Yeah, I haven't had a chance to come across one in game yet, but I didn't think it would be possible since it can't move in gravity well. Though maybe if you build it on the edge of the gravity well...

Not really related, but some defense related changes will be made in the next patch.

Wat. My ancient-starbases can move... 

Well, they technically can stack, its just there is a cap to the amount of diplomatic points you can get from each planet. Multiple embassies will earn points faster but can't increase your max potential points.

That said, I have intentionally build more than one embassies occasionally to keep their abilities active at all times. I had 3 or 4 Advent embassies at an allied homeworld for example to prevent an enemy fleet from bombing it out, forcing him to take out my embassies next to the player's starbase.

I have seen that bug occasionally, its not a huge deal since the AI gets reimbursed for their envoy cruisers, since they can't just use one like a player can. That said I might be able to fix it in Rebellion in a way that wasn't possible in Diplomacy. We'll see.

Thanks

Not that I can come up with. I'd have to apply more random buffs that do other things, but I can't put "Has Antispace Nuclear Missile launchers Deployed" or something on the infocard. The most basic one is visible, the planetary garrison, that gives 500 extra health and reduces bombardment damage by 5% as well. That's your only clue that a planet has them, and what weapons, if any are online you sadly can't tell until you see them fire.

The TEC loyalist homeworld always starts out fully fortified, to make rushing them difficult. Other planets that are colonized after the research will take 26 minutes to become fully fortified, with the garrison after 3 minutes, the short range missiles after 8, the Gauss cannons at 16, and finally the nukes at 26.

Unfortunately not to all accounts. I suppose if needed something could be done about the first. The planetary weapons are of course powered by abilities though, and as such deal special ability damage that doesn't have a weapon type, just like cleansing brilliance doesn't get buffed by research, or Phase missile swarm not getting a chance to bypass shields.

Hello,

Does anyone manage to get this mod to work with Rebellion 1.4 ? I keep getting minidump error everytime i try to activate it.

PS : thx for this magnificent mod !

Ok, thanks for the response !

Nice.  Thanks for the changelog--looks very good.  Maybe if I can get my schedule free I can get back in with profuse posting again.  

Okay, took longer for moddb to authorize that than I thought, but the new version is now out.

This probably won't be released until after the 1.1 patch, but here's a new feature to look forward to.

Goa, awesome mod, really.

I agree that this is Sins as it should be. If you need modding help, let me know. I have 3Ds Max and Zbrush. I can also work in Illustrator and Photoshop.

Question 1:

Would you have any use for colored, high poly 3D models of the various fractions? I've been wanting to do one in Zbrush for a long time, but really haven't been able to justify the time investment. If it could help your cause in any way, I'd do it. I guess it would look nice on the loading screen, in nothing else.

The one I was thinking of doing is Admiral Kol, the one that's already on the loading screen. I could do Advent too, or Vasari, or custom ships. W/e.

Note that high poly Zbrush models are not suitable for in-game display.  but I'm sure you know that.

Question 2:

Any chance for incorporating Titan hunting units as an in-game option? I mean like how you can turn pirates on/off at game start.

I have some ideas that might work. I can do the models and textures, but I don't have the coding skills beyond editing .entity files. Otherwise I'd just add them myself.

Also, the new upgrade system sounds great.

On an unrelated side question - I guess it would be a tremendous amount of work to implement the graphic updates from Distant Stars /Bailknights Graphic Mods and Volumetric explosions?

Cool. I can def help out. PM with w/e details to get me started.

Zbrush excels at creating 3D models for use in 2D illustrations. What I mean is, you can create your models, paint them with Spotlight and then drop them onto the canvas. Once you do, the computer releases the 3D model from memory, and it becomes a 2D graphic.

The difference for your purposes is that the character on the loading screen would be photo realistic. I Just think it would look cool. Here's an example of a piece I'm currently working on, "Battle Slug:"

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/267/battleslug.jpg/

Here's a depth render of the front, for context:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/88/battleslugdepthrender.jpg/

Photo-realistic Vasari would be epic, I think.

You can use Zbrush's hard surface brushes to create ships, you just have to be mindful of polygons. ZBrush is a high-polygon application, so you won't want to subdivide the model much. That said, I've tried it, and it works. It's much more intuitive than 3DS Max. You just output as .object to set your nulls and what not.

I don't know the Sins polygon limits for frigates, caps, etc, but if you let me know, I'll do those buildings for you.

As for titan hunters, I agree with the camp that says it seems unrealistic that the factions would not have one. I don't mean buffed corvettes, I mean slow, lumbering kamikaze units that can only attack titans and do 50% damage to HP. Maybe with upgrades that make them invisible in certain situations.

It could even be as simple as a spatial depth charge. A phased out mine that only reacts to a Titan's relatively huge gravitational pull. Extremely expensive to deploy, but does a lot of damage.

On the other hand, making the heroes into titan hunters is a good idea. Anything that prevents the late game from devolving into Sins of The Titans.

Something I've always felt this game lacked was a morale scale. I doubt it would be possible to implement now, but I think all ships, buildings and planets should get small, dynamic buffs/nerfs to their various systems depending on how the war is going. Lose a planet? Lose some weapons damage. Destroy a starbase? Small armor upgrade. It would make it easier to finish off a weakened enemy, and would make it so that every decision is critical.

Yeah, a Vasari like that would be pretty cool. I think it was Sinperium that was trying to make a Vasari character model but that was in sketch up I think, and it looks like your slug has more detail that he ever added.

There was a pretty ambitious machinima maker named Istaku Mesk who was the main guy having issues with the polygon limit. If I remember correctly 50k was the limit, but that was for capitalships and things. You'd want far less than that for more common structures and ships for performance reasons. He tended to have a lot of detailed turrets as well which I'm sure greatly increased his counts.

That said, they may have increased the limit with Rebellion and titans, not sure. And I think there are some scripts that will try and reduce your poly count by sacrificing some detail, and the tool that actually gets models into a format Sins can read also tries and reduce the polycount where it won't be noticeable.

Well, as something of a history buff the big things that really killed the battleship were submarines and aircraft. Unfortunately, aircraft translated a bit too well in Sins, and in sufficiently large numbers they'll kill anything far better than anything else, so I definitely don't want them to be a good counter to titans.

Something like submarines might be cool to try and implement, though complete stealth is not fully possible in Sins. If at all possible I would also like a titan counter to have some other purpose, and it would be quite easy to add additional roles to subs, if nothing else commerce raiding, which is a bit more effective in 1.45. The big problem will probably be getting the AI to use it well, and figuring out just how it should be countered.

If I can't find a different role that I'd like to go with a titan killer, a mine would indeed be a good idea. It would give players a way to defend their own planets but leave titans the unchallenged offensive weapon, and as Lavo says would be quite easy to implement.

While I actually didn't think of it as a morale system, I do have plans as a faction that has a very good military but is very vulnerable if its losing planets, meaning they can't be reckless with that military without getting hit by combat and economic debuffs if they are losing ground. I'll look into it more, but its possible it could be crudely simulated. It might be hard to explain to what's going on to the player though.