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.
D'oh! That probably was it! Cheers Sinperium.
IIRC the tech is a requirement for one of the Advent heroes.
I got into the habit of not researching it because of the lots of alerts it produces, eg AI sending one or two LFs/minelayers
** NewHorizons crawls back into his hole **
I you hate the "incoming blah blah" NH, you could always locate the sound file(there are a few media players out there that will play them) copy it's name and find something you'd rather hear(a ding or something like when you get a text message, something mild, not irritating) and make a teenie tiny sound mod and there you go.
Though the side effect is, you my miss text messages while playing sins....yeah, that got me an ear full later >.>
Added: got bored, so here's what the file's are names, just search HostileFleetEnRoute in your game's main directory under Sounds. COPY these three file names: "EventPhase_HostileFleetEnRoute" "EventPsi_HostileFleetEnRoute" "EventTech_HostileFleetEnRoute"
Just make your mod folder with a Sounds folder in it, and drop 3 things you'd rather hear with those names and there ya go, same goes for any of the announcements yu get sick of hearing. ^^
It's an old (bad) habit I adopted when first learning the game over a year ago, as a noob I found the extra messages distracting while still trying to learn the game.
As I'm a bit more proficient now, it's probably about time I adapted my tactics and started to use these techs.
There was a couple of occasions, during that game, where I did spot large incoming fleets and was able to intercept them.
Yeah, where possible I tried to give them sort of underused techs like that.
Sorry I missed this. It is something I'd like to do but not for a while yet, I need to recover from the last set still.
Enhanced 4X 1.4 has been officially released. Check it out and everything else new while its hot. Should work fine with patch 1.31.
Also some TEC Loyalist love for Ue_Carbon.
Are the planetary defenses up and running yet?
Oh yes they are. I took a fleet into an enemy grav well and started in on their tactical structures (there was no defense fleet anywhere near), went into the kitchen to get some coffee, and when I came back I had lost almost 100 fleet supply worth of frigates due to them. I was quite surprised, makes me wonder how Siege Frigates are supposed to be even remotely useful, given how frail they are.
Indeed, once they get fully built they're going to be a big factory in any prolonged planet siege. You'll probably need some repair cruisers next to your siege frigates at all times. Or just leave your caps to deal with the bombing while your frigates raid the next planet, the damage output shouldn't be enough to seriously threaten caps.
That said, its probably a good thing they're a TEC Loyalist exclusive, game would be very hard to win if everyone had them.
Is there a reason why the Mass Communion tech (-40% cost of temples) for the Advent Rebels has been removed?
I just had a nasty crash while running your mod. I was playing a 5-star map with 10 enemy factions (normal, while I get familiarized with your mod). One of my enemies had just surrendered to me when he sent 2 of his capital ships to a contested world, where the game promptly sputtered and killed my computer (had to hard restart the PC). This was early game, an hour in at most, so not much of a fleet beyond a few LFs, corvettes, and the enemy caps. Any idea what might have caused the crash? Let me know what info you'd need to help you out.
If the OS crashed, that's either a graphics/sound driver bug or (less likely) you've had something over heat.
It's very hard for user-mode processes, such as games and desktop apps, to crash a protected mode operating system - so it probably not a fault of Sins nor E4X.
I'd check that your drivers are up-to-date.
Just checked both my audio and video drivers, and they're both up to date. Odd. I should note that the audio was the first to go.
I'll chalk that up to being an incredibly weird fluke and try a new game.
I didn't think it fit the Advent Rebel theme very much. They have the standard superior Advent culture research but nothing unique to themselves save their sub faction ability that gives +50% shield regeneration in culture. The tech was moved to the Advent Loyalists, as I thought it fit them more, and its certainly more useful for them as they can build twice as many culture centers and have abilities that scale with multiple culture centers, unlike Wail.
While its not unheard of for a badly written ability (that I hopefully don't have in the mod) to cause lag or crash the game, crashing a PC is a first. If possible try the last autosave and see if you get anything weird again. If it does upload the save somewhere and I'll take a look. Number wise your RAM and CPU usage right before and after the stuttering would be most helpful.
Loaded the saved game and didn't crash, but got a minidump when I quit the game. I think if I turn down the graphics settings I'll be fine.
If it doesn't, send me the save.
Fortunately if it is a performance related issue, the next patch will include some rebalancing that help out the CPU, and I will add support for the Sins Optimization project when its finished to help with the RAM.
Ahh I see.
Twice as many culture centres + 40% discount + global unity + E4X's stronger culture influence = "All shall join the Unity in time"
BTW: I like the TEC Loyalist planetary defence tech - the sight of Orgrov-style torpedoes intercepting a hostile purge vessel was quote funny.
It is pretty awesome watching the planet open fire on an orbiting fleet, even if it does take out half my poor Advent support ships.
On a (barely) related note, there might be an issue with random race selection. I noticed that all 4 of my random opponents are TL, which I will admit is possible, if extremely unlikely. I'll investigate more to see.
I'd give it a couple more go around and see if it mixes up a bit more. I have seen this happen from time to time.
Yup. Hopefully its now possible for culture to give you at least a huge advantage as Advent Loyalists, if not win the game. The Deliverance engine now damaging culture centers (for both Loyalists and Rebels) should make culture kills much more viable as well. Also the loyalist culture centers can take over enemy ships when destroyed (or scuttled) with the right research, so they're a great way of winning a war of attrition too. In short, they really can take advantage of that bonus more.
Yeah, solo siege frigates won't last long against a TEC Loyalist planet if its been colonized long enough to get all of the weapons. The "nukes" are the very last thing but are the most dangerous, do AoE damage and hurt regeneration rates, so if at all possible try to keep your fleet apart while facing these.
I'm not aware that there is even any way to fiddle with how random selects races, but if you find anything Boshimi do tell.
To clarify. There is not a way to fiddle with the values that determine 'random' to my knowledge. I have seen in Vanilla Sins, Entrenchment, Diplomacy, & Rebellion where occasionally you have most if not all of the AI are one race or are a heavily weighted mixing of the races. It is more prevalent with fewer AI players added to the game though I have seen a 10 player (8 AI) a few years back where everyone was Advent ... in Rebellion in a 6 player I saw where 4 AI were TEC Loyalist, 1 Advent Rebel ... I was TEC Loyalist as well.
I have seen this occasionally happen in all of the mods I have played, 4X as well. It is a hard-coded issue that occasionally crops up in games (vanilla or modded).
You can either restart and try to get a better distribution (or manually set them to what you want) but usually I just accept it for what it is and imagine a story that fits why the AI player races are what they are in the system.
I just had weird luck. This is why I should not speculate when only having attempted one game. Herp-a-derp.
Me rikey dis mod.
I'm not sure if it was intentional, but artifact-starbases can go to different gravity-wells as Vasari Rebels. (Mwahahaha)
Can't get that to happen myself, although a fully upgraded, jump capable Orky with the artifact bonuses of +20% firepower & +50% hull & shields is scary enough!
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