The glorious April coding progress update! news - Ages of the Federation mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

Frigates Ahead!

So our main focus in April so far for coding at the very least starts with Frigates, we have been working extremely hard to finish all the basic frigate abilities and get the core code in for those particular items, in fact frigates are pivotal in AOTF more so than any other current Sins Mod due to how they impact the wider gameplay, Frigates are the speed demons of the fleet capable of zipping around, flanking and generally assisting their bigger brothers, the way combat works in AOTF frigates in large enough numbers and at their cost price can even overwhelm a larger vessel such as cruiser, with the right set of tactics.

By now your thinking well Bane I've heard all this before small ships are good you rabbited on about the scout ship last time and you would be right I did! Let's dive into another one of our hero of the moment routines with the humble but not so humble CORVETTE!

Corvettes are great little ships, traditionally back here on good ol' earth they specifically are the smallest type of naval warfare ship sitting below most other frigates they were designed primarily for coastal defence duties or fighting in minor wars and sometimes for escorting larger vessels such as convoys in world war 2, in fact they became a very important part of that war in escorting supplies to the United Kingdom from the United States during the battle of the Atlantic though destroyers as always get most of the glory for this duty!

In AOTF the corvettes play a similar role in that they are for border protection, they are among your faster ships and faster than scout classes, it may surprise you to note that Corvettes are actually more fragile in AOTF than scout recon vessels, however, what they lack in toughness they make up for in Speed and Firepower over the humble scout class. They perfectly make up for in their evasive manoeuvring too so while they have low hitpoints they are tricky to target and bring down in space, don't make the mistake though of running them in your fleet battles, they can dodge but they cant dodge that much! Corvettes are best used for flanking strikes using their speed to bring them in hit an enemy and get back out and almost certainly go for the jugular of artillery based ships which are often kept way back as they too don't want to be in the "mix" of a full engagement.

They excel as well at targetting and harassing large ships so whether a hit and run strike or even taking on a ship limping back home consider the Corvette the vulture class and ironically they are reasonable at beating up on the glory taker that is the destroyer, finally consider this, if you have some pesky opponent dropping sensor buoys from a scout recon vessel then the Corvette is your counter, its fast enough to catch those annoying recon ships and that heavily ties it back to that coastal patrol mechanic we use in modern warfare today.

So let's talk about what abilities the humble Corvette also has to help her in her role.

She comes with Evasive Maneuvers and Reinforces forward shields, so lets again dive right into how these help your corvettes and remember these are not unlimited in use so antimatter and timing are important!

First evasive meaneuvers, I call this a duel use ability in that it can be used bothe offensively and defensively, it grants you a boost to your speed and dodge chance, so in effect offensively you can use it to catch a ship that must go down, oh look an enemy ship is limping to the gravity well edge to warp out... and I need to close with an enemy ship fast and dodge its incoming fire or you can use it defensively, oh crap im in over my head here i need to use my speed and dodge to get out of here! so a good all-round ability for our little bugger.

Second let's talk about Reinforce Shields, now this is a conal projection ability in that it diverts power to shielding to the front 90-degree arc of the vessel giving it significant shield reinforcement, I call this ability a supplemental ability it works really well with the first ability and allows you to close to targets in a much better offensive position, though it won't help with getting you away from danger if your silly enough to get in over your head. A really great example here is closing with artillery, you don't want to be taking torpedos to the face while approaching they hurt so having boosted shields and deflectors is really going to limit that exposure to our otherwise fragile vessel.

so, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the hero of the moment the humble or not so humble corvette may you use her wisely and steal back some glory from those pesky destroyers, I mean who do they think they are... just because they are bigger and have more.... erm sorry!

Other coding areas:

Gul AKA technophobeus AKA the one who laughs a lot AKA ... erm, Chris...

Has been slaving away in the coding sphere too with the UI, working closely with Hobbs AKA the one who made the fancy graphics! AKA Dave to produce a really nice UI that will work for AOTF, it's a complex thing a UI and I do encourage you to thank him once its finished as every pixel has to be correct because it matters as to where and how we set this up for where you actually get to click! Each button is being made by the Art team for each faction to feel unique to the timeline and consistency is really important. We try very hard in our team to stick to canon matters with the overall feel of the mod and this even impacts our button designs too.

Chris has also been working hard on the research along with Gowron AKA Max to get the feel and overall flow of the research right, I should take the time to talk about Max in this post too, ever the hard worker and often highly spoken of but mentioned little he has been diligently working on every field of the game, coding to particles, art to modelling, in fact, I have to say I'm super excited about how he's leading the team and project helping everyone in every area of the mod, and if anyone has ever met me they know im a difficult pain in the neck to impress and please so high praise!

Draconis AKA better than everyone at everything games wise AKA Rick has been busy working on our cruiser coding, in fact, I often rely on Rick to do the most complex coding of all for ability chains and his work rate is quite simply out of this world, ill be sure to show off a cruiser later on.

Of course, there are many many more developers that I could mention but that's falling out of the coding sphere (plus they get to show off their pretty ships here all the time - Jealousy)

Finally, if you have an interest in seeing coding in action you can catch my stream on Guls Streams on Wednesday at 8PM BST on and watch myself and other team members discuss sci-fi trek and the game while seeing it being made! Youtube.com

So that's it for me and as I got told off for stealing Orions exit line (I didn't really) it just leaves me to remind you... Remember you too can be a hero of the moment!

Boom!

Bane Out!