Ah yes... good point, thanks for that =P

I have a way of making the limit of starbases praticaly non-existant meaning you can have as many capital ships in a grav well as you want.

sins traditional fighters work fine alongside the 'frigate' type fighters. I have ways of limiting weapons fire so that weapons that can't fire on the traditional fighters cannot shoot the frigate type fighters either.

Also, squads will be greatly limited compared to traditional sins, with Academies housing two squads (of 3 or so fighters, and acadamies will take up a fair amount of module slots) and battleships having to sacrifice armor or other abilities to field a Squadron.

Frigate based fighters have the advantage that they can act autonomous of any capital or module.

As far as the bounty hunters and corsairs... I'm hoping i hear back from the discovery dev team with permission to use some of their assets =D

tried to get into the discovery server back in july, but email never replied to.  GL on this mod.  Too bad there is nothing in the way of campaign for SOASER or it'd be fantastic.

Will the Elite fighter pilots basically be like the level 19 Ace fighter pilots you encounter in Freelancer? That would be neat. I'm assuming you won't have Titans of any sort, because they would also use the random elite pilot names, which would be odd if it's meant to be something or someone specific.


What are your thoughts on the whole Loyalist/Rebel mechanics for this mod? I came up with an idea that I thought was pretty neat for it.
I remember ZombiesRus5 was working on research mechanics in Sins of the Fallen, where instead of the normal Loyalist/Rebel mechanics, he used a discarded Rebellion research modifier that changed the player to the appropriate side ingame, and locked out research for the other side. Perhaps you could find out how that works from him or something?

Basically my thinking was that in Freelancer, the Rheinland military gets heavily infested with Nomads, to the point where their ships start sporting cloaking devices and nomad lasers and all sorts, but there were also a few small sections of the military that escaped infestation. The same goes for Liberty. You could have all the factions start off normal, but at one point, you could choose to have your faction become Nomad infested, which unlocks nomad tech, or become a rebel faction that fights against the Nomad infestation, and unlocks special ships, like the Osiris Battleship. The bit that would make it great, unfortunately, I don't think can be done in Sins, which would be to increase your relation bonus with Nomad players; as far as I know, a bonus like that can only be global, I've never seen it work on one faction specificly.

But yeah, the reasoning behind doing it this way is that the Nomad Infestion was mostly quiet and subtle. You're playing the mod squabbling with the other houses as usual, all of a sudden BAM! Bretonian ships are decloaking behind your defences. Unless you're constantly checking the other factions, you won't even know they're infected until it's too late.

Mmm, sorry for typing so much again, I think about this sort of stuff a looot.

Made the music mod. I edited the songs to be generally longer, and setup the music into the basic 6 Sins factions to test them. Worked pretty well, tested it for a few hours with a few factions. Each faction has their own specific music, along with nebula music depending on their location (i.e. Crow Nebula for Kusari), and extra music that is shared between all factions. I also made a nice little main menu theme that fits rather nicely, both quality and lengthwise.

You maybe able to make two version of each ship, and using an AI exclusive research let it build normal capitalships while human players will use the starbase versions. The feasibility of that though depends on how many capitalships you are going to have, as you can only have 9 types of capitalships built from factories.

I agree I think using Starbases as customizeable capital ships is a good idea, but only for a fairly unique or limited thing, like a race specific mothership or maybe even as a titan substitute for all races. If freelancer has as many capitalship equivalents as Sins does, I don't think it will be feasible to set them all up as Starbases.

Yeah, two years and expansions after the game came out. The AI also doesn't use Striped to the Core or Wail of the Sacrifice, and I don't think it uses any of the returning Armadas either, among other things. So I wouldn't cross your fingers unless you can get everyone to agree that the devs should fix it (or really add the ability for the AI to use it). I don't think most people care honestly (and many single players probably don't want the AI to use those things. Some were upset when the AI started using superweapons).

well, each house faction only has 3 capitals ( a couple more if I get permission for the discovery stuff) so it's not too hard to work with.... Most of the fleet will be made up of 'frigate' fighters, and combat freighters/transport ships etc.

I have an idea for AI compatibility.... I can give the shipyards abilities to spawn AI capital ships (wich will be unlocked by ai only research) This should help make the AI a bit more of a challenge without making them too overpowered as the spawned caps should take up fleet supply. This way they can still use the Elite/Ace pilots properly, and will still have capitals that roam around.... I'll probably give the abilities fairly long cool down times to prevent the ai spamming them too much too.

That is the best solution I can come up with while still keeping the original concept fairly intact.

Well, the AI capitals will probably be frigates... I want to keep the Elites separate and like you said it would cause naming problems...

I might actually have an answer for keeping the ships separate... I can use the rebellion selection screen. so on the left is Liberty, right is Liberty (AI)

That way I can also not give the ai the starbase increase code so that they don't have like, 20 starbase battleships around their homeworld =P

Yeah, for elites I'm going to just use last names for simplictiy. I'm thinking of making the names like: Ace. West, Ace. Hawks etc.

currently working on some variants... Got a Recon Rhino for scout, Combat Rhino with cannons, Missile and torp Rhino for LRM and an unarmed rhino for the trade ship.

Also have a Defender with autocannon and missiles, the defender I posted the pic of earlier will be an Elite/Ace Defender.

Also, I heard back from the Discovery admin, They're gonna check with all their modlers for permission to use the assets and get back to me.

My thoughts on Shielding is something along the lines of having passive abilities and research to set each faction apart.

Obviously because game mechanics are different there has to be some creative license...

Liberty for example tend to use Graviton shields, I imagine this as being something like a powerful magnetic/gravitational field which slaps projectiles aside.. So I'm hoping to make Liberty shields gain a % chance to avoid damage. (physical only if I can)

Bretonia I'm thinking of a % absorption of energy weapons into antimatter. (the model for Bretonian shields is called a 'conversion shield')

I was thinking I might make Kusari shields regen faster, and give Rheinland shields Phase block (Considering making Torpedos act like phase missiles) though that might change.

I have an idea for ship balance for the four houses:

Liberty ships will be the base line, with balanced maneuverability, speed, armor and weaponry, and a few powerful special weapons (like the cruiser main gun)

Bretonia will be about 'tanking' Heavy armor and shielding with more focus on forward guns on the caps, their ships will be a little less agile than Liberty ships.

Kusari ships will have slightly weaker armor and lower anti-matter reserves, but will have superior maneuverability and speed along with slightly stronger shielding. They will focus on quick strikes and counter attacks and will outrun most other ships of similar class

Rheinland ships will focus on armor and firepower and have high antimatter reserves, with weaker or slower regenerating shields, with slower acceleration and turning due to higher mass. Rheinland battleships will have devestating long range broadside barrages.

as for the Bounty Hunter Guild, Cosairs and generic Pirates I'm not too sure yet.

I'm going to use armor type to designate ship class, so that anti-capital weapons for example cant be used against light fighters.

Here's what I have so far:

Verylight - Light Fighter

Light - Heavy Fighter

Medium - Bomber/VH fighter

Heavy - Freighter

Veryheavy - Small Capital

CapitalShip - Large Capital

Module - Stations/modules etc.

Pirate - Nomad armor (this is so I can make certain weapons less or more effective against nomads)

Titan - ??