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'm not sure I understand. If the core AI code is not available for modders to change, then how can it be that tweaks to AI weakpoints were made? And is there a reason this isn't possible for Vanilla?
There are ways to change the game in other ways besides how the AI plays it to try and mitigate its weaknesses. For example, the AI can be inefficient in how it uses the black market, so we give it a reduction to purchase prices.
The way we went about doing it involves some things that are not present in the original game, so it only works with E4X compatible mods.
It would take at least some about of manual effort to port this to vanilla.
This answer is...still kind of confusing. If the AI isn't editable, then how can it be accommodated for things that aren't in the original game?
In any case, I *am* curious whether there are any balance patches anywhere at all that strictly attend to balance and nothing else. Are there no other AI improvement mods anywhere for Vanilla?
Ultimate Balance Mod by Zabik2 et. al. features drastic balance improvements that cardinally affect AI's behavior. In fact, a separate multiplayer version with nerfed AI had to be made because Vicious AI (the most high difficulty AI, which replaces human players in MP once they leave) reportedly becomes unstoppable under the new balance. However, the last patch (1.4.1) doesn't feature a separate singleplayer version with "fully unlocked" AI.
What does fully unlocked mean? Like is it partially unlocked? Or in other words playing Single Player with said mod and AI is not possible?
Enhanced 4X Mod version 1.87 has been released on Moddb. Change log is in the description.
Okay so I decided to run through SOASE again.. wanted a bit more challenge so I added some of the stand-alone mini-mods.
Starbase abilities vanished.
I worked with it, didn't really need the vasari colonize or the phase gate, so whatever. Wanted to do an advent run, no mass-desorientation.Okay, I thought.. I am running without the base-mod, so maybe that's why it's causing me problems.
Added the E4X mod, used the online configurator and selected my add-on mods.. the same issue persists.
"
TXT2
SinsArchiveVersion 197
Version 0
enabledModNameCount 9
enabledModName "E4X Doubled Fleet Supply and Capitalships"
enabledModName "E4X Expanded Research"
enabledModName "E4X Infinite Research"
enabledModName "E4X Resetting Titan Levels"
enabledModName "E4X Non-Vasari Phase Gate"
enabledModName "E4X Max Starbase Upgrades"
enabledModName "E4X Exploding Mines"
enabledModName "E4X More Tactical Slots"
enabledModName "Enhanced 4X Mod 1.87"
I really don't think I'm doing anything overly exotic.. any idea what could be going on? Can't have advent starbases without mass desorientation!
Edit:
I did some further testing. Even just loading the "max starbase upgrades" mod, it removes abilities from being used. Not from the research tree, mind, just from the ability lists.
As I said I noticed advent MD going missing, but haven't really tested the other factions as yet.
Edit2:
Forgot to mention. Expanded research seems to remove oceanic colonization research entirely from Vasari.
Are you sure you're using an updated copy of the minimods? You need to delete the old minimods when a new update comes out. Some of these issues have been reported by people who downloaded a new version of E4X but didn't get the newest minimods.
Everything in my mods-folder (Rebellion v. 1.85) is timestamped 27-07-2022.
I've downloaded this one: E4X & Interregnum Gameplay Minimods 1.87 file - Enhanced 4X Mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion - Mod DB
Comparing the files in the archive with what I have, they're identical - time stamps and all - so I think I have the latest one.
Is a particular BETA version required to be selected in Steam?
It should work on either the latest version of Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, and there's an older version for Diplomacy/Trinity.
What is your checksum when you enable the mod from the in game mod menu?
Hi, thanks for the awesome mod! Just wanted to mention a few bugs. I posted them on Mod DB, but I forgot about the forums here so I'll re-post them here. Not sure if any of these are related to the mod or not.
VCC Titan looses it's mind when it teleports
I don't remember if I played VCC since updating the mod last time, but this round the titan forgets it's orders every time it uses it's teleport skill. I've only been able to use it in a squad that gives it new orders every time it forgets what it was doing.
Change in the Vasari Maraduder skills
I noticed one of the vasari marauder's skill seems to have been changed to affect enemy ships. That makes the skill much more useful, but with it's current balance one level of the skill plus a jump interference structure will get ships stuck early game, so you can't even scout past vasari minor races worlds unless you send several scouts at once... and even then it's pretty easy for it to trap and kill them.
I'm a fan of new ways to trap ships so I can counter the AI's raids, but this one seems a bit OP early game.
Ongoing Diplomat Shenanigans
The diplomats seem better than the last version, but instead of flying out of the gravity well at random, they just get stuck when arriving in a gravity well. They also seem to freeze periodically when trying to deploy the embassy, they will just sit there and never deploy it unless I go back and tell it to stop and deploy again. The AI is really struggling with this bug as they rarely get many embassies deployed on my planets, and they will get stuck trying to capture a minor race world. I can send a diplomat and capture the world, then the AI will resume attacking.
Phasic Barriers block attacks
More of a feedback, but I think this was changed in the E4X mod... I've noticed that ships stop attacking a structure when the structure activates the Phasic Barrier skill. This makes cleaning up Vasari structures in an enemy gravity well a big pain because my ships will just rotate around the well attacking the next structure each time the barrier activates and never actually get anything killed. I usually counter it by pressing shift and telling the fleet to attack the structure 5 or so times. More just an annoyance but it would be cool if anything can be done about it.
Piling up Sentinels
I've noticed when playing as Vasari I seem to collect sentinels randomly. I will find them scattered on planets that I've just conquered. I suspect it's from the marauder hero's summon ships skill. They don't de-spawn though, and I'm not sure if they count against the supply cap. I'm also sure it's not the "replicate forces" skill.
AI fleets getting stuck
I frequently see the AI piling it's fleet on planets that have those invincible hero spawning buildings. I'm wondering if the AI is sending ships there to attack it, but it's invincible, so the ships just sit there. I usually play with an AI ally so I can watch them do this once the conquer an enemy capital.
Anyway, those were the notes I collected from the last few playthroughs. Again, I love this mod, thank you for putting it together!
Version 1.88 of the Enhanced 4X Mod has been released on Moddb. This is a rather large update with a rework of the Pact System, a rebalance of the resource economy in the game, and even a new unit type, the Antimodule bomber.
Yesssss! Thank you!
I like the new trading system too. It's no longer a matter of spamming every gravity well with trade ports. However, I noticed that trade port upgrades on starbases don't reduce the gravity well's trade income like the trade ports do. Was this an oversight or was it intentional since you can only build one starbase per gravity well?
We know Starbases do not apply the debuff. It was not so much an intentional choice, but simply because it was a lot harder to do for Starbases. So as you say, since there is usually only one, we were okay with it not applying the debuff.
I am having an issue where the AI is not building embassies very much and the auto build doesn't happen. The ai will send envoy ships to my planets but they will just sit there and not build the embassy. Is there a way to modify it so that it will build them more readily and more quickly?
That's kinda been happening since the addition of embassies sadly. It seems the ship get's stuck trying to move outside the gravity well at random, and the AI doesn't know to fix it so they just get stuck. I have it happen with my envoy's too when I send them long distances.
Is there any opportunity for players to capture pirates again? in the first try I've run into the problem of colony ship trying to capture the pirate post, yet dies out quickly while waiting the capture to happen. Any suggestion of this? I've already wiped out all expect two structures that I just can't capture, I've even colonized the pirate plant already.
Is the colony ship in range of any minefields you haven't cleared?
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