Defensive Changes image - Star Wars: Thrawn's Revenge II: Ascendancy mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
From the makers of Thrawn's Revenge: Imperial Civil War, Ascendancy is a Star Wars mod set after the Battle of Endor in the Star Wars Galaxy. Fight for galactic ascendancy as multiple factions from this period in Star Wars history.
First off, we want to thank everyone for the response to the mod, which has been overwhelmingly positive so far. We're glad everyone's enjoying it, and we appreciate the feedback we've received so far.
Some of that feedback has switched around our priorities a bit with regards to planet defences, partially addressing some bugs and partially reprioritizing. Since yesterday, there's been a few changes we've made:
1. Planets: Health has been doubled accross the board, and we've fixed a bug where the shield gen structure wasn't actually granting the shield. Also, we've made shields an inherent part of the planet, more accurate to how it is in Star Wars where the generators are based on the planet. So, once you research the shields/upgrades, they automatically apply.
2. Golans: There were a few bugs with how they targetted, making them seem a lot weaker than they were, and they were missing their shields. While we're still worried they may end up being a little too powerful when properly functional, we've also given the Golan III a hangar, which allows one squadron at a time.
This of course isn't everything we plan to do, but it should alleviate some of the problems people were having with planet defenses.
Great news! I must stay that the mod is incredibly beautiful, one of the best I have played on Sins. Can't wait to see and play more.
I specially love the laser effects.
I noticed there is no debris nor asteroids when a planet is destroyed by a superweapon, is something like that planned in the future?
Any plans about orbital turrets or mine fields?
1. We'd have to do debris as a persistent particle on the explosion itself, since the planet is set to invisible and we can't connect it, so either way it would have to fade over time or it might get pretty taxing.
2. Orbital turrets are already in, they're Golans. Having orbital turrets as individual guns wouldn't be very useful. In Sins "canon" ships have one or two weapons, so a weapon emplacement that's also one weapon is significant. In Star Wars a single turbolaser emplacement is negligible.
As for mines, no. Not really used in Star Wars, and also one of the most lag-inducing features in Sins.
Fair engough, thanks for the answers.
I thought the Empire had minefields surrounding their shipyards like at Bilbringi? Or how about some cloaked asteroids to blockage a planet? ;)
I noticed that when you zoom on a few ships, i.e. construction ships and the new republics ferret, the ships disappear, it seems that the camera zooms in too much for these ships, im not sure about the other ones, it may just be the fact that these ships are small, this doesnt happen to cruisers, cap ships, and the titans.
Each ship has its own max zoom setting line in its code, which determines how far in you can zoom. Most ships have at least a decent setting for it, but some (like the two you've mentioned) are still being worked on.
hey corey when will we get the fist people the blue guys
First of all, the mod looks amaizing!
Then there are questions...)
1. Are there starbases planned? I may have missed something, so it may be my fault...)
2. Are your defence structures cost-effective? In essence the simplest test for this: build a defence around a planet, build a fleet for the other team costing the same amount of resources and see who wins the battle. If it can kill a fleet costing up to 150% of its(def) cost, then its ok, if not it needs buffing. More would be OP i think. But it has to be able to kill a fleet of ships of equal cost, otherwise there is no point in building it in the first place.
Thanks for listening anyway.)
Very nice changes. Much appreciated. :)
I think the AI uses too often his superweapon, do you agree folks?
Yes, i think the galaxygun is a little too overpowered when the ai has it, i mean, its a super weapon, but maybe have the galaxy gun destroy the planet, but after the planet is destroyed, it turns into a dead astroid, its the same concept, also, it seems that if you play the imperial remnant, you cant even build a superweapon because it always says that the superweapon cap is reached. another idea is that the galaxy gun cant be used right away, like they can fire it, but it takes a while for it to fire, it would give you time to get to where it is and destroy it, i mean, its a super weapon, it should take a long time for it to power up
You can't make it do anything other than what it currently does within the limits of the game engine.
Also, as we've explained, you can build it, but it's limited to one Galaxy Gun per 15 planets, so you can't build it until you have at least 15 planets.
I remember the Vasari have the ability to destroy their own planet, turning it into a dead asteroid in the process, for a resource boost.
Yeah, that function can only work with scuttling though. It's not something you can attach to something else.
And I assume there is no way to force scuttle. Shoot.
You may be allready aware of how to do this, but in my personal mods I have been using mines to great effect to time delay ability availability (mainly for the purpose of spawning structures) by using the spawnActivationDelay variable. The downside to this is that by making the superweapon a mine or having it spawned by a mine will bypass the cannonGravityWellRatioDenominator parameter in GameplayConstants . Still you could just limit maxSpaceMineCountPerPlayer to one (1) in the planet entity files and give them a really steep cost in resources and slots to compensate.
Do you plan to release frequent updaTes for the v0.9 branch incorporating changes like those mentioned here? (They sound amazing and I'd love to see them in game soon. )
I feel awful... I missed day this was released, and even day next to it, only now did i notice!
But to my defense, moving to a different place is chaotic to most people.
Defense definitely needed a buff but for me the big problem is that IR is just straight up better than NR. Galaxy gun has no counter except for blowing it up however the enemy will put it deep in their territory so you can't reach it without directly destroying most of the enemies stuff. I think the nr needs some sort of galaxy gun jammer that keeps the galaxy gun from firing on the planet its on or all that factions planets. This will allow the ir to have and use the GG but they need to sabotage the nr jammer to use it. Second is praetors, they have no good counter for nr in terms of ships. This means late game if both players have the same skill, IR wins outright. Praetors needs some nerf in power or maybe a higher cap so you can only had a few. If these two things get fixed you'll take a big step towards a more balanced mod.
Sorry if its stated clearly and I missed it, I was just wondering if these changes have already been applied and I need to download the mod again or if its planned in next release/update? Thanks.
They will be in an update. If there's new changes, the version number will change so don't worry about redownloading any version with the same version number.
I have to say, the work you guys have done in this mod is nothing short of amazing. It is by far the most well presented SOASER mod I have played, the models looks nice and the textures are of a good quality (I do realize that the game has limitations, so it's impossible to get them looking as good as a modern game.) I also liked the design of the interface, I liked the aesthetics of the monochromatic style, although I do feel it can make distinguishing between particular abilities a bit more challenging. For example, if I had an Akkan on regular sins, I know that the Ion Cannon is blue, so I don't have to look for long, however in ascendancy, it can take a little longer to distinguish between abilities, even if the icon images themselves are different. My only major issue was that it seemed like even one frigate slipping into a planet would completely decimate it within a few mins, but seeing as you guys have addressed this, I don't really have any other complaints, keep up the great job with the mod, you really have a winner here :)