Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION is an addon project aiming to expand upon the existing universe of the Sins of a Solar Empire, providing original and high-quality content on top of the original game. Aside from the new content, the addon will also include multiplayer-friendly gameplay changes as well as reworked or new visuals/sounds.
ETA: To Be Announced
Planned changes/content will include:
==MEDIA SECTION==
==SCREENSHOTS==
==TRAILERS==
DRONE SPOTLIGHT I
A short ingame exposition of the Scout, Assault and Siege drones.
==BACKGROUND LORE==
Pangalactic War Timeline
Clicking the above link will lead you to the download of a .pdf document detailing the rich and dynamic history of the factions which will play a major role in the Last Stand mod, so if you are into background lore, be sure to check it out!
==UNIT INFORMATION==
Pending.
Well, where an ETA is concerned, too early to say, even though I am pleased with the speed of progress so far. I am halfway done with the Sovereign class Siege ship, and that leaves the Progenitor class Mothership, the Wyrm class elite battleship and the Leviathan class Titan to be done for the ships... and that's it! I plan on making a second teaser movie featuring the new ships as well as some of the more awe-insipiring abilities they'll have when the remaining ship models are done. It actually might be done by the end of this month, or at the beginning of the next.
Once the ships are done, I'll set my sights on the orbital structures. To save time I'll have a modular design for the non-essential structures, for example the both types of labs will pretty much look the same, which is not that odd since they are both basically giant neural grids (read: floating space brains) and only differ in what areas they are trained to think in.
Sound production is going parallel to the graphics production (check out this Mass Energy Cannon ability sound, there is also a remixed version for various beam weapons such as the Electron Ray), so it should not cause a delay at all. And finally, there is the research tree, but that should only cause minor delays as I will inevitably make typos and cause minidumps.
Its been quite a ride so far, these past eleven months or so... hard to believe I've been at this for a year already. I've learned a lot (just take a peek at some of my first models in this thread) and I can honestly say I've managed to cut my production time per model in half, if not more. Now that I've pretty much got a firm grasp on the ropes, things should *really* get rolling!
Oh, and since I felt like spending some time fleshing out the lore to be in a presentable form, those of you who would like to see the illustrated version of the Pangalactic War Timeline, you can get it here. It shows what's where... current Sins factions included (look for Emergence Point).
In order to differentiate between the two labs, you could give them subtly different colors or even auras/glows.
Ie.
The military lab would be slightly reddish and the civilian slightly bluish (or any other colors that are not similar)
Yeah, that's the idea. The geometry will be the same, but certain parts of the texture will differentiate in color to mark what type of lab it is. In the case of labs, there will be crystalline outgrowths which will glow, and that color will be the differentiating factor.
Sweet man. Give us all a heads up when its finally finished
what years on that timeline do the vasari and the tec and the advent showup?
The vanilla factions come into play right at the end, though it isn't mentioned in the Timeline. The Emergence Point is smack dab in the middle of the space they inhabit, and that's how they come into contact with the Xin and begin to fight them.
As for their involvement in the galactic history, I left that intentionally vague, to minimize possible future conflicts with the official story.
In other words, he's making it up as he goes along.
Hehe, yeah. But hey, fill in the blanks yourself.
Maybe the TEC started as one of those ofshoot colonies from their southern bloc which got cut loose and eventually forgot all about the big players. Or maybe they were just one of many unknown races never contacted by the greater galactic society. Or something else entirely.
As for Vasari, you will notice there is plenty of room for them to run from their big bad enemy. Only, if Ironclad makes that enemy into a galaxy-spanning superpower, I am afraid it will become necessary to say that, sadly, the Xin ate most of them and that the Vasari are running from refugees... sort of like the great migrations at the end of the Roman Empire, where whole nations attacked Roman borders but were themselves on the run from even more dangerous hordes...
Dun, dun, dunnnn.....
That is something that would be rather interesting to expand upon if they include an ability to add a story element to the game. I could easily see The Hegemony and the Clans remnant lending a paltry aid to the TEC in the interest of having a wall between them and the emergence point. Where the Advent would play into this would be rather difficult to say. The Vasari will either keep running or be wiped out, my money's on keep running (Thousands of years as nomads, Its a life style by that point). The TEC will try to hold as it always did, and the Hegemony and Clans (if they follow typical sci fi civilization thought paths) would lend what small aid they could to the hapless humans.
One thing that would be rather interesting to try and do is, ontop of your inclusion of these brand new races, include new bits of technology or equipment for the various factions to represent the amount of time that they have been in conflict with each other and to symbolize the influence of your new factions (and practically, to help to solve the inevitable balance issues having 3 new factions causes.)
i say that you give one of the races a special "religion" and the advent were contacted by them, and they learned the religion from one of the races, and from tham, got thier teck. (suprisingly similar in story to supcom... )
As far as the technological inbalance is concerned, I "took care" of it by stipulating that the Xin have not, in fact, opened a stable wormhole at the Emergence Point. If they had, all three vanilla factions would naturally be allmost immediately wiped out (after all, they couldn't hope to stand against a power which has more than half a galaxy worth of resources AND advanced technology at its disposal). As it is, the TEC, the Advent and the Vasari will have to face only a small contingent of Xin ships which went through - of course, those ships are perfectly capable of taking planets and turning them into strongpoints which will eventually produce more ships, but at the onset of the story and the beginning of Episode I, the Xin are not unmanageable, despite their advanced tech.
The Remnant, again, is not exactly advanced as such - although they had many thousands of years to do so, the vast resources at their disposal and the fact that they had virtually no need to improve upon any of their technology for the major part of the Legion Alliance's history means that their ships are actually *weaker* than those of, say the TEC. But the one thing they have over anyone else is their experience in building ships quickly, effectively and moving them about with great speed. The whole Nomad Fleet is like a kamikaze that's so big it smashes through everything without actually breaking apart. The Remnant will be able to field twice as many ships as any vanilla faction; four times as many as the Xin.
And finally, when the Hegemony enters the fray, it will also do so (storywise) with but a portion of their fleets - most of their strength will have to stay at the Bulwark to prevent the Xin from overrunning it. But by the time Episode III is finished, I hope to have some new tech added to vanilla races as well.
Hopefully in the future expansions we will see some sort of a "campaign" mode; I'd love to create a full-fledged storyline for the three new races.
Sounds very very interesting, glad the work is coming along well!
My own small projects have hit a snag with the beta, but im hoping to get started again, when the Final is released, but my little projects are nothing as complex or ambitious as yours, for one i dont have the experience, but im working on getting more of that, but for now, im still just a file tweaker. Anyway thank you for the progress report, i would love to see it when you are done.
-Teal
plz,tell me when it would be ready or how many time it would take to complete it,plz
Hey, if they do come out with a campaign, and if you need help with writing, give me a call. I may not be able to write a code at all, but sure as hell I can write a story.
Here's a little sneak preview of what I'm currently working on:
Guess what this one does!
Teal, hey, I started with a cube. Just keep going at it.
Vp21ct, will do. Ducktopia, you know what I'm going to say: when it's done!
It really looks like something out of a nightmare; something you NEED to stay away from. Whatever it does, it'll be nasty.
You've done an awesome job so far mate, been following your progress since you started the mod. Nothing important to add though, just that you're doing an awesome job.
mine? suicide ship? either way it looks like somghing thata attaches to ships and blows up.
Thanks, Marqulon. And, staying away from it won't help you. Here's a hint - you want to get close up. Well, in any case, anywhere but in front of it.
Gamerking, considering its larger than most capitals, I'd hate to see the monster this thing could attach itself onto. Another hint: you're looking at the rear section. If people can't figure out which way is front, I consider it a job well done for a Xin creation.
Hm then I guess it'll have some heavy weaponry mounted at front side; perhaps capable of destroying entire planets? That would be cool
My guess is that it is only the engine of a much larger ship ....as in a Titan-class
is it the colony cap or titan ?
Just to clarify, are you going to make 5 capital ships and 1 titan or 5 caps and 5 titans?
Just one Titan per new faction - having five Titans would defeat the purpose of having capitals. And no, its neither the colony cap nor the Titan. And it's not an engine section either. And as for the weapon, you can actually see parts of it from this shot too.
Proper ingame screenies coming very soon! In the meantime, finished render of the model:
I have to agree, 1 titan is a much more effective system than 5.
Another question: Is it possible to apply buffs to one specific type of ship (ie. buff the colony capital exclusively)?
If so, you could make it so that all 5 capitals working together could create a synergistic effect that greatly improves their durability. This could work like this;
colony - buffs - support - buffs - anti-planet - buffs - dreadnought - buffs - battleship - buffs - colony
However, you would want to alternate the supports between offensive and defensive ships
Also, is that the anti planet or main battleship capital ship?
I am eagerly awaiting this mod!
Every new faction will have certain specialities unique only to them. The kind of combinatorics, where each ship can lend something unique to the battle, and possibly create special effects in tandem is planned for Episode III and the Hegemony.
The Xin are pretty straightforward, their ships are expensive, tough and dangerous. They are mostly used to wade through enemy opposition and thus lack subtlety. They will have certain defensive abilities unique to them, for example the ability to interconnect *all* their planets really cheaply and thus create a transport network which should give a lot of headache to anyone trying to outmaneuver them on their own turf.
The Sovereign is what I like to call the Space Catapult. Its a step in the direction I want to take the mod, which is to further separate ship roles as to avoid overlapping abilities and strengths which ultimately make one unit or combination of units *the* thing to build/use. Shortly, the Sovereign can make short work of orbital structures, even Entrenchment Starbases, or even capitals too slow to get away. But the drawback is that it's totally unarmed with conventional weapons and poorly shielded compared to the Tyrant battleship or the Wyrm Elite Battleship. More info when I publish another mod update shortly.
Also, each new faction will have its "utility" capital replaced with a "speciality" capital which will reflect the nature of that faction. For the Xin its the Wyrm, a very expensive but incredibly tough battleship with no equal. The Remnant, for example, will get a beacon ship which will have several useful abilities such as being able to deploy hyperspace beacons which can cloak. So even if your fleet gets obliterated, the enemy will still have to find your beacon and destroy it, or face more "backyard invasions" (this sounds dirty) in the future. And so on.
Here's the newest addition to the Xin fleets! To save time I copy/pasted the lore and intro from ModDb webpage.
Space catapults. You got to love them.
Face it, nothing instills fear in the heart of a commander as seeing a big, lumbering device of total destruction being dragged into a firing position. Over time, names have changed, but the idea remained the same - to drop something big, heavy and possibly explosive on the other guy's head.
The Last Stand mod follows this fine tradition of warfare by giving each new faction a specialized capital ship which has only one role - to deal massive damage at extreme range. And as these things go, they are also made of glass, at least compared to the hulking battleships on the front line. For the Xin, the ship in question is the Sovereign.
Much like other Xin capitals, the Sovereign is immense in size. In fact, these ships are so large they have been known to get stuck in denser asteroid fields at times, though certainly not for long - one discharge of its powerful weapon is usually enough to clear any such paltry obstacle as a floating rock!
The spindly projection spires are especially vulnerable to damage.
And while the Sovereign is a powerful ship when used correctly, care must be taken not to place it in situations where its weaknesses, most notably the lack of strong shields and less-that-average armor plating, can be exploited. Also, to fire its main weapon, the Sovereign must not only align itself with its target, which makes it incapable of tracking and targeting smaller and nimbler ships, but it also has to expend a significant amount of its internal power reserves. Stock ships are estimated to have enough power to fire only five or six shots before their weapon capacitors need recharging.
The projection spires trailing behind the ship are used to shape the plasma charge.
To compensate for these shortcomings, the Sovereign has a couple of unique abilities at its disposal. The first is inherent to the interconnected power systems which run throughout the bioform superstructure of the ship, and that's the ability to actually drain its shields and use so gathered energy to fire several extra shots of the main weapon. Needless to say, this ability is best used with caution. The second, more exotic ability is something only mature ships possess, and that's the bioform's ability to utilize the gravitic nature of its Singularity Engine to produce a gravitonic shockwave effect. The shochwave does negligible damage but is capable of repulsing smaller ships and objects away from the Sovereign, thus perhaps giving it time to escape being swarmed by enemies it normally cannot engage.
Hope you like!
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