- This mod is no longer active. Instead, TobiWahn_Kenobi is creating another B5 mod that looks very promising. You can find his mod here: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/361694
Please let this topic die in peace. -
Since it is pretty outrageous that there isn't a single mod for Sins featuring the Babylon 5 universe, I have begun working on it myself. This mod will be designed for Entrenchment, as a Babylon 5 mod just has to have starbases in my opinion.
Setting:
This mod (at least at this stage) will focus on the early Babylon 5 series, before the formation of the Interstellar Alliance. I always felt that the best part of the series were the earlier ones, with the Shadows being "the unknown hidden threat" and the younger races emboiled in diplomatic manipulations with one another. Think season 2 & 3, with the Centauri being manipulated by the Shadows to wage all-out war with the Narn, The Earth Alliance being frightened into a pact of non-agression with the Centauri while their Babylon-5 Space Station fights a series of skirmishes against Centauri forces, a renegade Minbari Sharlin warcruiser, in other words alot of possible reasons for the different races to fight eachother.
Aims:
- A summer first release, featuring:
- 4 Playable races at first release. These will be:- The Earth Alliance-> The Earth Alliance uses ponderous but very solid ships with impressive armor. Their ships that lack the powerful long range weapons of the other races, which is compensated by powerful although somewhat inaccurate short to medium ranged weaponry.- The Centauri Republic-> The Centauri use fast and highly maneuvrable ships with devastating weaponry. Their ships are however less durable than those of the other races, even though the Centauri experiment with a new type of shielding on some of their ships. Centauri fighters are superior to Narn & Earth Alliance fighters, but they generally deploy less of them as several of their ship classes are not capable of supporting fightercraft.- The Narn Regime-> More ponderous than the ships of the other races, Narn ships are durable and well armored. They favour powerful long range frontal weaponry, with their trademark weapon being the energy-mine launcher. Even though their frontal long range weaponry is impressive, most Narn vessels are undergunned compared to equivalent ship classes of the other races. Narn fighters are comparable to Earth Alliance's Starfuries, but somewhat less maneuvrable.- Minbari Federation-> The most powerful of the young races, their ships are superior in all regards to those of the other races. They are faster, have superior maneuvrability, carry extremely powerful beam weaponry, and are protected by a form of cloak that makes automatic targetting impossible. Oh, and their fighters are superior in every way too.
- At least 5 ship classes per race (plus fighters) for the initial release. Most ship models already exist, but they need to be converted to XSI which is difficult and tedious.
- One starbase per race.
- Sins pirates will be replaced by their B5 counterpart the Raiders.
- Buildings will be for a later release. Except for the Starbases I feel most Sins buildings can easily function as babylon 5 constructions.- Integration with several other mods to change planets, planet bonusses, explosions and other such things to better suit the Babylon universe
- This mod will aim to reflect what you see in the series/movies as best as possible. Most ships will not have shields but use armor that determines their amount of migitation. The best survival a ship has is to not get hit: weapons will have a substantial chance to miss, but when they do hit it will hurt.
- Supply lines that allow you to keep your ships working at their highest potential
- Small to medium-scale conflict. No fleets of hundreds upon hundreds of vessels that insta-zerg everything in their path.
- Loosing ships will matter. Loosing an entire fleet will be a disaster. Knowing when to retreat will be important.
- Meaningful special abilities that resemble the stuff you see in the series/movies. The Centauri Mass Drivers for planetary bombardment for example.
- Fully immersive music, sound and speech.
Plans for the second release include:
- More ships.
- Completely reworked research trees that allow new ships to be researched.
The second release will also introduce the Shadows and the Vorlons as playable factions. Both of these races will have the incredibly powerful ships we know from the series, which will be balanced out by their high cost and possibly other things as well like lack of trade income, or very limited research, but that will be a future concern. Both races will be designed around their respective philosophies "What do you want" and "Who are you".
Since I am currently working on this mod on my own, it is going to take some time before a release. In addition, I do not have much modelling experience, and even though I already have most ship models so far my first attempts to try and convert a LightWave-made Sharlin Class Warcruiser to a Sins compatible XSI format were not an overwhelming succes.
So if anyone with modelling experience is interested in converting/creating models let me know. In addition if anyone knows any good models we can use for this mod let me know.
Regards,
Lord Tareq
Good luck on this!
finally!!!!!!!
its about time someone did this
good luck!!!
I though someone else is also doing that right now
Working on updating my Sins Babylon 5 galaxy map for 1.16/entr 1.02. Harpo helped me getting the maps updated. Will upload them soon to the stardock website.
Feel free to include the map in any B5 mod you are making, no permissions needed, just give credit where credit is due.
Actualy, the EA has quite impressive long range firepower ever since they rolled out the omega class Destroyers. The Combo turrets on the sides of the hangar section feature long ranged particle beams and a second burst type fire mode. usualy the ships will switch between burst fire and particle beam, burst fire basicly keeping the barrel busy while the particly beam charges for the next shot.
Aside from that b5 nerd rant:
you should aim to incorporate the dynamic baattles mod right from the get go, it will add a lot of flair to the battles (if you include it from the beginning, balancing can be adjusted for it) and you can further differentiate the factions. So you can actualy make the EA slow and ponderous while the centauri skim around a bit.
As for ships: Since B5 is a rather capital/fighter centric show you would have to decide if you want to forgo the whole Frigate class as a whole and go with heavy cruisers, carriers and destroyer sized (in b5 destroyer is the designation for capital class vessels) ships.
Why? Well mostly because noone realy wants to see much besides those things duke it out and because all the empires you wish to include hase shown a rather... limited amount of auxilary vessels.
Heck, only the leage worlds offer enough diversity to satisfy the "needs" for a frigate centered gameplay.
Anyway: noone wants to see them crappy boats, hand us the big guns. Its a terminal failing of many b5 mods: Too many ships noone gives a fck about.
I will post the preliminary ship lists for the first release this week.
As for frigates, the Sins AI requirest at least 1 scout and 1 colony ship, and iirc they both need to be frigates or the AI just sits in its homeplanet doing nothing.
NEED HYPERGATES.
that is all.
There is someone else doing a B5 mod, or was doing it. The thread for it became active again recently, but I'm not really sure what it's current status is. In anycase, it shouldn't be too hard to find, so I'd suggest speaking with them. Together you and they may be able to get the mod(s) rolling a lot faster. And if nothing else, I'm sure you can find out what problems they had run into that caused them to put their B5 mod on haitus, so that you have an idea what you'll be facing as possible problems as well.
But, I look forward to the mod. A B5 one has been sorely missing.
If you need help with stats for ships, weapon layouts, modifying files for the races let me know. I have all the B5 tabletop game books in pdf.
Initial ship list: (note: nothing set in stone, may change somewhat as the mod progresses)
Frigate & capital distinction simply determines if a ship will be able to level, and is needed for the AI to work correctly. If you think "hey, frigate Y is much stronger than capital X", then yes, that is intended. As an example, the T'loth-class Assault Cruiser outclasses the G'karith-class War Cruiser, yet the first will fullfill the role of colony frigate. It will still be a more powerful ship ingame than the latter. As more ships get added in over time ship roles may change, but with the current limitations on my part 5 ships a race will be the initial aim. Also, for the second release with the Shadows & Vorlons I intend to give every race an unlockable dreadnought at the end of the research tree (Warlock-class, Bin-tak, Neroon, Adira)
Earth Alliance ships:Strikecraft:- Aurora-class StarfuryFrigate:- Hermes-class Transport (colony frigate) Note: possibly will get replaced by the Explorer-class.- Artemis-class Heavy Frigate (scout frigate)- Olympus-class Corvette (siege frigate)Capital:- Hyperion-class Heavy Cruiser- Nova-class Dreadnought- Omega-class Heavy DestroyerMinbari ships:Strikecraft:- Nial-class fighterFrigate:-Torotha-class Assault Frigate (colony frigate)-Teshlan-class Fast Cruiser (scout frigate)-Tigara-class Attack Cruiser (siege frigate)Capital:-Tinashi-class Warship-Sharlin-class WarcruiserCentauri ships:Strikecraft:- Sentry-class fighterFrigate:- Corvan-class Scout (scout frigate)- Elutarian-class Bombardment Destroyer (siege frigate)- Centurian-class Attack cruiser (colony frigate)Capital: - Vorchan-class Warship- Primus-class BattlecruiserNarn ships:Strikecraft:- Frazi Heavy FighterFrigate:- Sho'kar-class Light Scout Cruiser (scout frigate)- T'loth-class Assault Cruiser (colony frigate)- Ka'tan-class Escort Destroyer (siege frigate)- G'Karith-class War Cruiser- G'Quan-class Heavy Cruiser
If anyone has any further shiptype suggestions let me know. In addition if you know of any good models for these ship-types let me know as well. I do have some Lightwave models but thusfar haven't been very succesful in converting them to XSI.
Explorer should be colonizing capital. That fits better with cannon, since it was signifigantly powerful, but also a utility ship.
It can be a capital stat-wise and still fill the role of the EA colony frigate. The AI needs a ship designated to be the colony frigate, but it doesn't matter for the AI if that colony frigate has the best stats of the entire game.
So for the explorer, basically you'd have a very durable (and big) colony ship, but still cheap enough not to handicap the AI, and balanced by not having much in the way of armaments. (just some anti-fighter guns)
Lord Tareq, if you have frigates and cruisers more powerful than capitals, there is no reason to build capitals. Capitals should be the toughest, nastiest ships in the fleet, especially as their numbers are limited. I'm not a Babylon 5 fan, and I know you are trying to stay true to the show, however some sacrifices have to be made in the name of gameplay. Get some fanon ships if you have to, but give everyone a good selection of ships so fleets have some variation in them. You also might want two strikecraft per race, one fighter and one bomber. Otherwise the fighters will just attack enemy ships and ignore the other fighters. You could do this by having bomber variants of the existing fighters.
First off bravo. I know there was somone who wanted to make a B5 mod but was pensive due to some hardcoded restrictions. Im pleased with the ship list to be honest and I like the focus on small fleets of capital ships. Are you going to give the siedge frigits wepons and abilities enough to be an asset in combat, or are they for bombing only? Remember however that lost tales made a couple more centauri ships canon (big primus sized ship, but it might not be in the same era as you want). I do agree that two strike craft varient should be included but its your mod and I want you to do it your way. Good luck on this. Hopefully you get some help to take some of the load
ps. the dynamic battle mod might make for an interesting expitience given your lowering of the to hit threshhold
The siege frigates (and colony frigates too for that matter) will be able to fight just fine (depending on their exact classtype ofcourse). They will be able to bomb worlds better than other ships, but they will be somewhat less cost-effective than other ships to prevent the AI from creating the infamous siege frigate swarm.
I may include the dynamic battle mod if it suits my needs, things combat-related I intend to change are:
- fighter movement for certain ship classes
- more impressive exploding ships
- chance for ships upon destruction to drift around as hulks for some time before exploding
- removal of shields as the main defense mechanism, armor will take its place for most ships.
- basic to hit chance greatly reduced
You can grab a high poly Sharlin in dotXSI format from my IO drop to help you on your way...
http://drop.io/BigBANGtheory#
Ah that Sharlin looks amazing, thanks alot for that!
so how are things coming along? I am eager to try this mod out!
I've hardly started. I have only finished updating the string file (almost 6000 lines to check & change...brrr) and creating the ship & player files, and am now working on extracting and converting suitable soundtracks and voices, both of which will be a major thing in this mod. Do not expect a first release within weeks or even months.
This is definitely a mod I will download when released. I've only recently been introduced to the Babylon 5 universe (got all five seasons + the movie pack last Christmas) and watched it all during January and February), and I can say that I love it. I'll be keeping tabs on the development, and good luck getting the string file updated and all the sounds in the game.
ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND POINTS! I've seen some footage of an Omega on youtube somewhere, but haven't seen anything since. I think a B5 mod for sins would be wicked, and am quite surprised nobody else has devoted much thought into it. I'll be sure to download it once you've got something put together!
Also, personal request, if you can do it, awesome, if not, no biggie - the Earth Alliance Warlock class destroyer. Would love to see it. I think, even in the stock game, the Warlock could replace the Marza - like what I remember someone doing with a mod where the TEC Cobalt frigate was replaced with a Miranda-class starship (Star Trek). Definitely interesting!
It's not that nobody has put "thought into it". Putting thought into things is easy. IIRC bigbangtheory quit doing this because he felt the engine was too limiting.
Truly? I wonder in what way, sure a B5 mod for Sins can't completely mimic the series, but it can come very close to the real thing. You have (limited) diplomacy, semi-random pirate attacks, emerging rebels, planets you can bombard and take over, with some imagination workable jumpgates (phaselanes between planets & the vasari phasegates), the possibility to add a fuel system for ships, and now with Entrenchment you can even have outposts, mines and customisable starbases. I haven't seen a single RTS game that can be made to fit B5 so well as Sins.
It's not an issue of B5 fitting Sins as much as it's an issue of Sins' general moddability. Even the mesh animation thing was a dirty hack.
I started off thinking so like you, then I discovered what I wanted to achieve wasn't possible. I think perhaps my expectations were too high for the present time that is.
FYI I intend to take a look at the possibility of converting the Vasari Phase Stabiliser into a B5 Jumpgate, if successful I will share the results and method with you. I also want to revisit texture animation regarding B5 ships the Fraiser brothers mentioned something in a post the other week (which I had forgotten about) which gave me reason to believe there was some merit in pursuing this further.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
