Sparda, has 7DS considered splitting off it's various races into stackable mini-mods like SotF and SoGE have done? 7DS would heavily benefit from the reduction in RAM usage, assuming its militias aren't too racially diverse.

Even so, you can still do it; it depends on what you mean by diverse. For example, if you're only using 2-5 ships and 1 defensive structure out of a whole race's fleet of say 15 frigates, plus capital ships and Titans, you can leave those 2-3 ships' entity, mesh, and texture files present in your CORE module while the rest of the ships and structures can be moved to their own file. That alone is a good 170+ MB of savings right there.

Assets which are common among two or more races would have to be left in the CORE module, such as say a ship (entity and/or mesh) used by both the TEC and TCA. UI stuff, and entity files that aren't either a ship, structure, or playerRACE, could be left in as well. Or, alternatively, you could put those common assets into their own stackable mini-mod, one which would have to be put underneath the TEC/TCA in the mod list.  If say 90% of a race's stuff is integrated into the core of the mod, then it might not be the best idea to move them out.

I'd be happy to explain things more detail and/or answer questions if any of you guys have some.

I'm ok with you guys commenting or criticizing my mod in this thread.

Please take comments about other mods elsewhere please.

I cut a version of my modding framework for Fall of Humanity which will be my first conversion mod. 

Here's a rough draft of my plans which will mostly be a lot of coding work. I'm wanting more emphasis on fleet engagements and less on geeking star bases and titans against the AI. Hopefully it all pans out well and since it's all primarily coding I only have myself to work against me on this. Like I said previously magic casting abilities are out of the mod as I'm wanting to focus on a more limited hard scifi theme. Maybe it will be fun, maybe it won't. I'm just going to enjoy trying something different.

Fall of Humanity will be told in 3 acts.

Act 1: War

Act 2: First Contact

Act 3: Extinction

War Factions: Alliance and Syndicate

First Contact Factions: Unknown aliens yet to be discovered

Extinction Factions: Unknown new threat arrives

Human Fleet Roles

Flagship 

• Your fleets main Battlecruiser which coordinates fleet strategy
• Flagships won't be overly powerful but will retain levels when rebuilt.
• You'll only be able to build 1 flagship (similar to titans in vanilla).

Battleships

• Heavily armored
• Heavily Gunned
• Extremely slow.
• Capable of extremely long range Kinetic Bombardment 

Battlecruisers

• Sacrifices armor for speed
• Heavily gunned
• General purpose attack battleship capable of taking on Cruisers
• Capable of engaging battleships in number or supported with Heavy Cruisers

Auxililiary Cruisers

• Heavily armored
• Slow
• Lightly gunned
• Responsible for resupply and performing remote fleet repairs (ship yards will be capable of performing on site repairs)
• Able to exploit remote resources while in hostile territory to manufacture additional expendable munitions

Heavy Cruisers

• Moderate speed
• Moderately Armored
• Heavy Weapons for engaging Battleships

Light Cruisers

• Lightly Armored
• Fast
• Capable of defending Battleships or Battlecruisers from Heavy Cruiser attacks

Destroyers

• Very Lightly Armored
• Very Fast
• Primary role is to defend heavier unites from Light Cruisers
• Speed advantage can be used to strike fleeing targets or targets of opportunity

There will be no strikecraft

General Characteristics of ships

All ships will have dynamic movement

All ships will have shields though shield mitigation as a mechanic will be out.

All heavy cruisers or larger while taking damage will begin to have critical systems go offline at various intervals. Eventually ships will lose the propulsion and if damaged enough will slowly float away and die. As ships are damaged they will take less and less physical damage depending on the class of ship. Battleships for example will become increasingly difficult to destroy as they're hull reaches 5-10% though at this point they will be floating husks without any weapons or propulsion.

All ships will have expendable munitions represented by their reserve capacity. When expendable munitions run out weapons such as missiles or kinetic based weapons will be disabled. Powerful shorter range energy based weapons will still be available until expendable munitions are re-supplied.

Escape pods will be launched from dying cruisers and battleships. Escape pods making it to friendly planets or fleet will add back to your available Military Personnel. Escape pods may be captured for additional experience by enemies.

Economies

Resources will include Personnel, Raw Materials and Research.

Research facilities may be built on key planets only and can be used to focus on improving key areas of your empire.

It will be possible to divert Personnel for temporary increases in Raw Materials or Research.

Raw Materials and Research may also be sold to acquire additional Personnel.

Personnel and Raw Materials will be used when constructing ships and structures.

Research points will be required to start any improvements through the various research trees.

Additional personnel will mainly be acquired by building orbital training facilities. The rate of increase in personnel will largely depend on the population size of the planet and available training facilities.

Alliance forces will rely on a steady stream of recruits and will experience surges in volunteers after successful engagements.

Syndicate forces will rely heavily on forced conscription for resupplying additional personnel. Their surges will occur when acquiring new planets or after suffering losses.

Colonizing planets will require dedicating a large amount of personnel to secure the planet and enough raw materials to start operations. Integrating a planet fully into your empire will be a costly affair.

Research

Fleet combat tactics, command and control research will be based on the number and presence of capital class ships in the fleet.

Planet side operations including planet development, training facilities, construction yards, etc will depend on the number of research stations built.

New technology or advancements will be acquired by spending accumulated or purchased research points.

Right now I just don't see strikecraft playing a role in the mod.

Syndicates will have the more expendable ships overall. Their tactics will vary slightly from the Alliance that likes to preserve ships and their crews. Overall weapons will be fairly comparable between the two factions though in keeping with the harder scifi theme as these are both human factions. I will look at some other tactical differences as well with the Syndicates in keeping with this theme based on how things test out.

I also have some challenges learning how dynamic movement will affect the battles as well as avoided the dreaded infinite chase out of the gravity well. 

Indeed ship leveling is a bit of an issue as I don't want magic hull and armor appearing on the units. More experienced repair, engineering teams all sound plausible. A rank insignia for promoting the ships commander sounds interesting too. I've thought about decreasing the chance to hit down for all ships (vanilla is 100% chance to hit). A seasoned crew might be able to better position their ship ensuring more attacks go where they should.

The general idea is only missiles or kinetic based weapons will rely on expendable munitions. All energy based weapons will always be available. Auxililiary cruisers will be tasked with refilling expendables which the AI should be able to handle quite well. The next task is how do you refill the Auxiliary. Two ways will be possible here. One is being in your own system where supply routes are established and expendable munitions can be resupplied when not in combat. The other way is for an Auxiliary cruiser to deploy their own mobile mining units in remote locations or deploying raiding teams to enemy structures.

I had also thought about using raw materials as a global resource for Auxiliaries but I'm leaning more towards the fact if your fleet is in remote enemy space they are cutoff from traditional supply lines.

In the back of my mind I want ship building to be a slow affair especially for larger ships. I want to avoid the swarm mentality too.

Though fleet to fleet engagements will be costly so just because you won doesn't mean you can just barrel through to the next system.

I thought about it, but like the idea of shields protecting from random volleys. They won't be able to survive sustained hits. Some weapons will poke holes in shields too allowing weapons a chance to bypass for a short time.

The idea in space is the ships are moving and moving fairly quickly. I get what you mean about positioning units and what not, but I think speed will come into play more with dynamic movement. I might find I want the battleships taking more stationary positions which is something I was considering. I just have to play around some to see.

These are basically some things I'll be shooting for. There will be other improvements ships can get, but you'll have to visit a shipyard or be newly constructed to get them.

Exactly. Evil megacorporation everyone works for. Kind of like Hypercorps taking control of the population and treating planets and their population like a corporation too.

Ships should have enough on board supplies to fight engagements assuming it doesn't go on too long. They would should only need resupplied after a battle or while retreating.

Also, some systems will require Auxilliearies in order to exploit the resources there as you won't have the option to colonize and backtracking may not be an option.

Basically there's some other stuff I haven't fully gone into like time to traverse a system, game speeds, etc. Some of these things will dictate a change in tactics versus flying around a massive map as quickly as you can on faster settings now.

It's good to have ideas challenged. Thank you.

I can only hope the gameplay is fun, because I'm not messing around worrying about a bunch of new models.

Hehe, yeah ugh, not worth it just for a new shiny dress.

Yeah what lavo says. When i played star trek, i parked my ships and they outgunned every other moving one, was pretty hillarious, them zooming around while i just sat there blowing them out of the sky.

Well, that was fairly easy to solve. 

Ability: Evasive Maneuvers

When your ship is moving it will be harder to target and damage.

When your ship is not moving it will be an easy target to hit and damage. (i.e. a ship not moving will get raped by anyone attacking it).

The problem is stationary is not superior in space. The ability to dodge and move is superior in space. 

If one target is moving towards another that is not moving which has an easier time of predicting where shots should be fired?

We are essentially talking basic physics and predictability here especially in a 3 dimensional space.

Which is more likely to happen with moving targets. That stationary target is likely to catch everything thrown at it.

Some of the weapons will be long range, especially kinetic attacks at planets or structures.

Others will be shorter range such as the Energy based weapons.