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Barbaric Penguin

Join Date 09/2007

Making Sins play more like Honorverse - ideas?

I've searched the forums and there have been very few mentions of Honorverse-like mods. It seems the consensus is that the property is rather tightly held for Honorverse ship designs, so doing a complete conversion for David Weber's Honor Harrington series is unlikely. Plus, looking at the ship designs for the setting, all the ships would mostly end up looking the same anyway, since they're all kind of cigar shaped. That wouldn't be very interesting visually (at least not to me).

However, that doesn't mean the game couldn't be play like ships from the book series. It doesn't really have to be changed as far as the models themselves go to make it play that way. And, it wouldn't intrude on the intellectual property of the setting just to try to make it play similarly. What would this mean to the game, then?

- Every ship type would have missiles. Missiles are the primary weapons used in the setting. Tech tree changes would be needed to make missile improvements more important, too, as range and power increase.

- Missile pods could be modeled by using the Missile Barrage ability. It would be a research option to add on to some of the larger non-capital ship classes.

- I don't know of any ability or capability of Sins to model anti-missile defenses. That's a big part of the book settings. I'm not sure how to model this part of the setting.

- Ships weaponry is mostly located on the sides, which makes sense with the more area there. This requires moving most of the weaponry to the left and right.

- Beam weaponry in the setting is short range and highly damaging. However, given the range the game has available, it probably makes sense not to greatly increase beam damage.

- Fighters already exist, as do carriers, so that's not a big change. However, the carriers in the setting are pretty much defenseless other than their fighters. Fighters are pretty strong against large ships, so there may be some changes needed there. Also fighters were a later addition to the setting as far as technology goes, so they will require research to attain. Most likely only carriers would be able to bring the fighters into battle and not capital ships.

- One problem is that the Honorverse setting has battles with large numbers of "ships of the wall". Capital ships in Sins don't really model the setting capital ships properly because the game tends to have only a few capital ships per side. This would mean a rework of the existing ship classes to allow much larger non-capital ship types. They would actually ramp up to the size of a capital ship at the high end and have similar hull and damage numbers to at least a starting level capital ship.

- So what are capital ships, then? I'm thinking they represent your heroic characters, such as Honor Harrington herself. They're your flagships of your fleets and thus have supporting abilities to inspire greatness during combat, just as the heroic characters in the books do. Of course you'd be starting out with the largest ships early with a capital ship, but you wouldn't get the large fleet ships until they're researched, so it comes close to representing the setting. This fits right in with the original Sins design, too, so that makes it easy to work with.

I have no experience with modding this game (or any other), so if anyone has any input or suggestions on what to do, please speak up!

modding

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Now this is what i'm' talking about! I myself also do not have any modding capabilities, this is however a very awesome idea. (Especially with ManSh00ter working on different battle physics) and (Danman working on some SolMods?) type stuff. In either case, I am bookmarking this and hopefully it will garner some attention.

Lastly, does anyone have any good ideas for creating Honorverse maps in which to play games of Sins? (That's what i'm currently looking for).

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I'm currently working on an honorverse map. I'll post back with more details later. I've got the general layout properly setup, now it's time to do some researching for planets.

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Might check out our mod Dawn of Victory if you're interested in those gameplay mechanics. We have the broadside mechanic, missile pods (in a way, haha), relatively powerful strike craft, and large cruisers with a fluid line between cruisers and (very large) capital ships. In a sense the only real difference is the reliance on cannons rather than missiles as well as the storyline, which takes a back seat to gameplay anyway.

It's good to see people with the attitude that visuals don't matter as much as gameplay, I suggest if you want things to get going to start learning at least scripting: it's relatively simple to reverse engineer and get going on. I would be hesitant at best to say a TC mod is a good idea considering the lack of available texturing and modeling in this community, but a minimod using those mechanics would be a worthy project.

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I've made a few maps with the idea in mind. The thing that i can't do is make a wormhole that goes to more than one place. The Honorverse map idea works. Basicly if you want to jump all the the across the map the only penalty is time.

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- I don't know of any ability or capability of Sins to model anti-missile defenses. That's a big part of the book settings. I'm not sure how to model this part of the setting.

I'm not sure if it's possible, but you could try making a special strike craft with a short range kamikaze ability and using that to model missiles. It opens up many possibilities wrt alpha strikes, magazines, active anti-missile defences, screening, etc.

I wonder if force attack can work on strike craft.

It probably won't be possible to simulate directional damage though. Best you can do is make the big ships slow turners, so if you get broadside to their nose you'll get a lot of damage off unanswered. *shrug*

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I've been working on the above mentiond Honorverse map, and I've run into a problem. Having modeled a star for each system (50 stars with roughly 2-3 colonizable planets per system), when you zoom out, it just turns into a white blob.

Is there ANY way that those galaxy animation things for stars (when zoomed out) can be turned off either by settings or changing a value in the game itself? So far, i've play tested some stuff and it works great, the only issue is that when you zoom out everything just turns into a bogged down brightly lit fog lamp. ' (you can't see where anything is until you zoom in again).

Also, just have the wormholes near each other (for the Manticore Junction) with very short phase lanes. This should allow you to simiulate a 'junction' without too many problems.

~Reuben

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I think Distant Stars or somebody did a mod to turn off the trails - reducing the radius of the stars and increasing the scale value should also help.

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I'm also looking at the existing races in Sins and trying to map them to the universe. The setting doesn't really have any alien races since they're all one human "empire" facing against another. TEC seems the most obvious for all of them, but that would be the most boring if everyone used that. So TEC could easily be Manticore. I'm thinking Vasari would be a representation of the "Peeps", or at least the earlier books Peep gov't because they were more aggressive. Advent seems kind of the odd-man out because they fit the setting the least. They could be considered Grayson since Grayson technology was what allowed for fighters to be introduced into the Honorverse, though Grayson is not really a star empire.

Or we could just ignore trying to make the Sins races map into the Honorverse and just focus on making the game play more like the setting. That's probably the simpler path.

Someone mentioned using fighters as missiles. That's a pretty good idea, especially if we use mines launched from "carriers" as the missiles. That would be a more accurate representation of the setting. That accounts for longer range of the missiles, too. Then you could give ships some measure of flak weaponry as anti-missile defenses. I don't know if it is possible, but existing missile weapons could be reclassified as a longer range anti-strike craft weapon, too, to model the longer range of counter-missile weaponry. You probably don't need both on a single ship, though, because that would reduce firepower too much with only 3 weapons available plus "mine missiles".

Using mines also allows for upgrades in size of squadrons to model larger missile barrage sizes as missile tech improves. And there are abilities that can model electronic warfare, such as the Advent power to fling strike craft (forgot the name).

This is definitely something worth trying as a way to model the setting.

On the maps subject, I'd love it if anyone could share maps they've already made. If other mods have a way to make the maps work properly, then that's all the better.

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Hmmm, I'll have to look into the Distant Stars mod to see if it's the effect that i'm looking for. It might just be that we have to make a mod to turn off the star grahpics when zoomed out to play the honorverse map i'm creating. I sent a message to ManSh00ter so we'll see what he has to say. He is also the one creating the Dynamic Battle System mod (which is closer to Honorver style fighting than vanilla sins is) and the Last Stand mod. If I can get the star graphics issue fixed then I'll continue with working on the Honorverse map and i'll keep you all posted with what I find out. (Other than the star issue, things are going good).

50 Star Systems, 1-3 habitable planets per system (Habitable = Planets you can colonize without doing research).

Is there anyway to slow down ONLY the jump speed, especially from star to star? A custom map I played on a while ago took forever to go anywhere, and currently the large map I have (as big as you can get it I believe), jumping between stars and stuff doesn't take as long as I would like.

Lastly, would alliegance be an issue if you own a planet in corner 1 of the universe on star 1 but also own a planet in corner 3 of the universe on star 50? How does alliegance between stars work exactly? Also, if that's an issue, is there a way to change it?

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I wouldn't be too concerned about the speed of jumps between stars. Taking longer would be not really be fun for the game itself, though it would be more in line with the setting. We could just consider it a hybrid between Honorverse and the Starfire series Weber was also involved in. Travel between stars in Starfire is "instant" using warp points. We already can't combine all the planets around a star into one big gravity well, after all. We'll just have to work with what we have.

Do we really need to turn off the star graphics? It's much more likely you're zoomed into at least a single star system when playing, it seems. I guess I'd have to see your map and play it to see what you mean.

I'm not certain how allegiance works between stars. If you build broadcast antennas, it should help spread your culture within a star system, at least.

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I'm going to try a few more things with the map to see if it helps clear up the problems before I put a 'VERY' incomplete version of it up for download. I also downloaded the Distant Stars mod and it does NOTHING to clear up the issue I am talking about. My biggest frustration is the fact that when you zoom out, your star turns into a miniture galaxy animation and ... well ... when you have a ton of stars, it just gets all screwed up past that point.

[Edit] Alright, so those things didn't work. I tried increasing the scale and it didn't seem to change much. Idealy I would like the time it takes to travel inbetween stars to be LONGER than the time it takes to jump two planets to get toa wormhole and use it, if jumping between stars takes too short of a time, then there is no reason to use the wormholes. That's the reason I was hoping to get the star jumping distance increased so if you wanted to jump between both corners of the map it would take you at least five minutes, maybe ten, that way people were encouraged to use the wormhole junctions.

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Below is a list of the Regioins and Star Systems I want in my map. I have done a lot of research as far as which systems have what and below is a good culimation of everything I could find. Keep in mind I have not put EVERYTHING down, otherwise this map would become a 80 - 100 star map very easily. For Reference, please refer to this Map of the Honorverse .

This next link is a Galaxy Forge map that has all of the star systems in place. It has the Sol system completed with a Start for Player 0. The Sankar system has a temporary Player 1 starting location (will not be in final release) simply for testing. These are the only two systems with planets.

Honorvorse Map - Work In Progress

Known Issues:

-When zoomed out everything turns 'white'. If someone could some how fix this, it would be greatly apreciated.

-Ships jump faster than I would like. Overall they should be jumping slower than they are to make future wormholes an advantage.

-Victory / Defeat usually happens upon map load up.

50 Star Map

1-3 Colonizable Planets Per Star System (Colonizable = Desert, Terran, Asteroid)

Solarian League

Sigma Draconis (Worm Hole - Manticore) - Beowulf (No Defense)

Sol - Earth Solar System (Player Start)

Joshua (Worm Hole - Erewhon)

Lima

Sankar

Silesian Confederacy

Marsh - Sidemore - Sidemore Station

Silesia (Player Start)

Tyler's Star

Sachsen - Has a Station

Sharon's Star

Endicott - Masada

Hancock - Red Dwarf (No colonizable planets)

Zanzibar - Pirates - 1 Asteroid Belt

Alison

Yorick

Elrick - Heavy Defenses

Grendelsbane - 1 colonizable planet (Heavy Defenses)

Yeltsin - Grayson (Also Asteroids) (Player Start) Uriel (Gas Giant) - Black Bird Base (Dead Asteroid) (At Least Six Planets)

Erewhon - (Worm Hole - Terra Haute, Joshua) - Pirates (Player Start)

Seaford 9 - No Habitable Planets

Silvestria - Trade Ports

Phoniex

Hennesy (Worm Hole - Manticore) (Heavy Defenses)

Terra Haute (Worm Hole - Erewhon)

Andermani Empire

New Berlin - Potsdam - Alpha Station (Player Start)

Durandel (Worm Hole - Asgard)

Gregor B

Gregor A (Worm Hole - Manticore) (No Habitable Planets)

Midgard - (Worm Hole - Asgard) (Player Start)

Matapan - (Worm Hole - Manticore) (Light Defenses) (Recently Settled)

Corovic - (Worm Hole - Asgard)

Asgard - (Worm Hole - Midgard, Corovic, Durandel)

Basilisk - Station (Worm Hole - Manticore) - Medusa

Talbott Cluster

Lynx B (Worm Hole - Manticore) (No habitable Planets) - Astro Control - Red Dwarf Star

Lynx

San Miguel - Good Commerce

Tillerman - Pirates

Talbott (Heavy D)

Split (Player Start)

New Tuscany

Republic of Monica

Monica (Player Start) (Pirates) - (Eroica Station) - Asteroids

Taylor

Manticore

Manticore - (Worm Hole - Basilisk, Gregor B, Lynx, Sigma Draconis, Hennesy, Trevor's Star) - Salamander (small planet closest to the sun), Phoenix (volcanic), Manticore (Player Start), Sphinx (Terran), Draco (Gas Giant), Roc (Gas Giant), Wyvern (Gas Giant), Erinye, Gorgon, Aphrodite, Domocles, Gryphon (Terran), Unicorn Asteroid Belt, nibelung Asteroid Belt, Titan, Gorgon Asteroid Belt, Fenris (Gas Giant)

Republic of Haven

Haven (Heavy Defenses) (Player Start)

Barnett

Trevor's Star (Worm Hole - Manticore) - San Martin is only habitable Planet

Seabring

Adler

Gaston - Toulon (Desert Planet)

Cerberus - Heavy Defenses - 2 Asteroids

Clairmont

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Do you intend this to be multiplayer only or what? AIs aren't that great at multi system matches.

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Wouldn't wormholes be worth using because they take you to a different part of the star's map?

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This map is intended to be a multiplayer map first but it is hoped that with a smaller number of colonizable planets per star the AI would be forced to expand more quickly.

Wormholes can be set to jump between stars (there are a couple threads on the forums explaining how this can be done). The goal is that if to jump between two stars takes a minute or so, actually gaining control of a system with a wormhole will mean something as it will grant faster travel betwee systems in comparison to jumping from star to star.

Idealy, this map asks the players and AI to engage in more strategical thinking because of the way the stars are setup. There arn't many systems, if any at all that you can just build up a fleet and go stomp around the star until you've got everything. As you expand your empire, strategy will play a bigger role, such as alliances ect ect. This is very similar to the honorverse itself.

NOTE: I can place planets, phase lanes, setup wormholes, place stars, but what i'm lacking in skill is the ability to setup templates and place structures. If I can get the planets and phase lanes set, and we can get the zoomed out glowing galaxies of death fixed, would someone with some skill in placing orbital items upon start, ect ect, be willing to teach me?

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Here's a thought... make the map only have 1 star. Yes, I know that makes it more "unrealistic" as far as multiple stars go, but it completely solves the wormhole problem and the star graphics problem. Model each "system" as a cluster of planets instead with everything around a single star on the map itself. You could still model the actual stars as gravity wells you can't colonize if you wanted to keep the star idea there. Then the multiple jumps between planets represents the longer travel time and makes the wormhole junctions worth using.

This would also solve the AI in a multi-system problem.

The idea came to me as I was reading about other maps done. For example, this Babylon 5 map was done all as a single star: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/320412

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The big issue I have with making everything one star, is that then you would have 50 phase lanes from each 'star' to each other 'star' in the game. The big draw for the Honorverse map is that you can jump from ANY star system to any other star system, not be dictaged by phase lanes between planets and such. The goal was to have each system have 1-3 habitable planets with anywhere from 5-9 planets total per system. I'd really like to not compromise the foundation of the map design if I don't have too. DarkCloud, did you have any ideas? I know we could rework the map that way but, if we dont' have to I don't want too.

As far as the 'White Globs of Glowing Doom' go, (when everything is zoomed out everything just glows white from the galaxie's clumping together), I was talking with ManSh00ter and this is what he had to say.

"I do have a few ideas. For one, there must be an image file controlling how the zoomed-out star looks like. Perhaps replacing that with the image file of a medium zoom-out star (the one where it is still a single star, not a galaxy) would work.

However, since the galaxy spirals are actually 3D (as far as I can tell) it is quite possible that the effect is hardcoded. Texture-wise, I took a quick look in the textures directory and suggest you take a peek at the "galaxyspiral" textures, see if you can switch them for normal stars."

I did some digging and this is what I found.

"Alright,

I've opened up the directory and this is what I see.

galaxyspiral2.dds
galaxyspiral3.dds
galaxyspiral.dds
galaxyspiral_green2.dds
galaxyspiral_green3.dds
galaxyspiral_green.dds
galaxyspiral_orange2.dds
galaxyspiral_orange3.dds
galaxyspiral_orange.dds
galaxyspiral_red2.dds
galaxyspiral_red3.dds
galaxyspira_red.dds

I have zero experience in texture changing, I don't think you can use particle forge to mess around with these values. I'm assuming that either galaxyspiral.dds is the blue star, the others are the red, green, yellow respectively. Also, i'm assuming that the three galaxyspiral,2,3 denotations are the three 'zooms' of the galaxies that pop up either in 1,2,3 or reverse order? Is there any good method of changing those files around so that it looks the same in all zoom levels. Or better yet, is there any method by which to get rid of those files by either deleating them or overwriting them with renamed star.dds files?

Which brings me to my other question. Looking up the star.dds files, these are what I found.

starblue.dds
stargreen-dds
starred.dds
staryellow.dds
starcore-blue.dds
starcore-green.dds
starcore-red.dds
starcore-yellow.dds

starcorona2.dds
starcorona.dds
starfield.dds <---- this one looks particularily interesting
starscapestar0.dds
starscapestar1.dds

Where and how should I begin. (unless trial and error are truly the only way)"

So, that is currently where I am at.

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I would suggest creating a mod folder in the mods folder and coping the particular .dds file that you want to the names of the other .dds files as asimple means of testing

hope this helps

harpo

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Replace all the spiral textures with black and that might achieve the effect: or simply delete them.

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One minor thing that I think would be neat that I haven't seen mentioned: Make gravwells much bigger. Quite often, big fleets take up half the star system, and it really limits the ability use manuever to give youself a tactical advantage, or force combat with a fleet that wishes to avoid action.

As far as modelling anti-missile defenses, I have an idea. First off, let me say that I have no idea whether it would be feasible within the Sins engine, but my modding instinct says it might work.

Model missiles as fighters with high acceleration, but limited maneuverability. Then give them a powerful laser weapon, with an insanely long refire time, multiple banks to reflect a single burst detonation of a laser head. Then give all ships a anti-fighter weapons (lasers & CMs) with a range several times that of the 'fighter' and a probability of hitting in line with how accurate point defense should be. To ensure that we don't get "missiles" making a second attack run, have a third weapon system on all ships, with a range say, 75% that of the laser burst from our "missiles", which has no visible firing effect, instant hit and pefect accuracy. This will clean up our fighters by killing them so they don't live to fire again, and by making the range of this thrid system similar to the fighter's range, we minimze the time where we have a "detonated" missile flying towards the target ship. Low enough turn rates will mean players / the AI can't micro their fighters for multiple attack passes.

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The Dawn of Victory mod does mention kamikaze fighters. That could work out as a way to model missiles, too.

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(still trying to find the time to mess with files to test the galaxy spiral stuff, college exams are killing me this upcomming week).

If you're looking for adjusted gravity wells and stuff, the Sol System Mod's might be something you should look into as I believe they did that while adjusting the planet sizes too.

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Alright, having messed with the texture files by deleating them has yielded not a single change, at all. No mini dumps, nothing. It's wierd.

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I completed a playable HV Map using only one star. Problems encountered: I couldn't connect all systems. Theirs an upper limit on how many phase lines you can have. With 40 stars connecting in the one real star map. 1600 phaselines. It goes kaput at 400 or500. Just locks up Gal forge. So I compremised by making jumps about 1\3 of the map. I tried to make it playable in about 1 1/2 hours for aggressive strategies. My HV map design was made with TEC on TEC in mind. I made the 2 sides different with the use of the Artifacts.

HV 2.0 Map1v1
Download

The map must be played with the CB mod.

I didn't randomized the positions. So Player 1 is the PRH and Player 2 should be Manticore.

This is only the 2nd version and is incomplete.

I intend to add more planets and moons and name everything that isn't named correctly.

Feel free to pm me for playtesting. Also I did not include a read me. I hope u'ds guys would know where to stick it...LOL.

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Hmmm, I played around with it and a few of the things that i've run into on your map are a few of the things that was why I decided to try the star route.

Good:

I like how you have system limit's modeled into the map. Very cool idea if you're going with phase lanes.

I feel tha the Celestial Body Mod has a lot of good utility in it that may lend itself to be usefull to a Honerverse Style Gameplay mod if used correctly.

Needs to be Fixed / Re thought: (My Opinion)

If both sides start with a lot of planets gained, it's very VERY confusing. The main reason being that you have no idea where anything else is in relation to anything else. In the Honorverse style universe, people knew where charted planets were, in this map. Don't. So all you have are a bunch of starting planets with phase lanes that you have no idea about where they go.

The reason I had decided to try the star route, was simply because everbody knew where the stars were and what they were called, even if you hadn't explored them yet. *shrugs*

With all the starting planets set up, there is absolutely no way to physically get your planets upgraded (plaing as Haven). It may be 'realistic' but you can't create a battle fleet that way, at all. Also, Haven started with a pretty big military. The majority of planets, whether in the honorverse they were habitable or not are able to be colonized at some point using this mod, AND they all have defenses and frigate factories in this mod.

The reason I had gone with the stars is that with Jump to Star reasearched, you can jump anywhere, and not be limited by phase lanes. You mentiond that you ran into a limitation on phase lanes, perhaps this would solve it.

I also think that players shouldn't start with an empire, they should start with a planet, just like in real sins. I don't so much care about emulating the Storyline of the Honorverse as much as I do the 'setting'. I want to battle accross the systems and planets with whatever race I deem fit to command. I was hoping with a standard Galaxy Forge Map this could be completed. (Again, white globs of death have prevented this).

I think there's a lot of potential for good, it's just, with the way the current phase lines are all setup, and with phase lines being the governing connection point between 'systems', it's too clutered and confusing to start off with. It's certainly impressive, just not what I had hoped could be accomplished.

Does ANYBODY have any idea how to get rid of the white globs of death when you zoom out?

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