Yeah I know what you mean as far as counters to devastating units in history. In WWI, the "titans" of the sea were the new destroyers that both sides had developed. However, the destroyers only met in combat one time throughout the war. That's what I mean when I say it isn't realistic for a titan's counter to be another titan. When an army has a unit like that, they don't relish the thought of putting it into battle with its equal. A titan/titan battle is far from optimal for a lot of reasons, but mainly because such a battle nullifies the advantage it yields. But I'm probably preaching to the choir here. 

I like the submarine idea. The U-boat was a terrifying unit in WWI, and it was very effective in demoralizing the enemy, especially when used to destroy civilian ships. As for a second purpose, resource stealing would be fine, or maybe let it act on frigates through sudden EMP attacks. Alternatively, they could be the "titan mine" layer unit, with an added kamikazi ability that does massive damage. I think they'd have to be really expensive units though.

I think an effective titan counter for the Advent would simply be a small ship of their best clerics who, when close enough, cause the titan crew to go into a comatose state. Abilities, movement and weapons cease for a long time, leaving the ship vulnerable. The effort renders the Advent clerics useless, however, and the ship goes dormant after one attack.

For the Vasari, an expensive, mobile nanite swarm should do the trick.

Just some ideas.

As for Zbrush, when creating ships or structures, you can create "ship-like" shapes easily at low polygon counts by masking in uniform lines and then using the deformation tools, mainly "size." This creates a clunky pattern that can easily pass as a ship.

That's interesting about the AI. I'd be interested in knowing more about how the Sins AI is programmed. I haven't seen any files that tell them how to behave in the mods I've pocked through.

I started the photo-realistic character. I'm doing Vasari first, since that's the hardest. There's a definite lack of reference images to work with, although the Vasari body plan is itself fairly standard sci-fi fare. Here's the progress thread:

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/432370

Once I have the model down, I'll create a background graphic for him to be standing in front of. Since I envision this Vasari to be a "Marine," it will probably be a battle scene. Feel free to use it in the mod, or not.

The sub concept sounds awesome, and I really hope it works .

These are unlocked by discovering artifiacts - that one caught me out at first.

You could use the dev.exe to give your faction all research ...

Ctrl+Shift+.  then press 'a' followed by 'a'. You'll get a message of the form "xxx has all research"

... and then open up the research->artifacts window.

Thank you. The others have mostly answered your questions, but here's a more in depth explanation of most of the features that might be difficult to figure out.

Beginners Guide

As for find the artifacts, keep in mind artifacts are twice as common in E4X as in Vanilla Sins, so that should help with that somewhat. I've actually found the planet specific planet bonuses I created are the hardest thing to find in game.

Well by that logic I'd have to give them 500 more health with each upgrade. And +1500 seems a bit much.

If I remember correctly what you suggested (and I may not) there was no good way to do what you described.

Well 13 Solanus adjudicators is a lot of fleet supply. 13 * 18 = 234 fleet supply. For that much you could get the equivalent of 23 normal bomber squads which could probably do the same thing before 1.45. The main point of this update was to make antistructure cruisers actually do their job well so I could nerf bombers.

The new defense system was intended to ensure you can no longer rely on starbases alone. They now need support just like any other unit. Deploy mines roughly 8000-10000 meters away from the starbases, and antistructure cruisers won't be able to attack it without the mines taking them out. I meant to buff turret range too so they could protect the mines from the scouts, but forgot, though that will be in the next update. In the main time use hangar defenses to take out scouts before they take out the mines.

Yeah, the planetary defenses where a bit strong I thought. I mainly reduced the range because on asteroids in particular you couldn't even go around the edge of the gravity well to avoid getting hit. The nuke was doing more damage than intended because the two nukes would usually hit targets close together, so I just reduced it to 1 but increased the damage.

Copy the folder with your galaxy forge. Then go to the mod, then it's game info folder. In the gameinfo folder, there is a file called "GalaxyScenarioDef". Copy this, then go to your copy of the galaxy forge. In that folder, there should be another "GalaxyScenarioDef" file. Paste the one from the mod so that it overwrites the one in the galaxy forge folder. The GF will then work for the mod.

While the AL certainly have a big advantage, you can still keep your mines intact if you have a defending fleet or a few squads of strikecraft or turrets. Like scouts destroying mines, the capture mine ability takes time to work, and if you inflict enough damage to the carrier, it will cancel the mine capture. Of course the carriers having more health need to take more damage.

The AI is probably better able to take advantage of the AL's changes than any other faction. The fact that they have culture activated from the second the game starts means their economy will probably be the best after the first 2 minutes or so, until everyone else gets culture up. Unlike say the Vasari loyalists planet denial ability this requires no input from the AI to take full advantage of it. And of course the AL late game has always been decent.

That said the AL's dominance at all stages of the game seems odd. Make sure you account for the AI type as well as difficulty (economic, aggressive etc.).

Curious, I find Corvettes extremely useful as long as titan AoEs are not around (and if normal Vanilla won't change that I will). Still it could be interesting if I feel they really do need something special besides their debuffs. The only concern I have it that this should not be something players should have to manually control, the Advent scout's suicide ability is a prime example of something that doesn't get used because it's a pain to micro. So the TEC Rebels ability is probably out because of that. Kamikaze based abilities would be possible though.

It should be noted that BailKnight's Graphic Mod found here:

http://ricksgalaxy.homestead.com/links.html

DOES WORK with E4X - giving it far nicer graphics.

Tested with Rebellion 1.041 and it works even on saved games.

@GoaFan77

Perhaps, you could aqquire his permission to implement it into E4X on a permanent basis? It is somewhat pity that so many people miss the awesome fireworks.

Well, the Advent Rebels will revive 20 percent of your destroyed frigates temporarily on death. But you ships have to actually die first.

Advent Loyalists have either the Coronata's subjugating assault ability (which I have not changed), Coward's submission captures 5% of all ships that phase jump from an AL world, or destroying a culture center can convert up to 10 frigates each (average is probably closer to 6). If you're talking say 30 frigates all converting at once that's certainly sounds like a bug.

This is on my to do list. Capitalships have to use a cap slot, there is no way I can get around that. What I'll probably due is make them actually cost the 1 capitalship supply and 50 fleet supply, but then have a research that gives you +3 cap slots and +150 fleet supply.

Yes, it's intended so that a defending player can stop you from say, stealing their ancient super weapon with a suicide colony ship. Scouts should have substantially more range than TEC and Vasari mines and have a bit more than Advent, but I can increase it if needed. If they are taking damage from enemy strikecraft for example it can also cancel the mine clearing. They should do this well on their own though. You might need to tell your scout to clear a specific mine, but don't give it any more orders than that as once it's started clearing any order will cancel it.

By default you can't give anything to milita players in galaxy forge. You'll need to set up the objects you want to span, remember the internal planet (Planet12 or whatever), then open it in notepad. Then find the planet and Type in the owner "RandomMilitia". Also for the superweapon type entities (Styx Desolation Engine, Rudra Cannon, Phase Tunneler, the ones that show up in the structures section in game) you'll need to set the colonize chance to 1.0 for that group, but the planet should get decolonized on spawning the entity. Note this might cause a problem if you were to try and give it to someone's homeworld though.

The Fair planets are not currently supported, they were added to the vanilla GalaxyScenarioDef file in 1.04 but are not currently used. Apparently they are supposed to be set up so that they have the exact same militia and resource extractors every time. My mod already has fixed resource extractors though so that part was redundant, they're just there for map compatibility for maps that may use them in the future. I've also been told I screwed them up somewhere but don't worry, they should be fixed by the next version.

I don't know exactly, probably not until Rebellion 1.1 is released, I have a lot of things planned and not enough time to do it in. I think most of your issues will get adjusted though, save the Advent one as I'd need to know what exactly is converting your ships.

I thought about doing that too. Depends if I want to keep them instantly available as now or force the player to substitute a hero for a capitalship early (heroes are still free after all) but then late game let them get the extra supply.

Personally I don't use any graphic mods for performance reasons. So that's unlikely to happen, because eventually those extra effects do take a toll.

Are hard points on the ships still hard coded?  If by some chance they aren't, you could replace the AoE skills with skills that add various weapon hard points (this sounds like a lot of work though). 

Maybe be able to call in a temporary AI controlled fleet to help the battle? 

Can you use abilities to spawn structures/star bases/defense structures?

Perhaps skills that reflects the traits of a faction.

Maybe a skill like the TEC starbase's self-destruct that auto-casts on death.

For titans I think so. Starbases and structures can change with upgrades, but I don't think that can apply to titans.

I'm afraid that's not really possible possible to tie them to planets. And while I helped develop the multiple titan system used in SoGE I don't really want to use it for this mod.

For the most part I'm just looking at changing the Area of Effect abilities, and redirecting the damage from that into normal weapons. I want them to be powerful, just not decimate unlimited numbers of frigates in a few minutes or less.

More goodies are coming too.