Stargate Invasion - Dev Change Log 1 news

Stargate Invasion - Dev Change Log 1

Intro

It has been a while since the last report and much has changed in SGI. Below you will find a log of our progress since the last report. We will do what we can to provide these change logs more frequently in the future. You can also view our history on GutHub. The changes are named/described as we make them and are listed in the commits section of our repository.

GitHub Repository

SGI is available as a GitHub repository. These files are public and can be downloaded or synced freely, even without a GitHub account. Our experience with GitHub has been very positive so far.

In general, please refrain from attempting to push changes to the server. Instead, contact us on Discord to let us know what you have in mind.

Link: GitHub Repository

Link: Instructions for installing / syncing the mod via GitHub

Current Faction Release Order & Roles

The order may change but we'll keep this section updated if it does.

Playable:

1. Goa'uld (integration has started)
2. Wraith (release date to be determined)
3. Asgard (release date to be determined)

Not Playable:

• Travellers
  • Multiple possible roles - Events, Neutral Planet Fleets, Outlaw Sectors Fleets
  • Currently under development - 5 ship designs so far including original Traveller ship from the show as a high detail model.
• SG1 Replicators
  • Pirate Faction
  • Concurrent development with other factions starting sometime next year.
• Ori
  • Planned for Events mainly but an entire faction could be designed and built eventually.
  • Release date to be determined.

Spotlight Videos

For anyone that wishes to post spotlight videos featuring SGI:

• Please mention that this is a developer build and that not everything is as we intend it to be.
• Since this is an incomplete mod, don't treat the spotlight video as a review. Presenting the work is fine but comments about what should have been included are obviously not since we may already have plans that we haven't stated. Once we are ready, we will let you all know that reviewing is in order.
• Before making the video, download and install the mod again from our GitHub repository so that you are featuring the latest version (or fetch the latest updates if you are using the GitHub Desktop app).

Thanks for sticking to the above! Now for our change-log:

Strings

Balancing

For Asuran & Human Factions:

• Rebalanced Shield values for both factions. Humans received regeneration boost, Asurans received shield mitigation boost in both research and per level for Capitals and Titans.

For Asuran Faction:

• Epheus Titan Hull Restore is now the same as Atlantis.

• Atlantis Titan received an increase to base shield restore (from 3.3 to 10.3).

• Antaeus cost has been adjusted, this should make it more interesting to the AI:
  
  Credits: 7200 (down from 13500)
  Metal: 4000 (up from 3000)
  Crystal: 4500 (up from 3500)

• Heavy Defense Platform:
• Tactical slot requirements changed to 2, base antimatter changed to 300.

For Human Factions:

• Weapons Defense Platform:
• Reduced some of the platform Asgard Core Overload ability values as they were extremely OPd. This ability may be reworked in line with the capital ship version so that it instead provides a cooldown boost to energy weapons (Asgard Plasma & Beam). Currently we are looking at a way to make the ability provide additional targets while it’s active but it’s not yet clear if this is possible.
• Tactical slot requirements changed to 4.

Various Fixes

• Replaced all vanilla cosmetic Titans with SGI titans:
• All Titans displayed at the start of the game (main menu) will now be SGI. Vanilla Titans have been removed.
• Disabled cosmetic Titan entity weapons to remove log errors. We can now replace any of the main menu titans with new ones as more factions are enabled, without causing errors due to different weapons setups.

• Epheus Titan:
• The Asuran Epheus titan was reworked to be the intended size (resolve shield clipping).
• The hardpoints are all new as well and now the Drone Frenzy will fire from all three towers simultaneously.
• The model is still rough under the hood and the textures have issues. These will be fixed later.
• Asuran Epheus will now spawn the Beam Weapons Platform as expected.

• Fix for Asuran Stargates (target filter)
• The gates should now allow allied and player ships to use them, in fact anyone can use them once they are activated so choose locations wisely!
• The starbase stargate was unable to function in gravity wells of stars which should be fixed now.
• This is a temporary setup as stargates will eventually lose their phase stabilizer functionality and will function differently in general.

• Human Weapons Defense Platform
• Corrected orientation and location for the Asgard beam weapon points on all lower tier meshes so that regardless of when the beams are researched, the points will fire properly and will not cause errors in the log.
• Abilities will be displayed only when researched, the Missiles Ability will only be available once research for the missile upgrade is completed. The Asgard Core Overload is now dependent on the Plasma Weapons research.
• Added ability 2 points (Plasma Pulse and Asgard Core Overload) to the meshes and re-positioned the weapon 0 points to remove orientation errors.
• New Asgard Beam Weapons (removed Asgard Beam Ability) and weapons setup (Auto-cannon L1, AC+Railgun L2A", AC+Missiles LV2B, AG+RG+M+Asgard Beams LV3). The meshes are still rough and will be worked on later during prep for texturing.

• All Asgard Beam Abilities were removed from Capital Ships, Titans and the Heracles Hero. These are now Asgard Beam Weapons like on the Daedalus model.
• The Concordia capital has a unique beam weapons setup and is the only capital ship capable of targeting multiple ships with Asgard Beams (1 target each in Forward/Right/Left firing banks for a total of 3 simultaneous targets.). It does not apply as much damage per target but can be devastating in combination with the Asgard Core Overload ability that decreases cooldown times for the beams.

• Human Starbase:
• Lowered shield upgrade values to 20000 maximum, translates to 70000 with full research.
• Fixed typos in the upgrade values, also lowered the final upgrade value to compensate for research. May have to balance these values further.

• Corrected the Human Titans engagement range to the shortest range weapon.

• Asuran Antaeus Disintegration ability set to autocast & target acquisition.

• Added Human Hero cost supply values

• Human Tartarus Titan:
• The Tartarus Cannon ability damage was increased to LV1 22000 - LV4 36000, antimatter cost was also increased for the cannon. Tartarus Asgard Beams are substantially more powerful than normal beams and require an additional Advanced Asgard Beams research.
• Shield mitigation was lowered slightly.

• Human Lagrangian/AG3 Beams: Autocast will now activate immediately when a target is in range.

• Improvements to Human Lagrangian Beam Muzzle particle:
• Fixed the enormous particle spread, also duration so that the beam isn't exposed for a long time without a muzzle. Added a separate particle for the orbital beam so that it can be matched to that beam's duration.

• Added Ability 0 mesh point to Asuran Ouranos constructor to fix the effect orientation issue.

• Human AG3 Heavy Defense:
• The AG3 is no longer a superweapon and it's armor has been reduced to 10 base - 28 at full research.
• Fixes for targeting - Titans now receive damage from the beam, corvettes get targeted.

• Weapons hardpoint layout fixed to remove some of the damage log errors:
• Some weapons were reworked slightly to be more representative of what actually happens in game and also to remove errors from the log file. The X303 mistakenly had its weapons reversed so this was also fixed.
• Fixed errors due to entity/mesh inconsistent weapons layout that were causing log entries. There are still some of these left that will be fixed later.

UI / Skin

• New Asuran Skin
• New Asuran Research and Ship Ability icons
• New Human Research and Ship Ability icons
• Reorganization of Human Military Tech Tree
• New Stargate Theme Icons
• Replicators images and icons replace Pirates
• Relationship screen redone

Abilities & Research

New/Modified Abilities (Tau’ri/Human Faction):

• Mark VIII nuke reworked - chance to hit:
• The Human Hero Nuke ability has been modified to include a chance to hit. If the teleportation fails to penetrate the shields, the nuke detonates outside the shield causing 30k damage to shields and then hull if shields fail. If teleportation inside the ship is successful, 70k damage will be applied directly to the hull as well as 30k to shields and hull. Chance to penetrate shields with the nuke is 15% at level 1 and 25% at the highest level.

• Asgard Core Overload:
• Reworked the Human Capital Ship Asgard Core Overload ability, it will provide an Energy Weapons cooldown bonus (Beam and Plasma) with 3 levels.
• The Concordia now has the Asgard Core Overload ability.

• Omega Maneuver:
• The ability will now boost the Asgard beams weapons when activated, making them recharge and fire twice faster for it's duration.

• Lagrangian Beams:
• Human Lagrangian beams have much lower damage values than the Asuran versions but also have shorter cooldown times. The Asuran versions have higher DPS but are less flexible because of the longer cooldown times.

• Engine Boost:
• The ability had levels but only the first had values so higher levels provided no bonus. The new setup now has lower values to start with. Initial value is 75%/300% and final level provides 250%/1000%.

• Time Dilation:
• The Time Dilation ability is now only available on the Human Heracles, no longer a Phoenix Cruiser ability. It requires a ZPM Artifact and research in order to work but has been buffed to lower many enemy stats when active, the effect intensifies with higher ability levels. The Heracles also lost its Asgard Beam ability to make room for Time Dilation but the Asgard Beams have been incorporated as a weapon like on the Daedalus.

New/Modified Abilities (Asuran Faction):

• Enhanced Drone Frenzy (Epheus Titan)
• The Epheus Titan Drone Frenzy ability will now get a substantial damage increase if it's used together with the Matter Bridge ability. When the Matter Bridge buff is active, Drone Frenzy will also be able to target up to twice as many ships at the highest level upgrade.

• Enhanced Replicate Beam Turret (Epheus Titan)
• The Matter Bridge ability will now enhance the Replicate Beam Turret ability. When the bridge is active, the Epheus Replicate Beam Turret ability will spawn 2 turrets at LV1, 3 Turrets at LV2 and 4 turrets at LV3

• ZPM ability (Atlantis Titan)
  • Modified to reach 3 levels (previously only 2). Antimatter drain has been increased to prevent a titan with this ability from becoming indestructible at higher levels. Also, a timer was added which will disable the ability after 10, 15 and 20 seconds depending on ability level (L1, L2, L3).

New/Modified Abilities (All Current Faction):

• Lagrangian Beam Damage values:
• There was an issue with the damage of these abilities. The damage displayed in the info card was not the total damage but the damage per second, this was never intended. All Lagrangian Beam damages have been lowered so that their final damage values are roughly equal to the damage value that was displayed previously. The total damage of these beams is a combination of beam duration and damage value displayed in the info card.

Research:

• Integrated the Human Hero units into the Research tree.

We welcome suggestions for possible Artifacts or research based on Artifacts both for currently available and potential new ones. These Artifacts should have considerable quasi game changing benefits for at least one, or possibly two faction. Post your ideas in the comments section of this progress report and we will see if they can be incorporated into the new Exploration research sections.

AI

The research trees (Human/Asuran) were reorganized to encourage the AI to acquire key weapons and defense technologies. For instance, the AI should now research Asgard/Lagrangian beams.

Texturing & Modeling

The high detail Traveller ship model now has 160 detail elements, element combinations and new MODO assembly rigging tools have been built to streamline our workflow with current and future high detail models. This will let us compound geometry and texture detail combinations with every new model/texture and will increase the speed at which we can create massively detailed ships.

SGI already has access to hundreds of details but with these improvements we will be moving into the thousands range while also gaining more flexibility for a multi faction workflow. In the video below, you can see one of these new tools being used in MODO to convert a geometry detail into a texture detail as well as a general overview of our creation process:

Asurans have an addition to their fleet with the Rhea starbase constructor model. This model is a rework of the original medium poly design built by Ademis and it has been UVd/prepped for texturing:

Currently in-game with temporary textures:

Epytron_Omega has reworked the Human Morpheus, here are some renders of the new model in MODO: