Hello everyone!

Its been a while since the last update, and while its not necessary to go into details, lets just say that I have experienced some technical difficulties which considerably slowed down my work on the mod. But, all this is about to change as the Episode I slowly draws to final stages of production!
Soon you will be fighting desperate battles against the encroaching Xin, or wreaking havoc across the galaxy while doing your best evil laugh imitation (optional)!

To tide you over until the next teaser trailer showing the ingame action in all its glory, here is a bit of information on the mod's biggest ship class - the Titan.

Leviathan CGI render

A Titan class ship is the most powerful unit a player can build in the Last Stand. The requirements are enormous, from research costs and time to actual building times and resource needs. They easily dwarf Entrenchment starbases in production costs, but on a plus side, a Titan can eat a starbase for breakfast, then burp flaming debris to incinerate the planet below. Proverbially speaking.

Each new faction, the Xin, the Clans Remnant, and the Hegemony will have one Titan class ship available via research, each having a unique approach to combat and utility. The Leviathan, the Xin equivalent, is built for one purpose only - to wipe out the enemy as quickly and decisively as possible.

Built from five separate modules, each larger than even the largest Xin battleship and easily dwarfing even smaller ships like TEC or Vasari battleships, the Leviathan is an immensely tough behemoth, designed to wade into the thick of action and detonate its most powerful weapon, an artificially created and maintained black hole.

Possibly the only machine in the known universe which can create and maintain a phenomenon of such awesome potential, little is known about the actual methods by which a Leviathan can maintain a full-fledged black hole in the narrow space at the center of its superstructure without instantly collapsing under the enormous gravitational pressure. The five identical modules are themselves autonomous, held in place relative to each other by the same forces they help put into being. In fact, it is speculated that the sole purpose of the modules is to provide the platform for whatever mysterious machinery controls the black hole.

Being so large, the Xin Titan does not have effective ship-to-ship weaponry. Instead, it relies on massive hordes of various assault and defense drones to provide point defense emerging from its ten enormous hangars, each of which could easily accomodate a cruiser or two. While this makes the large ship vulnerable to well prepared fleets which carry a lot of weaponry dedicated to taking out the drones, its most valuable ability lies in the fact that it can "excite" the black hole it maintains, creating massive assymetric gravity surges which not only suck all free-floating objects towards the gargantuan ship, but also obliterate any objects which stray too close, making the Leviathan potentially capable of wiping out an entire sector completely.

But, such awesome power takes time to unleash. It takes approximately six minutes to create a powerful shockwave guaranteed to wipe out the entire sector. While the minor shockwaves emanating from the tormented space-time in the center of the structure are potentially deadly to any ship, a determined fleet has an option to try and take out the behemoth before it can obliterate them - a timed race with only one possible winner.

Ultimately, your best bet is never to let your opponent build a Titan. Because if you do find yourself squaring off against one of these, you better come prepared and then some. When fighting a Titan, there is no room for second tries.

im speechless, i definetely do no want that thing in my solar system, and the tec, vasari, and advent need to have a new weapon to cope with this, perhaps an anti-titan torpedo structure that can only be built on planets and not move... what about that?

*note to self, remind Danman to make the stellar converter stronger*

Epic looking titan dude

Enemy ships can escape during that time period, however the Xin have access to a specialized utility Spider Cruiser, which can render phase drives unusable in a large radius, so with those in tow the Leviathan can easily trap enemy fleets and prevent them from escaping.

Also keep in mind that the secondary shockwaves will start happening allmost immediately, and those can do a lot of damage on their own as well.

Whether the weapon will do planetary damage remains to be determined when the beta comes out. At launch, only ships/structures will be targeted.

Superfleet, Episode I only will have versions both for Entrenchment and vanilla SoASE. Episodes II and III will require Entrenchment to be installed.

Gamerking, the mod itself is called The Last Stand.  The first episode is known as First Contact.

I'm guessing that the only Vanilla race that would stand any chance is the Vasari, and even then they'd need a starbase and a full fleet.

Kipples, thanks.

Vp21ct, the Titans will be indeed very hard to stop, but a well rounded large fleet should be able to at least drive one away. They represent a significant investment of time and resources and are comparatively powerful.

But there are drawbacks. A titan requires so many fleet capacity slots that having one means you will need to downgrade the total number of your ships by a large margin. Basically, you can have two large fleets, or one large fleet and a titan. So a Titan-wielding player will place themselves at a significant numerical disadvantage.

I reiterate that the Titan itself does not have any direct ship-to-ship weaponry. Just a crapload of drones - so sending one in alone would be most unwise. Sending it with a fleet escort, on the other hand, increases chances of a major victory, but also makes you vulnerable to flanking attacks and places most of your fighting force at risk.

Choices, choices...

WOW looks great... cant wait till i try this mod

A couple of ingame shots of the Leviathan, for comparison. Note that the Last Stand will feature planets roughly three times the vanilla size present on the first image.

can i assume that in the future you will have a particle effect in the center counting as the Black hole? Otherwise, a cool model. Nice work.

So, if the Xin are comprised of part biological lifeforms encased in armor plating, thus creating the ships, what biological lifeform then, is the Leviathan? is it like... 5 sentient beings representing 1 being as a whole or something? Not to say that it would matter, I was just curious.

Does this mean that Episode 1 is closing in on launch.