There are a few things I'd like to ask if they can be done in the SOSE engine.
1. can I add a sound effect for moving ships, ala Star Wars and its famous ""?
2. the engine does not support "hardpoints" ala Forces of Corruption for the various ships. does it support however different kinds of armor/abilities?
3. can I limit certain units to be only one per game? like the heroes of Warcraft 3?
4. can I have different background music for each race, even and especially custom ones?
5. how big can the galaxy map be before performance hits appear? is there a limit?
6. could a story-driven campaign be made?
7. can descriptions be added to planets/ships?
8. can we use custom art for custom planets? like, a ring of debris orbiting a custom planet?
erm, more than a couple, and there were more, but I cannot remember them
Yes
Yes. You can add up to 5 abilities per entity. You can change the armor type and damage bonuses of weapon types per armor type, but you can't add new armor or damage types (They can all be renamed though in the string file to match whatever universe).
Titans are the only game engine enforced one unit per game type. There are "workarounds" though that many of us old school modders have developed. The most refined of those is now in the E4X mod with it's Hero implementation.
There's no limit to the insanity you can create. Where it ceases to become playable is mainly system limited. You'll either exceed the 2GB limit or your CPU/GPU processing power at a certain point. How many stars/planets that is I don't think has really been quantified. The end result is you'll have too many units doing to many things for your CPU to keep up causing Sins to play like a TBS instead of a RTS and possibly eventually crash. Basically, your not going to get some grandious star trek galaxy with thousands of stars and planets to explore. You might be able to get tens or twenties of stars with a hundred planets or so to play well. You'd need to play around with it a bit to find the right mix.
No, not possible at all.
Yes- via particle effects.
oh thanks a lot
and btw, no star trek galaxy with thousands of systems. around 600, perhaps.
9. also, can we make ships shift between different "modes"? like "lock wings, get X% more accuracy but X% slower"? again, like star wars and the X-wings, who could lock wings in S-foil (attack position) and unlock them at their leisure.
10. when I say custom art I also mean actual custom planet appearing in-game, a different planet surface.
lol, no. 600 stars with an average of 5 planets is 3600 orbit bodies... Think in the low range of 100-200 planets and 20(ish) stars for playable on the LARGE end. Again the difference is playeable versus realistic.
Sorta and probably not what you want. You can add toggle abilities to Frigates (not strikecraft). Also, sins doesn't support animations very well so changing the look of a ship in a toggled mod might be more complicated than it's worth.
Yes. all the mods I listed in the other thread add new planet textures as far as I know. The complicated thing with new planet meshes/textures is understanding the Planet/GalaxyScenarioDef relationship which is far more complicated than I'm willing to discuss with someone that hasn't modded the game yet.
not 600 stars, 600 planets
You can build a 600 planet galaxy... You can probably even play on it for a little bit. After a few hours the map will probably become unplayable or crash.
Like I've said the difference is between having a playeable map versus what you feel is a realistic map. The two don't always coincide.
can I create custom symbols and theme colors? black, for example.
I thought the latest patch allowed for more multicore support?
Despite what XATHOS is saying about Despite what Zombie is saying- from my many years of playing this game on ICO (1500+ games) the engine quite easily supports the Huge Maps of 98 - 142 planets. I've also played several Random-Vast games online. The problem with late game lag online is usually somebodies shitty comp or internet connection on these maps.
Also, I was answering his question in regards to what the upper limit most likely is before maps simply become unplayable...
Your preference of 75 might not be his... I was leaving it more open ended
hmm.. which cpus do you guys have?
dark_ansem, with sins the cpu family (ie generation) is of help for the SINGLE core performance regarding the GHZ and ram speed of access, and in those areas I have several intel I series cpus running between 3.4 & 4ghz with the fastest ram I could get, but was STILL limited to the 75-100 planet range before the slideshow developed in the game partly from strikecraft, trade/refinery ships and the planet details with lower details for planets/ships increasing the galaxy size a small bit, and the biggest galaxy I have played with was approx 150 planets but got a slideshow (and a slow one at that) after approx 2 hours in the game against 6 ai
harpo
I see. thanks a lot anyway.
Playing with a reduced fleet size helps, too. My mod has rescaled fleet requirements of ships and runs on 1000 fleet supply. I also have rescaled strikecraft squadrens, trade/refinery ships, TSOP, etc. I can generally go 3+ hours before I see any lag whatsoever (of course, clusterfuck battles do encourage lag if you're zoomed all the way in).I'm using an OCed AMD A10 5800K.
ah, you mean ACTUALLY reduced smaller ships!
hehe, no.
Fleets are made up of points used for each ship, enlarging the fleet points for each ship will mean you can build less ships for the fleet, which helps reduce movement/pathfinding calculations.
slotCount 22.000000
is an example of how many fleet points or "Supply" this ship will use up out of your total supply. larger ships use more than smaller ones typically.
RESEARCHSUBJECT_MAXSHIPSLOTS
and
RESEARCHSUBJECT_MAXCAPITALSHIPS
let you research upgrades to get more ships
oh, I see. thanks for clarifying that!
how can I set a custom skybox for a Galaxy?
You can't, unless you make a special kind of Star that only has one skybox option. Skyboxes are randomly selected from a list based on what Star is in the solar system, but you can toggle between these by enabling and disabling the "Colored Skybox" or "Deep Space Skybox" checkboxes in the options until you have the desired skybox.
hmm, I think I need another lesson on how skyboxes works, and how much custom stars can be done.
er, no.
If you're playing against 7 to 9 AI you won't want to play on anything over 80 planets because the AI fights to the death and builds things like crazy (resource bonus will allow for that I suppose). Against humans, more planets are possible because people know when they're doomed and would rather start a new game than endure a long, painful defeat.
tl;dr
Playing against AI. Less than 80 planets
Playing against Humans. Less than 125
Please note the numbers above are general guidelines and dependent on number and skill of players/AI as well as computer specs.
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