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.
Why not just use the culture centers to call the heroes? Communications stations seem like a logical way to summon them.
Because you can build more than one culture station, and each culture station would be able to call in its own copy of the heroes. Sadly you can't set up an ability to be "global" for all copies of the entity that use it, I.e. if one used the ability the cool down for all would get reset. It would also allow me to make a lot of other techs like returning armada useful if the possibility for spamming a structure/unit to abuse it wasn't present.
Your mod is amazing.
I love the random stuff. The ancient artifacts that orbit planets, and I really dig the doubling of artifacts you can find.
Your mod would be absolutely perfect mixed with DS. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure they are not compatible.
Thanks.
Mild spoiler, the next patch will have another orbiting ancient artifact, in edition to the heroes.
Yeah, they edit a lot of the same stuff. And while early on it might have been possible to mix them without them contradicting each other, they are only drifting farther apart with each version. That said, boshimi was unofficially messing with getting the original Random Encounters (I.e. the mining colony and all of them) to work with DS. Perhaps he would share in a PM?
One thing I'm curious about:
"Colonizable Gas Giant"
"Gas Giants are not colonizable"
...so which is it?
Yeah, the string name got screwed up on a couple of them. Seems when I copied the data for the new gas giant textures from the colonizeable gas giants to the normal ones, I forgot to switch the strings on them too. So any with that issue aren't supposed to be colonizeable. It will be fixed in the next version.
Also for anyone that runs into it, the Rudra Annihilator Cannon seems to have gotten a targeting error between when I was testing it and when I released 1.2. That's been fixed for the next version as well.
Haha, that was my next question. Its active but you cant target anything with it.
If I get the chance here this week I'll post a link up for the mini-mod. Currently it is only compatible with Distant Stars 1.00 (Vanilla, no mini-mods). I need to make a version that is also compatible with the 1.00 efficiency pack.
Love the mod. I have some ideas but I don't know if they are possible to implement:
1) Tracking device. An option for the envoy to deploy and tracking device on enemy ships. This would allow you to see what they see, until it is discovered and removed causing that envoy's diplomatic immunity to be revoked for a short time.
2) Insert spies or security office upgrade for the trading port. This would give you a few options to buy research from corrupt alien traders. You would have to sink money into the port on the off chance an opportunity came along, which may take some time and may not even happen.
3) Sell arms (Requires above upgrade of trading port). Fund the sale of arms to rebel factions causing strife. If you are caught you lose trust and as a consequence trade income for a while.
There is a lot of espionage potential for trading vessels, but again I don't know if these are possible or even good suggestions. Thanks for humoring me.
Well 1 is certainly possible. As put 2 really isn't possible as research can only be obtained by actually researching it or finding an artifact, but having something to do with sabotaging/infiltrating trade could be done. Not entirely sure on 3.
The bigger problem is that the envoys currently have all 5 of their abilities in use. One of the reasons I added espionage was to give the envoys something to do after they've build embassies at all allied planets. Plus the fact that diplomats usually end up being spies to some degree.
Adding anymore abilities would require the creation of an "Espionage Cruiser". That's certainly feasible, but the hard part will be making it worth the micro to use one. With the next version I made the envoy abilities even longer lasting to ensure that they're worth the time to take your envoy and manually go to an enemy planet to use the espionage abilities. Espionage cruisers would need even more micromanagement, and getting the balance right with abilities that have a meaningful impact on the game could be a challenge.
I've just tried this mod and like it a lot, especially the improved economy and the double fleet supply :- you really now can build massive fleets and get engaged in epic battles.
I was pleasantly surprised that lag wasn't that bad - I was expecting the increased number of units to have an adverse effect.
The Domination ability of the Rapture is now actually useful as with normal Sins you've normally maxed out your fleet supply by the time this (level 6) ability has been unlocked.
As it now takes more time to use up your fleet supply, and there is more XP fodder from the larger number of enemy frigates, all capital ships level up relatively faster.
The Embassies are a really good idea, would be nice if there were new models for them though.
One minor query though, neutral factions now have "Fortress Constructors" which are invulnerable but can be captured.
As these are based on the Raloz I assume that only the TEC can actually use them to build an Argonev starbase.
There's not much point in Advent (and prolly Vasari) capturing one as they don't have the required tech :- the 'Deploy starbase' ability is always disabled because it has not been researched.
Thanks, glad to know someone liked the minimods.
Yeah, sadly I'm not a 3D artists. While if I asked very nicely I might be able to get someone to make new models for me, I don't have the nice software to make texturing them manageable. That said, while the embassies won't be getting new ones (yet), some of the other things will get new models in the next patch, thanks to Maelstrom.
That's not what they are at all (I used the Raloz due to my lack of new models). Capture one and try to use it and you'll notice it doesn't ask for the TEC starbase research. Instead its prerequisite is an artifact. Find it on one of your planets and you can use it to build a fully upgraded starbase that is more powerful than you current ones.
Ahhhh I see - tasty!
I think I was misled by the "Not researched" string, tooltip also implies that you've discovered the artifact even when you haven't.
Yeah, artifacts are actually treated in game as special research, that's why it all works. Unfortunately that's also why I can't make the tool tips more clear either. Just know if you find anything else like that if you try to use the ability it will give you the name of the artifact you need.
You could always make a worthless passive ability so that you can explain what the unit is and does.
Thanks for the explanations, there's a lot more to this modding lark than meets the eye!
BTW: Should "Cyro" be "Cryo" ? as in cryogenics.
Here are the Vasari Warlord voices. My apologies--on conversion a split second was cut out and two of them may be very slightly clipped at the end or beginning. Just let me know what needs to be redone. Tomorrow (fingers crossed) I can finish the Overlord and Scientist as well as do any do-overs.
http://www.cyberhaggle.com/images/Goa_Vasari_Warlord.zip
I see you're about now--did you see the above and can you get some feedback to me?
Yes, I swear I'm not dyslexic! It will also be fixed in the next version.
You're broken?
Only my typing skills.
Here's an idea for you Goa when you start enhancing Rebellion...
One thing I'll be implementing in my Rebellion mod is faction prioritization or "value selection"...as you may know, you can use the declare faction techs to change your faction ID mid-game, and doing so can unlock unique technologies...
As an example of how I'm thinking of using this, the TEC loyalists will have two possible paths: Protectionists and Mercantilists...choosing protectionists would give you exclusive access to twin fortresses and some early defensive tech (the one that boosts ship production rates when an enemy is present) while choosing mercantilists would give you development mandate (which I'm moving to a lower tier) and pervasive economy...
So, both are TEC Loyalists, but one can defend better while the other has more vertical growth options...
As another example, the TEC Rebels will have two paths: Attrionists (or maybe Deprivators) vs. Manipulators...the attrionists will exclusively get the krosove heavy fallout ability (which will be lower level and seriously buffed) and foreign sabatoge (which will be turned into a very powerful ability, likely tied to envoys or scouts)...the manipulators will exclusively get truce amongst rogues and the pirate mercenaries tech (whatever it is)...
So, the attritionsts focus on economic warfare while the manipulators focus on bringing allies to the cause...
Those are just examples, and I haven't had time to put a whole lot of thought into it, but anyway something you may want to consider when you start porting over to Rebellion (which I know you will do)...would actually give the player choices mid-game...you could implement governmental polices or setups, ideological choices, whatever you want...one word of warning: adding technologies may not be such a good idea since we already have so many (and too many are useless), so I'd advise using pre-existing techs and making them more interesting...
And if this has already been brought up then I'm a tool and will go drown myself in pudding...
Where did Goa go?
*cues the music*
Where in the world is ... GoaFan77?
So, did you test to see if that bit of code actually works? If so, that's awesome!
Yeah, I might mess with that eventually, though rather than make it restrict old techs I'll make it get new ones. I like making new tech trees and abilities remember. If I really feel something is underpowered and is somewhat worth the time (build time bonuses for example) I'll buff it no strings attached.
That said, I'm planning on the subfactions getting a serious makeover before I do this. First version of this mod for Rebellion will be a port plus a whole new set of subfaction racial bonuses that are active at the start of the game, in addition to the main faction bonus, plus some all new research, until I feel like they really play quite differently.
Have I been missing? I was posting today...
That actually sounds better than it ought to...
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