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.
I tried the E4X mod in Rebellion v1.8 + Forbidden DLC + Steller DLC as TECH faction.
It crashes the game on average, every 10 minutes. I don't know why but just putting it out there.
Also, I was looking at comets and exploded moon (i forgot the exact name) and to colonize them, the game said I required Unavailable research. So, I looked at the tech tree and there was no such thing as Unavailable research. Is this a bug? or are comets and moons colonizable specifically for other factions? I can code a little bit. So, if it is a bug and fixing is simple, I can fix it myself given which entity files to look at.
The new DLCs have sadly greatly reduced the memory space available for mods to run in. You'll need to reduce your texture quality settings to prevent random settings (I.e. planet detail from highest to high). I am looking at potential optimization options in the future but for now this is the only option.
No, you can not colonize comets or anything like that (the only exception are the Gas Giants called "Colonizeable Gas Giants"). I won't go into the technical reasons why, but for a tweak I did the same string that displays for needing a research to colonize a planet also displays for uncolonizeable gravity wells. Clearly I've been unable to come up with a structure that makes it clear there is no way to colonize it (last version I tried "Colonization Research Required: Uncolonizeable" but people still got confused ).
Ah... Ok I see. Thanks for your help. I love E4X just because there are so many artifacts to be found.
I reduced the graphics from all highest to high and seems to not cause any crashes so far (40 minutes into the game).
As for comets and moons, I thought they could be colonizable because there were crystal/metal asteroids. But I found out you have to capture them instead of building one. That made sense.
Just a heads up. For vasari rebels at least, when the research expansion modcomp is enabled, the research that lets you give missions has a second level.
Found an odd bug, think it might be pirate related, download for save;
http://speedy.sh/DbWwQ/current.savereb
Mods were
Expanded Research
Reset Titan Levels
Double Fleet Supply
X4 1.7
Crash seems to occur right when pirates should be spawning. Hope save file helps isolate the issue!
The Minimods havent been updated for 1.7 yet, so that might be your problem.
I did consider that but none of the mini mods should of been effected by 1.80 update as they affect different parts of the game. It occurs right upon pirate spawning, try the save for yourself.
Infact the mini mods are partially compatible with non X4 mods, example fleet supply mod which I use regularly with other mods including the new SOA release.
Thanks! Good timing, it should be fixed in the 1.7 minimods.
Simonak, I was unable to test your save as the only download link I could find on that page was an executable file. However, the Resetting Titan levels minimod does change a file that was modified in 1.7 and contains some of the pirate changes.
Fortunately I am mostly finished with updating the minimods for 1.7, hopefully Moddb will approve them it my the end of the day.
Ahhh fair enough. And aye, that upload sites a bit of a pain, in order to download files off it, don't touch the exe and just directly click the files name. I had same issue myself.
I have another problem. My game crashes for some reason in vast random map. Rebellion v1.8 + Forbidden DLC + Steller DLC. I think I am 2 hours into a game with only E4X mod on and I get crash dump error thingy at exactly same time point (10 seconds after the game has loaded) when I loaded the game 5 times. I tried autosave that was about 7 min before the saved game and same thing happens crashes at same time point. All graphics have been lowered to low so I don't know what the problem is. Is this solvable? or is it a dead skirmish game?
Saves: http://www.mediafire.com/download/a7av8mdkc1kvdmg/Desktop.zip
Thanks for the save. The error message I got indicated that it was caused when something entered the gravity well of a Neutron Star. The day right after I uploaded E4X 1.7, the devs uploaded a hotfix that fixed a bug with the Neutron Star and Black Hole abilities. Unfortunately this fix caused problems with E4X and will cause it to crash whenever any ship enters one of those gravity wells.
I will be releasing a hotfix as soon as possible to fix this, which will hopefully allow you to resume playing your game. I would have released it tonight but I got a crash while testing that I hope to narrow the cause of. I hoped your save would be the same issue but it seems I still need to track that bug down.
Thank you so much. I don't think I ever met a person as helpful as you in my entire forum experience.
Guess I will be playing Pokemon with 3DS until hotfix is ready.
I am also waiting for your minimods that will also be awesome as E4X.
While I certainly can't object to playing Pokemon (I still play Black/White 2 when I travel anywhere, don't have a 3DS yet), I actually uploaded the minimods tonight so they should be authorized on moddb any hour now. Technically if you started maps until you got one without neutron stars/black holes, you wouldn't have this issue and could start a new game with the minimods tomorrow.
The only other bug of note I think was the Vasari Loyalists/VCC lost the ability to build phase gates, not sure if the hotfix would correct that for a currently in progress saved game or not.
Omg this mod is my bane...
I want to play the awesome features it has but exactly like the last time I gave it a shot (roughly 1-2 years ago) it just keeps crashing and producing bugs. Back then I thought it was due to my limited machine and running the game in 32 bit mode but this time I come back with an up to date system. To be exact it is 2 new systems since I am trying to run this mod for LAN matches.
However, despite several updates to my system and the mod nothing has changes since then:
1. The game crashes randomly (I assume there a multiple triggers).
On our first attempt (2 players lan + 6 AIs) my host crashed even before he could load the map so we both tried skirmish. This time I crashed after roughly 10 minutes - former host didn't crash.... Well let's try lan again but guess what? Crash to desktop after 30 minutes.
2. Graphic bugs.
Obviously I wasn't able to see alot from the mod with it crashing all the time but from what I've noticed so far:
-Vasari weapon effects have a lower resolution than vanilla (not sure about resolution but they look noticeably worse than before). Dunno about other (and mostly less effectfull) weapon systems.
-Pirate(tec) flak frigates. Remember how they have 4 seperated auto cannons? Well they do for me too unless they fire... then they become blank rectangles. Or actually it looks like the muzzle flashes are blank rectangles.
-Speaking of blank rectangles... remember phasemissles? I guess a streamlined shape isn't necessary in space...
I'd like to offer you a save but I don't see want kind of save would help you here since the game crashes and bugs out constantly from the second we both press the launch button. Hopefully it's just me being too stupid to install the mod properly because I really want it to run... it's exactly what sins needs
edit: we both run the game at max graphic settings (without any issues in vanilla) and without any minimod mutators.
That is almost certainly the problem. You can not do that with large mods, period. Mods by definition add more content to the game and this further strains a game engine already being pushed to its limits. To make room for the new content you need to reduce your graphics settings somewhat, specifically the texture quality settings (I.e. planet/ship/structure detail). I think all the problems you describe can be fixed by this.
Yeah, as GoaFan mentioned youve just hit the ram barrier. It's an old problem of Sins and there is no way this is going to get fixed until Sins2. For reference... i run the game with model quality set to high, bumps and extras set to medium. That makes Sins almost never crash on me.
You can ignore all other settings like AA/AF/Shadows and just leave them at the highest setting, but textures on max settings almost guarantee your game to crash in pretty much any mod out there. If you encounter any more crashes, just lower your settings a bit more. This is where autosave comes in handy at times
Came here to report that reducing graphic settings to "high" gave us a 4h match without any crash so far. If that's really the only problem then GO TO HELL GRAPHICS ^^
Thanks for the replies though!
There is one thing left that makes me wonder: Why are VCC unable to build phase stabs? Didn't I read somewhere that this has already been fixed? ^^
Yeah, highest especially has always hated mods for some reason.
Because I accidentally screwed them up and didn't notice until after I released 1.7. Will be fixed along with the Black Hole/Neutron Star crash in the next few days (just want to see if I can track down that another possible crash bug I ran into). At least the VCC can still get them indirectly through their titan.
Did you fix the skipping of research levels in the Expanded Research mini mod?
Used to be able to go from tier 1 lvl 2 to tier 2 lvl 5. Basically skipping two levels levels of research.
Could do this for each tier...just research two levels and go to next tier.
Actually this how it was designed. I just wanted to increase the amount of research available, not make techs farther down the tech tree harder to get. So you do not need to research the extra levels of a tech in order to progress down the tech tree.
The 1.7 versions of that minimod does change a few things though, such as fixing a few techs that had additional levels that shouldn't or techs that were too powerful (Advent ships were virtually unkillable in their culture thanks to shield mitigation, so I halved the mitigation bonus and added a new culture shield regen bonus).
So we still have to research all levels to get the full effect? Even if it's possible to skip levels?
Should also thank you for this mod. Its first time I've been able to run E4X without any crashes. (no minimods)
Please change the mine detection to the new system with passive detection. The old one never worked properly as they cast while out of range.
Noticed some weird text info when trying to use abilities of the buildings that can be captured.
Something about research required, but it makes no sense. I do understand that you can use them if you have found and own an artifact that correspond with that ability. But the research part I do not understand. Why can I not build a starbase from that captured ship if I have starbase researched?
Edit: Silly quote system. Can't quote properly inside a quote...
No. If you research everything you'll have twice the benefit. It is just you do not need to say research all the level 1 shield research to get to the level 2 shield research. This was done because some ships like the Advent's Guardian support cruiser require stat research, and I did not what to force the player to research 6 shield research to get it instead of 3. However, if an Advent player researches all shield research with the minimod he will get +60% shields instead of the default +30%.
I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to say here, but scouts in E4X actually use both systems. It will try to target mines and destroy them with its ability (so the unit AI will auto clear minefields) while still revealing the mines passively so other ships can destroy them.
The ancient structures require artifacts to use their special abilities (the game considers artifacts and research to be the same thing). The starbase constructor does not build your standard faction's starbase but rather a special starbase that is much more powerful. Thus you need the new Starbase artifact to construct this super starbase.
Just a suggestion, but as things are the special starbase isn't that great - it has a great statline, yes, but it has no special abilities at all, not even the universal enforce loyalty/trade station functionality. You might want to add those as available upgrades, although I'm not sure how you would make them require the right techs.
Uh, you should be able to get Trade and Bombardment Protection on it. At least I programmed it in at some point, granted it has been a while since I've gotten one.
Been quite a while since I got one either, so my memory is probably wrong.
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