We are currently looking for help with skinning. We lack this extremely important job. If you would like to do this, please PM me. If you have things you have done in PS or GIMP, please send those as well.
Also, for more detailed information on what we are adding, you may click on the external link above which will take you to the Aurora Games forum which has backstories and statistics. Ultimately, it will have images as well.
Features:
9+ new ships
2 new capital ship classes: Lancer and Destroyer
2 new cruiser class: Troop Transports and a Utility Cruiser
2 new SC classes: Interceptors and Torpedo Bombers.
Reworked SC: Fighters are now multi-purpose and Bombers are Gunships
3+ new researchables that increase the power of capitals [for once]
Currently, we have five capital ships, each with their own capabilities. We have the support, the colonizer, the battleship, the dreadnought, and the carrier. This mod is dedicated to adding two more classes to that list: Lancer and Destroyer.
Lancer: These ships are the snipers of the game. They carry very heavy forward guns with little defense on their sides. They do not maneuver well, but have very long range and carry an axial cannon to damage targets from long range.
Destroyers: These ships are pure damage dealers. These are not to be confused with battleships as these have greater damage and less health.
Pictures: I will post these as I get time to do so.
Unfortunately, I'm do lazy to hunt through the thread to find the other pics of ships. I'll get around to it eventually. Here is one though.
Astrom:
http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x111/VoltCruelerz/Astromv3.jpg
Special Thanks:
TheRezonator: created the thread that spawned this idea
Eadtaes: balanced many of the statistics
Guywhoyoudontknow/CI: created Sinners which is referenced in the Backstory
Whiskey: has posted here more than anyone else aside from me... (he's kept the thread alive)
Darvin: Came up with the idea of an Artillery Cruiser which caused me to think of a way to
Other:
If you see typos, pleas alert me to them.
EDIT: Wow... In the typo line, I type something wrong. Because of the irony, I'll leave it.
We lack someone who can skin, so if you are good at such, we could use you.
Uhh... The Eyron is the fastest moving Destroyer, and arguably the most powerful... I changed its ultimate ability, so you may want to take a look at it...
ah, but is that hull or shield, or both? There's still the problem that the Shadowsun's particle cannon outranges the Eyron's entire weapon suite by several thousand units.
and the speed of the Eyron is irrelevant. The Manta actually uses an SC flight dynamic.
Both... But, I'm working on a way to avoid mitigation... If possible, it would only do 50% of that... All the same, that attack would be devastating to be hit by... Combine an Eyron's Shield Detonation with a Progen's shield regen, you have almost unlimited damage. The ship is designed to punch through everything in its path and keep going.
Ehh... All that is going to do is make your ship take more time to line up for firing. Fighter physics work best on frigates... Not capitals... Capitals turn too slowly for it to work well... You may say that it helps your ship because mine can't turn, but your primary guns are forward facing... You will get hit by all of my ships' rear guns while I only get the damage of one... All you've done is make it easier for you to die...
Anyways though, for shield detonation, if you have ever seen a video of a prominence just before it breaks, think of the same thing here... A good chunk of the forward shields will break off and fly towards the target. Upon impact, well, let's just say it won't be pretty... 2250 damage with negated mitigation is enough to punch through an enemy's shields, or rend their hull... So, in other words, a good hit with this would destroy a post-balance Shadowsun...
And is the SS a lancer? Curious here... If it is a lancer, then 1-2 Nolane's ought to take it down. Even if it is the most powerful, no more than 2 of the opposing ships should counter it... And besides, once again, the Eyron is a massive shield array...
Oh, and random, but I found the space battle in a clip on hulu:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/26021/serenity-straight-ahead
If you go 32 seconds in, there is a ship in the background that I want to add at some point in some way to sins...
the Shadowsun? no no no. It's not a Lancer. It's actually a Mobile Star Fort. These ships are expensive, supply hogging, titan-styled ships. Pretty much, the goal of the MSF is to have something weaker than a SB, but more powerful than a cap.
The Eyron's shielding is irrelevant. The Shadowsun Cannon bypasses shields by drilling an EMP-effect through the shield array, creating a whole for the particle beam to pass through.
The Manta will have the highest maneuverability of any ship in the vanilla and entrenhcment game right now. SC aren't counted, but even so, the Manta will be able to out-turn them.
There's also the problem of the Manta's railguns. Taun'Shas railguns outrange pretty much everything. Even LRFs.
The Manta's Drone Railguns ability increase the range of the Railguns on it significantly. And tha Manta only costs 20 fleet supply points. It still costs a cap crew, and it's still a bit pricier than comparable LRFs/LR-cruisers, but its abilities and the fact that it gets more effective the more it levels up more than make up for this.
Okay...
Have you read my book? Seriously? Have you hacked into my computer and read the the part from my book at the bottom of this post?
Ehh... Okay...
You do realize how unbalanced that is?
I don't know if you can do that, but I suppose you can try...
At any rate, seriously! I wrote this last summer!
“Fire! Bring it down! Focus all fire on the Dark. No exceptions.
Then came the hum and the ground shaking tremors as the particle cannon began its charging sequence. The tip of its barrel protruding from the ground began to glow with the blue light of its ball of fusing plasma. And then it fired. The massive gun recoiled as the shockwave shot out around it and the blinding blue beam shot forth. Flying through the air at nearly the speed of light, it did not take long before it met its target.
The plasma pulses had already made contact but had not penetrated the shield. The particle cannon on the other hand, ignored the shield and went straight for the bridge. It collided with the belly of the ship but it did not stop, as it continued to fire, the hole went deeper and deeper until with what would have been a deafening boom had it not been in space, it shot out the other side, leaving the ship with a three hundred meter wide hole straight through it.
As another barrage of plasma bolts hit their marks, the ship began to falter before finally exploding spectacularly.
“Try to open a com link with the remaining ships,” the general said trying to catch his breath. “Let’s see if they are willing to negotiate now."
oops... i hope i didnt interrupt anything between you two lovebirds =P
hmm. i cant say which actually... Eyron looks quite mean, but the Gartel appeals more to my particular taste... that said... the Gartel is quite simple... its like its missing something... idn... i guess i do like the Eyron more because as a whole its very good looking. idn, if you feel like it maybe go back to the Gartel and have another look...
but when you attack another players ships, they hear the sound: "Our fleet is under attack". all im saying is, if its possible, create some sort of notifier for the game to look for, and when any of your ships read this notifier as True, then the sound "Our Ships have been boarded!" would play.
okay, good point, fair enough
6-8 caps? we are making Destroyers and Lancers cap ships as well. and on large or huge maps, you are going to need at least double the number of caps you would use on a small/medium map.
and this is a personal request, but i like playing with the biggest fleets possible/feasible/necessary. if im playing a map with 50 stars and about 20 GW's per star (there are some GalaxyForge maps like this), im going to need more than 6-8 caps... i think with the large fleet sizes setting, 26 cap ship crews or so would be appropriate, standard size 16 would be appropriate, and small size maybe 8 or 10?
and who uses the empire tree? at least the way it is atm ... the fact still remains you need to spend alot of effort and even more time on micro, and unless you only have 2 maybe 5 TT ships, you have to constantly monitor all of them to ensure they are being used as effeciently as possible, because unless you target the BPSC, they and the TT itself will just sit there taking damage.
on the other and... if you use it by itself, with maybe some escort ships, as part of a surgical strike (against a superweapon, starbase or cap ship, for instance) it could be very effective... on that note... if you launch a BPSC attack, then jump the host TT out of the graviy well, do the BPSC continue to damage the targetted ship? will they give you visibility of the GW where the targetted ship/structure is located?
fair enough, i do know the logo is the average location, but if they are a full squadron and not reinforcing, they usually stay relatively close together... anyway, if its not possible its not important, but... something that acted like that... increasing SC defensive and offensive capabilities in an AoE ability for a short time... meh, its not important.
why not? each ship needs to have its own targetting co-ordinates right? so instead of the BPSC having co-ordinates assigned once it enters combat like any other ship, the BPSC takes the same value the TT has stored. you may need to tweak the code that handles targetting info just for the TT, in order to make referencing the co-ordinates from the TT to the BPSC much easier... at worst, you may need to re-write the code from scratch just for BPSC and TTs, but considering you will need to write new code for many of our ships, so it wouldnt be that much more work. i have done some coding before, so i do have some idea of what would be required
meh, you've written more backstory and have referenced it from that Sinners fanfic, so its cool, as long as most of the details stay the same like designs, weapon types/mounts/names, abilities etc... ship names im happy to look at changing, but yeah, i dont mind that much, id just like some say.
relax, i was kidding =P to be honest actually... i can see the current model for the Gartel acting as the model for the Arlow TT.
hmm... i cant see that video because Hulu only streams within the US... could you possibly take a screenshot of the frame/ship you are talking about and post/send it to me?
i havent been reading alot of what you two are arguing about, but from what i understand, Whiskey has just built a whole bunch of new ships with mindbogglingly destructive weapons.
as much as i usually like big guns, this mod isnt designed around massive destruction. ill have a closer look at your mod later, but as it is i agree with Volt, things will have to be nerfed and balanced.
as an example: i was playing a beta of Sacrifice of Angels 2 for Vanilla Sins. its a total conversion mod that replaces the original races ships with ships and races from Star Trek. in this beta, all the ships had massive DPS, Hull and Shield points. most ships had no abilities, and orbital defenses hadnt been upgraded to compensate, so all your planets had to be defended with fleets. shields would not recharge, and the pirates had a massive borg cube that required about 1000 fleet supply to take down, while ripping your fleet to pieces. ships had very fast phase charge ups and jumps, and very quick sublight engines, so you couldnt even catch an enemy ship flying through your system.
all in all, a very pretty mod, but totally unbalanced, and not fun to play. im sure your mod will have its own type of balance... but for inclusion into our mod, it has to be nerfed.
I'm gonna go back through and add detail on all of them later anyways...
As far as the sound goes... Its just that that sound is only played upon engagement... I don't think you can do it, but I'll check and try to... I understand why you want it, I just don't think its possible... I'll try nonetheless...
True... I guess that would make a difference... I guess we will have to do something about fleet supply, or perhaps change it so that the toggleable goes up to a higher level. Currently, you can get 2000... Let's say that 2k is the medium one and then the big one would be 4k... That way, everybody's happy...
You seriously don't use the ET? Wow... You should try it some time... Turn off autopin and pin the planet in question, your frontline frigate factories, turrets, and repair stations. (Oh and don't forget flagships) The ET really does make gameplay a lot easier.
For the fighters, or maybe interceptors, we could add in something like:
Covering Fire: Reduces damage done to self and increases damage done to target squad by squadmates.
That way ISC's would have an advantage in dogfights and would get your idea... sorta...
You just can't upload targeting coordinates... I can't do anything about that... It is in in-game variables which are all hard-coded... I just can't do anything about it... I mean, I suppose I could do something like an owned SC specific buff on a target... Then, when you launch the BPSC, it would go to that ship... Kinda like animosity, only in reverse... I'll have to try it, but it might get the effect you are looking for...
True, but I changed a few things... I never did like that he called the Vasari leader the "Fleet Admiral Commander." Just seems redundant...
Good... But I do have an idea for it, and it should look pretty cool...
i do, i just dont use it to select certain ships... especially since i have a 17" 1920x1200 res monitor, so mousing from right to left multiple times...
okay, im just trying to remove the need to target each SC individually. in my opinion its seriously too much mirco, like targetting 50 Scouts worth of Timed Explosives... just click target tab repeat 50 times...
anyway, on saturday im going away for a week and im not sure if ill have internet (or if my gf will let me online =P)
just so you know
Do you hotkey things?
Okay, I'm just thinking out loud here, but...
For the BPSC, you would have to instill a buff that makes them fly and crash into said target. The best way to do this is to add a local offensive animosity buff. This would make your SC fly towards it... Now, how do you get them to board it... I have no idea... I'll look through the code to see if I can find something though... Perhaps I something in the Board ability that causes it to do that... I believe animosity affects abilities as well, so if I made it so that the priority level on the board ability was high enough, it might be able to do what we need...
Well, I've got band camp next week, so my position isn't much better...
woot! American Pie Band Camp FTW! =P alternatively, im spending a week at the home of these:
anyway, back on business...
ill just think out loud as well:
why not tell the SC to 'self destruct' (without an explosion, naturally) within maybe 5 units of distance from the targetted ship, and once destroyed it applies the damage to the ship....
you know how your SC will move to a certain point within a hangar defense or carrier/cap ship when docking? why not artificially create one of those within the targetted ship as part of the animosity buff thingo... in fact, why not create one in the first place, skip the animosity thing, and simply set the SC docking attribute to true once launched, so it flies towards the targetted ship, 'dock' and apply the damage effect?
at the very least, you could set a rally point for the SC at the center of the targetted ship/structure, have the SC fly there, and once there, 'destroy' itself, and after that, then apply the damage/disable effects...
btw... do you have any idea how you intend to disable certain abilities but not others? or do you intend to disable all of them at once and then disable regen, engines, weapons etc seperately?
Well, I know how to do that... That is the same as martyr and lingering presence.
That won't work... You can't create nulls at runtime...
I suppose I could try lifting the rally point code, but I can only try... I have no idea if it would work...
No.. I could probably figure it out though, but it wouldn't be worth my time to only take out ability_0...
well, Volt, I can't hack a comp, don't know how. EMP effects drill a hole in the shield, not the beam. No EMP, no hole, no hull-effect only.
I've already got some balance for the Shadowsun anyway.
it costs 500 Fleet Supply (1/4th the max!), it costs 4000 credits, 1000 metal, and 1400 crystal. It's a tier-7 research, that requires the tier-6 Defender Particle Cannon to be researched 1st. Additionally, its SLOW, and turns about as fast as a drunk rhinocerous. It's shining glory is that it can sit at the edge of a gravity well and simply plink away. It doesn't have to close distance. That also happens to be its weakness, as it has no rear weapons, and most of its side weapons are supposed to primarily face foward.
So, IF any of the Destroyer-type ships COULD close range with it, they would have a good chance.
There's also the problem that building one of these suckers can easily kill your econ. Granted, a super-econ player would easily be able to afford four of these, but then that's all they have. The slow speed of the vessel is its problem, and its lack of rear and side weapons.
Shadowsuns are designed to engage at obnoxiously long range, chewing up enemy ships, and than vomiting the wreckage onto the nearest planet. Proverbially speaking. As such, closing range with Destroyers could easily see it destroyed.
A problem would be attrition. At level 10, the Shadowsun has 7500 hull, 5000 shield, and I think ~10-15 armor points. It also does significant damage, but only its Railguns and the Shadowsun Cannon can bypass shielding arrays. While it does carry up to 6 squadrons of SC, they are primarily intended to protect it from enemy bomber types. So just having a fleet of bombers come up could doom it, though it also has the ACIDS (Advanced Close-In Defense System), which at level 3 has a 10,000 unit range.
Ultimately, you would need a bunch of destroyers, because the first one would probably get vaporised by the particle cannon, and the subsequent ones would be destroyed by railgun shots. The Shadowsun is almost a cockroach, but it's not invincible. It can be killed, it just takes quite a bit to do it.
hey, just thinking out loud...
Shield Burst from 3 Eyrons and the Apocalypse Cannon from a couple Nolanes would take it out...
but the problem is ENGAGEMENT RANGE. The Shadowsun is pretty much a sitting duck, and while 2 Nolanes and a trio of Eyrons could take it out, the problem is if they even GET CLOSE ENOUGH. The Shadowsun Cannon pretty much outranges every other thing out there, so there goes an Eyron/Nolane. Then the Railgun batteries chew up the Eyrons as the try to close, while the Shadowsun can close with the Nolanes, and STILL be out of their primary weapon range, and chew them to pieces. If I'm on the offensive, then the Shadowsun pretty much vomits the flaming wreckage down onto your precious planet. Proverbially speaking.
Okay, you do realize these are the advent caps here... First off, these are caps, so they get 65% mitigation. Next, they get a +12% passive shield mitigation. That brings us up to 77%. Next, add in another 8 from culture, and they are negating 85% of anything you throw at them.
the Shadowsun's DPS=
100 from railguns, 56 from Ion Cannons, and 74 from Plasma Cannon= 230 DPS o/a; 100 DPS BYPASSES shielding COMPLETELY.
mitigation really won't matter, as the Shadowsun STILL outranges the Advent Caps SIGNIFICANTLY, be able to plink away at them from across the gravity well.
You may want to increase the credit cost for it... And besides, with the price you paid, I could just as easily bring out a dozen Nolanes and all those Apocalypse cannons firing at once would bring that thing down...
Not necessarily. The Shadowsun Cannon deals 5000 damage that bypasses shields COMPLETELY (death to any Advent and most Vasari caps right there), and has a range of NINETY THOUSAND UNITS. The Shadowsun will just sit at where it jumped in, and obliterate a Nolane. Apocalypse Cannons deals 3000 damage, but over the course of 5/6 seconds. The Shadowsun instantly kills anything with its cannon. Because it deals damage OVER TIME, the Shadowsun has enough health, armor, and shielding that it can turn around (when stationary it has a halfway-decent turn rate), and leave.
Then there's also the problem that, while abilities may remain 100% accurate, in Legions, weapons will have a chance-to-hit. Meaning innacuracy. I assume that Nolanes are good at range, but poor at close-quarters. Shadowsuns are similar, but they have greater range (meaning they can sit back and plink away), and if its a bunch of level 1 Nolanes versus a level 1 Shadowsun, most of the Nolanes will be destroyed. The Shadowsun might not, or it might. At level 10 on the other hand, numbers are against it. There's also the problem of the fact that, once the tech is researched, the Taun'Shas can appear VIRTUALLY ANYWHERE.
What's that mean? I pop in on your cap production facilities, you major econ planets, and anywhere where you have labs, and I OBLITERATE EVERYTHING. Bye bye, no more economy, research prototypes, or anything like that. With luck, I'll cripple your econ to the point that you cannot recover, and then I simply eliminate you at my liesure.
Shadowsuns also NEVER operate alone. They can, but they don't. They are usually accompanied by several Manta Missile Destroyers, which because of the maneuverability and good weapons, can simply fly around your Nolanes and pick them apart, like a person picks apart a lobster dinner. If I choose to throw in a pair of Broadside Battleships, one of the few Taun'Shas vessels that does good at close ranges, then your done on that world.
That happens to be the defining feature of the Taun'Shas. Mobility, and range. At close-in, the oftentimes loose badly, but when engaging at long distance, as their light frigate design outranges the vanilla races LRFs, they will simply pick apart an enemy fleet. They have several ships that DO do well at close-combat, but these are few. With the Taun'Shas, you have to close distance, and have a significant numerical advantage, as flying straight into their waiting guns will take its toll, but once your in their fleet, you'll be able to cause some pretty heavy losses.
id just bring in chuck norris
guys, can i actually ask you to take it over to Whiskeys mod page... not that i dont like the publicity for our mod, but seeing as we arent incorporating the Shadowsun and what not into our mod just yet, its kinda superfluous to be arguing about it over here
anyway, I FIGURED OUT WHAT THE GARTEL NEEDS!!!
check it out:
http://pdpardue.deviantart.com/art/spaceship-19181610
http://pdpardue.deviantart.com/art/spaceship-Perspective-19201547
http://media.photobucket.com/image/Starship%20Troopers%20Ships/CanisD/Shipyard/Drawings/OtherGenres/athena.png
http://media.photobucket.com/image/starship+troopers+ships/proxo/ships/Athena_Starship_Troopers.jpg?o=1
the above are all Starship Troopers ships. i think thats what the Gartel COULD be, but is slightly lacking atm.
also, i found another pic of the Serenity battle here:
http://www.projectorreviews.com/images-projectors-06/Samsung_SP-H710ae_SerenityFleetLarge.jpg
hope it helps
Fine by me...
I know... I'll add more to the Gartel, just haven't done anything yet...
hey, i had an idea about the BPSC attack
remember at the beginning i said wouldnt it be easier to just make it an Ability? and you said then the damage would be guaranteed and it wouldnt be good.
well, why not apply a Reverie-style condition to it (but in reverse) so that if the TT (or whatever ship happens to cast the ability in the end) takes too much damage or gets interrupted (like an Ion Blast or whatever) while channelling the ability (which would run over the 2 minutes of the ability's duration itself) then the ability gets cut off and whatever damage/disabilities were caused remain... perhaps disabled abilities would remain disabled for the length of time they normally would have been without the interruption (or a little less), then come back online themselves.
this way, we get the DoT, and we get a way to shut it down...
also, i wrote a post many months ago about StrikeCraft, attempting to make them less of an overwhleming force over the entire GW (this was before the boost to flak though)
read the post and see if you think any of my ideas could/should be incorporated into our mod
http://forums.impulsedriven.com/342377
Hmm... The Reverie idea isn't too bad... Let's say that the ability is disabled if BPSC receives 150 damage. It would have to passive, so the thing could only board enemy ships if it has >50% health. I'll see what I can do.
But.. But.. I like a having a giant missile spitting cloud of death... Look IntSC would be in a new armor and weapon class (if I can figure out how to add them) called "slight." They would have a 200% damage buff versus other slights, 175% against verylight, 150% versus light, 50% versus medium, and 25% versus everything else. In other words, they would not be able to do anything against any ship with medium+ armor. I would also change the fighters to make them anti-medium rather than anti-light. The bombers would also get changed to anti-very heavy/capital. In this way, IntSC take out other SC, FigSC take out bombers and some frigates, and bombers take out structures and caps.
If I could figure out how to add armor/damage classes, then I would likely add another one called "sheavy" for dreadnoughts and battleships.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
