds that they are exploiting the underclass. communist, so lower amount of money from taxes. their ships are asymmetrical and obviouslty scavenged. early reaserch into scavengeing feilds allows them to build ships for 25% cheaper. they use some of the same black market techs as the pirates. have high costs for ore and crystal, but lowered credits, as the pilost are willing to work for nearly nothing.

I apologize about the spelling in the later paragraphs, for they were taken directly from my notes.

9,995 views 8 replies
Reply #1 Top

Sounds very interesting ill keep watching to see what new stuff will appear:ninja:

Reply #2 Top

Sounds interesting. Your ideas are fairly similar to mine. Here is the link to my thread, hopefully it may answer some questions you have.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/329761

Reply #3 Top

your better off just waiting untill the expanchion releases. and hoping that you can have more than just 3 pannels of research (civilian, military, and fleet) as well as 3 groups per pannel.  other than that, you got a LOT of work cut out for you, more than im going to explain really. but you got to create a new Player(name).entity for every new race (contains every ship, building, research, etc for the faction), new buildings, abilitys, ships, research, art, etc.

Reply #4 Top

Your confederation of free states sounds nothing of the sort... more like Chaos from Warhammer40k

On another post i mentioned about people posting about proposing, or suggesting new mods, but having absolutly nothing to show for it except an idea, and no one on the team can mod if their life depended on it.

There is nothing wrong with promoting new ideas. Especially if they are presented the way Dr Fosstus presented it here. Not like how some others did by posting the mod in a title making you think there is an actual mod in work, and then finding out 2, or 3 pages later that the team cant mod for crap, and there really is no mod.

These ideas are good foundations, but i would play around with it using some more imagination. Do the factions "have" to be human? Do humans need to be there at all? What if the Humans were the bad guys, and not revealed to be untill the final battle? Why is it always good guys vs space thugs? Just things you can play with and explore. You never know. There are not very many original IP mods out there.

Reply #5 Top

The Purpose when I was origionally writing was hard science. Sins uses a lot of its technology asthough it was magic: force shields that deflect beams of pure light... etc.

The factions have to be human.It is very difficult to explain xenobiology using hard science without using cop outs, and hard to make realistic aliens.

the purpose behind this was motivation. If people can see that I exist, then I work harder than if no one knows. I can pick up text editing fairly quickly, but the hardest part is going to be building the models. I have no experience with any kind of software for it.

 

I'll explain the ideas behind the sides and universe more later, got to go to dentist.

back from dentist

The Confederates are designed to be magnificant bastards. You pointed out the good guys vs space thugs bit. aside from the Confederates, there are no real heroes or villians in this, only political beliefs. The pirates steal stuff and have reaserch in drug trafficing that increases maximim loyalty, the culture are the entity who has supported their people with such a lavish lifestyle that they must conquer to maintain, the monarchys give every benefit to their upper class, the ECA wishes to remove all free will from government, and the Freemen wish to molotov everything. I designed, to an extent, so that you could pick your heroes and villians based on your own ideaology.

If I can't get my firends to make models, I will have to learn on my own, and that will suck. Major Stress is correct though in that I have little to show except an Idea, and my skills at this are terrible. StCobalt is correct that unless I can either learn to use the programs or get my friends to make the models, this will go nowhere fast.

 

Reply #6 Top

well, good luck. because findind a modeler is hard. finding a texturer/graphics artist, even harder.

Reply #7 Top

What kind of models are you looking for? Real time International space station, mir ,space shuttle, stuff like that?  I have a 6000 some odd poly version of the iss in gold foil textures and also have the mir in w.i.p. The shuttle should be an easy model to make depending on how accurate you want it.

Or are you thinking stuff like starship troopers ? or aliens movie tech ? I get your idea keep it real tech.

Reply #8 Top

Learning to model will not suck if you are willing to learn. It wont be easy, but if you have the patience, and are willing to learn from your mistakes it can be fun. I still LOL at my 1st models.

You will need Softimage XSI version 6 to export models in a format the forge tools can read. If you want to stick exclusivly with sins then learning softimage is your best bet. If you plan on expanding your horizons beyond sins, then i suggest learning 3dsmax, maya, and lightwave as well.

FYI you want to try to keep your triangles under 5k for ships. The highest poly ship model in sins is just over 4k and thats a cap ship. Cruisers and frigates average between 1 to 2k. the highest poly model in game is a station (i dont know which one) at 7k