The Battlefleet Gothic mod is now compatible with Entrenchment 1.041 as of 1/17/10, and has a new version (1.30) out as of 1/17/10
This mod contains the Imperial navy in a fully modelled state, and Chaos, the Tau and the Orks in a proxied state.
BE WARNED: THIS MOD IS STILL RATHER BETA AND IS MISSING MANY FEATURES, INCLUDING:
-A research tree (unlocks, colonization, fleet supply, cap ship crews and long range jumps are quite literally all that's there (well, there's a missile tech, but it doesn't do much, and you WILL be able to get late game ships early)
-GUI elements. some 2D icons aren't done yet, and the ones we have are a bit odd. They will be fixed eventually.
Things that we know about (IE we know about it and it's odd, but it's either a design decision which will be explained or something not implemented):
-Counter description text. It's wildly off and somewhat arbitrary, but the ship descriptions are pretty good and should give the player a decent idea of what to expect, and I'll write more on them on our forum (link here).
-Shield Mitigation. It's gone, but it says it's at 15%. Trust me, it's gone.
-The Emperor Battleship. As a compromise on its heavy dorsal armament that can be fired to either broadside, we made it have the strength of the dorsals and a broadside point forward, and slightly stronger broadsides. We think it works pretty well, but please tell us what you think.
-Chaos ships and tau ships in the Additional Races Compendium are odd. The chaos prow weapons are locked to fire left, so they can broadside well to one side without turning into brawlers and tau weapons are locked forwards so they can concentrate fire, but they lost their ability to fire at half strenth to the sides because multi-arc weapons are impossible in sins as far as I know.
-No stock sins races. GW wouldn't let us include them, and they have a very different gameplay mechanic anyway, and need a very different setup for damage types, much to my chagrin, seeing as I want to know how it'd end up .
Okay, now that that's out of the way, we can get to the fun stuff. The ships are working great. If you know the tabletop game you'll know the key things that I need to tell everybody else so they understand the game.
-Ships turn and fire SLOWLY. You need to think ahead, and you can fit in a lot of micro if you know what you're doing. This is intentional.
-Shields recharge VERY VERY VERY VERY FAST. This is a legacy of it being a tabletop game where focusing fire is a big achievement. Shields will fully recharge in the time it takes for you to fire a second salvo of your weapons. Firepower supremacy is big here, and so is using your weapons to their utmost. However, hulls repair rather slowly, so protect them.
-Ships will go up like popcorn, even caps if your fleets get big enough. A fully experienced cap has quite a bit of damage absorbing ability, but it isn't even close to invincible. They're about twice as valuable as a cruiser, and if you're careful, can absorb 3 times as much damage easily. It's a great bargain, but they will die, don't get attached to them.
-Oh right, cruisers. There are cruisers in this game, and frigates are now fragile scouts and flankers. Frigates are cheap, expendable, and surprisingly dangerous in numbers. Cruisers are a lot bigger, much tougher, and carry a good bit more firepower, but a really big price tag. Battleships come in on top, and are really durable, and host a lot of long ranged firepower.
-The weapons are different too. Weapons batteries and Lances are your basic weapons. Lances are focused beams of energy that do best against escorts (accuracy) and armored ships (penetration power, but with just the imperials that isn't that big an issue). Weapons batteries are massed guns that do best against battleships because they can actually be expected to hit a lot. They aren't that different, and the range and strength of the guns means more than their type. Torpedoes are great. They punch through shields 100% of the time, but tend to drop off against bigger targets, which boast the point defense turrets to shoot most of them down. They make great escort killers, and are your best weapon in smaller fights.
-Attack Craft (fighters and bombers) are also very different, they come in squadrons abstracted to one ship, and are much more fragile. They're also much more dangerous. They, like torpedoes pierce shields and can do a lot of damage, especially against smaller ships (including cruisers, battleships are nasty to them though). However, every ship has turrets that can kill them, but if they stagger their waves, they can hit home very hard. They also replenish quite fast until their parent ship runs out of antimatter, so they're really quite good. Fighters are quite capable at interception duties, if you have more fighters than the enemy, your bombers will be able to strike enemy ships while your ships are safe from enemies.
Please note!
-Planet capturing is quite different from in standard sins. The transport is your one stop shop for planetary warfare and colonization. They land troops instead of bombarding. The whole idea is a little bitcomplicated, and I encourage anybody who's interested to read the thread I'll post on our forum shortly. The short version is that you build transports, use their bombardment ability to pound your enemies into dust, and then return them to the munitorum depots (they have the advent antimatter recharger icon for now, shouldn't be hard to find on the screen) to refill. It should especially suit the Imperium's style of defend and counterattack.
Now that you know the basics of the game, you can download the mod here:
DOWNLOAD (7ZIP, 109 MB) (This should work properly but I've been having lots of problems with it, if not, please tell me so I can remove the link while I fix it. )
7zip or winrar both can open 7zip files, and both are available for free, and much smaller than 50 MB.
DOWNLOAD (ZIP, 162.63 MB)
And please visit our forum at Modcraft if you want to learn more about the mod and what to expect, volunteer or give detailed feedback:
OUR FORUM
Dev Journals: These guides will help you know what to expect in the future and understand the current state of the gameplay.
Dev Journal 1: Ships of the Imperium It explains all the imperial ships and their fleet's way of fighting. Should be useful.
Dev Journal 2: Fleet tactics of the Imperium It focuses on the use of the Imperial ships in a fleet. Definitely good food for thought, may apply more to tabletop than the mod, I need to test the theories some before I fully endorse them.
Gratuitous screenies:
Gothic class cruisers pummeling a Dictator class cruiser with lances and torpedoes
Retribution class battleship firing its prow lances and torpedoes at an enemy cruiser.
Finally, the trailer for the Imperium (thanks again, Thrawn!)
Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.
[quote who="xthetenth" reply="25" id="2224301"]
The other thing I want to do is make fleet bases (once I get those in, they're one of the very few planet types not in yet, since they're mosly for larger battles) able to have some sort of passive repair ability to help it work as a regrouping area. But they aren't a huge deal right now.[/quoute]
In my opinion, fleet bases should also provide some form of combat bonus to ships in the gravity well to represent the benefit of proximity to the planning and tactical staff for an entire sector. I looked and planets can have up to four different abilities, so it would be possible to have the repair ability and the combat boost.
And truly great artists already have permission to reuse what they need . We already have permission to make use of the resources of sins plus graciously granted by danman, so this works great.
I tend to agree, but remember that there are bastion worlds, with a swollen tactical cap ready to act as full defensive worlds, so I think a smaller bonus to actual combat strength, such as cheap fortifications, rather than tremendously numerous ones, and having the healing affect the fortifications would make it tough without really usurping the bastion world's place. I think that by having the fleet base able to provide for its defenses with a healing ability for surrounding ships and toughened defenses would make it an ideal fallback point for a damaged fleet, where even if it was surprised it could fight better than its damaged state would allow, making it a perfect rallying point for damaged fleets. This would also provide a difference between them and bastion worlds, which tend towards large numbers of defensive structures.
I'm currently doing the buttons. What is in this video took me 10 minutes (click it to watch in HD)
The buttons look very nice
yea thrawn that stuffs ace!
Pure curiosity, has anyone tried activating this mod contiguously with another? Does it work if placed above or below another? I loooooove me some BfG, but I hate to just see Imperials volleying at each other.
well we will soon fix that boe but due to the copyright stuff on GWs IP we aren't alowed to have non GW races in the game. not sure if its compatable with other ones and it all depends on how the load order works in sins. generaly lower is loaded later and overwrites the previous ones if there are any incompatabilities
prezo the sequence in entrenchment is the higher in the list overwrites the lower in the list of activated mods(righthand list)
harpo
thats why i said generaly =P in my experiances with other mod managers its loaded top to bottom. but if harpo here says its otherwise i'd trust him =P
You can try it, but it won't be pretty. To get the mod working properly I had to do terrible, terrible things to the armor/damage types in gameplay.constants that you pretty much can't reconcile with the current limitations (that bit is hardcoded unfortunately). Also the galaxyscenariodef doesn't play nice because it has to make random maps follow the IP restrictions and spawns balanced militias, so that's different. And finally the stats are to a very different scale. I don't think the bfg ships hold up too well without mitigation, but they'll have 40/80 hp of shield regen a second, so it's kinda interesting at large sizes, I think. Feel free to try it, but at larger fleets the sins ships'll get more and more overpowering, since so much of their toughness is from their shield regen, and if you can break it they die relatively quickly. That and the bfg ships don't get research, and (all honesty) they really need it to keep their toughness scaling with their firepower properly.
All in all, try it if you want, but one of the two sets of ships will be seriously messed up by the damage types.
Heh, alright then, I guess I'll just have to be patient
Thanks tho, guys! Lookin' forward to subsequent releases!
Yeah, I think that the modeller's about to get out of school, so the pace of work should get stepped up nicely. The next release is almost ready, and it will get a fast patch as I try to figure out a proper way to balance troop replenishment stations. I definitely think I'll need a lot of feedback on that one.
FW00T! Finally got the newest version out. The new stuff it includes that I can think of off the top of my head is:
-New 40k style planets making use of the sins plus planets (thanks danman!)
-All ships textured, all buildings except defenses have actual models.
-Some unit icons replaced.
-Now requires entrenchment but works with 1.03 (sorry, but the imperials really need starbases to work right, and you'll see them soonish).
-Fighter/bomber dynamic now working, it should be pretty doable to set up a fighter screen that keeps enemy bombers away from your ships.
-Transports landing based, refill at munitorum depots.
Check the thread for the key stuff, I'll try to write a guide soonish to the most essential stuff.
If anybody wants to play a multiplayer game (I don't discriminate on skill, don't worry), feel free to PM me and ask.
WOW! Great work guys! I love the 40k universe and the BFG game so i love this mod. I like all the stations and models. i have been playing quick game against the Ai and it seems to use a good mix of the ships and counters what i build quite well, unlike a few others mods were the ai has trouble using new ships.
I noticed when extracting the zip a few chaos ships names popped up like the Styx but i haven't encountered any chaos ships at all. Are they not ready yet? Sorry if you have answered that before.
Also the battles seem to be over very quickly and that when trying to command my fleets that the ships were going down so quick i didn't have a chance to command them or select them (or it could be i just kind of suck at fleet tactics which is prob more like it ).
I know that the escorts should prob go down quickly and think thats a great idea, maybe though that they blow up a little to quick and should be given a wee bit more durability same for the cruisers because in the books and manuals i have read the cruisers and esp the battleships seem to be able to take a huge amount of damage, but again its your mod and i prob haven't got used to the new play style. I'm sorry if this sounds like i am moaning, i really don't mean it to do as i really like this mod .
I like the way that you now take over planets very good and different way to do it. Do though any of the current ships have the ability to bomb planets as none of the ships i was using would attack and had to use transports which is a fantastic idea. Will you be including a ship I.E a Space Marine battlebarge to bomb planets, because the Imperium is know to wipe out a planet pop and then replace it, ie Armageddon.
You guys are certainly doing an amazing job with this mod, definatly something to be proud of.l
Yeah, there are chaos ships floating around, but they aren't nearly ready yet. The reason they aren't all cut out is because there's about three meshes and one general texture. The biggest problem with them is getting their prow batteries to work properly, since they need that extra firepower to work at range, concentrating their firepower onto one broadside.
That is something I'm working on, I have a few ideas for it, but in larger battles ships do have an alarming tendency to explode. I think one thing that might work is making a brace ability for the ships that triggers when they're crippled and dramatically improves their durability at the cost of firepower, giving them a chance to pull back, but that might get messed up in some way. Merely upping their hull strength might work, but it wouldn't scale too well in all likelihood, so I need a better idea than that and the bracing sounds like it might be it.
Capital ships can still bomb, although they destroy population better than they do planet defenses (indiscriminate lance shots'll do that to a planet) and are mostly oriented towards raiding rather than planet capturing. They're also good at cheaply getting rid of the last bits of resistance on a planet. Space marine ships will definitely be quite capable at taking planets.
Thanks.
Anyone have any suggestions for the research tree? That'll be the next milestone
Liking the mod but I have a question for you
I saved the game before taking a break, hoping to get back to it later. When I tried to load the game later, it caused a minidump. I don't know if this has been reported, but thought I'd send this anyway.
Edit: Never mind, worked when I tried it again.
It crashed during the loading process? That's really odd if that's what happened and I have no idea what could've caused it. Glad to hear you liked it though.
For the researches, it looks like we get three 8x11 spaces to play with, so I was thinking of splitting it into three chunks for the imperials: Munitorum for combat upgrades, Administratum for civilian upgrades and Ecclisiarchy/Inquisition for the really tricky/neat stuff I come up with. The munitorum will have a lot of room taken up by various upgrade trees for various aspects of the imperial navy. Combat upgrades will be a major way in which I make battles stay a good length later in the game. The various trees on the combat upgrades section will be of different lengths in order to emphasize the strengths of the various races. For example the imperials will get their weapons power and armor boosted the most, while chaos will get their range and firepower boosted but remain comparatively fragile so that they have their usual early advantage in ranged firepower while the imperials try to close. What do you all think?
The main things I'm considering changing right now that I want some feedback on are increasing the gravity well size so the ranges aren't quite as ridiculous (jumping in and being able to fire on a fleet sieging an asteroid might be a bit much), making transports require refills a bit more frequently (more iNert's idea than mine, I think it should be fine with properly fortified planets) and finally increasing the tactical cap on most planets so they're more capable of defending from a decent sized attack.
What do you think of all these ideas? Don't worry if you only have something to say about one of the things, I just want some feedback.
I think the tech tree should be fairly large, as in Sins the tech tree is ridiculously short. I do like the fact you are making the racial tech trees much more different to each other than they are in vanilla Sins. Be sure to give Chaos lots of culture researches and the Imperials lots of culture-stopping researches to counter.
If you increase the gravity well, be sure to increase planet sizes as well to match. The scale in Sins is horribly off.
Increase the tactical cap, and make sure most planets can have more than one starbase. A Fortress World should have at least 4 or 5 maximum, especially if you are expanding the size of the gravity wells.
Hull upgrades hull upgrades hull upgrades... if you don't change the way the current system (things explode too fast). You could always lower ranges rather than increase gravity well sizes, but hey thats up to you.
And yes, planet defenses should really be a major part of this game, but starbases being few and far between, unlike Entrenchment. Maybe you should have a cap on those too, sort of like Captial ship crews.
I'm going to make a ton of researches, don't worry, and chaos will have quite the insidious culture spread. There'll be a fast spread but more importantly they'll get an insurgency style upgrade to harass their enemies' planets. The imperials will get plenty of resistance to spread, don't worry, and one thing I hope I can do is make starbases have an upgrade to resist the spread of culture like capital ships.
I will if I can, but that's more on iNert's plate.
I will increase the cap, especially on lower levels, but remember that a fully upgraded decent planet can muster ~30 attack craft squadrons and some passable firepower from the orbital docks. Add a starbase to that and it'll be dead nasty. If you really want to make the planet impervious, you could add one of the ramilies star forts we're adding soon instead of the basic starbase. Each arc of those babies can outshoot a battleship in each arc (1000 lance and 2400 weapons battery strength per arc), carry 16 AC squadrons and spray 1800 points of torpedoes at an unfortunate enemy, so if anything once the starbases are added, the top level of defenses might need to be reined in a bit. Also, don't forget that shipyards can repair, so if you absolutely need to hold a planet you can throw in a few of those for combat repairs.
I'll say more later, got to go, and yes, hull upgrades. Also, the regular imperial starbase will be highly civilian oriented, and more to make planets customizable than as a ubiquitous defense feature.
Excellent! I shall take a scanner and recon this new version and report back to the admiralty at the first possible moment!
Awesome, can't wait for you input.
In the interim, allow me to present a bit more tl;dr bait, actually a bit shorter than usual.
Don't worry, there will be hull upgrades galore. gotta balance out the tons of firepower somehow.
What I was going to do is to give the imperials a generic, defensively weak starbase they can build anywhere to add a bit of defensive firepower and allow the player to choose between defensive strength or a stronger civilian setup. Thrown into the mix will be a very very small number of ramilies star forts. I mean one or two for the whole game. These will be able to anchor an entire flank with only defenses if supported properly. However, the way I'm thinking right now their only source is constructors you start with based on game size, so if you lose one it's a big loss. They will be movable if that is the case, don't worry. I really think that's the best way to implement super weapons for each of the races, limiting the number you can get in a game because it's the only thing that can really apply to any type of super project. What do you think about giving the imperials customizable starbases with a matching cut in civilian/tactical slots on their planets and making the unique units limited in the number the player can possibly have?
Well, I messed around with the latest version. First off, by the Emperor's left ball, the visuals are incredible! I love the new buildings and the ships have even better details! The only concerns I have are about things you have intentionally, so I don't expect vast, if any, changes:
Ships die VERY fast. Now, I don't mean an über battle of a hundred plus ships. I mean, ten minutes into the game I have a cap ship and some frigates taking the nearby planets held by rebels and the like and the dinky frigates on both sides die within seconds. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if the armour and hit points and damage are to remain as they are, I feel weapon ranges might be reduced a bit. I could barely enjoy seeing my meagre yet impressive (visually) excuse for a fleet enter a system and open fire. Within seconds, all rebels are destroyed. And that's nearly halfway across the awesomely huge gravity wells. The huge range, in my opinion, defeats the new big gravity wells. But I love the large size. Now the porous core has a noticeable affect on gravity wells!
Either here or on your forums, I wouldn't be surprised if someone has brought this up already, but I will ask anyway: what about prices? With the short life spans of ships, should the costs be so high in both resources and population? It is... difficult to get a bunch of ships until you've taken a dozen planets or more. And even when you do, they die bloody fast, so it's hard to replenish them quickly. Again, might be intentional, but I wanted to ask nevertheless.
Also, I was looking at the diplomacy tab and seeing all TEC names got me thinking; maybe someone already thought of this, in which case this is pointless, but better safe than sorry: for names of computer, you could have the different Segmentum fleets, such as Segmentum Pacificus or Scarrus. Chaos would have legion names or corrupt fleet names perhaps, same for Marines (albiet with chapters), and so on down the list of different factions/races that you decide to include. As for markings, which could be a problem since my beloved Space Wolves do NOT use the same markings as those panzy "ultra"marines, just use the basic symbol for each race/faction: star of Chaos, Aquila for Imperials/Marines, some Eldar rune, the basic Tau symbol, and so on for whichever races make it into the mod. If you want to have such decorations on the ships, of course.
The imperial shipyards are wicked cool. I had to mention it. Perhaps there will be a research upgrade to allow the frigate factories the ability to make three ships at once, since they appear to have three docking berths or whatever? That would be cool
Well, there are my two Imperial Crowns. Take or ignore at your leisure
Made a mockish trailer. Sorta bad/ rushed since I'm going to Ireland tomorrow. I'll do a better one when I get back. HD should be up soon
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