Sins of a Solar Empire is often described as a 4XRTS game, or a game that tried to merge the action and tactics packed gameplay of a Real time strategy game with the deep, complex, empire wide strategy of a 4X turn based game. Its up to debate whether Sins succeeded in this goal, but I think all can agree that of the 4Xs of "explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate", Sins is much more focused on the exterminate than on the other three.
This mod seeks to give more depth to the other 3Xs of the game by adding additional game elements or refining the existing ones to reward players who give more strategic thought to the non-combat side of the game. Combat will still be the center point of the game, but players will find that the non-combat options available will be much more rewarding and will need to put more thought into developing their economies. This mod will also attempt to address some other weaknesses of Vanilla Sins where possible, such as increasing race diversity or improving the AI.
Features
Faction Diversity - Exploit all new racial bonuses to crush your enemies.
Hero Units - Lead your race's champions into battle with their powerful new abilities to base your strategies off of.
Random Encounters - Keep your eyes peeled when scouting, new challenges and opportunities await you in the depths of space.
Embassies and Espionage - Friend or Foe, interacting with other Empires will never be the same again.
Ship Upgrades - Customize your capitalships and titans with unique upgrades (Rebellion).
New Planets - Your Empire will never look the same again. Meticulously balanced for competitive play.
New Skyboxes - 12 unique skyboxes provide a fantastic backdrop to your conquest of space (Rebellion).
New Artifacts and Bonuses - The fringes of your Empire hold great power if you know where to look...
New Random Events - For owners of the Rebellion Stellar Phenomenon expansion.
Civics Matter - Almost all civic structures have an impact on your Empire. You must develop your planets wisely to get the most out of them.
Culture Matters - Don't underestimate the ugly stepchild of Sins anymore, its back with a vengeance!
Customization - Play the game the way you want it with a growing library of optional minimods and enhanced mapmaker support!
Downloads
WinCustomize (Diplomacy 1.34/7)
Moddb (Rebellion)
Latest Version
Credits
People
Axel Dude - For his wonderful planet textures in the Infinite Space mod, most of which is included in E4X.
IskatuMesk - For his awesome library of sound effects released to the community, a few of which are included in this mod, as well as particle forge advice.
SZ0 - A great modeler, several pieces of his work are used in this mod.
Genocyber - For his great looking Repair Drone model!
Sinperium - For making the phase probe mesh and good feedback.
ZombieRus5 - For getting channeling abilities to work correctly (after we ironed out a few bugs) and for his many hours of "experimental" modding that lead the rest of us realizing more things are possible than we thought.
Seleucia - For his thoughtful analysis and for allowing me to use some of his rebalanced abilities.
Ue_Carbon - Intelligent Feedback.
Mods
Maelstrom - Awesome new planet module meshes
Infinite Space - Main source of planet textures and other astronomy related changes, as well as some planet bonuses.
Uzi's Sins Plus - Several planet textures and bonuses have been incorporated from it.
Project Equilibrium - For an awesome set of fun balance changes.
Also check out the new Star Wars addon, Star Wars: Interregnum.
No worries, glad you could figure out that very unusual problem. Enjoy the mod.
To combat the recent surge in necromancer activity, I thought it would be a good time for a status report.
The TEC heroes are functionally complete, and say 60% of the icon work for them. The rest are pretty haphazard, but progress should be quick once I have a lot of time to put into modding again. Biggest issue is still trying to get the AI to autocast it, does anyone know of any other abilities that use "ApplyTargettedBuffToSelf" to target friendly planets in other mods?
Well, there's always Provoke Hysteria. It doesn't target friendly planets, but that's a simple change.
Hi could you please put your very impressive mod on moddb.... also a hugh fan of zombierus's mod.
Thanks for making this awesome addition to the sins universe. It's quite nice to get a mod that you really do need to think before you act unless you want to get your butt kicked )
Definitely considering it, this mod ended up growing far bigger than I thought it would, it could certainly use its own dedicated space. I'm personally a bit lukewarm to Moddb though, perhaps because I can't find hardly any good list of features it gives modders and what the requirements are.
ModDb is where a lot of people who've played other modded games find new ones sometimes though. Doesn't hurt.
Just to throw it out there, I found Distant Stars first through ModDB and then was directed to it's thread on the forums here. If anything, it is a road marker to garner additional attention.
That's certainly true, but honestly I care more about will it make handling the logistic of the mod easier. Also what exactly is the difference between moddb and Desura these days?
I'm not sure really anymore either. Doing some looking around to see what's going on as a few of the mods are now on both Moddb and Desura.
Haven't heard of Desura before ...
It's a client somewhat like Steam but it has the installation and playing of mods specifically in mind. You buy and download the games yourself or off Desura I believe.
Stardrive is on Desura....nice thing is, doesn't require an internet connection play like steam does....
I'm pretty sure Desura is just moddb's client. The mods that are set up to work with Desura are done by moddb users, though unfortunately this isn't without it's own errors.
So it can actually install mods correctly for Sins? At least part of the time?
Well, I would think Sins would have to be on Desura....
well somehow my mod started the move to Desura, though I didn't initiate it. Kinda peeved about that. I sent an email to try and get the skinny on that.
Wow...so, does desura actually install a mod for a steam game?
Yes. At first it didn't install SoGE right, though after I brought that up on the Desura support forums, the guy who added SoGE fixed that and now it works fine (or so I hear).
As I mentioned before, it's moddb users, working on/with/whatever Desura, that decide to add mods to it. Said users also tell Desura how to download/install the mod in question as well. Or in other words, you have fans, and fans who want to make it easier to run/install your mod. "Easier" being entirely subjective of course.
Yup. Unless it requires a base-game override (like the STALKER series), I don't see why there would be an issue with modding Steam games.
Ya, that needs to be shutdown. I can't have fans deciding how to install my shit... and then expecting me to support... lol.
You have enough issues with folders.
Just saying.
Man, you should've seen my face when I read that someone posted that installing SoGE via Desura caused minidumps as it didn't install patch 2.1 right.
Good news, I've now set up the heroes so the autocast and thus AI will use them correctly, so this feature is definitely a go. Though it still might be a while as the next few weeks will be quite busy for me and I want to complete them as professionally as possible.
Yeah, you just need to have a "standard" edition for SotF and Blood and Chrome, and let those smart enough to figure out your documentation get the rest.
Yeah its a cool idea, they should ask the modders first though.
Looking forward to this update Goa. Makes your mod really stand out.
Just out of curiosity, how are you making the hero units? Do players simply start with them? I'm assuming you've copied the Advent Rebel techs for your revival code.
Completely different my friend. The heroes will be released on the last version of this mod for Diplomacy, maybe with some stuff from Sinperium's cargo mod if his sons ever stop getting married and contracting work finishes so he can finish it up. No Rebellion features are needed for it to work.
It works closer to how titans and flagships work in Maelstrom and the original flagship mod (I think, haven't played the latter) in that each player starts with a single, invulnerable structure that can spawn them. However my version is a lot more flexible as all of them can be spawned from the same structure and at any planet you own.
You don't start with them, their summon abilities require certain normal techs to be researched (I think I'm going with one at 3, 5 and 7 labs), so its intend that you'll unlock them as you normally progress up the tech tree. Each time you summon a hero however the cooldown to replace them gets longer, so you want to be fairly careful not to lose them (and of course their levels will reset). Also you'll only be able to summon one hero in a 4 minute period, so you can't surprise you opponent by warping them all in at once.
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