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.
The only drawback to that is that someone who doesn't want the planets still has to download/extract them...probably not an issue though some poor soul out there with awful internet may be less than pleased...
As far as I concerned though, a longer download time is a small price to pay for something you enjoy and plan to use a lot...
I don't see how anyone wouldn't want a bigger selection of planets...unless the new planets completely throw off the balance of the game. It's a big universe and from what little we have seen so far, most planetary systems are a lot stranger and different than ours. And even in ours, we have a large variety of planets and moons. Four just isn't enough to play around with, IMO.
They should not. I used a more or less standardized system in designing them to try and make the different planets more useful. I didn't get much feedback on the Requiem Beta about it but it seems to have gone over well. Basically its set up like this.
Key: Name (Extractors)(Colonization Type)
Tier 0 Planets (Miscellaneous low population planets)Dead Asteroid (unchanged, removed from most random lists as the map generators rarely put them in good spots)Asteroids (unchanged)(None)No Atmosphere (4-5 mixed extractors)(None)Colonizeable Gas Giant (1-2 mix extractors, credit planet bonus)(None)Tier 1 Planets (Standard Low Population planets)Swamp (4 crystal Extractors)(None)Volcanic (4 Metal Extractors)(Volcanic)Igneous (4 Mixed Extractors)(Volcanic)Tier 2 Planets (Mid population Planets)Ice (3 crystal Extractors)(Ice)Cyro (3 metal Extractors)(Ice)Desolate (3 mixed Extractors)(Desert)Tier 3 Planets (High population Planets)Desert (2 Metal Extractors)(Desert)Oceanic (2 Crystal Extractors)(Ice)Terran (2 Mixed Extractors)(Terran)Industrial (0 Extractors/Ship Build Bonus)(Terran)
In addition to different extractor make up, the stats of each planet in a tier is about the same, but with a few differences. I.e. desert planets have slightly lower populations than other tier 3 planets, but can support more orbital slots.
I forgot all about Requiem. This forum really needs a dedicated subcategory in the modding section for each mod.
I downloaded and fired up the latest diplomacy version last night...and had lots of fun.
The industrial planet has a good bonus...and not too insane. It was a bit low in logistics slots...but then again, you wouldn't be trading, mining, and broadcasting from your factories.
The swamp, rock, and oceanic planets were pretty good too. Using very different textures for the same type of planet also adds a nice variety to the planets.
Goa, I've released an updated version of equilibrium that makes changes to the capital ship and support ship abilities...if you are interested, you are certainly welcome to use them...in particularly, Timed Explosives and Embolden have been completely reworked...
Okay, my "artifact structures" are now pretty much done (roughly inspired from this post). These are randomly placed structures you can capture but won't work until you find a particular artifact. It may take several games for you to get both the structure and artifact required (especially on small maps, on large maps there are typically a few structures and the artifacts to power them somewhere on the map), but once you do they're quite powerful, and are an extra incentive to explore planets should you find a structure.
Now its just to add the 8 new planet types, maybe add some new bonuses for them, and fix some odd graphics bugs, and then 1.2 will be pretty much complete.
Awesome, I'll take a look.
Exciting news!
And I thought of a good artifact now finally...darn.
Ancient Repository...lost archives containing maps of ancient facilities and installations discovered. Chance of finding artifacts/bonuses when searching worlds is now increased.
Oh well.
Is that possible to implement? The planet bonus density is tied to each galaxy file and the location of such bonuses (I presume) would be set at map creation...not sure you could change that mid-game, but I could be wrong...
Hehe...it's a concept. You could pattern it off the Advent ability Divination:
Planet bonuses I know of no way and don't think you can.
No, but I suppose an artifact that makes planet bonuses free and instant could be pretty useful. If I ever have need to add another 10 artifacts (maybe if Rebellion adds some) that will be one of them.
Murphy's law states that will be found on the last planet you explore...
True that. I always end up finding the research archive artifact after I finish researching everything.
That was exactly what came to mind!
Got the new artifact pictures done. Next version should be up for next weekend at least.
Quite impressive, good sir...
5th row down, 4th one from the left...what is that? That is a quite a cool image...anyway, good job keeping the art style more or less the same!
Its for the new shield artifact, so its supposed to be a force field of some sort.
Well I didn't get much time to work on the mod this week, so I maybe delayed a day or two. Basically just have 3 annoying mesh issues to fix up. But here's another little teaser. I don't think the militia are used to seeing this every day.
That is either is a bug, a super long range laser, or a very long telephone cable....
Looks like the Rebels got their hands on the Death Star and increased it's firing range!
I told them that was no moon...would they listen?
Okay, I realize the Rebellion beta is going to completely overshadow this, but I've decided I'm going to release 1.2 tomorrow! At most I might add one small random encounter, and there is still one small graphical glitch remaining, but its pretty much done and plays wonderfully.
Also just to prove I wasn't doing nothing while falling one week behind my deadline, I too have adopted the modular mod approach, and 1.2 will be released with multiple optional minimods bundled with it. In additional to the new skybox, I took someone's idea (can't find the post) to take advantage of this mod's higher income rates and make a proper deathmatch mode out of it. Included will be minimods to increase ship damage, greatly increase income/build etc. setting, and adjust fleet supply between 1.5x, 2x, 3x, and 4x the fleet supply. While a bit experimental, taken together if you just want to get to the extremely large fleet battles faster it works great.
If there are any last minutes suggestions to make or remind me of, this is the time to ask them. The update after this may not be out for a while.
It's addictive once you start.
Alright, 1.2 is being uploaded to WinCustomize at this moment. Here's the full change log (also will be in the mod folder), will edit the thread for the more general feature list.
- Many adjustments to ship abilities, most are just stat changes, but new effects are listed below. * Gauss Rail Gun - Now slows target's rate of fire by 17/33/50%. * Adaptive Force Field - Now a passive ability with slightly reduced effects. * Shield Restore - The Dunov can now use this ability to heal itself. * Magnetize - Now has no target cap but will stop after a certain number of strikecraft are destroyed. * Incendiary Shells - Now slightly reduces the armor of the target ship. * Animosity - Now gives the Radiance a damage reduction bonus for its duration. * Clairvoyance - Increases the damage the targeted planet takes from bombardment (doesn't appear on infocard). * Guidance - Now reduces antimatter costs as well as cooldown times. * Martyrdom - Now correctly stacks damage from multiple seeker vessels using the ability at the same time. * Sabatoge Reactor - Now instantly removed 25 antimatter from target * Interference - Now reduces antimatter regeneration rates by 25% * Other abilities adjusted: Missile turrets, flak burst, finest hour, subversion, embolden, reverie, heavy fighters, incendiary shells, phase out hull, speed boost, vengeance. - Fixed the autotargeting on the channeling abilities designate target, suppression, perseverance, and transfer antimatter. - Made significant adjustments to the rarely used race specific tactical structures. * Shield Generator - Now has shields to make it much harder to destroy, in addition to a big buff to its main ability. In addition, the shield generator and its improvement tech can now be acquired with 1 fewer research labs. * Antimatter Recharger - Now has a secondary passive ability that increase antimatter regeneration rates around it. * Nanoweapons Jammer - Increased the target count from 5 to 25-35, making it far better against large fleets. - Vasari repair platform now gives a +1 armor bonus for the duration of the repair. - Resource Pact now gives +15% to resource focus, to match the +15% refinery income the TEC/Vasari get. - TEC's racial ability now makes population upgrades 15% faster and 15% (from 10%) cheaper. - TEC Sanctions espionage ability now reduces trade income by 45% instead of 25%. - Envoy cruisers now have their abilities disabled after deploying an embassy until they leave the gravity well (so you can now leave autocast on). - Research Labs now give a minor race specific buff to the gravity well they are in. * TEC: Civic - +2.5% trade income, Military - +3.75% range bonus * Advent: Civic - +5% max population, Military - +10% shield regeneration * Vasari: Civic - +250 planet health, Military - +2.5% damage output. - New planet system with 8 new planet types, textures from Sins plus, Celestial Bodies, and Axel Dude. - Overhaul of planet exploration system. Now more logical and has a better chance of finding artifacts on all noncustom maps. - 8 New Artifacts and X new planet bonuses (some adapted from Sins Plus). - 5 New "Artifact Structure" Random Encounters. You may now find entities available to capture in random gravity wells, which while very powerful, only work after you've found certain artifacts. - The manifest dominion artifact now gives +1 to your relations with other factions. - The resistant metaloids artifact armor buff increased to +2. - Each faction's homeworld now starts with a faction unique bonus. *TEC: +4 Logistics Slots, +25% trade income, +1 constructor *Advent: +33% culture spread rate, +35 population, +25% growth rate *Vasari: +1 tax income, +750 planet health, +15% structure build rate
Indeed, but I don't think these will give me as much trouble as they did you. These are mostly just single files so I shouldn't be needing to rebuild them too often.
It looks like the upload didn't work. All I'm getting is the same old v1.1
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