Well, I've been mulling over a few ideas....

Mostly they include a 4th level to all abilities.  This would make most capital ships more useful come late game.

And I've got ship models that Ive been prototyping

Do you want those posted here?

A ability to create ships from a flagship would a great ability, but I believe it's been tried before and doesn't work out.

You could also try to give as a ultimate ability the orbital cannon ability to shoot far away planets.

Hey SuperZERO, to my knowledge there are a fixed number of ways to create ships: Frigate Factory, Capital Ship Factory, StarBase, createFrigate ability and spawnShips ability. I don't believe it's possible to create a new shipyard that wouldn't have to use an ability to spawn ships.

The problem with using abilities to spawn a capital ship is they don't follow supply lines correctly. For example: spawnShips will spawn a capital ship but will ignore the capital ship supply availability. I did one test where I spawned 50 capital ships, lol.

I do plan to use the existnig textures and will only have to create new meshes for resizing which shouldn't be too bad.

I think your mod is already great for a researchable capital ship so I'm just trying something different here to see how it plays out.

Personally I've been testing out my own mod where I made a 2nd tier of capital ships for all 3 factions.  So I made upgraded versions of 4 of the 5 for each faction, leaving out the one I considered likely to benefit the least.  These 2nd tier capital ships are much more expensive (30,000 credits, 4000 metal, 2500 crystal) and have to be researched first.  You'll need to be able to support 10 capital ships to even research them.  Gotta know how to handle the little boys before you can build the big boys, after all.

They start at the equivalent of level 5 for regular capital ships, then range up to the equivalent of level 14-15.  Upgraded abilities are included; the 2nd tier capital ships start with abilities equal to a level 10 normal capital ship, then they can further upgrade them.  The 3rd level 2nd tier heal cloud and nanodisassembler are nice, but the uppermost level of the upgraded volatile nanites is truly awesome in its ability to sow destruction through an enemy fleet.

I could contribute by showing you what I did with the ships, or you could check out the upgraded abilities I made for all of them.

p.s. I'm not sure you can make 5 new capital ships without discarding a current one.  I think there's only 9 slots total, at least in OS.

I've released version 0.01 of the Sins Flagship Mini-Mod.

Version 0.01 Release Notes:

Compatability: Entrenchment and Diplomacy only.

1. 5 Flag Ships have been created for each race
   1. Starting stats have not been changed
   2. Abilities have not been changed
   3. All level up stats have been doubled (excluding shield mitigation).
   4. Target counts per bank have been increased to 4 for all 15 Flag Ships
   5. Flag Ships are only spawned at game start and cannot be built from the Capital Ship factory.
2. A random Flag Ship class capital ship is spawned at the owner's planet at game start.
3. TECH Flag Ships mesh size and shield size have been increased 25%.
   • Mesh and shield size is for aesthetic purposes only.
4. PSI and Vasari mesh and shield sizes will be increased with the next release.
5. The first starting capital ship is still free, however, you have to research the first Capital Ship crew upgrade and possibly fleet supply upgrading depending on if fast start or not.

Sounds cool... You've peaked my interest even more

I'll try to package up what I have in the next day or two for the thread to look at.  It's not completely playtested, however.

Except for the string file, it all goes into \GameInfo\.

Some interesting ideas here. I'll contribute more when I have a chance, but I do have an initial thought.

Bear in mind that the targets per bank is logically governed by the number of hard points per weapon type in that bank.  For instance, if you have 2 beam emitters to the front, you can only set the forward target count to 2.  Otherwise, each emitter ends up discharging multiple weapon effects at once, including damage.  It doesn't create an errors, but it is an odd visual on screen.

If you've increased weapon hard points to offset this bug, I apologize for stepping on your toes and will promptly insert my foot into my mouth.

Thats a good question. First, this is a mini-mod. I don't plan on it becoming a full blown mod (I already have one of those I'm working on). I'm going for the KISS theory here to make a decent little mini-mod that will be fun for gamers and possibly useful for other modders.

Second, I'm not opposed to adding new abilities or improving existing abilities, but I need some ideas. It's easy to code them and much harder to think of them. I spent several months just researching ideas for my other mod.

That said bear in mind the Flag Ship class capital ships will reach the stats of a level 8 "normal" capital ship at level 4. This gives them a distinct advantage when it comes to total AM and AM regeneration allowing already good abilities to be used more often during a battle.

These Flag Ships will actually level up just like normal capital ships. A level 5 Flag Ship will have roughly the same stats as a level 10 Capital Ship.

Also, with entrenchment all ships, modules, etc can have the meshes customized (you might already know this). Although, you are correct that star bases allow the mesh to be changed based on the upgrade while ships and structures are globally linked to research.

I'm choosing to use the existing meshes though as this is only a mini-mod and I don't really plan on introducing new meshes or textures.

here is another idea you can use to force the flagship to be the one and only

    groups 0
planetItemsTemplate
    templateName "Template:DefaultHomePlanetSetup"
    subTemplates 0

group
            condition
                type "PlanetOwnerIsRaceQuickStart"
                param "Tech"
            owner "PlanetOwner"
            colonizeChance 1
            items 11
                item "Tech:Module:FrigateFactory"
                item "Tech:Module:CapitalShipFactory"
                item "Tech:Module:MetalExtractor"
                item "Tech:Module:MetalExtractor"
                item "Tech:Module:CrystalExtractor"
                item "Tech:Module:CrystalExtractor"
                item "Tech:Frigate:Constructor"
                item "Tech:Frigate:Constructor"
                item "Tech:Frigate:Scout"
                item "Tech:Frigate:Scout"
                item "Tech:CapitalShip:Flagship"

using the GalaxyScenarioDef file and put it under these headings
the player starts with it and if he loses it, oh well, can't rebuild

ah good point with the randomness part, personally I like having a new model up for a flagship, am using SujperZero0's Kol mod for it

am also working out some abilities for it

an idea that you might like for the TEC is possible an expansive version of the Finest Hour for a level 6 ability that covers the fleet