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!)
Well just remember to make the bigger ship you put in the raid to attack ships and buildings/bomb... not go after trade ships.
Also, the troop transport doesn't bomb by default, which is kind of annoying. Maybe you should just remove the laser it has and just make it a planet bomber?
well i was going to tinker with textur'in these for you but for some reason 3ds wont import these, just the regular .mesh from vanilla sins will it import....sad i wanted to give it a go...
the tau will probbly be in as soon as i get some more of the models cos at the moment i have the castelian (or however its spelt) the protector and i think its the warden. i've also already got their strikecraft prepared so as soon as inert is a little less busy i'll get him to make me some tau!
prezo
Hmmm... that's very odd. If you want to try texturing, we'd be happy to set you up with on of the .objs, just ask in our modcraft forum. I have no idea why it wouldn't import our meshs, try the overlord, because a lot of them have minor errors that don't effect gameplay but may confuse 3ds.
also they are probbly optimised differently and are in a text form, or they could be a newer version of the .mesh file than the importer... but i dont know what importer you are useing so i couldent exactly say
i got some script of this forum, everyone is hating and wanting the first one but i cant find a file link to download the first version sadly....
I think its spelled Castellan, but more importantly than spelling will the Emmissary cruiser be there? the first tau interstealler space ship i saw, and it is still my favorit
and x i agree playing with humans would be fun, and its probaly the only way to test multiplayer ballance.
(danm strikecrafts are defecting from my Emperor again, they probaly heard the tau are on the way)
So Kiernyc will make a forum post on the specifics of what we managed to test in like 40 minutes, but A) the Despoiler is probably the right size for caps and the model itself is still funky. The prow that is. Also, the IN crusier that is supposed to have just weapons batteries has just lances on the model (is it a proxy model for now?).
Its more flat than the ingame model is now too.
I don't hate, I just want. That'd be awesome if you could get us even a very very simple texture. By very I mean make the prows white and the shade of team color not too heavily affected by the lighting so it looks darkish even when lit brightly and still has color when not lit so brightly. Some trim around the guns would be nice if you're feeling particularly energetic. This of course assumes you're working with imperials. Anything you could do would be a great help.
Yeah, all the tau ships will be there. Does anybody have the real forge world rules for the forge world fleet? The experimentals they have online suck (they're meh at best, too fragile and unmaneuverable and not enough firepower, and lose a lot of the character the SG tau had.
Any time after this saturday, I'm free to play, just tell me when you're free if you want to. I'll even answer any questions you can think to ask.
First priority once I have some time to experiment is that and the Nova Cannon.
Yeah, it's a placeholder, and it does its job until iNert gets a good one out.
Yep, the same reason why the Dominator has 0 damage torps on what should be an NC nose too, and why the dictator has an NC nose and launches torps out of dorsal lance batteries (odd looking, but it works).
Also, if you want to see it, the preliminary version of the second dev journal, a fleet tactics guide is up. It'll have to wait till saturday for me to test it, but it should be good advice, not much has changed since tabletop. Please make some suggestions/comments and tell me what you want me to write the next one about. It's right here
Finally, I have two things I want to ask.
1) I've been thinking about how to make escorts more survivable in battle and still survivable. What would you say to making them have a 30 second reload time on their guns instead of 20, keeping their DPS the same. That way, attacking the enemy's stern and retreating out of range would be easier to do, and you'd get more time to recharge your shields before passes. It'd also decrease the level of micro needed. What do you think?
2) I need to be reminded about all the planet types there are in 40k, but also want ideas about how to represent various planets. For example, a shrine world would quite possibly increase culture as the Imperials use it to spread the Imperial Cult or their enemies use it for propaganda/sinister purposes.
If you could make the suggestions look like this, it'd be great:
Inhabited world:Resources: medium (2-3)Population: mediumAppearance: Stock terran/Sins plus savannah/forest/old naval baseExtras: nothing, just bland
Oh, and now's a good time to segway into two announcements about the planets:
-We get to use all the resources of sins plus, which is great (thanks danman! I guess I should shill 7DS even though it's more popular than god so dl it and enjoy it, make danman and his team happy)
-Unless you guys object, different planet types will have multiple meshs. The reason for this is simple. Most of the worlds are not defined by a single climatological characteristic. For instance, if the life on catacha weren't so damned nasty, it wouldn't be all that much of a deathworld, but would still be very very green. This means that we can get a lot more variety in the meshs and make the maps look a lot more varied than in stock sins, and feel a lot more free to make planet types that have nothing to do with their appearance (do something holy on a world and it could become a holy world, it doesn't matter what kind of plants there are). The one thing about this is it'd be a bit harder to tell what types of planet everything is at a glance, so I want to know your opinions on it before I make all the planets. Thanks
1) I've been thinking about how to make escorts more survivable in battle and still survivable. What would you say to making them have a 30 second reload time on their guns instead of 20, keeping their DPS the same. That way, attacking the enemy's stern and retreating out of range would be easier to do, and you'd get more time to recharge your shields before passes. It'd also decrease the level of micro needed. What do you think? I think that's the way to go...otherwise they're gone pretty fast
I think that's the way to go...otherwise they're gone pretty fast
Yeah, that's what I was thinking, it was an idea I got for the eldar originally, and I think it'd work well for the escorts. One thing to remember is that escorts are not frigates. They're a lot more maneuverable and have disproportionate firepower, but are very fragile. The best way to use them (I think) is a series of slashing attacks on the enemies' rear, getting out of range before they can respond.
Oh also (since I guess kiernyc is posting tomorrow now) the IN capital ships don't broadside. Granted, a Retribution vs a Despoiler and the Retribution wins. Despoiler vs an Emperor and the Emperor class gets pwnd.
It is funny when the IN torpedo spam one ship since the torpedo explosion is the planet bomb nuke thing.
Well here's the initial issues we found...some of them have been posted by Thrawn already but I'll say them again!!
Here goes:
- Battleships don't broadside (though cruisers do yay!)
-Battleships (maybe cruisers) are way too agile...retribution goes like 328190312 mph
-Bombers freak out and just don't work for Battleships
- Despoiler is the right scale for a battleship, Imperial ones are wee little things...wayyyyyyy too small
- Chaos Carrier cruisers is also not the same scale as other cruisers
Here are some pics now :
Yes, that wee yellow thing is a Retribution....Despoiler scale ok!
Retribution compared to a Kol.
Bunch of size comparisons.
The Emperor and Despoiler go head to head!
Mini carrier cruiser
Yeah, but it's such a nice big explosion.... I couldn't resist....
And yeah, it's actually a good thing that they don't broadside. Their torpedoes' expected damage is almost the same as that of the broadsides, and if they go in straight, then they can wiggle to fire all their weapons in a fast salvo. Also, when they go in, they're in the best aspect to do the most damage they can. The battlecruisers and battleships have their dorsals locked forward, so that's their most damaging aspect, plus you can make wide turns to fire all your guns. It's probably the best aspect for them.
Ret's the same speed as the IN cruisers, if it's higher, I'll fix it.
known.
They don't fire their broad sides at all unless you micro it for them to move their behinds (which maybe too micro?). Also X you did notice that last picture right.... is that supposed to be that way?
They do if you play them the way I do! I generally use a move order instead of an attack order, works better. My general rule of thumb is place your ships in the front 2/3ds of the enemy fleet, and hit the back with the torps, and if you use them like that, they will fire everything. I do want to make the formations a bit looser to make this less crowded. Plus, snaking your support ships is a matter of setting a series of waypoints in a zigzag leading to the enemy, it's not that hard or micro intensive. Escorts are the only really micro intensive part of the whole thing.
that be prezo's job man, the only thing that's my job is matching the models with the entities. I'm going to look at them next to the Imperial cruisers, because those are set, and we are going to use them as the basis for the scale on everything else. The chaos cruisers don't matter because they're getting replaced anyway. In short, the chaos ships are a bunch of very shiny and nice looking .entity files floating around that I want you to help make play well with the imps.
Oh, and tsk, dude, only the non-release version has the kol, and it's really not supposed to be there, so don't make screenies with standard ships.
I just skimmed the the stats of the online and the Taros book, and i couldn't find any difference between the ships, but i i didn't get much sleep last night as i'm about to head for germany, so i might have missed something.
That's what I hear from prezo too, that's a shame, the FW tau are really short on firepower and durability. Forces them into ordnance spam a bit much in my eyes, but whatever.
Thanks for going to the effort of checking though.
http://rapidshare.com/files/172608358/Dirk.txt.html
The current website holding the story is down at the moment, so that's always a bit suckular. Its a good story, about a Guardsmen named Dirk, who is the universe's luckiest person. If you read it you'll find out how lucky and such. FYI, its safe, so no woes. {You can only download it 10 times for some reason, I guess a new policy of theirs. If you can't download it, tell me and I'll try an alternative!}
The tau are pidgeonholed by the rules into a disproportionant reliance on attack craft and missiles. However you could make them reflect their 40k selves. A highly mobile force with an excellent variety of weapons that output an excellent fire/size performance. On the flip side their increased subspace mobility comes with a significant penalty to long range jumps meaning tau need to consistently refocus their frontline production facilities in order to maintain lines of logistics and requisition. This also kind of reflects the fluff in that the tau spheres of expansion, coupled with the lack of warp technology (and a general warp presence, be it of c'tan of old one intention) leave them a long way off from homeworld reinforcements.
Continuing in the 40k vein, they are fragile. Even with their xv suits, they tend to be obliterated by any form of respectable concentrated small arms fire. These factors tend to lend the tau to high mobility tactics, including jump shoot jump suits and devilfish assaults. In BFG terms it makes them a bit like the eldar but less fragile and with poor warp travel.
Give their rail guns longer range and added punch (they are insane in TT, St 10, AP 1) with an AM submunition shot for frigates or strikecraft. Make mantas THE definitive bomber, they are larger, faster and carry a more powerful payload than anything else going round. Plus the air caste have unnatural understanding of 3 dimensional combat and high tolerance to g forces.
They have a fairly limited range of ships and are definitely noted in 40k for a lack of static defences. Even forgeworld only introduced deep striking turrets. However they make extensive use of human auxillaries so perhaps they can utilise and few basic imperial ships and defensive structures.
Finally, big bonuses for the presence of an ethereal and even bigger penalties for his death. Phew, far too much said but i am more than happy to chat about any good criticism or ideas about anything ive mentioned!
EDIT
Just crossed my mind but is it possible for you to integrate some of the dawn of war sound files? there are some excellent lines littered amongst the 4 games. would it require permission from GW/thq/relic/assorted developers (cept ironlore who is now defunct)?
Got it, pretty funny. I liked that line about seeing fear and a krak grenade on the daemon's face, that was good.
I just realized something. Of course the Tau are pigeonholed, all the races are, and it doesn't make them any less interesting. I bet you could play them something like mech tau actually, keeping out of the enemy's range, and swooping in on part of their fleet, defeating it in detail and then moving on to the next one, but I'm not sure, I'll need to see how they play to know for sure.
Plus, if you want a fleet that can shoot well, that leaves you reason to build a lot of Heroes for those of us who like the SG fleet.
Well, they're not that fragile, but they're pretty expensive for troops without a 3+ save, so they don't have the numbers to soak up casualties all that well. The BFG rules make them fragile and that works, it just makes it very very hard for them to launch a credible attack. But whatever, a carrier fleet would be pretty interesting.
In what way are Mantas not the definitive bomber? There are two other forms of AC that can even hold a candle to mantas. Thunderhawks also get the 4+ save in TT, but they're assault boats so they don't do all that much damage, while the Eagles are very good at doing damage if they get to the target, but they don't have the sheer durability of the Mantas, and neither even comes close to the sheer blanket coverage you can get from the Manta.
I don't know if we could get the permission, but we're keeping that in mind, don't worry.
p=npanything with in reason to help the mod along, and also gives me an excuse for digging through all the old books
There are two ways to make the manta into the definative bomber, that readily springs to mind.1) Dammage, the harder it hits the harder it hurts2) Survivability, making the manta able to survive a flak burst, would really increase the fear they generate. this could be explained with their shield arbsorbing the flak, the shield then overloads after x flak for y time. This flak resistance would force the enemy to move their ships into each others flak range for better defence, or make them field their own fighters. Figthers in the IN, chaos and eldar all seems to have speed of 30 cm in BFG as oposed to the 25 cm of the baracuda fighter, this speed difference would mean that the tau would need to focus their fighters on escorting the mantas, as chasing down the enemy fighters easily could mean that enemy fighters out manuver the baracudas and head for the "defencesless" mantas
EDIT: There's probably a coding problem here as with my other ideas
There's one other key thing about the manta that makes it awesome. It'll be a one bomber squad (the chaos one will too, but that has a bland effect) with an awesome set of firing effects. 2 heavy railguns and 6 ion cannons will make for quite the light show and that range will let them hit before they fly into flak range, so that'll let them shoot even if they get killed by the turret later and they'll be able to survive a squadron of fighters making a run on them. Don't think they'll do more damage, though, that'd be a bit excessive, but I think the others will work nicely.
I hate too sound like an idiot but what software are you using to model,texture,code and get it in the sins mod. Cause I'd like to help in any way I can. Oh and also where I can find the software.
Knowledge is power guard it well.
I use notepad++ for the entities and meshs, it's a really good text file editor, you can clone windows to other views and lots of other fun stuff that really helps out, and I use gimp whenever I need to play with textures (you'll need a plugin to work with .dds files like most of the ones in sins), but considering that I'm already able to deal with any of that, if you want to help, notepad++ is all you really need. Honestly, I've pretty much got the text modding under control, and I can't help you with the models. Prezo and iNert are the guys who can help you with that, but I'm glad that we've inspired you to help.
EDIT: Oh, I didn't notice, 100th post already! woot!
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