Featured (by a small mention) in the October edition of PC Gamer magazine
Candidate for Mod Database's 2008 Mod of the Year
This is the OLD "Work in Progress" thread for the Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 mod.
The new WIP topic is here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/342747
The "Release" topic can be found here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/322473
The mod is intended to be a hommage, and tribute to the original Sacrifice of Angels mod for Homeworld. It will use many of the same models, and effects created for that mod by the Trekmods team. Like the original SoA mod SoA2 is set during the Dominion War era of Star Trek. Using both canon, and non-canon units to recreate those battles with Sins "empire building" mechanic added. Like in SoA you can fight battles in SoA2 using hundreds of starships. Sometimes thousands if your computer can handle it While the mod was not intended as a "Total Conversion". That is exactly what it is winding up being. There is much about the Sins engine, and mechanics that we still need to learn. There are some hard coded stumbling blocks we have to overcome.The factions will be the Federation, Klingons, Romulan, and the Dominion (with Breen, and Cardassian ally units). The main factions seen in the Dominion War. With a "Surprise" as the Pirate faction.
Factions like the Borg "may" be added in the future. LokiGodofMischief is working on a very good 3rd party Borg add on for SoA 2. It is very possible his add on may be merged with SoA 2 at a much later time.
The current version of SoA 2 is 0.03b "The Second Dominion War". Look for it here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/322473
0.03b only works with Sins versions 1.1, 1.11, and 1.12.
All previous versions of SoA 2 are obsolete, and will not be supported, or hosted anymore. All older version downloads will be removed.
We will NOT port SoA 2 over to Entrenchment until after Entrenchment is out of beta, and released. Along with proper forge tool updates.
I am working on the models mostly ALONE so it may take a while for any new ship model updates.
Darkshimmer is the Balancing guru, Code monkey, and Master at arms. We do have other contributers, and the best 3rd party work from the finest artists in the trek mod community to help make SoA 2 the best it can be.
Status of Demo 0.04 "The actors are in place"
Will update when i have news.
General Changes:
Manshooters Volumetric Explosions mod will be included as of 0.03a
May include Sins Plus (planets), but ill need to see how much that mod needs changing to incorporate into SoA 2.
SoA 2 0.03 and above is now patch 1.1, and better compatable. Sins patches 1.11, and 1.12 only address balancing, and online exploits, and have no effect on the mod.
Ships will have some anti stike craft weaponry.
Ships are still being added and balanced accordingly.
More re-balancing so that one faction is not overpowered over the other.
The Federation:
Faction is complete. Only structures left
The Klingon Empire
Faction is complete. Only structures left.
The Romulan Star Empire:
The Dominion:
Faction is complete. Still needs balancing work.
Pirates:
They were going to be the Borg, but that idea failed. So we are looking into Random multirace ship spawns.
Planetary Defenders
Basically "Ships of the week" like the Maquis, Sona, Ferrengi, Tammarian battle cruisers and the like.
Balancing: Darkshimmer has the Federation, Romulan, and Klingon Empire, and Unified Dominion balanced.
Gameplay: We now have a working Cloaking Device! Check the ModDB page for the WIP video. Cloaking will not be fully implemented in the mod until version 0.04
Art: We are working on an LCARS style UI, adding proper icons, and pictures for all of the new units. The UI is going to take a while to do, because of all of the redundancy of the Sins UI. SoA 2 uses 2 sets of UI textures. Instead of the standard 4 textures for buttons, and 2 textures for icons. SoA 2 uses 8 textures for buttons, and 4 textures for icons which IMO is a major waste of resources, because sins loads all these textures at startup. Unfortunetly i dont see any other way to do it. What is kind of cool is that we dont have to use the same HUD for each faction. It is possible to have unique HUDs, but again the perfomance hit, because of the extra drain on resources could be big, and not worth it.
In Planning: (No promises, or guarentees, but we will try to add these if possible.)
Troop Transport effects.
Planetary invasion animations
Tractor beams. (need a code monkey for this)
Whatever else we can think of and are capable of doing.
Future Updates:
SoA 2 0.04 is now in planning, and will be focused primarily on Proper research trees, Ability's, and adding proper Structures. More than likely demo 0.04 will be the last demo. After that then the full mod should be ready.
SoA 2 0.05 will be the final spit, and polish of the mod. It will focus mainly on re-balancing if needed. Also final artwork changes will be made here. Which will include some ship model re-builds, and re-texturing.
The Full SoA 2 1.0 mod will be released "When it is Finished". We are doing this on our own free time. We aren't getting paid to do this. We have no set schedule. We have no time limit. I want this one to be good. So it wont go online until we feel it is ready.
*NOTE: Much about Sins as we are all now realizing is hardcoded. SoA 2 is going to be far from a perfect "trek" mod due to these hardcoded issues. However we will try to do the best we can with workarounds, and compromises to get it as close as possible. Like i said some things wont be perfect. Some things cannot be done at all. Enjoy the mod for what it is, and try not to be too "nit picky".SoA2 will be hosted on Mod Database once it is ready http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-trek-sacrifice-of-angels-2This main header will be updated when i have news to post.
Just so you guys know. I'm seriously considering just jumping over to entrenchment. There are alot of nice goodies in the ship files that are not in the std version i could really use. Especially the new bank system. It would allow me to set multi targeting which i think would be rather devistating on ships like the sovy, vorcha, neghvar, norexan, galaxy and akira! just to name a few. Also with the increased weapon points i can really make the fed ships work properly and the starbase upgrades is just too sweet to let it sit there unused. pretty sure my next update to the mod will be the last for the Std version, updating 2 sets of stats and files would be too much work for just one person to do alone.
I was going to get Entrenchment upon it's final release next week, but this would be awesome news if you did decide to go down that route. It sounds like everyone is having a better time with the add-on for the very reasons you've explained and more and I can't wait to get my hands on the complete edition having not played with the beta's.
Which ever way you decide I think the majority of the people here will support that decision as we respect the work that you and Major Stress have already done on this mod.
i just got done with an awesome match against the 3 Ai oppenents. I'm going to start converting the starbases first with Fed weapons to see how they come out, i'll post a screen shot when its done.
I checked the torps and all the sounds are working for me.
Offically the mod is on hold until the new developer is released, ever since i installed entrenchment the mod crashes left and right for the gameplay.constants file. If i replace it with the entrenchment version it still don't fix it.
Hopefully they release the developer tools soon after entrenchment is released in that case, I couldn't agree more about switching support to entrenchment over vanilla sins, I think all the new additions are great, I was worried due to it being a "mini expansion" it might of added very little gameplay additions but I think they added a substantial amount to make it a worthwhile purchase, but then I am a more defensive player so I would like it.
At any rate as darkshimmer already mentioned, it would add a lot to the mod, not just starbases etc but in canon the different factions Romulan, Federation etc have used mines which is another entrenchment feature, which as I recall may allow cloaking to be finally implemented properly due to the fact that mines use "Phase Out" which is a similar effect to cloaking? That effect may of already been in Sins, it's been a while since I played the vanilla version.
Btw did Major Stress ever say how long he was going to be without a net connection? Weeks, Months?. Anyway just wanted to say great work so far keep it up.
Any hints taking out a borg cube, 1v1?? I can never get past over 200 DMG at a single point..
didn't you catch the note, i only write in green! so it stands out from everyone else....
This is my attempt
I know that the image doesn't look too clean, but there is my fleet battling the cube, only lost 20 or so ship with a fleet or more than 360 ships
meh, calling colors is kinda childish... I've written in soylent green for ages... but what ever
Too bad about the borg cube though... 32 capitol ships takes it down though real quick... course that's 2v1..
Seriously do what Dchan said to pop the cube. I took some screenshots myself and was gonna post them but they pretty much look like his so no need lol, except I got the fleet in the empire tree specifically for the pic so you can see what's in it and how big it is. You don't actually need that many ships though. I took out a fully stocked pirate base with a gimped fleet accidently, was swarming through a system and accidently jumped them to an unknown planet, but hey it worked out. I probably only had 150-200 ships, and lost a few in the fight, but if you seriously outnumber them it's usually pretty easy.
1800 on it's weps looks like it's going to do a ton of damage, and it's no walk in the park being hit by it, but between the armor and shield mitigation it isn't doing a whole lot of damage to your ships, especially with only 2 or so beams firing at a time at several hundred ships. The biggest threat is the regen on the hull, too small a fleet and it'll knock you down to where it's gaining more than you're doing, which is the whole pont behind needing a fair number of ships to go at it. The other reason for needing a lot of ships is it's armor. It's going to just shrug off a lot of the shots you throw at it.
Sorry for posting this right as you're getting ready to remove the cube Shimmer, just too many people asking about it. I'll be sorry to see it go, but I guess we can look forward to Loki's work if we need a borg fix then.
o come on you think i was serious... pffft!
well we have already promised loki we would remove it. so i like to keep my word. I plan to work with him later on to balance the borg mod with ours. Besides i think i would rather have ferengi ships there along with gorn and tholians. My only problem is i don't have the model skills stress has. I can a model converted and into the mod, but i don't know how to prevent the black ship issue.
I get the pink font!
Pink is the new black, which was the old green.
Post Wall-e, all color references are the new red, not black.
hey this is just comepletly random but can some help with froge tools and how can i model ship and stuf
p.s this mod rocks
I'm writing in black cause it's the new red (which was the old red that was the old pink that was the old indigo which replaced the old green)
btw, watch out for 7DS 3.0 It will have SoA2 merged (i should know im the one doing it )
lol,
I have noticed that the ships in the mod progressively get stronger as you get the more expansive ships. I have been playing the Klingon Empire on my own and with dragoon online and have found no reason to build ships besides Vor’ Chas and Negh 'Vars for my armada. (Of course I scout and colonize with small ships) because they may be more but in the long run it’s worth it. I think this mod needs to have the ships be different in powers and not just get slowly more powerful each ship level. Oh and sorry if this has been said before.
Actually once the techs are added you'll need tmp era ships or get steamrolled early game.
Well, I still think the ships should have more variety in function and have more options.
they will be alittle more diverse as the mod progresses. Your just seeing it in stages atm. I've been running through entrenchment with the different races again, taking note of the abilities. So far i have to admite the vasari have the advantage with mines and mobile stations. there are some things that i took note of that might be common amoung all the races like speed boost for those ships in the intercept role. right now i'm alot more interested in getting my hands on the developer to i can fix the mod in its current mod and get it going again. Definately looking forward in making the multitargeting work which would also progress with strength of the ships with a few exceptions. Will probably take a page or two from the stations to get it to work. The mod won't have roaming stations, but it will have movable platforms. i think having this trade off is better. Many episodes have shown defense platforms move onto a target and open fire. Some like romulans platforms can cloak and shoot. I really look forward to this next version of the mod.
i all ready have the entrenchment 0.93.006 instilled
I am not sure if this has been suggested for the Fed, since they too have fighter craft, I believe, there is a federation fighter, there are pretty clear modles of them on http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Federation_attack_fighter so, this is my suggestion for an improvements
Also for the next version, even though you are making it for entrenchment, not all of us will have entrenchment so do you mind, making a seperate version for those of us who don't have it?
problem there will be i have to do double the work. It would really hold back progress. And for $10 its worth spending the money honestly
hi darkshimmer
i reinstalled sins and put the 1.13 patch on but now i got all the time minidumps. can it be that 3b and 3c is not compatible with 1.13?
or is it somethink else?
and when yes how can i get 1.12 back?
and i have also to say that this mod rocks!!! thx 4 ure time and work
but can u make the galor to a cruiser and stronger in the next patches? ^^
I for one don't know if I want to get entrenchment, but can't you just add the moddel to the base sins anyways? since you are bascially using gameinfo, and meshes, you could make 1.13 have starbases?
Also for the pirate base, you could use unicomplex from Voyager to create it
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