A new version of the mod has been uploaded.
I really wanted to get this out back in January. A number of people had been complaining about crashes. I thought that it would be a simple fix of updating some files, taking less than a day. The problem was, I couldn't even reproduce the crashes, let alone fix them. I started digging around in the files to find the problem.
And it was found, thanks to people here! Disable all DLC options when starting a new game (Random Events, Rampant Militias, etc.) I don't have any of the DLC, the mod wasn't developed either for or with them and using them will cause the game to reference things that don't exist. Then you will crash. Thanks to everyone who helped figure this out.
While I was looking over the mod files I was amazed that it even ran at all. The last time this project was seriously worked on was for the initial release in 2010. From the very start it was plagued by bad performance and memory leaks and all effort went into fixing that rather than adding new content or even keeping up with current game builds. The move from Entrenchment to Rebellion broke a number of things that were used for core game mechanics, and since I didn't want to completely rework them I made some quick hack fixes.
Given all this and since I was already in this deep I thought that I might as well rework it. First was the models. Nothing has actually been done to the geometry or textures, rather they now use the official Sins importer. The old one was a third-party version that had lighting problems that among other things caused visible seams to appear on models, which is why Iserlohn never appeared (it's a featureless sphere with high reflectivity). Fixing that offered another opportunity.
Yes, it's finally here and you can build it from the Imperial resupply ship (which the AI never builds so you don't have to worry about encountering it). Because it's a decade and a half late and also not balanced at all, it costs nothing to build and you can do it right away.
Other changes: mostly aesthetic, like the resource slots being changed to space stations. I never was really satisfied with how they looked and there were issues with spawning. The biggest gameplay change is that ships are no longer built in squads: you have to build them one-by-one now, just like in the vanilla game. Build time and cost has been cut significantly. This is similar to how it works in games like Cossacks, although there's no way to make formations like in that game.
Formations are and always have been a major gameplay element, however. This hasn't changed, and has been expanded. All non-capital combat ships have a passive ability ("Cohesion") where they take less damage if they're within a radius of other ships with the ability. It reuses the Shield Mitigation mechanic (which has been renamed Damage Mitigation here because it always works regardless of shields) and absorbs a percentage of incoming fire. The original game had it set to zero and slowly ramp up under fire; because giant fleets and alpha strikes are so common here they're set to a minimum base: 30% for destroyers, 50% for cruisers, 60% for battleships and 70% for carriers and larger. Each friendly ship within range adds 1% and it stacks up to thirty times, so if you have a carrier with escorts it will be nearly invulnerable.
Another major change: missiles. All warships have them now, and they give a massive firepower boost but use up supply. Because of the damage model described above, a squadron of destroyers can wipe out isolated battleships in a few salvos, but not a fleet of them. They're also short-ranged, in keeping with how they're portrayed in the games: you can avoid them as long as you stay at maximum beam range.
Short-ranged weapons have also been reworked. Most ships have them as broadside guns, and they were intended mostly for shooting down fighters. They still do that but now they have been changed so that they're as good if not better at killing smaller ships like destroyers.
Other changes off the top of my head:
- Starbases have weapons now, guns and missiles. They have a very long range and can obliterate isolated ships but are less effective against large fleets. Their HP has also been raised significantly.
- Most ships have been downscaled to about 60 percent size. They had already been rescaled once before the mod was released but they still seemed too big to maneuver in formations.
- The trade port has been replaced by a version of the refinery (although it's still called Trade Port). Before it was very easy to make credits but most of that was spent buying resources. Starbases still have a trade port upgrade although you'll have to build other starbases to have anything to trade with.
- The Necklace of Artemis lost its Iserlohn-style gun and has also been restricted to the FPA, but its cost has been halved making it easier to build more of them.
- The previous spawning for resources has been reverted to the one used in the base game. This means resource asteroids appear again (as resource stations).
- Carrier have had their max squads reduced from 5 to 2, but the number of fighters per squad has been raised (9 for FPA and 12 for Empire). Rebellion really does not want carriers to have more buildable squads than fighter types, and if there are it spits out an assert != squad error which eventually crashes the game because it's being logged millions of times a second.
- Changes to ship HP and antimatter (supply): destroyers have less, cruisers and battleships have more. Speeds have also been changed so that ships have less difference between them and move better in formation.
- Speaking of destroyers, they no longer use the "fighter attack", which seems to have been changed at some point from a kind of orbit to just running into the target and then flying back.
This is getting on for pretty long, so I'll leave it there. Let me know what you think.
