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!)
I'm releasing a mini expansion pack style addon thingy for the mod with placeholders for chaos and tau and maybe a surprise (trust me, it's worth it even though it'll take till tommorrow), but none of them have a full set of textured models. Chaos has two untextured cruiser models that proxy all of the cruisers and their escorts, but the infamous team color cube for their caps, and the tau have only one untextured model, which is doing triple duty as the protector and hero variants, and maybe I'll use it for the merchant and envoy classes too.
Space marines are going to be in the second version of the add-on. They'll be team color proxies too, and I'm not sure what we'll do for color. One possibility if we can make versions with different textures hash the same way then you could make a texture for some chapters (dark angels, space wolves, blood angels and black templars are the ones I'll ensure get made, I bet enough people are going to ask for smurfs that they'll be in too), and have the various fleets be different companies. Doesn't make sense if they're fighting each other, but it's probably the best we'll be able to do.
It would, but that's something for a different engine. It'd also be likely enough to result in enough battles that it'd go really well with multiple players on a team, something I'd like to see in the rts market. I want to see a team based
Hmm, that's interesting about the constructors, because they definitely aren't listed to be buildable. I just tried taking them out of the player files, which will quite possibly work. Stupid bloody computer not playing by the same rules. If that fails, I'll just make it cost 40,000 creds and make it overpay horribly for cheating. And yeah, release'll be sometime tomorrow, I just couldn't wrap it up today. Not much left to do, so it pretty much depends on when I wake up.
oh... they are so usefull at repeling small invasions.. but when you hve my fleet jumping from planet to planet with 7 capitol ships, easilly 15 cruisers and god know hows many frigates the start fort doesnt stand a chance.
the smurfs?! You dare insult the honor the Ultramarines 4th Company in this way?!
COURAGE AND HONOR!!
Oh i cant wait for the next release (hopfully tomorrow yeah?) I have been hard promoting your mod to ..well just about everyone really ( i think some people might be getting abit tired of it as well lol) With the planet killer i asume you can only build one or somthing ( as ther only is one) im quite intressed in what you be doing with space marine as these were a major issue in the table top gane to. they were expesive and to week now ther expesive and death incarnate, mind you, will you be making them the same expesive to build but ouch. as space marine liek most of the tech is prized and scares. most chapters only have 2 or 3at most 3 battle barges, as it oly take one of these to turn up and the whole dam system is loyal and complinet prity dam quick. but ,ind you if you were strick to 40k you only ever see a strike cruisser turn up now and then. Sorry once again im passionly rambling, i woudl realy like to help con tribute ( any odead shout please). i really must stay away from the coputer when ive been drinking lol.
well atm i fought against a maxed out defense of a planet and i didnt lose one major ship.. meaning cruiser and above, i lost maybe a frigate and a duantless but thats it..
@Whiskey144
About the smurfs, not only do I insult the honor of the fourth company but I insult every last blue one of them all the way to papa smurf! Mwahahaha! ...Ahem. If you didn't look at the list I gave, it's pretty much a list of the main codex disrespecting chapters in the imperium. I'm a black templars fan with a fondness for space wolves and blood angels who dabbles in guard. It's natural to be jealous of you guys and your half price rhinos from the templar viewpoint and the way you steal the guard's glory. Sorry, won't happen again =P .
@ja_147
The release will be whenever I get it done, but I'm winding down, I'm just waiting for the k... *ahem* cruiser model nert's prepping for me tomorrow. The planet killer, I'm going to make as available as the ramilies, since the navy's pretty sure they killed one during the 12th black crusade with the torpedoes of the lunar cruisers of Omega squadron but another showed up during the 13th black crusade. I'm taking this to mean that chaos can build more of them and given the exaggerated numbers of ships we're already fielding, 3 potential planet killers isn't too bad. I mean you can have as many battleships as battlefleet gothic, we're playing a bit hard and fast with the fluff. Same goes for the marines, they tend to group up for key campaigns we're assuming our games are, but we don't have the ability for multiple textures, so it's gleefully ignoring scale. GW does it all the time, it's why marines aren't like movie marines but are instead the 15 point 3+ saves we know and love.
@NeighborKid
I'm surprised by that, how much firepower did you have? I think I'll up the tac cap though, I want turtling to be possible, so allowing people to build up a ton will probably go in.
Anyway, it's gotta be tomorrow, took too long leaning how to export models to get enough coding done. Sorry, but it'll be awesome hopefully and the new model is sweet.
so what can expect from the next release? chaos race? semi textured/modelled? any improvements to imp? any surprises we should wait and see for? will it be balanced? any new game mechanics that the new race('s?) bring?
lot of excited people waiting for this next release, oh yeah xthetenth are you in america or uk, os i can get in sink with days example whn you say oh ill be addin this tomorrow i know your torrow is my night if your american.
Chaos and Tau race, very slightly textured/modeled (a few models, none textured, the rest cubes), a few assorted fixes to minor issues, a rather large surprise to wait for, maybe balanced maybe not (I won't have time to test all the permutations but I'll try to make sure the stuff I can test quickly is), and definitely new mechanics. Chaos are long ranged broadsiders who suffer in close, while tau are fighter spammers who have all their guns concentrated into their nose arc and can hand out serious punishment as long as they don't get flanked too much or engaged very closely. Chaos also benefits from very effective cruisers, but their battleships tend to be less effective. They also have a grand cruiser now. Grand Cruisers are toweringly nasty ships with the firepower of a battleship in a package somewhere between battleship and cruiser price tags. The tau also have orca escorts on some ships (explorer battleships, the Kel'shan merchant and the custodian battleship has orcas proxying the nearly identical warden escorts for now). Chaos also has the planet killer, an offensively oriented super with firepower to match the ramilies, significant defenses and the potentially devastating armageddon gun (essentially the hybrid offspring of cleansing brilliance and nova cannons). I'll deal with what the surprise brings to the table when I release, but it will have some seriously fun stuff too.
And yeah, I'm an american and don't have much time free today until most everybody east of greenwich has gone to sleep. Sorry to hear you'll have to wait another day for it.
Does anybody else not have the formatting bar show up in the posting window, and have to do their formatting in HTML or is it just me? Sorry if my formatting is terrible.
oh a rather large surprise , oh dear god it not a activated black stone fortress is it, now there some serious fire power
oh god i know... well im gona need a bigger gun
First rule of surprises: You always need a bigger gun.
Second rule of surprises: Firing nova cannons at them is like hurling eggs at a brick wall.
Anyway, I'm back coding, should be done soonish. I have a frigate, a very painful fighter derivative and some buildings left to code.
Edit: Supers are screwing up horribly, neither the planet killer nor the surprise spawn right, should I just release now (tau don't have a super, and the other two would probably mean I won't release till tomorrow if I tried to get them working)?
i think marinies might be getting some models soonish as they only have a few and should be relitivley easy to make their full list. i might even do it now i'm getting into modeling
Sounds good, I think I'm waiting till the morning when I can get some more models from nert. I'll try to get the supers working, but if they aren't done when I've got those models I'm releasing without supers.
just take a coupla days to try work things out, if not just give us something to chew on till it comes out.
and my guesses for the surprise are the necrons since how you said 'them' not it, or maybe another super race
nope. The multi-arcness of the weapons is still giving me a headache. That and figuring out how to make the most stripped down gameplay model imaginable is messing with my head.
It's the lack of a tau super in large part, I'm very tempted to just release one without supers while I figure out what to do for the tau and how to make spawning ships near-permanently work. Two birds with one stone.
[I'm very tempted to just release one without supers while I figure out what to do for the tau and how to make spawning ships near-permanently work. Two birds with one stone.[/quote]
Good idea! Supers aren't absolutely necessary at this point. I think the new races by themselves should satisfy everyone.
would the ramilies count as a super?
My guess is orks cause of the "k -ahem-...cruiser" comment you made.
Yeah, but temporarily taking it out would be accompanied by a considerably higher tactical cap, because I really want the imperials to be able to turtle without committing too many ships to defending.
Yep, it's all the orks, including the space hulk, which is what I was referencing the most (that nova cannon comment is from its page in the rulebook). However, any of the ways I can think of to spawn ships aren't working. I may retry returning armada derived abilities, but nothing seems to work right when it kills the spawner. Maybe if I had it also spawn an invisible star base with a damage over time buff that killed it it'd work. I'll try that and make sure roks work right and then release it/give up on supers for the moment.
ok i noticed u have the cruisers cap and frigste from the original BFG but will u included the newer ones from BFG armada later on E.G.
along with all the new ships in armada
cause i would love to see the adept machanicus fleet in action
and will Imp ans space marine b in dif races or together as research unlock???
cause there ships ment to b the best in the Imp apart from the realy realy old ships in the fleet
Yep, known. A lot of it is that to do the voss fleet you need voss prows, and our modeler hasn't done those yet.
Space marines are their own fleet. They're organizationally seperate from the IN, and have a very different fighting doctrine that probably wouldn't mesh too well with the IN style.
They'll be in eventually, they'll mostly be the IN with a lot more focus on research.
I'd tend to disagree on that, they're meant to be the most capable assault transports in the imperium, not the best warships. Their job is to punch through any opposition to deliver their cargo and support it, not to win fleet battles. They will be more expensive because they are really tough to punch through opposition, but they won't act in the same way as the IN. They even aren't allowed to have true fighting ships because of the post-heresy division of capabilities, having their own transports is remarkable enough, let alone how capable they are.
EDIT: Roks are badly screwed up enough that I'm postponing for a day until I can get the issues with turrets worked out. The only way to make them work as ships chained to a grav well is to make them fighters, but even with fighter attack turned off they still use it and turrets absolutely trash them the way they're set up right now, and I need time to rework all the fighter stuff.
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