Dawn of Victory (DoV) is a modification currently under development by Slipstream Productions for the RTS Sins of a Solar Empire. Dawn of Victory is a total conversion, replacing the game's original assets with completely new and diverse ships, structures, and gameplay elements. Dawn of Victory pits players as one of 3 intergalactic superpowers: the Democratic Federation, Greater German Reich, and the Soviet Union. These three factions wage war amongst themselves even as a greater threat, the Scinfaxi, threaten them all.
While Dawn of Victory started out loosely based on Harry Turtledove’s “Worldwar” and “Colonization” book series, since then, the backstory has expanded to the point where it has taken on a life of its own.
For centuries an alien race known as the Scinfaxi had been the dominant power in the Orion region of space, their slow but steady expansion brought them into contact with dozens of other races, each one conquered and exterminated to provide the resources and material necessary to support the continually expanding empire.
In the 14th century, the first Scinfaxi probes reached Earth: it was surveyed, catalogued, and the plans were meticulously laid for its capture and assimilation. However, the Scinfaxi concept of time was very different from humanity's, and so when the first ships of the conquest fleet arrived in 1943, they were stunned to see Terran society had progressed to an industrial state in an unimaginable sliver of time. The initial landings took humanity by surprise, as the Scinfaxi advanced upon every continent.
It was in this darkest hour that what once divided humanity now brought it together, as the old prejudices were put aside and every free nation on Earth united against the alien aggressors. The tide turned in 1945 when the Soviet Union detonated an atomic bomb on its own soil, destroying a Scinfaxi landing site.
With the total conquest of Earth impossible without destroying everything of value, the Scinfaxi retreated to the Southern hemisphere, content with half the planet. Decades went by with no contact from the Scinfaxi, but as humanity grew bolder, the aliens' plans accelerated. As spacecraft from the last free nations made landfall, and eventually colonized new worlds, the Scinfaxi slowly began to advance. City after city was lost until, in a final act of desperation, the various Terran factions agreed to pursue a literal "scorched earth" policy, sacrificing their remaining positions to nuclear bombardment and quarantining the planet.
Humanity has expanded to the stars, and dozens of planets and moons now belong to the remaining Terran nations. There has been almost no contact with the Scinfaxi, and the former nations of Earth have become so complacent with their apparent safety that the old prejudices have returned and they once again war amongst themselves. The Scinfaxi are still expanding however, and it is only a matter of time before they decide to stamp out the potential usurpers; if humanity is allowed to advance another hundred years, it may be human soldiers landing on Scinfaxi worlds. The dawn of victory is approaching: the only question is which side will claim it.
Past Updates
Good stuff
This is probably the coolest mod for sins ever!
Check out their website too, there alot more information about the mod, and the back history.
http://forums.slipstreamproductions.net/index.php?showforum=85
http://wiki.slipstreamproductions.net/index.php?title=Dawn_of_Victory
AWSOME THANKYOU swiss knight I was beginning to think u guys wud never release more pics. Its just u take so very long to put something out. but its cool thou.
Your Soviet concept design and model dude(s) are/is Coolhand-level quality. Those who are in the know will know what I'm talking about.
The reason for the long wait between updates is that Dawn of Victory isn’t just a mod that’s gonna slap some new models and skins on existing units and keep everything else the same. We’ve been radically altering the gameplay to accommodate our ideas and many of the things we’re working on can’t be illustrated with just screenshots.
Not to mention, as previously stated, we will never release unskinned or unfinished models they always look like crap.
And we did indeed take look at some of Coolhands Soviet ships when we were thinking of our designs.
Nice to see an update, hope to see more of this great mod .
you just made me jizz in my pants after that video.
Now im waiting patently just too see the germans kick the soviet ass back to the first stalingrad.
ok swiss ill be as patient as possible.
This is something that I found that I thing you all will apreciate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KEueJnsu80
Enjoy
With the resumption of hostilities on the Soviet-Reich border, tensions have risen all across the Illyrium Sector. Civilian trade has nearly disappeared in the neutral colonies of New Geneva, Kuiper, and Outreach over fears the conflict could spread to the New Weimar Republic.
The 20 some odd Freeports in the Illyrium have their fair share of scares lately after fighter spacecraft and bombers from Soviet battlegroups have begun flybys dangerously close to civilian shipping. 2 weeks ago civilian salvage ship “Tranquillity” was forced to abort its docking at Freeport 29 when a squadron of Soviet bombers fired shots across its bow.Still, even with such incidents occurring at an alarming rate, not every free captain is willing to find safer routes. For the BBC, I’m William Moyles reporting from Freeport 33.
Since we launched our Wiki, we've had an enormous amount of fan backstory written. User-generated content has came from forum games and such, but there has also been quite a bit of pure prose from some talented individuals. Entire minor factions have been built up from scratch, diplomatic relatons and history described, and conflicts and skirmishes illustrated in great detail. The mod's development and backstory has been heavily influenced by fan-created works. Both our latest news updates' names were inspired by an article created by user Super-soviet called “Proletarian Colonisation”, which also found its way into the manual.
Most of the long articles on units were written by myself, but there have been some rather lengthy articles on various other aspects of the universe. SSP forum regular Wingman has taken it upon himself to flesh out the entire DF faction: he has contributed to the main DF page as well as created several articles about their politics in an attempt to keep them from being the “generic good guy” faction.
Erdrick Colonization Corporation
Another frequent contributor, the aforementioned Super-soviet, did a ton of work mostly on the Soviet side of things, like creating the Communist Party article.
Communist Party
The second highest level of the party structure. The national Communists oversee activity in each of the human nations. All members of the Soviet government and high up military posts are required to be members of this party level. In the Soviet Union it runs all social activity and controls political thought and economics. The Soviet parties are divided up along the lines of the ethnic population; old U.S.S.R (i.e a Russian communist party, a Kazakh communist party, a Ukrainianparty, etc.). The Communist parties of other nations are mostly underground, while in natural nations such as the Japanese Empire, they act openly, and enter elections peacefully
I like those strike craft, what role do they have?
They're bombers.
Nice job with those bombers, they remind me of the Sukhoi-32
For the last...well, let's just call it a “long time” for the sake of both of us, we've been showing you renders, screenshots, and concept art nearly exclusively. I've written a little bit about our gameplay mechanics in dev journals and such, but there really hasn't been an explanation of how much Dawn of Victory is actually going to change things in Sins. This is slightly ironic, as our goal for the project is more to bring new gameplay than to have a bunch of models: I know I've seen a lot of supposed “total conversions” for a variety of games that ended up being a bunch of models pulled off other sites from a popular IP and with no gameplay changes beyond the utterly superficial. We don't want to do this.So starting today, I'll be writing one journal per day for the week about things we've either done or plan to do for the first release of Dawn of Victory, but all of them will be discussions of how gameplay will work, nothing else. Hopefully, this will catch me up to our artists. Today's discussion is going to be a general one: what makes DoV different from base Sins? Military focusThe answer is: enough to make it feel like a brand new game. We have taken influences from a variety of titles, from Petroglyph's Empire at War (the game on which we first started the mod) to Big Huge Games' Rise of Nations. Sins of a Solar Empire, as we all know was a cross between 4X and RTS, but this approach doesn’t work too well when applied to our vision of Dawn of Victory. We will be cutting out a majority of the 4X elements to suite a more military oriented game. This doesn't mean you won't manage empire-building: however, it does mean that existing mechanics will be retooled into more military specific roles, new mechanics, research, and structures will be focused on combat and strategy, and players will usually start with more than one planet under their control.For example, take the Planetary Defense Base, available only to the Soviet side. Here, corvettes are spawned in at regular intervals (though if you don't want to drain your supply, you can turn them off) rather than built directly. Another structure available to all factions is the Communications Center, which performs a similar role: calling in units from afar. This allows players to feel like they are a commander in a struggle much larger than their own: they can requisition fleets from “elsewhere” as needed. This mechanic was inspired by Empire at War, where larger starbases would call in small ships like the patrol cruisers regularly.Planets are vitalOne of the larger retools is how planets are managed and taken. Planets in Dawn of Victory maps are scarce: taking a planet is a difficult but rewarding endeavor, and losing a planet is a major setback. Dropships now both 'damage' and colonize planets through troop invasions with (unlike the base game) chances below 100% of success. Even if not successful, invasions may lead to allegiance drops, planetary revolts, income drops, and so forth. Troopships must be refilled after each usage at the Planetary Defense Base or Orbital Barracks, so players cannot wait a short time and try again. Planets have larger radiuses allowing more strategic static weapon positioning and minefields can be deployed to force an enemy to go where you want them to go.Retooled shipsThe final thing that you'll definitely notice off the bat is how damage in Dawn of Victory is taken. Ships have four main attributes: hull, armor, plating, and power.Hull represents the underlying structure of the ship. Ships in Dawn of Victory often have very weak hulls: they regenerate quite quickly though, as crew of a ship tend to put “fix leaking atmosphere” near the top of their priority list. A ship's hull has no mitigation (see below) and therefore 300 hull points will fall much faster than 300 armor points.Armor represents the general strength of the armor of the ship. It should not be confused with the “armor points” of the base game and functions like Sins' “shields” attribute. This takes the majority of the ship's damage but unlike Sins it regenerates slowly or not at all. Targeting opponents' resupply and repair ships will doom them, and lone capital ships can no longer plow through five planets' worth of local militia and come out without a scratch on the other side. As in Sins, armor is fitted to repel certain kinds of attacks, and some warheads will do more damage against some ships than others. Plating represents the electric reactive armor fitted on all ships in Dawn of Victory. This plating helps dissipate enemy warheads before they hit the hull: this translates to a percentage shaved off the amount of damage taken by the armor depending on the rating. Higher is always better and plating can be upgraded through the research tree. Plating also becomes proportionally less effective when fired on from multiple targets, as opposed to the increasing effectiveness in vanilla Sins of a Solar Empire.Power is a percentage representing how much energy is available to perform certain tasks. Unlike base Sins, it is always between 0 and 100, and abilities therefore take a certain percentage of the power total rather than an arbitrary number. See you tomorrow for our next discussion: the largest, most fierce ships in every commander's arsenal, capital ships.
Sins of a Solar Empire, as we all know was a cross between 4X and RTS, but this approach doesn’t work too well when applied to our vision of Dawn of Victory. We will be cutting out a majority of the 4X elements to suite a more military oriented game.
Oooh, can't wait! This means you might give us a somewhat soonish release! DELICIOUS!
Your changes sound like they'll make it much more challenging and tactical to play, I like it .
Hooray for more combat!
What about the AI? The new features sound great, but how will you make the AI use the new system, for example refill the troopships for another invasion attempt, or perform strategically at all considering the changes to the way fleet buildup is handled? Considering the SoaSE Ai is notoriously difficult to adjust, will DoW be more oriented towards multiplayer gaming, or will we be able to enjoy battles against a computer opponent as well?
Troopship stuff uses a hacked antimatter thing so they may be able to go back, probably not though. We're not going to dumb down the game so that the AI can play it 100%: since there's just so much stuff we'd have to cut out, doing that would mean a mod like I talked about, just model replacements. They'll still be able to do the basics, and you'll still be able to play against the AI, they just won't do some things effectively/efficiently. Fleet encounters should be OK, though I'm a little worried about the AI's usage of PDBs
We're going to make as much of an effort as possible to publicise it so there should be a decent # of people playing online upon release. We hope. I'm thinking we'll probably do a Hamachi network or five to make it easier, not sure how ICO handles mods.
Gameplay Week Update #2: Capital Ships
Capital ships are easily the most visually impressive thing in Dawn of Victory. While capitals in the base game were large and imposing already, they were quite common and easy to field. In Dawn of Victory, capital ships are behemoths, with dozens of weapon points, insanely high hull and armor ratings, and accordingly large resource costs. Players will not be able to field them at the start of a game, like in base Sins, and small games may not ever get access to them. However, seeing as how cruisers largely take the role, size, and impressiveness of vanilla's capital ships, it shouldn't be too much of a loss.Capital shipsCapital ships in Dawn of Victory tend to fall into a specific class, however: their usage is not solely direct fleet engagement. This isn't to say they aren't versatile: most of them can adapt to any role as needed, but their effectiveness often varies substantially depending on their nomenclature. Not every faction in Dawn of Victory has every type of ship: several are only available to certain factions.Battlecruisers: Like historical battlecruisers, these ships are higher-speed, lesser armed capital ships, in between a medium or heavy cruiser and a true capital ship such as a battleship or dreadnought, and with considerably less armor. In Dawn of Victory, ships of this class tend to be medium-range fleet interdiction and hit and run attacks, with abilities that increase effectiveness of flanking maneuvers. These ships should be positioned, fire salvoes behind enemy lines, then taken out of combat. These ships can pack a punch but are most effective against cruisers: while their pure firepower is quite staggering, their guns tend not to be as large as their historical counterparts and therefore less effective against other capital ships.Assault Cruisers: Assault cruisers are a special class of capital ship. Not to be confused with the Entrenchment “Assault Ship”. these ships focus on close-range utility. Unlike a dreadnought, they do poorly in fleet engagements on the basis of pure strength, but their armor is relatively high and they can use abilities such as remote mines to harass the enemy and halt or slow their advances. Battleships: A battleship in Dawn of Victory is a versatile medium-range fire support platform, good at fleet combat, able to take a beating, and armed with a variety of weapons. They can engage at closer ranges but gain no advantage by doing so. Like battlecruisers, their best usage is to destroy cruisers, but they can also take on other capital ships admirably.Dreadnoughts: The dreadnought is the one-size-fits-all solution to any capital ship problems. Dreadnoughts are armed with the heaviest guns as well as normally long range weapons such as torpedoes, but the latter is fitted more for firepower purposes than the ability for these ships to fire from far away and therefore warheads are much larger and range much shorter than torpedo frigates and cruisers. Dreadnoughts are the fiercest non-supercapitals in the game, with heavy armor, heavy guns, and abilities that boost both itself and the fleet's attack power.Carriers: Carriers have one role: transporting strike craft. As in World War II, pure naval firepower doesn't mean a thing unless you have the planes to back it up, and carriers are much more important in Dawn of Victory than base Sins. Carriers tend to field extremely large masses of strike craft: the Soviet carrier holds more than half a dozen squadrons, each comprised of several fighters. They have decent speed and armor, and can fight off attacks from smaller ships relatively well.Command Ships: Command ships perform like their equivalents in Sins, with medium-long range abilities that bolster the fleet's effectiveness in combat as well as out. Because of their remote positioning, these ships are designed to ward off any attacks from long range: in other words, their anti-fighter defenses are second to none. They carry a slight assortment of fighters but a multitude of flak guns. They are not a replacement for flak, as their defenses are designed to defend themselves, not friendly ships, but can hold their own against enemy fighter squadrons.SupercapitalsThere are also two types of supercapitals. These ships are mobile superweapons, but they have drastically varying roles. It is also rumored that the Democratic Federation is working on a design of their own, but this is yet to be confirmed...Soviet Rodina Superdreadnought: An enormous behemoth of a vessel; easily the largest ship in the game, dwarfing even traditional dreadnoughts in size. The Rodina is designed for total fleet domination from any range. However, its main inspiration is the Slavny Light Cruiser line of ships, a line that emphasizes varied weapons loadouts and modularity: it is simultaneously destructive and versatile. To unlock this titan, players must research three separate prerequisites, with each research item coming out of a particular trait of a ship line. A game in which the Rodina is fielded is pretty close to over (both in the sense of time and of unit strength): it can be destroyed, but it will take several fleets, a menagerie of unit types, and a good strategy to take it down. Players are best advised to bring lots of torpedo cruisers and a lot of patience.Greater German Reich Einseite Heavy Assault Cruiser: The Einseite is just as powerful as the Rodina. However, it's much more specialized. The Einseite is a unusually speedy, maneuverable capital ship, designed for sniping at fleets from long range. It is a potent blend of all the capital ship types: a battlecruiser in mobility, a dreadnought in firepower, an assault cruiser in interdiction capabilities, a carrier in anti-strike craft capability and a modest strike craft capacity, and a command ship in support abilities. The Einseite is a frustrating enemy and takes a good strategy to destroy: it can take out slower ships from range, then run away if cornered. Trapping the ship or slowing it down with abilities can help.The thing we've heard the most out of people when they hear the concept is “make capital ships awesome”. And as you know, we listen to our fans. Tune in tomorrow for another announcement, this one just as inspired by you guys.
Just one question, will there be Star Bases.
Sounds so damn awesome, can't wait.
Our first release will be for vanilla. So no: structures may be technically "starbases", and there may be outposts that are "starbases", but ones like exist in Entrenchment will not be present.
April fools
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