Btw, I'm enjoying this conversation.

Realistically, you keep moving of course. You don't necessarily get close to the yard, as there might be defenses and other sorts of hindrances close by, however maintaining movement is essential and one may opt for a sort of circular motion for example.

Please tell me your kinetics will be railguns or Gauss guns.  Autocannons in space are lame.

Nope, no autocannons.

Oh, thank you.

Hehe, and i agree with the mooving part, i picture side thrust mooving the ship sideways and forward at the same time, or in cases of extrame ranges just slight turns of the prow while mooving forward will cause shots fired to miss by vast distances. So im all with you on the mooving part, its just that with the system i saw in action the ships were like dogfighting, flying in circles around one another etc. That just struck me as unseemly for space combat. But hey, im no scientist specialicing in space and warfare at the same time

Good call on the autocannons. Much better to use rail guns, mass drivers, micro/macro cannons etc. Much more fitting, autocannons sounds like 40 mm anti air used during world war 2 hehe.

Hmm so yeah if you could slow down the movement speed of the ships when they are zooming around so it feels more like the slow dance of lumbering beasts instead of the mating dance of two hummingbirds it would be nice. Like where two big battleships slowly circle one another all the while firing every weapon port availible at the other. That could be kinda cool actually if done properly.

movement will be Carbon and Ryat slow.

Faster movement won't exist.

It will all be relative in the end, but no dances with locusts here.

Hehe, sounds good then.

Another item I forgot to mention is maps will all be custom multi-star with no Star Travel allowed.

Star systems will be connected to pre-defined jump points making it impossible to jump directly from a players home system to another players home system without first traversing through secondary systems.

A system may connect to one, two or more systems, but, again, the ability to jump between those systems will only exist at the pre-defined jump points.

Sounds good to me. Hehe.

hey zombie great mod, have just recently tried it. I have a quick question, how would i convert the ship and shield mesh files to text to that i can edit it for rebellion. I know that your supposed to add a line to the mesh file so that i will work for rebellion, I have read that its not mandatory, but its the only thing that I can think of that could be the problem. I've gotten a few meshes to work without editing but I tried it without editing it and the game mini dumps when i start a new game.  Also what texture files are the battle ship and carrier using for the hypercorp race cant seem to find them only see hypercorp capitalship main, perhaps thats why the game minidumps.   thk in advance.        btw the Fall of Humanity mod sound great looking forward to it.

managed to get it to work thanks to your reply in ask a ques section, and thks

Won't the AI end up researching both, though?

Not at all. They'll be constrained to pick Loyalist or Rebel. Then can can pick one and only one sub-path from there. Each sub-path has two levels.

Loyalist Sub-paths

Alliance

Assimilation

Migrant Fleet

Isolationist

Rebel Sub-paths

Purification

Militant

Syndicate

Bloodlust

Seed AI

I thought you couldn't force the AI from researching all of it.

Rebellion supports this.

This could go one of two ways, but I'll ask. I'm not saying I don't enjoy blowing the Cylons to hell with nukes, I find it amazing! But when I was playing this mod, on Diplo, as the Colonials against the Plague or 
Nephilim, gave me the challenge and rush that I love so much. My simple question is, not: "Oh, is the rest of this mod almost ready", or: "What's taking so long?!" All I just want to know is: have you done some work with the other fallen races?

Sadly, he hasn't.  In a private conversation I had with ZombieRsu5 over Xfire he indicated he wanted to finish Blood & Chrome before moving to the other races.  Please submit bug and balance reports as well as additional ideas for researches and abilities to him so he can finish B&C faster so he can move to the other races.

Thanks, it is nice to know people appreciate my original work. I spent a lot of hours researching various sources to come up with the fallen races.

If your hooked up to SVN I'll be putting working versions of Nephilim, Plague, Hypercorp and Rogue in soon. I haven't released them up to this point because they are mainly using stock titan setups and don't have any new cool research subjects yet for Rebellion.

As SpardaSon21 stated, I've been investing a lot of my free time into completing the Colonials which are now looking very good. While I did take the original assets for Sins of 13th Tribe, Blood & Chrome has been completely reworked to the point there is very little similarity between the two mods.

Off the top of my head here is some of the Colonial work done by me over the last year:

• Converted original Diplomacy work to be Rebellion compatible.
• Created new XSI scene's, hardpointed, wired textures for every model included in B&C plus some not used yet (40+ models)
• Reworked every texture improving the quality and detail for every model used from Sot13t.
• Remeshed and optimized the Galactica and Pegasus to include turrets from original coxxon models.
• Modified uv-map and texture for Generic Columbia and Mercury class battlestar meshes.
• Textured Koobalts Valkyrie model (new)
• Textured Cygnus Gunstar (new)
• Retextured Berzerk Escortstar, Alberio Gunstar, Nova Battlestar (From Sot13t)
• Added turrets to Asgard model.
• Mesh, hardpoints, additional texture work for Koobalt's Cetus and Jupiter models (additional texture work is creating the team, specular, light, reflective, bloom and normal map textures, original diffuse textures done by Koobalt).
• Mesh, hardpoints, additional texture work for many new models from Coxxon's fleet.
• All new research trees.
• All icon work for research trees.
• All icon work for main view and info card icons.
• New images for empire tree, research tabs, and research pictures.
• Added rjhughes BSG UI to the mod.
• Create all new abilities for every Battlestar, Cruiser and frigate
• All icon work for abilities
• lots and lots of hours researching BSG lore trying to translate that to something interesting for Sins research subjects.

A lot of the BSG mod exists because of the work done by Koobalt and the original content from Sot13t (kreeargh, Coxxon, kyogre12 and many many others) and a few other sources. I'm just happy to be able to bring to life their work and mine in one of the best space strategy games created.

I'm also feeling pretty good about where the Colonials are right now other than some balancing or tweaking of some abilities. I may pick a faction from fallen to finish before I start on the Cylons. It's probably about 4-6 modding weeks worth of work for each faction to make rebellion ready. Of course 4-6 modding weeks could be 2, 3 or 4 months if you don't get that week free to mod

looking forward to the fallen being added I need some more cannon fodder for my Battlestar's

Oh Rebellion, how I hate thee!

I'd drop the whole Rebel/Loyalist path for fallen if I hadn't already started down that path merging research trees on the Tech, Advent and Vasari. I'm not sure it's any better to be honest at this point, it just the current state of the mod.

Anyways here's some rough concepts for Rogue I may work on next.

Rogue faction titans

Yamato class Titan

Abilities: Wave Motion Gun, Stack Missiles, Rotating Asteroid Defense, Reflective Shield

Babylon class Titan

Abilities: Novalith Shell, Anti-module Shell, Explosive Shot, ?

Loyalist - Sure we're pirates, but respectable ones.

Rebel - We take what we want when we want too.

Going to take advantage of some universal techs along with some new stuff.

Research

Loyalist

Adaptive Smartlinks 3.0

Cargo Upgrade

Compartmentalization

Truce Amongst Rogues - Ya, rogue traders needed it.

Pirate Weapons

Pirate Armor

Pillaged War Chest

Savage Thrill

Warhead Splintering

High Order Explosives

Refined Emitters

Captured Frigates

Why not only include the Rebel/Loyalist mechanic for the stock three races, and just give SotF's races additional racial bonuses plus the choice between two Titans?

That was the original plan I was going to take, then I went and built out the Empire window for Rebel and Loyalists and haven't decided to dump it yet. Plus I put a fair amount of work into an addon that will add additional Empire trait selections for Loyalist and Rebels.

I'm also trying to creatively use the art assets I have as I'm not planning on any new modeling. 

Fallen stuff needed for a full Rebellion release...

12 Titans

12 Corvettes

~120 Research Subjects

60 Abilities

Lots and lots of icons...

I at-least have one faction nearly complete for Rebellion! So say we all!

I definitely like the thought of a hard sci fi game, love the speculative fiction.

I'm no physicist (not yet, anyway) but IIRC NASA's already researching a plasma shield type thing to protect against radiation; the earth's magnetosphere certainly protects us against EMP waves (and other radiation?) so an energy shield blocking energy weapons seems plausible.  Lasers could be stopped with dust particles/smoke screens or reflective/absorptive armor, and point defense lasers/railguns/particle beams could intercept missiles to an extent.

That said, there are a few issues... space is friggin cold... stealth would probably be even less possible with manned ships... go with unmanned drones perhaps?  Or perhaps not.

Anyway, lots of dronesthe follow up to this would be the requirement for an overseer of some kind.  This is where a smaller "fighter" type ship might come in handy...

Anyway, if you go with the "space age stealth beats space age sensors" side of things, "torpedoes" or cloaked (kinetic?) missiles kind of come up again, heck if they're unguided WMDs then potentially they come up exactly as they did in pre-WWII times, with small, nimble vessels zerg-rushing the bigger ships and point-blank firing (relatively speaking) in the hopes of getting a hit.  Having cloaked, unmanned torp. boats (probably expendable... maybe, or else they'd just ram the ship with the drone a la the Cole bombing) it would be an interesting mechanic if it could work out in SINS.  I always enjoyed torpedo boats vs. dreadnaughts in Fall of the Samurai's naval battles.  IMO torps. are fun and frantic to use or avoid.

I'm not entirely clear on things but I think fuel would be the biggest constraint/tactical concern... why not have antimatter represent fuel?  whenever you have a change in velocity/direction, you'd need to consume fuel somehow.. not sure how that would work, maybe a toggle ability that disables linear/angular acceleration or consumes antimatter?  Of course this might end up taking quite a few ability spots to implement, to say nothing of the probable microing, but if you're going with far fewer but more important/essential ships, then perhaps one or two of the bigger battlecruisers would work like that...

Also, because of the whole no-atmosphere thing, you could use (vac-proof) balloons as rocket-decoys etc.

ROGUE

Quick update on Rogue Trader/Syndicate factions. Still some work to finish up but getting closer to a release of this faction .

Rogue Traders (Loyalist)

Cybernetically enhanced humans fashioning themselves as pirates will be the first to pass through Pandora's Gate. These pirates aren't like the pirates of Sins making occasional raids for the highest bidder. Instead the Rogues are scavengers, trash talkers, and are generally just looking for a good fight to pass the time. Don't be surprised to see them offer "protection" to nearby worlds for a moddest kick back. Their affinity for the less than honest way of living meshes well with the pirates of Sins allowing for lots of back room deals. Sporting fast ships and a criminal mentality you might find yourselve faces losses both financially and militarily before you realized what happened.

 Yamato Class Titan

Abilities

• Wave Motion Gun - Enables Tachyon energy power of the engine to be fired in a stream directly forward damaging all units in it's path.
• Stack Missiles - Rocket missiles fired vertically from what was once the smoke stack of the original Yamato.
• Asteroid Defense - Rotating Asteroid Defense|Shock cannons fire showers of small metal probes which are magnetically formed into a hardshell resistant to enemy fire. As a final act, the asteroids are expelled at high speed damaging nearby ships.
• Reflective Shield - Coats the Yamato with a reflective energy coating, reflecting incoming damage back against it source.

 Scavenger Class Corvette

Abilities

• Scavenge Resources - The Scavenger's weapons have a chance to tag enemy ships making it possible to recover a percent of their cost.

Rogue Syndicate (Rebel)

Rogue Syndicates have no regard for the laws of others making it difficult for other factions to ally with you though you'll ally with anyone if it suits your purpose. It's difficult to tell the Pirates from your empire especially as you are able to purchase pirate reinforcements whenever they are needed. Stealing income and resources from other empires is a matter of pride.

 Babylon Class Titan

Abilities

• Kinetic Bombardment - huge multi-ton metal slugs fired at high speed to cheaply demolish ground emplacements
• Orbital Rocks - huge metal slugs shaped like old school rockes are fired at high speed to cheaply damage orbital structures.
• Grape Shot - tiny metal ball bearings fired from railguns which do huge damage in relativistic-speed during combat
• Consume Debris - Pulls debris within reach towards the titan, allowing it to be quickly deconstructed and used to repair the titan's hull.

 Domineer Class Corvette

Abilities

• Disrupt Hyperspace Jump - The Domineer's weapons have a chance to damage the enemy's hyperspace drives, impairing it's jump speed and charge rate