Comments - Martechi

I've been having lots of fun playing this mod, and am eagerly waiting for the next version! Two questions:
1. In my current campaign, I've noticed that any tank deployed will be counted as "lost" after the battle, even when staying out of the combat entirely. I assumed it might be the case that because of the small unit-size of the tank-crew, the game counts the unit as disbanded after the battle - fiddling around with unit-size options hasn't solved this. Is this a known issue?

2. A more general question: Do you have any plans to include the very ww1 themed battle-maps with trenches and so on in the campaign?
It would be so fantastic if city-sieges or some equivalent of fort-building would lead into those more hellish battlescapes in contrast to the pleasant countryside.

In any case, thanks for all the great work on this mod!

workaround: The recent EAW update seems to cause a problem with shaders. Once they are deleted in the mods "Art" folder, the green does not appear anymore.

Something about the recent multiplayer updates of EAW FOC causes all assets of the mod to be displayed just as a bright green glitch. Unfortunately, it seems like without an update, it's not playable anymore.

Thank you very much!

Question: Would you be okay with someone using some of your custom ship designs as a reference for other artwork?
I am currently trying to throw together a little fan art for the original Alien-Universe and I always thought your designs of the Trade Alliance ships fit right into that style. For example, I'd love to use a ship like the Firebird Cruiser a the base for a pixelated ship design of a weyland yutani commerce vessel.
Although I wouldn't use any of the actual models or assets, it would of course still very much resemble your design, wich is why I wanted to ask before doing that.
In any case, I really Maelstrom Mod and I am glad to see that it is still around and getting updated after all this time!

As far as I know, the guys from Armada3 CTA did a similar thing with their cardassian race. They made it so that the AI chooses randomly wich side to research. That can be a 50/50 chance, or a mechanic that makes the AI prefer one side.

For Sins of a solar empire? Yes, for sure! It lets you play around with most of the ships that were present in the show (most of them in civil roles, of course) and has all the famous battlestars and cylon units in it. You also get a very detailed research tree that fits the lore.

If you're looking for mods in general, you'd probably want to look at "Battlestar Galactica Fleet Commander" a mod for Homeworld2.

I have a question that just won't get out of my head anymore: Do you plan on releasing a galaxy forge tool for this mod or any other way of using galaxy forge with it? It would just be so absolutly awesome to rebuild parts of the 12 colonies as a detailed map to play around with. It would add so much to the gameplay experience if one could start with the colonial seperatists on tauron, competing with capricans over ressources before the cylons attack and so on...

At the moment, the kobol planets look so great, but (and it is possible that this is just my mistake when I installed the mod) none of the planet types is properly labeled even in the ingame-map editor. it's just the typical "string not found" wich makes it rather difficult to set up a map where at least any of the 12 colonies only appears 1 time :D

Anyway, in the actual match it all works and I have a ton of fun playing around with it. I'm aware that working on this mod is very time consuming, so I just wanted to ask if a galaxy forge tool or something like this would be possible at all someday in the future!

I hope we'll get to see some deep space stations type K-7 as it was seen in TOS. And I'm really excited to see these stations textured. I remember, in the original TOS, they all looked very plain, you could not see much of the plating and so on. Part of it was design choice, part of it just due to the technical issues they had back then with more detailed and complex models . (They tried something on the refit to make it's plating look all shiny and interesting and it basically ended up being a giant pain in the a** to edit out all the bluespill they had from using a blue/greenscreen with the model)

Now, with this game and the input from axanar, these guys might be able to give those well known stations a little different look and I'm really eager to see wether they'll go for a more detailed, rough design that looks less advanced than TOS or if they'll stick more to the TOS plain designs.

Anyway, by the looks of it, they'll manage to sort that all out beautifully!

Is it just me or is the hull plating very rough on this one compared to other models? I like that, it makes it look more sturdy

Oh I can't wait to see how these bad boys would look textured. Now, if I understood you guys correctly, this mod will have a much "smaller" scale in terms of fleets and so on. Any ship is valuable and so on (I love that). So..is it safe to assume that star bases will be also really expensive and for that reason, rare?
When I play Armada 3 CTA, some Ais will build starbases almost in every gravity belt they own. That would be not the case in Axanar I'd assume, right?

As far as I know, the JJverse uses a mor spherical star base design that has big disks around it.
However this one is actually inspired by older TOS model space stations I think. But it wouldn't suprise me if the JJ Star Trek movie would have some influence on that design. The time period would fit and the team of the axanar independent film project took some inspiration in terms of ship designs from them.

Well, I guess that means I'm going to hijack an asteroid-base, crash them into the next portal and hope to find a big red countdown that tells me when the reapers will arrive. That sounds like a safe plan!

This Nova certainly fits in with the rest of the fleet! Perfect, to defend the colonies against any threat!

ooh, I love this! The Nova could really need a little rework and this looks awesome!

It is pretty damn good at blowing up cylons, so I can't say that is a bad thing :D

I just started playing with the most recent version here aviable and I have to say, you did a wonderful job. All the little things that have changed...perfect, it feels more and more polished every time!

Are there any plans to update the planetary defence turrets of the colonial faction? Because at the moment, they're just pretty much galactica turrets with the size of a small ship wich is kind of ridiculous. Anyway, it's otherwise great to look at and I admire all the work and effort put into!:)

This looks absolutly amazing.

I love your work on that already! this is going to be amazing!

I really love to see that this mod is still being worked on! It already looks nice but more improvements are always amazing!

I have a similar feeling. But it is hard to tell scale in these images.

Another thing that always bugged me, was the minuteman station in the current version. In the game cutscene of mass effect 2, this thing was gigantic. In dotr it looks pretty..small, it just doesnt feel like massive, giantic space structure. But I tink they'll figure it out just fine!

That would be a nice idea for an artifact bonus that could be found on this planet, or maybe a general bonus for this planettype. Maybe something balanced like "less culture, but more logistic slots/ faster buildspeed for ships"

He should definetly become the councils ultimate hero unit! his power shall smite the unworthy!

I love that idea! It's one of the greatest things about an ME mod, that there are so many possible gameplay-things that could fit to the lore! I think the devteam will have some hard time to decide wich things they really want to implement and how to balance this stuff.
In addition: I think it would also be nice to rename the planetary upgrades for each faction. I don't think cerberus would build "infrastructure" to increase logistic points. there would most likely just infiltrate more companys and install agents in fitting positions to grant them more ressources.

I love this kind of design that makes it feel like I'm looking at the galaxy map ingame as the commander of all forces! Flipping the words would be better I think.

also, even though I don't think it is really possible, but...did you ever thought about creating one "CIC" skybox to the game? So that you'd see not some generic backgroud-universe ingame but the interior of a giant combat information center, as if the whole sins of a solar empire map would just be the hologramm of the ship?
I'd love to see if this works :D

This looks amazing! I love the design, feels absolutly "mass effect"-like.

I think so far you guys did a good job at the effects and stuff and I think especially with mass effect it is hard to set the hardpoints for weapons and stuff, because lorewise and as far as we see it in the actual ME games, we don't really get such detailed information about the weapons on these ships and where they are sitting at. At least as an amateur thats how I imagine it:D

At the moment it is just too amazing to play with this mod and thinking about all the possible things that could be made in the future. So, here's another question, that you guys quite certainly already thought about, but I didn't find an answer yet, although I didn't had the patience to go through all the comments. So, here it is: are there any plans to include any kind of "hero" system in the game? I mean..who wouldn't love to have hackett himself commanding the fith fleet ingame, or maybe let oleg petrovsky lead the charge on the omega-pirate base himself. That would be awesome!

Also, I ask myself if there will be some kind of "event" research ingame. For example the Babylon 5 mod for sins had some special events in the history of factions as research, that had certain effects on the gameplay. maybe for example for the council species, the "wonder of palavan" would unlock boni for turian units, or the new rise of tuchanka could provide capitals with krogan boarding units. stuff like that could be an amazing source to make the game even more connected with the ME games and lore. Together with the fantastic work on maps going on in this community, this mod could truly become the strategic reincarnation of the mass effect universe.

This sounds AMAZING! But also like a lot of detail work. Are the factions going to have all the lore-wise colonized worlds already? I think a map this big could be almost impossible to play anything alone. maybe there will be some kind of "multiplayer version" where several players can play smaller parts of the factions, to make it all more managable?

Sounds definetly like a better use than fighting the geth, so...yeah, probably right. They do look amazing in fleets anyway, that's reason enough!