Thanks for the praise everyone, glad you like my work!

Jarquafelmu, the Dynamic mod incorporates the latest Volumetric effects, so you don't have to run the Volumetric alongside it - unless you want the bundled-in Bailknight's effects as well.

Overall, I have to say that I am enjoying this mod. That said, I do have a problem with the turn rate of the stationary turrets: They turn far too slowly for what they are intended to defend against. In my opinion, the stationary turrets are meant to be the counter to light raiding attacks (ie. Light frigates) and countered by heavier attacks (such as by LRM frigates). As it is now, they are useless against the faster craft, and outranged by the long range craft, making them little more than wastes of metal, credits and crystal.

Actually, that exact error happened to me if I tried to play the initial 0.9 version with the Entrenchment 1.02 so it makes sense that you get the same if you play the updated 0.9 version with Entrenchment 1.01. Have you upgraded Entrenchment to the latest version?

Khrysanth, yeah, the stationary turrets will get an overhaul as well, but probably in a different direction. I see them as heavy weapon emplacements (after all its a whole station designed to basically be a big gun) with long range capability and high damage - useless against light attack ships, but dangerous against capitals and slow moving craft like siege frigates. They are meant to defend a planet against ships that can harm it, which usually means the abovementioned classes. Unfortunately it slipped my mind to overhaul them for the 0.9 version, sorry.

Thanks for the feedback, looking for more of that because it helps me refine the combat system! Especially if you notice a certain ship class dominating unfairly on the battle field, or "stealing" another ship class' role and usefulness!

The system is designed to help AI somewhat, but it will not be doing any facy maneuvers if that's what you mean. Then again, it never did so...

Anyway, based on my playing experience, the AI is working just as well as it does with the original game.

I played the public beta of entrenchment and for some reason kept on expecting a little more. The starbases are good and entrenchment is a good addon. But I have not touched the actual release of entrenchment..... just been too busy with the likes of ETW. Now I am motivated to do so.

Manshooter, I'd disagree with somewhat on your assessment of Turrets - They shouldn't be useless against the lighter frigates at all, less effective, but should still be capable of taking them down. A fully upgraded TEC Gauss Emplacement (Swarm Missiles and Meson Bolt, plus the capacitor upgrades and so on) should be fairly capable against everything, it just needs a greater turn rate. The point of defence emplacements is that you leave them behind at your worlds to defend your empire on it's manifold fronts, whilst the player's main fleet rampages across hostile worlds. Their purpose is sort of defeated if they get "WTF-pWned" by Light Frigates, if you catch my meaning.

This then enables the Assault Cruisers for the Advent and TEC, and the Vasari Orkulus to fufill their created role - as dedicated structure/emplacement busters, and actually gives them a role within fleet architecture. Sure, you can get by using normal frigates and cruisers, but you should take a large amount of losses in the process.

Sorry for the ramble there, I love the mod, and use it a lot with your effects mod

Ravenholme, the orbital defenses still can pose a threat to frigates, especially when they get adjusted in damage for the next version. However, any kind of a static defense should not be able to repel a mobile force on its own. Static defenses have a simple purpose of tying up enemy forces and preventing them from advancing or achieving their strategic goals until a mobile force can be deployed to destroy the attackers.

That said, I envision static defenses as precisely that - powerful defensive batteries with a nasty attack, long range and an absolutely crappy turn rate. They can make mince meat out of capital ships which blunder into the defensive line, but are very much innefective against a swarm of light and medium attack ships, or dedicated structure busters such as torpedo cruisers or missile boats which will still have slightly longer range than the static defenses.

I don't have to say what will happen to siege boats if they try to approach a planet defended by a ring of orbital guns.

If you want to tie up mobile enemy forces and are worried that your turrets are going to be innefective against swarms of light ships, bolster the orbital hangar count - bombers are still quite effective against all sorts of frigates.

The idea, and I am very much interested in seeing how will this work in multiplayer, is to force the players to choose between homeland security and all out attacks in a greater degree. One of the lame things about Sins MP is the "mega-fleet" tactic, where a player focuses all of its fleet strength into a single swarm and simply lays waste to enemy worlds, safe in the knowledge that the enemy player will not be able to field damaging raids against his own worlds because those upgraded turrets and starbases can hold the line on their own just fine and the defending player won't be able to send a large enough force if he wants to keep his own worlds intact.

This way, you can still dedicate the majority of your forces to defense actions and send small detachments of light ships to bust up the orbital defenses and pave the way for some cheap-arse siege frig (which will get a major upgrade in damage to justify building them instead of more capital ships) attacks.

In my opinion, ship and unit roles overlap too much in SoaSE. The more specialized individual ship and unit classes are, the greater freedom of creativity a player has. Instead of ending up with a cookie cutter strategy that works every time in precisely the same way, you get a better chance on mixing and matching your ships and trying out new and unpredictable stuff based on the situation ingame.

That's the idea at least. Hopefully I'll be able to pull it off with the upcoming releases.

Does anyone got the mod, the link seems to be broken

ok question mansh00ter, do you just alter the ship speeds and "usesFighterAttack TRUE" ??

if so, i think this really breaks combat mechanics, the battles often end up out of grav well, and take forever in large engagements.

if there is something different you did, could you share?

it already happens in vanilla, on a limited basis, when an anti-fighter follows a strike craft out of the grav well, then the attacking fleet follows it, then your fleet follows them, then the fighter gets further out, etc...

i activated this in my mod, then quickly deactivated it. i was just wondering if he modified anything besides mass, ship speeds, and fighterattack. if so, i tried that and i know what happens. maybe people like it. not me.

i am not looking for realism, per se. and don't forget, for the majority of time in large scale land warfare, battles were fought by lines. it is not an "unheard' of tactic. imho, it makes the game a hell of a lot smoother. plus in my mod, i have things balanced so frigs pop quickly, cruisers decently fast, and caps are.... real caps.

i have already done this. it happens no matter what. because they make their return swings so large. if there was a way to limit those swings, i would agree this would be awesome. but as it stands, games already take so long i dont think battles need to be extended.

Installation:

Unrar to your Entrenchment mods folder, then enable ingame. Make sure this mod loads last.

I had just dl'd the mod but I have not been able to get this mod to work, I have unrar it into the mod-entrenchment v1.02 folder, and now I have the following folders: Requiem(the requiem mod), Gameinfo, particle, pipelineEffect, TextureAnimations, Mesh, Textures, and a file call entity.manifest, and two .txt files.  I had Enable the mods(each of the folders), but the ships do not move.  What am I missing??? Any help would be appreciated.  thanks

Nevermind, I figured it out.  Just had to create a new folder in the mods-entrenchment v1.02 folder and extract all the content into there.