It's time to bring the best space MMO ever to the best space RTS ever...
First question: is anyone else already working on something like this? If so what have you done so far? Would you like to collaborate?
Now I know that a game as complex as Eve cannot be fully incorporated into Sins... I just want to take the best elements and come up with a good mix.
=============
I first want to go over the various aspects of Eve and hash out what we can and can't do in Sins.
I want to compile lists of:
I'll compile this info here and expand to separate threads only if necessary.
I'd like to get community feedback first.
So? I know there must be at least a few former or current Eve players here.
I will work on producing some more tomorrow, just been messing with the texturing system. Kinda doesn't wanna work the way it should so will need to find some help on learning it better. Got a issue atm were the Data map texture isn't producing reflectivity and effects like it should but acting as a texture itself. Shrug. will figure it out.
cool beans thanks for the fast update.
quick question whats the time frame look like for this mod for completion? since you technically could do it in 3 updates 1st update will be the ships and races patch 2nd patch be sov system patch which includes cyno jammers and cyno bridging and 3rd patch can be if someone is really hard core and have an eve universe map made down to system names and regions. sorry for all the questions im just happy to see someone making a mod for eve.
also if you need any help with eve ingame stuff such as ships and systems and what not pm me and we can get ahold of each other and do some work. (played eve since beta)
Well I can get all the base work done using the info posted so far. I can produce most stuff within a week,. However the things that will take time possibly a little while would be Model/Textures and Abilities/Effects unless I use the present stuff and just mix and match accordly.
I would also need to figure out a research tree, also atm I'm just trying to get the Amarr sused. As for getting all the other races done, that all depends. Atm we will need to possibly make our own models and textures which will add some time. I will see what ProgressBar has planned as well. I just started on Amarr for a bit of experience once I resolve all my little issues It should all go quite smoothly.
sounds good man. shame ccp wont let us use there models.
Don't use the lists in this forum. I am just posting what I've balanced. If you want more thorough information, pm me with another mode of communication so I can give full, more thorough balanced, yet EVE inspired weighted ship stats.
For example, all of the scouts cost 200 credits. The weighting of metal and crystal for the Executioner through my process comes to 15 metal and 0 crystal (the only crystal used to make the Executioner are 2 measily pieces of Isogen). 15*3.5=35. So credit cost will be 165 with metal cost of 15.
I changed the weight for Metal to go at 3.5 credits per unit. While most conversion in game is 2.5 per credit as much people are selling metal, metal is sometimes bought, as is crystal sometimes sold. I noticed a quite fair balance of cost when I weighted crystal as 4 credits and metal as 3.5 credits. If you wish to discuss a different weight, then I encourage it.
Name Credit, Metal, Crystal, Time, Supply, Hull, Armor, Armor Type, Shield, Anti, Dmg, Type, Range, Pdmg, Abilities
I suggest these abilities be unlockable at tier 2. No research required for the ships
Executioner--148, 15, 00, 12s, 2, 450, 2, Light, 385, 250, 3, Anti-Light, SoaSE, 0, Lingering Presence
Condor------145, 10, 05, 12s, 2, 320, 0, Light, 450, 230, 3, Anti-Light, SoaSE, 0, Timed Explosives
Atron-------174, 05, 02, 11s, 2, 410, 1, Light, 385, 220, 3, Anti-Light, SoaSE, 0, Sensor Drones
Slasher------165, 05, 05, 13s, 2, 320, 0, Light, 385, 200, 4, Anti-Light, SoaSE, 0, Martyrdom
I suggest these abilities be unlockable at tier 3. No research required for the ships
Crucifier--355, 30, 10, 20s, 5, 585, 3, Light, 410, 300, 11, Anti-Medium, SoaSE, 0, Decrease Accuracy
Griffin----375, 30, 05, 19s, 5, 445, 1, Light, 600, 270, 09, Anti-Medium, SoaSE, 0, Disable
Maulus---400, 25, 05, 21s, 5, 585, 2, Light, 490, 250, 10, Anti-Medium, SoaSE, 0, Disorient
Vigil-----355, 20, 20, 21s, 5, 460, 3, Light, 430, 220, 11, Anti-Medium, SoaSE, 0, Increase Damage Taken
I suggest the ships be tier 4 with abilities tier 5.
Coercer-----420, 60, 55, 27s, 8, 1150, 5, Heavy, 920, 400, 21, Anti-Medium, LRM+, 0, Overheat Lasers
Cormorant--390, 35, 85, 25s, 8, 940, 2, Heavy, 1150, 340, 20, Anti-Medium, LRM+, 0, Eject Automissiles
Catalyst----395, 50, 70, 26s, 8, 1020, 3, Heavy, 990, 300, 21, Anti-Medium, LRM+, 0, Magneticism (range)
Thrasher----372, 45, 80, 25s, 8, 940, 3, Heavy, 1075, 290, 21, Anti-Medium, LRM+, 0, Explosive Rounds
I suggest the ships be tier 2 with abilities tier 5.
Inquisitor--450, 40, 05, 21s, 5, 600, 4, Medium, 420, 0, 14, Anti-Medium, LRM, 0, Cloak
Kestrel----320, 25, 65, 23s, 6, 440, 2, Medium, 600, 0, 17, Anti-Medium, LRM, 0, Cloak
Tristan----275, 50, 60, 23s, 6, 615, 4, Medium, 600, 0, 15, Anti-Medium, LRM, 0, Cloak
Breacher--400, 60, 05, 21s, 5, 525, 2, Medium, 540, 0, 14, Anti-Medium, LRM, 0, Cloak
I suggest the ships be tier 3.
Punisher---350, 45, 45, 23s, 6, 650, 5, Heavy, 540, 0, 18, Anti-VeryLight, SoaSE, 0
Merlin-----310, 55, 30, 22s, 5, 500, 3, Heavy, 690, 0, 15, Anti-VeryLight, SoaSE, 0
Incursus--445, 70, 00, 21s, 6, 560, 3, Heavy, 460, 0, 19, Anti-VeryLight, SoaSE, 0
Rifter-----315, 50, 50, 22s, 6, 525, 4, Heavy, 600, 0, 19, Anti-VeryLight, SoaSE, 0
Colonization and Neutral Employment No research required for the ships
Magnate--375, 110, 65, 30s, 6, 1200, 2, Light, 0700, 0, 0, Anti-Light, SoaSE, 0, Colonize, Capture Neutral
Heron----415, 135, 40, 30s, 6, 0925, 0, Light, 1200, 0, 0, Anti-Light, SoaSE, 0, Colonize, Capture Neutral
Imicus---480, 140, 20, 30s, 6, 1070, 1, Light, 0855, 0, 0, Anti-Light, SoaSE, 0, Colonize, Capture Neutral
Probe---460, 100, 50, 30s, 6, 1050, 1, Light, 0855, 0, 0, Anti-Light, SoaSE, 0, Colonize, Capture Neutral
well the coding part is rather easy. hell, i could do all the research tree, ships and buildings in a single day. the abilitys and buffs take a little longer tho since its harder to code things you want to get the desired affect but with entrenchment a LOT of problems are solved, such as starbases in neutral/enemy grav wells, upgrading ships, ships meshes, ships weapons and whatnot. the hardest part id say about this mod would be the models/textures which take a LOT longer to do. i know for me (im always winkering with things in Sins, and entrenchment is a dream come true) the only thing i cant really touch is mesh and textures because i cant model and dont really have the drive to learn how to. i find coding much more entertaining. but it would be sweet to see this get off the ground. (would be willing to help too if needed, just PM me). on another note, balancing is the hard part.
I think SoaSE has a load of ship effects already in the game that will fill most of the abilities that we would want. We have phasic cloaking -> Cloaking, Scout abilities are directly given to the EVE scouts for fun, Decrease accuracy can be reversed from the Akkan, Disable Weapons would be used for ECM, the Disorientation given from Star Base Transcendia would simulate Dampening, Target painters simulated by a simple damage taken increase... and that's so far.
I imagine the 3 most infurating parts of the mod will be Doomsday, Jumpdrives and Siege. Pretty much the Titans will be the hardest thing to do.
In terms of translating the EVE style territorial warfare into SoaSE, a system should obviously translate into a planet.
well ya. but honestly, thers a lot more potential and fun if you create your own. of course you need a gifted graphics artist to make decent portrates and whatnot. also your planets can have MASSIVE grav wells if you so choose. as far as entrenchment goes, it is great for moding, you can now "upgrade" weapons vis aresearch, not just damage, but looks too if you can mod it. you can also change the hull shapes if you wanted. the only problem would be creating the right feel to the economic side of the game. trade and mining are both large parts of eve and Sins does not have the best setup for it IMO. but with a little immagination, who knows.
True but most 0.0 alliances dont worry about mining since they are making a killing off ther r64 moons so we can have metal and crystal sub out as dysprosuim and promi moons.
I think StCobalt has a point, having custom planetsizes and grav wells will allow us to create a unique universe for Eve and also allow us to use truely larger and more accurate ship scales rather then plain vanilla. I will work at creating couple ship models over next couple days and If I can I will texture them with my own textures. Im no gifted artist but I can do a relatively good job esp with the awesome reference material eve provides.
Mining in ships is the most ridiculous part about EVE, anyways. I think we should just keep station mining. Besides, we have facilities that can employ ships for resource related processes anyways. I don't think we should make enormous Grav disproportionate grav wells, perhaps even smaller grav wells with respect to the planets than SoaSE. I do think our planets could be bigger but with proportionately smaller grav wells (but still resulting in overall bigger grav well to work with). That would feel more EVE like than enormous Grav Wells.
edit- sorry for the double post. I'll just keep the 2 themes of each post seperate like this, then.
- I was thinking about supply and graphical detail. If we are to get any fanatical (exceptionally good) graphical artists, we should make clear to significantly reduce the poly count compared to SoaSE. We will not usually be looking at them and when we will, it will only be for a "heh, see, that a Rupture! I have a Rupture... LIKE IN EVE OMG!" type of feeling. Not necessarily for the graphical wonders of EVE Online, and yes even less wonder of SoaSE (but I would suspect not too low). What I am hoping is that we can create a mod with as little lag as possible.
Giant planets will not have a problem following suit, either. They weren't typically that awe inspiring in EVE, and we should try to go along with that in the mod, aswell. Even their new planets aren't all that astounding... so we shouldn't have any problem producing the EVE effect without too much effort and wasting user resource.
Please message me on AIM Austinhs2002 or Yahoo Austinhs2002 if you want to discuss in further detail specific balances. I have begun working on entity files, but I will only start doing them over completely once I have absolute balance. Remember, balance should be kept between classes, not inter-classes. A higher class level may be stronger or weaker (per cost or supply). The only thing that should be kept in balance as relative to everything else as possible are vessels with strikecraft (because of their in-grav mobile offensive nature).
well, everyone basicaly has their own aproach to it really. as for the mining part, ya it is a pain in the arse, but hey, if worse came to worse, you could see if its possible to make it "look" like thers a mining field in an asteroid belt and make it look like its minig just to get the feal of it, of course, in the end its nothing more than something to look at and chances are you will never be focused on that particular aspect for more than 2-3 min, if that but hey, ideas are always welcome right? worse comes to worse it might inspire someone elce.
what area of modifying the .entites are you best in if you dont mind me asking (all, or just some, i myself can do just about everything, and got the free time to do it as well.) well at any rate its late and i need sleep, ill check back in to this thred tommrow and see wahts new and what you guys are doing.
I just started learning SoaSE entity files just today. I've modded many games through wordpad alone to extreme degrees along with imported models, skins et al by getting permission from other people who have used them. I will learn the entirety of every variation of the entity file quite quickly, but do not mind if someone else wishes to put time into modifying them. In the end, I want to look them all over for error ect. I've been told I am quite effective at spotting errors and trustworthy enough to prevent a case when an 'additional' balancer put something 'special' in for their own 'agenda'.
We need a group of balancers discussing balance together. I can catch a lot of things to bring together the different aspects of SoaSE to simulate an EVE feel, but only go so far on my own. I would really like people interested in balance to contact me.
Sounds all good too me, I don't think its a issue if a few people go mess around see what they come up with. I have only adjusted entity files to allow me to mess with a unique races model/ships which I have called Amarr ingame. I have done modeling and texturing before so its just a matter of learning the mod tool well.
Also mining is fine, just use the refinery concept were it sends out ships to collect from near by asteroids but make it so you can upgrade it or employ more transport ships? just a idea, you could eliminate the old style of asteroid mining via facility then. Then make a setting were ships can auto collect from nearby asteroid field. Then have it so people can attack other players supply routes for crystal and metal by blowing those ships up? Shouldn't be too hard.
I think I should post this one more time to properly stress this. I know I'll have to wait a couple days before I get an actual response, but again, it's AIM Austinhs2002, Yahoo (email or messenger) Austinhs2002. We can make this mod prolific and enjoyable to everyone, but only with proper balance. The models are probably the toughest thing, but really only draw in people for a 1 time go of EVE Fandom. I am hoping to form a group to properly scrutinize the list, and thoroughly, so that we can make it very successful (just like EVE Online) .
lol. problem is not everyone uses either of thoes. the more mainstream one to use would be MSN to be honest. also, if you got a damage and balance table out if you want to send it my way id be happy to get working on the base creation of one of the races. hell, if you want to speed it up, i can work on one race while you work on the other. another thing i want you to keep in mind tho is the actual damage and armor values. in the gameplay.constants i do believe theres an accurasy modifyer for weapons and whatnot, in eve online (i never really been in a massive cap ship battle in that game as i was more into the mining/transport side of the game) but judging by the average user, a frigate at tier 1 would NOT damage a cap ship at all. im not sure about tier 2 but all in all the diffrence from a fridate to a cruiser is rather large in comparason (highly dependent on the role of course.) at any rate, it would be an interesting experiance
In my experience non Americans use MSN, americans use AIM/Yahoo. There are anomalies inbetween, but those are the most backed up generalities. Prime pointed me to pidgin which uses them all. I have it downloaded and will contact anyone on any messenger and organize to a single one.
A frigate actually can damage a cap ship. It is in fact a capital ship or battleship which would NEVER damage a frigate. Goonswarm has proven on numerous ocassions that frigates alone can down a capital ship, it is just a problem of getting 'enough'. We're not going to be simulating the differences of EVE passive and active tanks (which would dictate frigates below a critical number would see no progress against a capital, depending on the type of tank, while the other type of tank has it's own advantages), but rather both will be represented. Shields sort of passively regenerate faster overall in SoaSE than they do in EVE, until the ship in EVE is fitted out to be a passive tank. Well shield tanking by means of abilities in SoaSE is far more effective than shield tanking by means in EVE Online, until you realize that just about EVERY ship in EVE can fit the booster and run it til they run out of cap, which the abilities in SoaSE are to only certain ships. Needless to say, we're not going to put a shield regeneration ability on every caldari and many minmatar ships. Likewise, there will not be a hull repair for all the Amarr, Gallente and some Minmatar ships. Rather, to properly simulate the actual more common tank in EVE Online, an increase in passive regeneration will be implemented. For the sake of simplicity, we'll go with SoaSE flow of relegating special effects to that which drains antimatter. No one can manage thousands of SoaSE ships and their armor repair unit or shield boosting unit to the efficiency that they would do so in EVE. Going back to Frigates, the reason that they will never take damage from Battleships and capitalships (unless tackled by more than 1 tackler for battleships and more than 3 for capitals) is their speed and size.
Now that I've explained about how exactly the reverse to be true of what you stated with respect to frigates and capital ships, if we can modify armor type, then we will want to make greater armor types worse, actually. To preserve the balance in SoaSE, however, we'll likely be fitting the greater ships with majority cap weapons, some smaller weapons and then respectable amount of fighters (as in the actual game). But we'll get there when we get there. Right now, we're merely at frigates.
I've also revised how I will weight credits/metal/crystal. The revision is because of the mineral descriptions.
Neither/No Weight/Indirect Credit Weight: Nocxium, Megacyte
Metals: Tritanium, Mexallon
Crystals: Pyerite, Isogen, Zydrine
Why do I suggest that there is no weight/indirect credit weight? Well, because many smaller ships do not have Nocxium or Megacyte, and obviously they will not cost just Metal and Crystal (as you can easily just earn ISK in EVE and just buy them) so everything will still be fair.
Here are couple pictures of a Executioner for the Eve Mod. I was just learning at this stage, now I have found better ways to do things so might move on to making the Titan. I have only made the UV Map-Stamps at this stage. Will mess in photoshop after I get couple ships done, if someone wants the Stamped UV maps for perhaps a play around and see if they can do some sort of textures for these ships that be great. The Eve models can only be used as referencing thought so no copy pasting if so.
PS. Yes I know its not much, but will need to do as I learn more over time. The model triangle count is 1200 about which is below the Tech_Scout model triangles for SOSE. So thats ok. I left out ultra detail for a purpose btw, original model was 2800 Triangles BTW.
The original model from CCP is on the bottom, mine is above which in this shot is slightly earlier attempt but approx the same as the above.
Bottom picture is true aspect of dimensions, The mod tool program wasn't being nice when I tried to render a pass with the above two, its complicated horsesxxx really I can't be bothered messing with atm.
well its still nice either way. good luck. i nither of you have added me yet and i dont really got the data myself.
the main problem with modding EVE to SINS is you lose so much of the overall experience. It's really hard to smack when there is no local chat. Can't even post disturbing pics at enemy alliances while everyone is prepping for that massive capital fight due to ensue the moment the cyno blocker is popped...
http://home.comcast.net/~futher/motivationals.htm
Regardless, damn fine work so far guys. I'm ordering tons of T2 Zippers for 7DS 2.0 Final and your EVE mod. All other mods be damned. lolz.
If you've got issues with "fish-eye" distortion in the mod tool, try pressing "r" to reset your camera, then "p" which will engage the "rail-movement" for the camera so you can actually move further out, instead of zooming out which usually produces this sort of distortion if you go into the "negative zoom".
Other than that, good work on new model. You might want to straighten out some of those quads, they could be a little finicky with texture distortion, depending on how you map them.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account