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!)
Dude, I explained the mechanic for encouraging a player to switch from the SG fleet early in the game to the FW fleet as a late game fleet =p . Yeah, they're getting both fleets, it'll give them a good sized fleet selection and some interesting gameplay mechanics.
EDIT: Nice quickpost, beat me to it.
Oh, and if you want to look at and comment on my dev journals without becoming a member at modcraft, I've started an impulse blog here.
I like your idea X about the Tau ship transition later in-game, though I assume you can still build the old ships? Also, I really like the GW Tau ships...A massively wide space vessel doesn't really seem to make strategic sense. (FW...)
Also, Tau culture should be teh pwnz, along with their trade....so they should be the economic beast of the races
EDIT: Forgot to mention this but then realized it was in the description on main post. The Battleships are strangely smaller than the cruisers but I see you know that lol...it's just wierd.
Yeah, of course, it'd be way too much effort for them to not be available even if I wanted to make it that way, and I'll even try to make some options for strategies that use the SG fleet just for you.
They'll be very good at both, don't worry, but chaos culture's gonna be real nasty too, but in an entirely different way. Tau trade will be the top by a good margin (especially because the SG fleet will be cheap enough to allow for some good early investment, paving the way to the more expensive but less supply hungry FW fleet if you want or economic beastdom if you don't), though, then Imperials (they run a surprisingly huge amount of trade) and then everybody else kinda sucks at trade.
Chaos trade ---> Fail
I think the big blue book was marvelously understated when it said that chaos really couldn't find anybody on their side who wanted to ship supplies. Kind of forces them into the whole fast raiding thing, doesn't it?
Lol...anyone want to sell these slaves of nurgle....no takers...?....ho hum guess we go raid....
On a different note, I hope you're putting Grand Cruiser in!!! My suggestion would just put the Avenger Class in as it's the most unique one. Port and Starboard WB THAT'S IT! But, they pack a meaner punch than even the retribution.
Well, the flagship of my chaos fleet is a repulsive, so I'm not letting iNert not get away with not putting that one in, and we've got an idea for chaos and the IN where you start out with only the Grand cruisers available as capital ships (IE they get experience and you get one as your flagship) so by the time you get battleships, you've got a levelled GC that can keep up decently because of its experience. I think this'd work better for chaos, where the GCs are very much a flagship lite ship, and keep them as support ships for the Imperials, as they seem to fill something of an auxiliary role in the Imperial fleet. Wonder if I can make GCs cost half a crew instead of a whole one? Or make all the battleships cost 2 and double the crews researches give you. Still, they're not coming for a while, iNert doesn't even have GCs started. They will make it though, hopefully.
Well in the TT GCs are used basically to drive straight into the enemy formation and broadside the *&%$ outta them. Anyway to make that happen in game? :3
yeah, it's called right clicking in the middle of the enemy fleet =p
And yeah, that'll be there once we get the models, it's not that hard to do, and it's a tactic that's low on micro if you catch your opponent off guard and can force him to react in a way favorable to you. They're definitely on my list of stuff to add, they're an interesting change to the IN approach to things, and chaos works great with them.
With the increased importance on broadsides it'd be fantastic if the fleet formation options were expanded, rather than just the tight, normal or loose coherence from vanilla sins. Then again it is equally achievable with micromanaging. Anyway the first release is excellent for an early alpha, definitely moving in the right direction. The only real issue I had with it was a few pathfinding woes with my cruisers who on a few occassions decided to jump the opposite direction to which I told them. I love the increased sub-space movement, really brings tactical runs into consideration. Also the models are looking sharp.
Like all 40k related games, the lore is so expansive that you can take the mod in a dozen different directions. Should Foreworlds be available from the get go or be researched. In gravity wells with warp storms, randomise their occurence so fleets can not jump whilst they are active or a step further (if even possible), turn your fleet rogue if they are caught in one. That would make travelling through a warp storm a real risk-v-reward scenario. Will boarding torpedoes be dealt with as an exectuable ability that deals dps, much like volatile nanites from vanilla? Alternatively you could pay a fixed fee for each boarding party you launch, arguably representing the requistion costs of launching Karskin/Stormtrooper/Marine boarding parties.
Finally the approach you are taking to the Tau with the two fleets sounds excellent, as does starting off with a Grand Cruiser for the IN.
I'll see what I can do about that, I don't know how detailed I can get, but I definitely want to see if I can increase the spacing between the various ranks so the support ships can stay off the firing line.
No ideas on that one yet, but the IN doesn't really get them, so they're not something I need to worry about this moment. I'm thinking for chaos and marines making them cripple a ship's maneuverability or weapons or something along those lines, but for orks doing mostly damage with much less crippling. Not sure how that'll work out in all its details though.
Everything is looking great so far. The models look fantastic! Texturing can wait. I think that you've been able to slow the pace down to the point of where you are close to the tabletop feel. I've got my laptop running with the current build, and my desktop with the earlier build with chaos ships for comparison. I'm trying to get videos together.
SWEEEEEEEEEEET. I've been longing for a video of this mod to set to liberi fatali (The ff8 theme, don't ask me why) for a few days now. I got you the internal version with chaos and the IN, right? If so, try to keep the chaos caps other than the despoiler off the videos, will ya? Also, if you take the time to learn the change galaxy command menu in the dev exe, it'll make your life a lot easier.
No, I need that. Let me know when you can get me a copy.
Great job, guys!
-sniff- The little mod is finally growing up...they grow up so fast! [sobs with happiness]
I'll PM it to you on modcraft right now.
haha, what'd you think of it?
Badass. I love what you've done with the damage system. I wasn't sure how to turn Sins into a series of small scale tactical battles, but I think this will manage it.
Greetings xthetenth! I like the direction this mod is going [I especially enjoy watching my Black-As-The-Void-From-Which-No-Light-Can-Escape-From Ships attack their Black-As-The-Void-From-Which-No-Light-Can-Escape-From borg-esque cubes [which is the construction frigates ] as well as ships.] Seriously though, I have always enjoyed looking at the various ship designs that have sprang forth from Warhammer and seeing them in my Sins will be a true delight. I humbly request this badass name to be entered as one of the possible ship names, if you can: The Flaming Gilded Claymore of Unyielding Fury of the Emperor’s Relentless Justice and Eternal Vigilance.
If you get the reference; cookie for you.
Hey X and Prezo, sorry I havnt been contributing recently, Ive had a hell of a time with exams and keeping a new girl to keep happy >< But Its holidays now, and when im not entertaining, ill be able to test your mod. Congratulations on pulling out of that void, BTW, I thought the mod was going to die there for a second. And youve come back guns blazing too, with the IN out. Sweet job guys! I cant download till after christmas though, because im reformatting my computer (gotta find a friend with a 300 gig harddrive somewhere, so i can save all my stuff!) but at least by then, any initial issues should have been dealt with. When i do eventually get it, however, am i able to copy/paste the strings from the test alpha into it, so im able to have chaos as well? (It shouldnt get you introuble with GW, as ill be the only one with it, and im not distributing it)
And on the subject of Tau jumps... I thought they COULD go into the warp, but only for short range jumps, because they have no navigators? It would make sence for this mod, because all jumps are pretty much in between plannets, which isnt far. Even inter-system jumps are only a footstep in comparison to the 100m sprint other jumps can end up being.... So its fine if they are jumping in this game. No fluff breaking here.
Also, judgeing from my limited 3D experience, are you able to round all the edges on the model? It would make them look less jagged and tacky (They rule BTW, im just saying tacking in comparison to the models in the actual game). not the corners, just those straight edges. Would be more true to the model too. And places where its SUPPOSED to be sharp, only round them slightly, but round them nonthe less. dont know what the texturiser would have to say about that though...
Are the imperal cruiser models finished because their are a few mesh errors (mirror line down the center) and the eagle at the top of the bow is missing.
Got it this morning It's awsome! I can't believe the speed at which this is coming together. Hats off to you and Prezo. I'll do some videos this afternoon
Excerpt from a communiqué sendt by the engineseers:"TARGET: TAU; THREAT: MINISCULE; TARGET PRIORITY: ALPHA"
The emporer protects the faithfull, and i shall indeed purge his divine realm from the prencens of your xeno filth!
(on another note what i meant to say was "The option of commisars is gone. Purification by holy fire is what we need for these beings so corruptet by the prince of pleasure!" refering to the strikecrafts )
(We are loyal to the tau (But IN is the second favorit))
I can't be certian until i have faced them in battle, but it would probaly make it a bad idea to dump 5 cap ships and return later to see how they are doing.
[crazy idea] the flak do seems quite powerful, and although i haven't played BFG, the FW tau ships seems to rely somewhat on strikecrafts (all caps can fly them). so maybe an ability to create illusinary copies like the illuminator (tau's famed electronic capabilities maybe) for them to waste their flaks on.[/crazy idea]
[crazy idea] the range cirkels dosn't appear to correlate with the actual firing ranges the ships got, and with the apparent diffreance in range with the different weapons, three colour coded cirkels might be an idea[/crazy idea]
no cookie, I'm sorry, do you have a link instead?
Huh? I don't get what you're saying. Also, all cruisers are in the same weight class and are generally close in their capabilities, so guess off that.
They can actually take some damage, and they get fielded in huge numbers, so the turrets should get terribly overwhelmed. Mantas are win.
Don't think I could do that, and trust me I'm working on a way to fix range circles, but nothing seems to be working.
Well I have tried a couple of times to warp about 4 cruisers and a retribution battleship to a pirate base late in the game, then be distracted by an enemy fleet elsewhere, and when I return, I find all of my five ships still intact and no pirates.
And i can't be certain that 8 cruisers would be the answer as i havn't fought that many pirates in the same gravity well, but it would probaly make it harder for my ships.
Ahhh, now it makes sense. The escorts aren't all that strong and they don't use firepower dilution at all, they just queue up nicely to get shot. Howver with some cruisers they'd have some teeth. I'm not sure how many I want to put in the base, but I want to see a cruiser pop up in the nastiest two levels of raids and the garrison to give them at least a little bit of teeth, it's pathetic otherwise. With a cap, those raids would take two cruisers and a modicum of attention to beat, which could actually be worthwhile, and even when defenses go in, they could actually do some damage.
It depends on two things come to think of it, how many ships you're going to be able to spare, and how valuable the pirate base is going to be. If it's going to be worth a lot of credits, which it probably will be, then it'll have to be a bit better defended than if it isn't.
EDIT: Talking about specificity, I feel that it should be a gambit type move to attack the pirate base in a large single galaxy game, in which two fleets are expected and they'll probably be about 6 cruisers and a battleship, quite possibly more, so I'm thinking 6 cruisers and the current number of escorts would be challenging, but perhaps 8 is more accurate. I really really want to playtest this mod with some humans, and not just because I think it's a ton of fun .
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
