Feedback Thread - Star Wars: Interregnum mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

Here's some suggestions, some things I like and some stuff that I feel could be improved. Feel free to add to this thread.

Just a disclaimer, some of this is my opinion after wasting my weekend (around 16 hours) on the mod.

First, an idea I had when using Admiral Piett's special ability, the 60% frontal damage reduction one. The idea is to give ALL ships (or just capitals?) ~25% frontal damage reduction. It would encourage the use of actual maneuvers and tactics, since as it is, a pincer maneuver is really no different than a frontal attack. 25% (or in that ballpark) is enough to make a difference in a controlled battle, but low enough that if the battle turns into a mess it won't be a deciding factor for either side. I'm no modder, but I think it could be easily done by just making it a bonus that all races get at the start.

Another suggestion I'd like to add is a range increase. When fleets do battle, it seems to inevitably turn into a mess of ships bumping into one another, turning in strange directions every which way and clipping into one another. A ~33%-50% range increase would keep it orderly that much longer. This would especially be important if the frontal damage reduction suggestion above is implemented.

Stuff I like:
Theres too much to list it all, so I'll jot down the ones that stick out.

-The implementation of the Skipray Blastboat is awesome. Really cool to see heavy fighters with the ability to operate independently.

-I love the heavy cannons on the Star Destroyers. I don't know if they are heavy lasers or ion cannons since it's kind of a mix of both colors, but it looks incredible when it fires, very well done. Also the engine trails look great.

-The Golan platforms for the Empires defense weapon. We never really saw little cannon platforms in the Star Wars universe, so I thought that was a nice touch of authenticity.

-When I first heard the KOTOR battle music I experienced a euphoric wave of nostalgia. Awesome little addition.

-Who's the chick wearing the Imperial uniform?

Things that I believe can be improved upon, or things that this Star Wars "fan" thinks may be a bit strange

-No Dreadnought heavy cruiser. These guys were, to me at least, iconic cruisers in the Imperial Navy in old games like Tie Fighter and X-Wing/Alliance.

-Imperial Star Destroyers weapons seemed a bit lackluster. Being a fan of Star Wars and not so much the Sins races, I don't really know the extent of the Sins races capabilities, but 8 of these bad boys hammering away on a single enemy capital ship during a pitched battle didn't seem to do a whole lot of damage.

-As I said before, the Skipray Blastboat is great. However, I feel it might take a bit too much fleet supply. Reduce it to 2 and I think it's great, and I definitely hope to see this kind of thing implemented for some of the other Star Wars factions. Also, maybe it should get a bit of an evasion bonus seeing as how it's small and stuff.

Bugs: A few of the ships (Lambda, Skipray, possible more) don't have their own voiceovers for jumping to hyperspace.
I thought the Empire titan was bugged when it was built and immediately blew up, but I guess that's intentional. I didn't see exactly what happened as I wasn't watching, but it worked out.

One more suggestion that came to me while writing this.

I don't know if X-Wings and other hyperspace capable fighters are going to be able to operate independently once the New Republic comes to us. But I may have an idea on how to make it work.

I'm writing this with a limited knowledge of Sins modding, under the assumption that fighter groups aren't hyperspace capable.
This came to me when thinking about the Skipray Blastboat, so I'm going to use the Skipray as an example to try to get my point across.

Stipulate that instead of a single Skipray Blastboat, you wanted to have an entire squadron, but still operate independently. What if you gave the Skipray the ability to host it's own squadron? Give the host (or the leader?) the ability to carry a single squadron and some extra defensive bonus so that it's not destroyed as easily as the squadron it hosts.

Apply this concept to an X-Wing or B-Wing. I don't know if this would work, or even be practical, but I thought I'd throw it at you anyway.

--
Anyway, that's it for now, but great job so far. The level of quality shown so far does not at all suggest that this is still an alpha version.

Thanks for the detailed feedback here.

1. Um, I'm not exactly sure what you're saying here. That ability should give frontal damage reduction to all friendly ships in range. If you're saying that bonus should be available all the time without any special abilities I'm afraid that is not possible. Unfortunately ability modifiers and research modifiers are not interchangeable, abilities can do some things research can't and vice versa, and frontal damage reduction is one of these. I guess I could give each ship an ability that applies that but some ships are already using all 5 ability slots.

2. This is really a more fundamental issue with Sins. For the most part all the ships have the same range as their Vanilla Sins counterparts. I have been toying with adjusting the range values for everyone, but the thing is focus fire is just too important in Sins. So if you have 30 Carrack Cruisers and they are all firing on the same target, they'll tend to clump up no matter what their range is.

3. The Skiprays are filling the roll of Sins faction's corvettes. I've even made the Sins corvettes smaller so they'd match up better (and they have similar crew sizes though the Sins corvettes were originally much bigger for some reason. I don't think they scaled things as well in Rebellion). Since Sins Corvettes use 3 supply that was just the most natural number to balance them towards. In the Rebellion alpha they used 1 and then 2 fleet supply, but that tended to create lag problems in large games.

4. The most distinct particle in the game is the Star Destroyer's heavy ion cannons. Really all the other particles could use a bit of TLC but they're not my specialty, and I figure my time is better spent on getting the other races finished.

5. That and one quiet track from Kotor II are the only pieces of music not from the movies in the mod. More may eventually join them though.

6. Which one? The one in the standard uniform is Admiral Natasi Daala. The one in red is Director Yasane Isard, who you will see more of in the mod with the next major alpha.

7. Dreadnaughts and Ventor Star Destroyers will be in the next major alpha release. For a while I was thinking about making them Imperial Warlords unique units, but I may make them available for both Imperial factions after all.

8. Space battles in Sins can be quite slow, especially with just capitalships slugging it out since they have higher health. For weapons damage primary combat frigates (Carracks, Gladiators, Vindicators, even Skiprays in very large numbers) are a more efficient source per supply, so building a fleet of pure ISDs would make for longer battles. You may want to try the faster combat minimod but note this means your star destroyers won't last as long either, and the less time capitals have to use their abilities, the less useful they tend to be.

9. All Star Wars factions will have a Skipray/Corvette type unit. The Rebels will get the X4 gunship from Star Wars Galaxies. I was planning on giving the New Republic the K-wing, but it seems this is the one case where I want a Star Wars unit to go into hyperspace but it canonically doesn't have a hyperdrive.

10. Yeah not all units had suitable hyperspace voiceovers. The ones that do are from Empire at War, but other units use voices from other games or ground units for EaW. Unless you know where I can find some talented voice actors with good microphones that can donate their time, we'll have to live with the female computer "Unit preparing for hyperspace jump" as a generic message.

11. The titans only blow up on construction if you have the Resetting Titan Level minimod. Titans spawn at level 1 when summoned by an ability like heroes, but the only way to have the titan build normally and reserve the required fleet supply is to actually built the titan first, blow itself up, then spawn the replacement titan a microsecond afterwards.

12. Heh, that is exactly the kind of thinking you need to do for modding Sins, I'll give you that. No, fighter squads in Sins are not hyperspace capable. For more mobile units you have have strikecraft, which operate in squads but need to be attached to another entity as a carrier, can't hyperspace jump and are very limited in the kind of abilities you can have. Then you have corvettes like the Skipray which can jump and use any sort of abilities but cannot operate in squadrons. I'll admit I did not even think about giving corvettes squadrons, if they can have their own strikecraft (and I honestly don't know if they can) it may even work. But then the question becomes how will bigger ships spawn the corvette squad leader than then spawns the rest of the fighters? Or will you have to build Rebel/New Republic fighters on their own like Empire at War, which might be a pain in Sins since other factions just get their fighters for free with bigger ships. It would also make Rebel carrier units I was planning to add much less useful.

there are some graphical glitches, such as the engines of the executor not all lighting up and the muzzle shots of tie fighters.

I am a fan of Admiral Piett's Allegiance SD. A very solid choice of heroes. Also Thrawn.

I would also like to suggest, despite their impopularity, the implementation of the Eclipse STar Destroyers, both models. Perhaps as additional titans / unique units?

-On a sidenote, I'd die to see CIS/Old Republic ships as well, but that is too much work for a single person

Dark_Ansem wrote: there are some graphical glitches, such as the engines of the executor not all lighting up and the muzzle shots of tie fighters.

I am a fan of Admiral Piett's Allegiance SD. A very solid choice of heroes. Also Thrawn.

I would also like to suggest, despite their impopularity, the implementation of the Eclipse STar Destroyers, both models. Perhaps as additional titans / unique units?

-On a sidenote, I'd die to see CIS/Old Republic ships as well, but that is too much work for a single person

1. I'm afraid there is nothing I can do about the Executor. There is a hard limit of how many engine particles we can have on one ship and the Executor goes over that limit. Corellian Corvette will have the same problem, though its engines are closer together so its harder to notice.

2. Despite their impopularity? I know every Star Wars mod that doesn't have it gets bombarded for requests for the Eclipse. I won't comment if its a possibility to see it here though.

3. And as mentioned in by previous posts you'll see a handful of Clone Wars era ships later on. But probably only ones that were seen in the movies.

GoaFan77 wrote: 1. Um, I'm not exactly sure what you're saying here. That ability should give frontal damage reduction to all friendly ships in range. If you're saying that bonus should be available all the time without any special abilities I'm afraid that is not possible. Unfortunately ability modifiers and research modifiers are not interchangeable, abilities can do some things research can't and vice versa, and frontal damage reduction is one of these. I guess I could give each ship an ability that applies that but some ships are already using all 5 ability slots.

No, I didn't explain it very well. I'll try to be a bit more clear. You would think that ships would naturally have a higher damage resistance to frontal attack. In war, it gives you a tactical advantage if you can manage to outflank your opponent. In Sins, however, flanking renders no real tactical advantage since ships have equal protection on all sides.

If a ~25% frontal damage reduction was applied to ships in the game it could make naval maneuvers a real thing instead of just throwing clumps of ships at one another. This is also why I suggested the range increase; it would take longer for the battle to become a mess, allowing you more time to execute tactics such as flanking or a pincer maneuver.

Don't give implement it as an ability, as the hero ships has, I just mentioned that specifically because it's what gave me the idea. I mean give all ships, or capitals, a passive ~25% frontal damage reduction. I don't know how it could be applied - I know that all races get a special bonus, found in the diplomacy research tab. The Empires is armor increase, ship build rate increase, bounty increase and population killed increase. What if you just added a frontal damage reduction to that list, for all races?

GoaFan77 wrote: 2. This is really a more fundamental issue with Sins. For the most part all the ships have the same range as their Vanilla Sins counterparts. I have been toying with adjusting the range values for everyone, but the thing is focus fire is just too important in Sins. So if you have 30 Carrack Cruisers and they are all firing on the same target, they'll tend to clump up no matter what their range is.

30 Carrack Cruisers may clump together firing at the same target, but 4 ISDs lined up would tend to maintain that range a bit longer, would they not? Even if the battle inevitably turns into chaos (which happens in real life) there would be a longer period of order before the chaos begins. Personally, my biggest pet peeve during a battle is seeing the large capital ships turned in every which way bumping into each other. I know in the SOGE mod scaling is much more dramatic - and I'm not saying you should increase the range that dramatically - but you never really see ships bumping, twisting, upside down, etc.

GoaFan77 wrote: 3. The Skiprays are filling the roll of Sins faction's corvettes. I've even made the Sins corvettes smaller so they'd match up better (and they have similar crew sizes though the Sins corvettes were originally much bigger for some reason. I don't think they scaled things as well in Rebellion). Since Sins Corvettes use 3 supply that was just the most natural number to balance them towards. In the Rebellion alpha they used 1 and then 2 fleet supply, but that tended to create lag problems in large games.

Fair enough.

GoaFan77 wrote: 4. The most distinct particle in the game is the Star Destroyer's heavy ion cannons. Really all the other particles could use a bit of TLC but they're not my specialty, and I figure my time is better spent on getting the other races finished.

Agreed!

GoaFan77 wrote: 5. That and one quiet track from Kotor II are the only pieces of music not from the movies in the mod. More may eventually join them though.

May I also suggest the "Droid Invasion" track from Episode 1 and "Into the Trap" from Return of the Jedi?

GoaFan77 wrote: 6. Which one? The one in the standard uniform is Admiral Natasi Daala. The one in red is Director Yasane Isard, who you will see more of in the mod with the next major alpha.

Yeah, the one in the uniform, not Isard. A lot of the EU stuff I've read was from Michael A. Stackpole, so I thought it could have been Leonia Tavira, but I wasn't sure.

GoaFan77 wrote: 7. Dreadnaughts and Ventor Star Destroyers will be in the next major alpha release. For a while I was thinking about making them Imperial Warlords unique units, but I may make them available for both Imperial factions after all.

Awesome to hear. Personally I'm not a fan of the Republic ships such as the Venator and Acclamator for the Empire, but to me the Dreadnought is Imperial all the way.

GoaFan77 wrote: 8. Space battles in Sins can be quite slow, especially with just capitalships slugging it out since they have higher health. For weapons damage primary combat frigates (Carracks, Gladiators, Vindicators, even Skiprays in very large numbers) are a more efficient source per supply, so building a fleet of pure ISDs would make for longer battles. You may want to try the faster combat minimod but note this means your star destroyers won't last as long either, and the less time capitals have to use their abilities, the less useful they tend to be.

Yeah, I was doing it wrong. I had a fleet 7 or so ISDs plus about 10 Carracks, a bunch of Strike Cruisers and some Lancers for anti fighter duty all concentrating on a single capital ship and it didn't seem to be doing a whole lot, but I guess I needed more support ships since the Carracks seemed to go down very fast and the Strike Cruisers didn't last much longer. Also my fighters seemed to disappear pretty quick while theirs managed to run rampant, despite my Lancers best efforts.

GoaFan77 wrote: 9. All Star Wars factions will have a Skipray/Corvette type unit. The Rebels will get the X4 gunship from Star Wars Galaxies. I was planning on giving the New Republic the K-wing, but it seems this is the one case where I want a Star Wars unit to go into hyperspace but it canonically doesn't have a hyperdrive.

Star Wars Galaxies was a great game until they ruined it. Yeah, I don't really know what to tell you for New Republic ships. I guess Corellian Corvette could work, although it doesn't behave like a starfighter the way the Skiprays do. An obvious fit would be the YT-1300 transports but they aren't used in that role.

GoaFan77 wrote: 10. Yeah not all units had suitable hyperspace voiceovers. The ones that do are from Empire at War, but other units use voices from other games or ground units for EaW. Unless you know where I can find some talented voice actors with good microphones that can donate their time, we'll have to live with the female computer "Unit preparing for hyperspace jump" as a generic message.

Have you considered just using something as simple as "moving to coordinates" or something to that effect? I find that voice very distracting.

GoaFan77 wrote: 12. Heh, that is exactly the kind of thinking you need to do for modding Sins, I'll give you that. No, fighter squads in Sins are not hyperspace capable. For more mobile units you have have strikecraft, which operate in squads but need to be attached to another entity as a carrier, can't hyperspace jump and are very limited in the kind of abilities you can have. Then you have corvettes like the Skipray which can jump and use any sort of abilities but cannot operate in squadrons. I'll admit I did not even think about giving corvettes squadrons, if they can have their own strikecraft (and I honestly don't know if they can) it may even work. But then the question becomes how will bigger ships spawn the corvette squad leader than then spawns the rest of the fighters? Or will you have to build Rebel/New Republic fighters on their own like Empire at War, which might be a pain in Sins since other factions just get their fighters for free with bigger ships. It would also make Rebel carrier units I was planning to add much less useful.

Yeah, the idea just popped into my mind so I figured I'd throw it out there, take it or leave it.

--

One additional suggestion I'd like to add though is to add an optional sub mod to half the size of the Executor. It can get a bit cumbersome.

And to the Eclipse thing, I'm not a huge fan of large scale super ships like that. Yeah it's cool to read about and stuff, but I think it's too out of scale for a game such as this. Even the Executor I think is a bit of a stretch, but I can live with it since there is only one at a time. Besides, isn't the Eclipse out of place in Interregnum's story?

Edited by: Service_Disconnect

redsox2cf wrote:
Don't give implement it as an ability, as the hero ships has, I just mentioned that specifically because it's what gave me the idea. I mean give all ships, or capitals, a passive ~25% frontal damage reduction. I don't know how it could be applied - I know that all races get a special bonus, found in the diplomacy research tab. The Empires is armor increase, ship build rate increase, bounty increase and population killed increase. What if you just added a frontal damage reduction to that list, for all races?

Yeah, what I was trying to say at the end of that their is that front damage reduction can only be applied by abilities. Those faction/race bonuses in the diplomacy tree are still research, you just get them right away for free. So sadly I can't implement it that way.

redsox2cf wrote:
30 Carrack Cruisers may clump together firing at the same target, but 4 ISDs lined up would tend to maintain that range a bit longer, would they not? Even if the battle inevitably turns into chaos (which happens in real life) there would be a longer period of order before the chaos begins. Personally, my biggest pet peeve during a battle is seeing the large capital ships turned in every which way bumping into each other. I know in the SOGE mod scaling is much more dramatic - and I'm not saying you should increase the range that dramatically - but you never really see ships bumping, twisting, upside down, etc.

Huh, my ships don't seem to twist around as much as yours. The amount of space the game tries to keep in between ships in formation may be another thing entirely. I remember hearing it was hard coded at one point but I'll ask around to see if I can confirm that.

redsox2cf wrote:
May I also suggest the "Droid Invasion" track from Episode 1 and "Into the Trap" from Return of the Jedi?

They're probably in there. I know we used what seemed like the entire Episode 6 soundtrack for the Empire.

redsox2cf wrote: Awesome to hear. Personally I'm not a fan of the Republic ships such as the Venator and Acclamator for the Empire, but to me the Dreadnought is Imperial all the way.

Funny you say that, since the Dreadnaughts are canonically older and much less advanced than the Venator and Acclamator, which were basically brand new for the clone wars. Of course they were based on a very sturdy Mandalorian design, so they have that going for them. You might see Dreadnaughts and Venators in the hands of militia factions as well.

redsox2cf wrote:
Yeah, I was doing it wrong. I had a fleet 7 or so ISDs plus about 10 Carracks, a bunch of Strike Cruisers and some Lancers for anti fighter duty all concentrating on a single capital ship and it didn't seem to be doing a whole lot, but I guess I needed more support ships since the Carracks seemed to go down very fast and the Strike Cruisers didn't last much longer. Also my fighters seemed to disappear pretty quick while theirs managed to run rampant, despite my Lancers best efforts.

The Strike Cruisers were probably the problem. They're technically a support ship, though well armed ones with fighters. Their covering fire ability is designed to allow your Star Destroyers to last a lot longer. I try to have 1 Strike Cruiser per capitalship, hero and titan in the fleet, plus one or two replacements. For weapons damage against heavier targets though the Gladiator and Vindicator would do better, and Skiprays against titans.

redsox2cf wrote:
Star Wars Galaxies was a great game until they ruined it. Yeah, I don't really know what to tell you for New Republic ships. I guess Corellian Corvette could work, although it doesn't behave like a starfighter the way the Skiprays do. An obvious fit would be the YT-1300 transports but they aren't used in that role.

I honestly never played it, I just looked through the wiki looking for things that would fit the size category, and the X4 happened to work and I had a model of it. Corellian Corvette is definitely too big, it will be a frigate of some size despite the name (Sins and Star Wars classifications are a bit off). To be honest you may not know a lot of the New Republic's ships since they're more based on the Expanded Universe that occurred after Endor. Indeed many of their ships designs were built after the X-wing novels as well. Though unlike SoGE there will be a bit of ship overlap between the Rebellion and New Republic.

As for the YT-1300s, you'll see them around as the Alliance's trade ship. Also the Millennium Falcon herself will show up in a rather unique way.

redsox2cf wrote:
Have you considered just using something as simple as "moving to coordinates" or something to that effect? I find that voice very distracting.

Dunno, honestly I was actually planning on adding more of them to replace the generic TEC events (A power surge of great magnitude has been detected. An allied titan has been destroyed! etc.) It's the same computer voice used for Empire at War, with just the words spliced in different orders.

redsox2cf wrote:
One additional suggestion I'd like to add though is to add an optional sub mod to half the size of the Executor. It can get a bit cumbersome.

And to the Eclipse thing, I'm not a huge fan of large scale super ships like that. Yeah it's cool to read about and stuff, but I think it's too out of scale for a game such as this. Even the Executor I think is a bit of a stretch, but I can live with it since there is only one at a time. Besides, isn't the Eclipse out of place in Interregnum's story?

Would you believe the thing is already 6.2 kilometers shorter in this mod than it's canonical size? I scaled it to 12.8km instead of the official 19km percisely because it was too big, as 12.8 was a previous length for it. I suppose I could shrink it to 8km (for a time that was its official size too), but it may be a while before I update the minimods.

If I add the Eclipse it will be a 1 per game unit. Even rarer than a titan which is 1 per player. And the thing was under construction before Endor so I could say they continued working on it if I want to include it. Also technically it is not as long as the full sized Executor, but some say that is an accidental side effect of them making the Executor bigger after those comics were released.

about the engine glows: the "Alliance" mod by Nomada Firefox, despite the creator's terrible attitude, has managed to find a workaround. how do I upload a screenshot to show?

Eclipse impopularity: I mean because they are capped by the Reborn Emperor.
Still, that doesn't mean it would not be possible for Vader to choke the projects out of the engineers

I'd love to see the Invisible Hand model the Malevolence? doubt it.
after all you still have some cruiser and frigate free space, also for Capital Ships.

Can I hope for the Sovereign SSD?

Yeah, what I was trying to say at the end of that their is that front damage reduction can only be applied by abilities. Those faction/race bonuses in the diplomacy tree are still research, you just get them right away for free. So sadly I can't implement it that way.

Oh well, too bad, it would have made battle tactics very interesting.

Huh, my ships don't seem to twist around as much as yours. The amount of space the game tries to keep in between ships in formation may be another thing entirely. I remember hearing it was hard coded at one point but I'll ask around to see if I can confirm that.

It usually doesn't happen until a couple minutes into the fight, but large engagements can last fairly long when both sides bring enough hardware to the table. I'll take a screenshot next time I see it happen bad like that.

Funny you say that, since the Dreadnaughts are canonically older and much less advanced than the Venator and Acclamator, which were basically brand new for the clone wars. Of course they were based on a very sturdy Mandalorian design, so they have that going for them. You might see Dreadnaughts and Venators in the hands of militia factions as well.

I know, I'm just not a huge fan of the ships invented for the prequel films. Since the Dreadnought was in the original TIE Fighter/X-Wing series, it's okay by me, I've always considered it more of an Imperial ship as opposed to the Venator and Acclamator which weren't invented until the prequels. It's a personal thing, I just prefer the style of the original Star Wars ships as opposed to the sleek and flashy route the prequels seemed to favor.

Dark_Ansem wrote: about the engine glows: the "Alliance" mod by Nomada Firefox, despite the creator's terrible attitude, has managed to find a workaround. how do I upload a screenshot to show?

Eclipse impopularity: I mean because they are capped by the Reborn Emperor.
Still, that doesn't mean it would not be possible for Vader to choke the projects out of the engineers

I'd love to see the Invisible Hand model the Malevolence? doubt it.
after all you still have some cruiser and frigate free space, also for Capital Ships.

Can I hope for the Sovereign SSD?

Providence class maybe, since the Rebels actually used a few, but no Malevolence.

And no sovereign, too similar to the Eclipse if I wanted a ship like that and Eclipse is much more well known.

Unfortunately, so very true. Sovereign is one of the less.known types. One of my favourites tho. and not only for the name,

Regarding battle distance, I havent noticed any kind of visible "clumping up" when distances are longer. Somekind of increase would be welcome in my opinion (maybe as a minimod?). Small comparison (no offense!):

Interregnum:
Cloud-2.steampowered.com

SoGe:
Cloud-2.steampowered.com

Edited by: Kuikka88

Huh, none of my battles have had anything like the direction facing problem your Star Destroyers are having. :p

That's what I'm talking about. A few minutes into the battle the ships begin to bump into each other in an attempt to get into firing range. They push each other out of the way, bump around, start getting stuck and twisting at weird angles.

I've seen it get worse than that when there are a lot of enemy ships as well.

Is there a particulator reason all Empire planets have a 30% Tax and Trade Penalty? I get this every game at what seems like randomly and I never lose any planets.

*edit* Strike Cruisers are actually nice.

Edited by: centurin

centurin wrote: Is there a particulator reason all Empire planets have a 30% Tax and Trade Penalty? I get this every game at what seems like randomly and I never lose any planets.

*edit* Strike Cruisers are actually nice.

If you have a Stellar Phenomenon DLC, that is the Economic Downturn random event. It reduces the Tax and Trade income of all planets by 30%, not just yours. The Morale System debuff would have hurt culture and ship build time as well.

GoaFan77 wrote:
If you have a Stellar Phenomenon DLC, that is the Economic Downturn random event. It reduces the Tax and Trade income of all planets by 30%, not just yours. The Morale System debuff would have hurt culture and ship build time as well.

That makes sense. Thanks for the reply. I've really been enjoying the mod so far. For an Alpha, it's remarkable polished. Very, very well made.

Few more suggestions after playing for a bit longer.

The Executors Force Choke ability (and I'm assuming the other force ability as well) requires the ship to turn to face the target in order to use. I don't know know if this is something that can be changed, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

The Escort Carrier seems to be a bit expensive and supply heavy for what it is. 22 supply can eat up a lot of space, especially since it can hold only two squadrons of basic starfighters and has no other use.

Regarding the Assault Shuttle ability of the Imperial class. I noticed it uses the Sentinel Landing Craft model as the assault shuttle. Consider replacing it with this craft shown at about 0:32 of this cutscene from X-Wing Alliance. Youtube.com

redsox2cf wrote: Few more suggestions after playing for a bit longer.

The Executors Force Choke ability (and I'm assuming the other force ability as well) requires the ship to turn to face the target in order to use. I don't know know if this is something that can be changed, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

The Escort Carrier seems to be a bit expensive and supply heavy for what it is. 22 supply can eat up a lot of space, especially since it can hold only two squadrons of basic starfighters and has no other use.

Regarding the Assault Shuttle ability of the Imperial class. I noticed it uses the Sentinel Landing Craft model as the assault shuttle. Consider replacing it with this craft shown at about 0:32 of this cutscene from X-Wing Alliance. Youtube.com

1. I'll look into that, thanks.

2. All of the other faction's carrier cruisers had their fleet supply costs increased by 50% so its not as bad as it seems. This was done in an attempt to discourage fighter spam so that the game won't lag so badly.

3. The Gamma class Assault Shuttle was actually what I wanted to use when I drew up that ability, but I was unable to find a model for it so a Sentinel is being used for the time being.

GoaFan77 wrote: 12. Heh, that is exactly the kind of thinking you need to do for modding Sins, I'll give you that. No, fighter squads in Sins are not hyperspace capable. For more mobile units you have have strikecraft, which operate in squads but need to be attached to another entity as a carrier, can't hyperspace jump and are very limited in the kind of abilities you can have. Then you have corvettes like the Skipray which can jump and use any sort of abilities but cannot operate in squadrons. I'll admit I did not even think about giving corvettes squadrons, if they can have their own strikecraft (and I honestly don't know if they can) it may even work. But then the question becomes how will bigger ships spawn the corvette squad leader than then spawns the rest of the fighters? Or will you have to build Rebel/New Republic fighters on their own like Empire at War, which might be a pain in Sins since other factions just get their fighters for free with bigger ships. It would also make Rebel carrier units I was planning to add much less useful.

You could (in theory) use the Vasari cap ship that spawns the nanite swarms as inspiration (just set duration to -1) and maybe combine it with the buff system you created for SoGE to limit the number of Titans, but it may get messy that way. For other (potential) issues, how to limit the replacements if the original "host" ship runs out of antimatter, and also the fact that your "initial" ship I'm assuming will have to count as frigate/corvette and thus be affected differently by abilities that target specific classes (this one might be an issue regardless of the method).

You could make it a targeted ability (similar to orbital LRCs... only with limited range) of the carrier to spawn fighters at the selected grav well, but this will require using an available ability slot. You might also want to consider it temporarily reducing the number of available strike craft it can field when activated... although now as I'm writing it I realize this might not be possible. Maybe a debuff to strike craft replacement speed? You'd then just have to worry about balancing the range. Not so far to where you can bypass (too many) barriers against your fleet, but not so close to where it wouldn't work against most systems.

Just some thoughts.

Here are a few bugs that I've noticed:

TEC
- No culture from homeworld (Is this on purpose? HTS, both Advent, both Vasari and the Empire get culture from their homeworld)
- When using the "no superweapons" mini mod the Novalith Deregulation research is still in the research tree (Maybe remove it in the mini mod so that it looks more clean.

Orthodox Advent
- Sanctum of the Unity building is not invulnerable (The homeworld has the "invulnerable" tags instead)

VCC
- One of the loading screens mention "half price capital ships" for this faction, but I can't see that research anywhere. Also, the same loading screen has a small spelling error (firgates instead of frigates)

My checksum is: 525456575

I'm using the following mini mods:
- Double Fleet Supply and Capital Ships
- Enhanced AI
- Expanded Research
- Exploding Mines
- Faster Combat
- No Superweapons

Hi Goa,

Continuing my feedback here as directed. Wanted to add to my list that I noted that of the VIR heroes, the second one (don't have game booted right now to double check name) was not set for auto-cast. I know as a human player we want that off, but you mentioned wanting/needing it on in order for the AI to build them. EDIT: My mistake....

For the VIR +45% population, yeah, I don't recall it stating it was for Volcanic/Inhospitable. Unfortunately, the test map I was on didn't have any of those. I take it Ferrus is falling under that "Inhospitable" category seems I saw no mention of it anywhere in the planet colonization/planet bonus research descriptions? EDIT: Scratch that as well. I noticed the Ferrus mention in the same research as what increases max pop for worlds like Asteroids & Barren. So I take it then that means one of the changes is that Ferrus no longer requires special research to colonize.

As to the other thing I found... it was actually the fact that every time my fleets jumped into a grav well and got the "our ships have joined the battle" or however it is the Vasari say it despite my ships being the only ones there that alerted me that something was up....

EDIT: Annnnd apparently this forum combines consecutive posts automatically, with no regard to how old the previous one was or any indication of when the new part was posted. Course the fact that this forum is telling me this post is 4.33 hours old when in reality it should be closer to 12 hrs old is another thing, too....

Oh, one more thing to add that I can think of. The special structure for spawning the Heroes... are there any conditions where it'll auto-destruct? Or can be destroyed?

Getting ready to play another round, but remembering from that previous one, the AI I was against was the unfortunate victim of a "two-pronged assault", if you will. I took part of his fleet down (including his cap) in a neutral grav well between our territories while the first pirate raid of the game was passing through on its way to his home world. By the time I launched an assault, I found that those two factors combined had crippled the AI. His HW, while still colonized (as they had no siege ship), was completely bare of anything else. Literally nothing left except the occasional respawning constructor frigate that the pirates would then swarm. The only reason why he hadn't surrendered was because he still had 1 world left with a fleet of frigates, but he was stuck in an attack->retreat loop trying to clear the pirates out.

Anyway, point is, that special Invulnerable/Cannot be Scuttled structure was no where to be seen. AI was Orthodox Advent.

And before posting I decided to start a round to be sure they had that structure and could see the problem right away... the Invulnerable/Cannot be Scuttled buff is being applied to the planet instead of the structure itself....

EDIT: New round done as VCC, only have the following to report:

General
Desert planet icon looks a lot like Barren (gray rather than brown)
Inhospitable & Dwarf planet icons are hard to see when no intel on grav well

Edited by: FuryoftheStars

Thanks for the awesome feedback guys. Sadly I'm having some problems with my IDE right now so I can't quite checkout all of the coding things right now, but I'll investigate them as soon as that is resolves. But for the things I can answer.

DarknessDK wrote:
When using the "no superweapons" mini mod the Novalith Deregulation research is still in the research tree (Maybe remove it in the mini mod so that it looks more clean.

Can you research it without the standard Novalith tech though? Just wondering how big of a problem this is.

FuryoftheStars wrote:
For the VIR +45% population, yeah, I don't recall it stating it was for Volcanic/Inhospitable. Unfortunately, the test map I was on didn't have any of those. I take it Ferrus is falling under that "Inhospitable" category seems I saw no mention of it anywhere in the planet colonization/planet bonus research descriptions? EDIT: Scratch that as well. I noticed the Ferrus mention in the same research as what increases max pop for worlds like Asteroids & Barren. So I take it then that means one of the changes is that Ferrus no longer requires special research to colonize.

You would be correct. I didn't want any planet alone in its category, and honestly I didn't really understand why Ferrous would be harder to colonize than volcanic, other than its a really good planet. I did nerf its population values a bit though.

FuryoftheStars wrote:
As to the other thing I found... it was actually the fact that every time my fleets jumped into a grav well and got the "our ships have joined the battle" or however it is the Vasari say it despite my ships being the only ones there that alerted me that something was up....

EDIT: Annnnd apparently this forum combines consecutive posts automatically, with no regard to how old the previous one was or any indication of when the new part was posted. Course the fact that this forum is telling me this post is 4.33 hours old when in reality it should be closer to 12 hrs old is another thing, too....

Yes it is quite annoying.

FuryoftheStars wrote:
Oh, one more thing to add that I can think of. The special structure for spawning the Heroes... are there any conditions where it'll auto-destruct? Or can be destroyed?

They shouldn't. I was unable to find a good solution to remove them since I wanted players who retake their homeworld to be able to still use them.

And actually only AI players need to retake the planet. You can actually spawn heroes at any planet, so if you somehow lose your homeworld as you can reroute them somewhere else, though the autocast won't work. Hence why the AI only uses them at their initial homeworld.

FuryoftheStars wrote:
General
Desert planet icon looks a lot like Barren (gray rather than brown)
Inhospitable & Dwarf planet icons are hard to see when no intel on grav well

They might well be. Many of the new planet types textures and icons, including Barren, Inhospitable and the new dwarf planets are from the Infinite Space mod. Perhaps he just recolored the desert icon rather than make a new one.

Goa, have you seen any issues with the AI in this? I've played a few games now where it seems as though at some point the AI "stalls" and then stops doing anything. It doesn't appear to build reinforcements, nothing.

Just did a round with a friend, him as TEC me as Galactic Empire (seems well done, by the way) against Orthodox Advent (Hard, Aggressor... Unfair kicked our collective butt) on the map "Balance of Power". The AI only took the 1 Desert and Uncolonizable that were to either side of it and launched some tough assaults against our Desert worlds... but once beat back, it stopped completely. It never moved to take the Ice world near it that it could reach without going through us and never built more frigates to replace those that were lost. It just... stopped... then surrendered once we launched a joint strike on its Desert world.

Oh, and the other odd behavior? The AI sent a fleet of scouts against me. You heard me right... a fleet of scouts. ~20 of them. And they sat there and did nothing. They were almost great as a diversionary tactic (to be honest) because I never noticed when they started filling in with Disciples, but the scouts themselves still did nothing except move around the immediate area where they jumped in.

Edited by: FuryoftheStars

Yeah. There's definitely a problem with the Empire AI (or more likely the generic AI is just much dumber than the vanilla races AI). I've occasionally seen both behaviors in Vanilla Rebellion but it might be worse with mods for some reason. I definitely know I didn't do anything to scouts to make them seem more attractive. :p

I've had the same problem with the AI occasionally, even the original races. They will just stop. I've even tried to slow down a bit, to throw them a couple bones if you will to try to make them present more of a challenge but it doesn't seem to work.