A new Steam community group, abbreviated "soage", has been created. It's a public/open group, run by myself, whose purpose to allow for easier multiplayer match organization. Over the past two weeks, me and a handful of people have played over half a doze multiplayer games together, which is what spawned this idea; if everyone who has SoGE and wants to play online with others was in the group, it would be easier to get pick up games going, would it not? So if you're interested in multiplayer, hop in the group, don't be surprised to get messaged from myself and others offering to set up a match!
Onto the meat and potatoes, the next release will once again be a full release, like R1003 was. I realize some people may prefer for it to have been a patch, however due to certain fixes that the new version would bring, the patch would be over 150 mb in size. At that point, making a patch is not worth it, particularly when the current full version is causing people download issues. Now then, here's a list of some of the fixes/additions in the new version:
-Fixed "ship(s) showing up entirely as a player's team color" bug (kudos goes out to Chimaera for mentioning specific ships which had this problem, which let me find the source of their woes)
-Increased scale of all combat structures and all ships by 25% (I will want feedback on this)
-Pirate raids have been redone, and are now playable as the low levels are not overwhelming
-Added Rothana Destroyer to Republic
-Added VSD-II to Empire
-Removed some techs from the NR, gave them some new ones
-Reduced targets per bank of Executor/Viscount/World Ship/Mandator/Subjugator/MC80B to 5 from 8, but increased their weapons' damage by 37.5%
-Gave ion cannon platforms a well-deserved nerf, to make them viable but not OP
-Added new Vong plasma (all sizes) and heavy missile projectiles
-Optimized particles
Further, I also want to take the time to note that the next will be in a .rar archive format. This file type can be opened by 7-Zip, a free archiving program, just like before, and by WinRAR. The reason for this change is that using .rar allows for the usage of a function called "Recovery record"; redundant data that decreases the chance of say, a few kb or mb missing which would otherwise cause serious stability problems and MiniDump issues with the mod. Additionally, WinRAR allows for the repairing of archives with a recovery record.
I would also like to encourage everyone to download the mod from a Moddb mirror instead of Gamefront when it comes out, as Gamefront has been causing hundreds, if not thousands, of bad downloads, and is the source for the majority of R1003's crash issues. The trick is when you take the download url (right click on the red "Download Now!" button and hit "Copy Link Location" or whatever applies to your browser. Then edit this link by removing everything from ?referer= onwards and put /all in it's place; this will allow you to choose which mirror to download from. This also applies to any Moddb page, if you are wondering.
The Addons Pack will also be updated, likely during the weekend of January 26th, to accommodate these changes and to add in a new optional addon; invulnerable Supercap Factories.
I had no idea so many bad downloads were happening. This mod isn't even the largest of Sins mods, so it sounds like bad luck to me.
now that "Guest" has mentioned about the performance drop issue (SoSE in general), I'd like to ask whether the game's still plagued by the 2GB limit?
it becomes near unplayable when you've more than 5 players with normal fleet size settings, hence making it impossible to play on the Star Wars galaxy map
):
and of course, is there any possible solution to it?
It's mentioned before; the 2GB limit is a Windows limitation, and not something with the game itself. The only way to fix it is to use LAA, which does not always work, or to play Sins on an Apple or Linux OS.