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.
Yeah, WinCustomize is being extremely slow to approve the update (maybe the beta took people off wincustomize or maybe they don't work weekends ). Here's temporary link I used to send it to some friends for testing.
Thanks! I'll play around with it later this evening.
Great mod but the new exploration system as well as the new random encounters don't seem to be working. I have also not seen a single one of the new 8 planet types. Everything else in the mod other than what I listed here is working *so far* however.
You made sure you got the 1.2 version right?
As Goa mentioned 2 posts above yours WinCustomize is being slow updating the link at the top so if you used that too download it you might have the older version (AKA version 1.1).
Yeah the zip file should say v1.2 in there, and when you extract the zip you should get six different mod folders (main mod called "Enhanced 4X Mod 1.2", and 5 optional minimods called "E4X ...".
The easiest way to check is to start a game and see if your homeworld has a planet bonus. If not you have the old version.
Yeah this is kind or ridiculous, I updated the mod a week ago but it seems the WinCustomize staff has been busy with something else and may not get everything sorted until the end of the month. So official I haven't updated it, though it is available from that mediafire link.
Wow I'm a total bone head. I'm sorry I can't believe I overlooked something right in front of me. Thanks!
Just stumbled upon this MOD, can't wait to try it tonight.
Yeah, thanks to WinCustomize its been rather quite around here lately... its been two or three weeks and update still not officially approved.
Which is a shame, this mod is worth it.
Minus your bombers
Really Carbon? Really?
Yes.
Okay, finally got the Wincustomize link to work, so this mod is now officially updated. You now download a ZIP file called the Enhanced 4X package that contains the main Enhanced 4X Mod plus some tiny minimods you can enable if you're interested.
It contains 8 new planets, 8 new artifacts, lots of balance changes, and more. There's a changelog in the readme that should have most of the details.
If you already downloaded version 1.2 from the mediafire link I put up you already have the latest version.
Yay! Took long enough.
FYI--I have made miniscule texturing progress--but progress. I'll share stuff with you ponce I get it down.
The "Cargo Cult" ships and abilities are coming along nicely with no issues so far. Would make a good stack onto this mod.
Okay just a small bug here.
Seems the old gas giants are mixed in with the new colonizeable gas giants but are called the same thing, leads to the funny sight of a colonizeable gas giant having red text under its tool-tip name saying this planet is not colonizeable.
Ah well, its good for a small laugh.
Awesome! Yeah I was just thinking of having some cargo boxes spawned around the map at random, but if your Cargo Cult components are fairly easy to pull out of your mod it might make a good minimod. Though as that's technically another race that could have a few more issues with it.
Both Gas Giants share the same set of 5 different textures. So if you saw say the blue gas giant as uncolonizeable that's certainly normal. Now if you're saying I got my planet text mixed so that its name is "Colonizeable Gas Giant" while in reality its the same old gas giant with neutral extractors, yeah that's a bug, I'll get on that.
Yeah the text mix up is exactly what I saw. I will try too grab a screenshot the next time I play too show it.
It should be fine just to tell me what color it is, I should be able to figure it out from there.
So, It seems 1.2 might not be the last version of this for Diplomacy after all. In addition to a sort of goodie box system, perhaps with Sinperium's "cargo cult", that will allow the player to get extra resources, ship upgrades and experience while exploring/expanding, I've come up with a method that will allow me to implement true Hero units.
As I'm planning on it now, each faction will have three hero units (I'll probably add a fourth when this is ported to Rebellion) using modified versions of current ships. They will be quite different from their basis though, both in stats and abilities, but will complement their faction's fleets. You will only be able to control one of each hero though, and its ability progression will be predetermined (I.e. at level one you can only pick from one ability, not three, and a level two you'll get a different ability), so at the same level two heroes will be completely identical. Heroes will require research that already exists on the tech tree, so you'll slowly get access to heroes as the game progresses naturally rather than having them from the start. Naturally hero's will take a while to be respawn, and may or may not keep their levels (not sure how I feel about this yet), so you'll certainly want to protect them.
I've got most of the TEC and Advent hero ideas down, but feel free to suggest some if you think you have a good idea. I'll certainly have no problem trying to use it if its good. And for almost all of them I need some good sounding names that fit with the factions.
TEC
Admiral ___ - Modified Celio class cruiser w/ missiles. Fleet/ship buffs.
Commander ___ - The first ever Marza captain. Lots of active combat abilities.
Captain ___ - Modified Kol. All round hero focused on decisive action.
Advent
The only title we have for them seems to be Psintegrat, so I just need a pair of Advent sounding first names.
___ - Modified Domina class Cruiser. Extremely strong single target abilities with some combat ones.
___ - Modified Halcyon Carrier. This Psintegrat has mastered manipulating the physical world through psi-tech.
Vasari
What would be good titles? Warlord, master, overseer?
___ - Modified Skarovas Enforcer. A bit of a borg influence here, able to use nanobots to assimulate enemy ships (or convert them to Vasari ones), buff fleet.
Warlord ___ - Heavily Modified Antorak Cruiser. Specializing in raiding, can summon its own escort, always connected to phase network.
Here are some quick Advent names....
Psintegrat, Templar, Anima (the only group i know of named in the standard lore), Crusader. Just some quick ones that fit with the holy/religious theme.
Might get some ideas for any of the fan fiction for ranks.
I was planning on digging through there when I have the time, but I thought this might be faster.
Talk to Ryat, Draak, or Stant. They could give a quick rundown on some the titles that have been used in the DS lore. Or help you make some new ones.
I'll take a look also as I catch up on that lore. I'll give you a shout someway or somehow this week on some suggestions.
Anything else I can assist you with Grand Moff?
May consider just using some of the terms in the angel hierarchy, such as seraph, dominion, or virtue....
Maybe, though do the Advent really use those for themselves? Or just their ships?
My impractical rectangular colored badge thingy clearly shows I'm an Admiral, not one of those sissy Moffs appointed for no reason other than sucking up to the Emperor. I demand an apology, or I'll have you shoved out hangar bay on my Star Destroyer.
There is no evidence I'm aware of that indicates one way or the other...by that I mean, there is no official lore that supports or contradicts my suggestion...you may just have to add to the lore or make up stuff at this point...
I'll be downloading this later to see how it plays out. Also, if you need any help with any future changes you might have planned, I'd be more than willing to help.
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