The Battlefleet Gothic mod is now compatible with Entrenchment 1.041 as of 1/17/10, and has a new version (1.30) out as of 1/17/10
This mod contains the Imperial navy in a fully modelled state, and Chaos, the Tau and the Orks in a proxied state.
BE WARNED: THIS MOD IS STILL RATHER BETA AND IS MISSING MANY FEATURES, INCLUDING:
-A research tree (unlocks, colonization, fleet supply, cap ship crews and long range jumps are quite literally all that's there (well, there's a missile tech, but it doesn't do much, and you WILL be able to get late game ships early)
-GUI elements. some 2D icons aren't done yet, and the ones we have are a bit odd. They will be fixed eventually.
Things that we know about (IE we know about it and it's odd, but it's either a design decision which will be explained or something not implemented):
-Counter description text. It's wildly off and somewhat arbitrary, but the ship descriptions are pretty good and should give the player a decent idea of what to expect, and I'll write more on them on our forum (link here).
-Shield Mitigation. It's gone, but it says it's at 15%. Trust me, it's gone.
-The Emperor Battleship. As a compromise on its heavy dorsal armament that can be fired to either broadside, we made it have the strength of the dorsals and a broadside point forward, and slightly stronger broadsides. We think it works pretty well, but please tell us what you think.
-Chaos ships and tau ships in the Additional Races Compendium are odd. The chaos prow weapons are locked to fire left, so they can broadside well to one side without turning into brawlers and tau weapons are locked forwards so they can concentrate fire, but they lost their ability to fire at half strenth to the sides because multi-arc weapons are impossible in sins as far as I know.
-No stock sins races. GW wouldn't let us include them, and they have a very different gameplay mechanic anyway, and need a very different setup for damage types, much to my chagrin, seeing as I want to know how it'd end up [e digicons][/e] .
Okay, now that that's out of the way, we can get to the fun stuff. The ships are working great. If you know the tabletop game you'll know the key things that I need to tell everybody else so they understand the game.
-Ships turn and fire SLOWLY. You need to think ahead, and you can fit in a lot of micro if you know what you're doing. This is intentional.
-Shields recharge VERY VERY VERY VERY FAST. This is a legacy of it being a tabletop game where focusing fire is a big achievement. Shields will fully recharge in the time it takes for you to fire a second salvo of your weapons. Firepower supremacy is big here, and so is using your weapons to their utmost. However, hulls repair rather slowly, so protect them.
-Ships will go up like popcorn, even caps if your fleets get big enough. A fully experienced cap has quite a bit of damage absorbing ability, but it isn't even close to invincible. They're about twice as valuable as a cruiser, and if you're careful, can absorb 3 times as much damage easily. It's a great bargain, but they will die, don't get attached to them.
-Oh right, cruisers. There are cruisers in this game, and frigates are now fragile scouts and flankers. Frigates are cheap, expendable, and surprisingly dangerous in numbers. Cruisers are a lot bigger, much tougher, and carry a good bit more firepower, but a really big price tag. Battleships come in on top, and are really durable, and host a lot of long ranged firepower.
-The weapons are different too. Weapons batteries and Lances are your basic weapons. Lances are focused beams of energy that do best against escorts (accuracy) and armored ships (penetration power, but with just the imperials that isn't that big an issue). Weapons batteries are massed guns that do best against battleships because they can actually be expected to hit a lot. They aren't that different, and the range and strength of the guns means more than their type. Torpedoes are great. They punch through shields 100% of the time, but tend to drop off against bigger targets, which boast the point defense turrets to shoot most of them down. They make great escort killers, and are your best weapon in smaller fights.
-Attack Craft (fighters and bombers) are also very different, they come in squadrons abstracted to one ship, and are much more fragile. They're also much more dangerous. They, like torpedoes pierce shields and can do a lot of damage, especially against smaller ships (including cruisers, battleships are nasty to them though). However, every ship has turrets that can kill them, but if they stagger their waves, they can hit home very hard. They also replenish quite fast until their parent ship runs out of antimatter, so they're really quite good. Fighters are quite capable at interception duties, if you have more fighters than the enemy, your bombers will be able to strike enemy ships while your ships are safe from enemies.
Please note!
-Planet capturing is quite different from in standard sins. The transport is your one stop shop for planetary warfare and colonization. They land troops instead of bombarding. The whole idea is a little bitcomplicated, and I encourage anybody who's interested to read the thread I'll post on our forum shortly. The short version is that you build transports, use their bombardment ability to pound your enemies into dust, and then return them to the munitorum depots (they have the advent antimatter recharger icon for now, shouldn't be hard to find on the screen) to refill. It should especially suit the Imperium's style of defend and counterattack.
Now that you know the basics of the game, you can download the mod here:
DOWNLOAD (7ZIP, 109 MB) (This should work properly but I've been having lots of problems with it, if not, please tell me so I can remove the link while I fix it. )
7zip or winrar both can open 7zip files, and both are available for free, and much smaller than 50 MB.
DOWNLOAD (ZIP, 162.63 MB)
And please visit our forum at Modcraft if you want to learn more about the mod and what to expect, volunteer or give detailed feedback:
OUR FORUM
Dev Journals: These guides will help you know what to expect in the future and understand the current state of the gameplay.
Dev Journal 1: Ships of the Imperium It explains all the imperial ships and their fleet's way of fighting. Should be useful.
Dev Journal 2: Fleet tactics of the Imperium It focuses on the use of the Imperial ships in a fleet. Definitely good food for thought, may apply more to tabletop than the mod, I need to test the theories some before I fully endorse them.
Gratuitous screenies:
Gothic class cruisers pummeling a Dictator class cruiser with lances and torpedoes
Retribution class battleship firing its prow lances and torpedoes at an enemy cruiser.
Finally, the trailer for the Imperium (thanks again, Thrawn!)
Sorry for the delay. Anyway, thanks for the feedback. I'm really having a hard time trying to figure out how to make battles last longer without slowing ships down, because if battles are made longer, then long-ranged ships which rely on being able to weaken the enemy before it closes. If I increase ranges/slow ships down considerably, then the strategic elements become very very slow, which is also a problem.
That few? Hmm, I wonder if I bundled a ramilies buff with the additional ships compendium. That may be the case, but I'm torn between making it more expensive and durable and leaving it the way it is, I'll need to play it a bit.
What is that? If it makes the frigates attack like fighters, it'd be trivial, but I think it'd make them even more fragile because they'd likely go screaming through both broadside arcs of the enemy fleet, which would be really bad for their life expectancy. I'll take another look at what it does though.
Not right now, but it's supposed to work with strong ramilieses, so I'm not sure what to do with them. Plus, I seem to be incapable of getting ship spawners to work, so I may consider making the super units buildable normally.
xthetenth, Dynamic Battle System is a mod by ManSh00ter that gives almost all units fighter movement. While I think it would LOOK coold, it would also likely decrease the lifespan of the already super-fragile escorts.
Also, another mod by ManSh00ter that I think would go good with BFG is his 'Volumetric Damage&Explosions Effects Mod'.
The Eldar are supposed to do grand sweeping attacks, and the Dynamic Battle System would allow them to do that by making them do strafing runs and then coming around for another pass.
hmm. I did not know that. So, for the Eldar, definitely give them the DBS. For the Imperials&Chaos, likely not; Orks likely not.
Tau I'm not sure. Dark Eldar would also get DBS, as they are the piratey versions of the Eldar (w/in the mod anyway).
From my understanding Tau like to barrage with mass amounts of homing torpedoes and then use their forward-mounted ion and railgun batteries to finish whatever is left. From my understanding Tau also have killer attack craft.
YAY TAU SC! Barracudas, Mantas, Tigersharks galore!
Tau are AWESOME. Though tactically speaking, using a long-range barrage of large quantities of ordnance, then mopping up with gun systems IS actually a more valid tactic than using linebreakers, or strafing craft.
Mostly because it puts you at a much greater advantage than if you weren't.
Exactly. Which is why I am awaiting Tau models to be done so I can spread the greater good through massive use of torpedo warheads and illuminate my foes with my ion cannons.
Hey , I think the problem with the damage is that in your average game of BFG you might have 4/5 ships focusing fire at once , in this its all to easy to spam cruisers which tend to melt stuff very quickly.
From a purely single player POV ive tried upping the amount of hull shields and slightly up'ed the regen rate of the shield. Also slowing ships decreasing acceleration. Seems to work in teh sense of making the battles more longer lasting. The slow speed is off set in multi playre by increasing the game speed.
However I think you could overcome this problem from a multi player POV by just slowing the acceleration alot and keeping a decent top speed , so over the whole gravity well your not slowed too much , but in local battles you dont get massive battleships and cruisers turning on a penny and zooming off ata crazy speed
Again, sorry for the slow response, I'm trying to juggle school and a crippling Hearts of Iron 3 addiction. When you draw an accurate APP-6A diagram for a 4000 man battle in muslim history, it's gotten pretty bad (Well, pretty accurate, there isn't a proper representation for archers). [e digicons][/e]
I'll definitely look into that, that's just a matter of getting permission.
Yeah, it'd look good, I'm just worried about those balsa and tin foil ships getting shot any more than they have to. Of course, using the MMS style stats should help, we'll see about that, I do kind of want them to keep their speed up, but not by getting shot repeatedly. I think I will use it though. Just eldar and maybe escorts though, I have various reasons for the rest not wanting it (basically only the imperials and orks want to close and they both want to stay there).
Yep, pretty much. Tau have (very arguably) the best torps in the game (eldar don't tend to have the quantity, IN the quality and nids aren't going to show up), and their mantas are absolutely devestating, especially in the numbers the tau can field. They are very much ordnance spammers and really want to stay out of point blank firefights.
Tau are my first army, but I'm going to contend that point. It is definitely the best tactic for tau, who are easily capable of building large amounts of highly sophisticated ordnance, but the other fleet doctrines are brutally effective as well. Chaos is capable of potentially holding off Tau ordnance and brutally savaging the Tau with their heavy ranged firepower, the IN is capable of shrugging off a ridiculous amount of punishment and handing as much back so the Tau need any initial victories they can strike, and the orks make up for their weakness to fighters with their ability to make even the IN look like a lightweight in the gunnery department. All strategies are viable and almost certainly the best for their respective races' production and leadership capacities. It's part of what I like about the game, it makes sense. However, the initial advantage will usually be the Tau's, although a good spread of IN torps or Eldar alpha striking can swing it the other way. Explorers are big, juicy targets and the cornerstone of Tau ordnance superiority. Taking a spread of torpedoes to the nose of one of them is definitely not the Greater Good.
Me too, although I'm also looking forward till when I get the eldar done, I've always been a sap for preposterous maneuverability even when I don't have the skill to micro it properly [e digicons]:grin:[/e] .
You know, dropping the acceleration might just work, although that would require a metric ton of tweaking so that the IN (for example) can't get a head of steam and punch straight into the heart of a chaos fleet. I'll see what I can do. It may require quite a bit of tweaking to stats to get right, though, but the feel should be the same.
Hi all,
I'm very, very glad to see that someone managed to release a BFG mod. There were lots of them planned but I believe this is the first one to actually see the light of day. I can't wait to try it out. The in-game video looks awesome and I simply love what you did with the gameplay.
Still, I would also like to play BFG in full 3D tactical environment. For some time I'm trying to make it happen by modding the game Starshatter. It's a 3D tactical fleet combat in space, perfect for BFG IMO. You can check out the mod community at www.starshattermods.com. There are lots of mods available there already (BSG, SW, ST, B5 and others). You can also see my posts there, under the same nick as here.
You'll see that I have some modding experience and I would venture to do some scripting (or "deffing") if you'd agree to supply the models. Of course, you would get all the credits. It would be our mod, not mine.
For starters, I thought of making a small scenario, a couple of smaller ships (of the same type) against one bigger. When I get that into game, I'll make some screenshots and maybe a video of gameplay. If you like how it turned out, we can go on.
Please let me know if you're interested.
xthetenth- when I noted the long-range barrage comment, I wasn't necessarily meaning BFG, so much as ACTUAL space warfare.
Still, TAU ARE BOSS.
I think it would be cool if in the game in general gravity wells where bigger and ranges longer , I like the idea of massive guns shooting over large distances EPIC!
Sure, that'd be cool, I'll have to pester nert for the models. Just be warned that between this, school and an RPG I'm making I won't have much time to help.
Well that is definitely true unless materials science makes some serious leaps in comparison to weapons technology.
That way lies slowdown and frustration. Seriously though, if the wells get too much bigger weird stuff happens, aoe and speed need to be cranked up more and it does cause slowdown with the grid on and I refuse to make a mod that doesn't play well with the tac grid on, I cannot play effectively without it. Plus, they're already triple stock.
Well the thing is all you'd have to do is send me a model in .OBJ or .3DS file that isn't over 16.000 polys (of course the fewer the better). I can take it from there.
The reason why I need a model before I start tweaking the .def files is that positioning of weapon bays is the most time consuming in modding Starshatter. Adjusting the existing weapons, behaviour and damage, will also be important. I will probably need some advice from you guys regarding that.
I trust nert's gotten in touch with you? If not I'll have to pester him some more. I will see if I can check Starshatter out and help you some, but it's gonna have to be mostly your work even if I ghostcode some.
This is going to be completely random to the topic, and pardon for the obvious departure, but I have been looking for Gothic ship modellers for a very long time now, and I finally just came across this. I almost jumped out of my seat.
There is a game, a simple 2d ship combat game, called Escape Velocity Nova. It is absolutely perfect for Battlefleet Gothic, even with the semi-topdown view. I ask you guys to check out http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/evn/
Play the demo for a bit. The game is built on open source and there is a free editor out as well. There is also a Wiki specifically for the game, which details the tons of Plug-Ins available and the Total Conversion mods people have made and ARE making. It is the perfect medium, and would be a ton easier to render and get ships into the game than SINS. If any of you are interested, drop me a line at [email protected]
Again, I apologize for the hijacking, but years I have looked for this sort of group.
Is this mod going to have custom planet bombing effects?
I kinda don't think so, seeing as they're relying on invasion for most of their planetary conquest, and not even 40k weapons tend to have effects visible from orbit. I might see about making a few custom comm chatter type sound effects, but considering our lack of voice talent and the difficulty of doing that kind of thing right it's rather unlikely. But yeah, even 40k races would think twice about using their cruisers' guns for suppressive fire except against certain targets. Short version is not very likely, though. Much more likely is special landers for the transit animation.
nice, gonna have to try this... although I am partial to eldar ships.
So just to clarify exterminatus will not be represented in any way? Also will there be a space marine battle barge, and if so will it be in the imperial Navy or space marines?
I have a few questions and suggestions.
1. I understand that you are making Space Marines and Ad Mech their own factions. I feel that they should be an extension of the Imperial forces for a couple reasons. A.) Fluff wise, it just makes better sense. The only planets the Ad Mech control and actually care about having are Forge Worlds, and Space Marines don't control any planets at all except for their homeworld, instead they are called in to help regular Imperial forces. B.) Gameplay wise, they just don't have the ship variety to make them fun and diverse factions to play. Space Marines have 1 battleship, 1 cruiser (a light cruiser at that), and 3 escorts that are basically slight better and more expensive versions and their Navy counterparts. Ad Mech would essentially play just like the Imperial Navy with better and more expensive ships.
Instead, the Imperial Navy should be able to get access to these ships through the research tree to represent them requesting aid from these othe factions.
2. What are you planning to do for Demonships? I have a few ideas for abilities based on their god.
- Demonship of Khorne:
- Demonship of Tzeentch:
- Demonship of Nurgle:
- Demonship of Slaanesh
3. How are you going to do Eldar holofields?
no exterminatus for a long while, and many forms would need some serious scripting ability that just isn't there. Space marines will be their own race unless something changes.
The problem with adding either to the imperials is that the imperials already have a surfeit of ship types, and adding in more would be a waste. Instead, what's a lot more likely is that the space marines will have a setup somewhere near the armageddon list tweaked to represent the forces a chapter like the smurfs which focuses on building its own realm by supporting the local fleet and calling in favors when needed. The admech will need something different but largely similar. I would not be surprised at all if they went to the defense of planets which provide them with key resources, and honestly justifying them will be damn hard in any regard, if we want it to be fluffy, it'd likely be something like the space marines with admech enhanced local IN ships with occasional fully twinked admech ships. I'll have to ask prezo about that, he's the resident cogboy fan so he gets to call the shots on that.
I honestly haven't put much thought into them yet, but some of those ideas are pretty good. I may pilfer some of those ideas, but I'm not sure yet. I haven't been able to get much of any work done, school's been killing me.
No bloody clue yet, likely an ability but maybe a custom damage type if I have to.
Couple more ideas.
- In addition to the invasion and capture abilities for the troopship, give it a garrison/reinforcement ability that targets friendly planets and increases planet health. Makes sense that you want to send your own troops to stop your planet from being overrun
- Titan transport ship. High tier capital ship that attacks planets similar to the troopship, but deals much, much more damage, can't capture planets, and replenishes antimatter slowly instead of getting it refilled, since repairing and rearming titans can take a very long time.
Heyo, just stopping by to see if there are any updates or progess i love the mod!
Very nice mod, Any news at all on an Entrenchment 1.041 Version and Also an idea.
- A Space Marine Capital Ship (althogh its not really a ship) From the Dark Angels chapter, Their Main "fortress" is a huge Asteroid base called "The Rock" which is the only survivng part of their home planet. this would be more of a super capital though seeing as it has Multiple Seige Grade Warp Sheilds that withstood bombardment from an entire Space Marine Chapters fleet.
it could probably also be used to colonise and such, to be honest i just want the Dark Angels in the mod lol [e digicons]:grin:[/e]
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