Therax

Reply to Questions about Sins in Sins of a Solar Empire Stardock Forums

Ron, your scheme works, but it's less compatible with the standard "hold down the RMB and move the mouse to determine facing" for group moves.

Reply to chasing vs intercepting in Beta Feedback Stardock Forums

I think the terms you are looking for are "pure pursuit" (pointing your nose directly at the target), "lead pursuit" (flying towards where you expect the target to be in the future), and "lag pursuit" (flying towards where the target has been in the recent past). BTW, although lag pursuit sounds like it has little use, it's an important part of combat maneuvering if you want to end up behind your target, especially if you are moving significantly faster than the target is. With

Reply to Questions about Sins in Sins of a Solar Empire Stardock Forums

I can't remember the last time I clicked the "move" icon in an RTS. IMO, if 3D movement isn't accessible via the RMB, it's not going to get used. Here's my suggestion on how to work it: 1) Move your cursor to your desired position on the X-Y plane. 2) Push and hold tilde (~), which instantly fixes the X-Y position and allows you to move the mouse up and down to select Z position. 3) Right-click at your desired Z position. That's it. If you pushed tilde at the wrong t

Reply to Release: Kin of the Stars, a mod to bring Sins into the Seikai universe in Sins Modding Stardock Forums

I know there are people out there with modeling skills. There are even some of those that are Seikai fans ( http://www.sala.or.jp/~y-nabe/3dcg/seikai/cg_goth.htm ).

Reply to Broadsides and Battleships in Beta Feedback Stardock Forums

The game alerts me that the Kol will be firing out of ports it lacks, but then graciously allows me to play anyway. Actually, the game is informing you that there are weapon ports on the model (the forward and aft autocannon turrets) that don't have weapons assigned (because you disabled them). On the contrary, if you try to add weapons where there aren't associated weapon ports on the model (say, you tried to make the Kol fire beams to the rear), then the g

Reply to Artifacts in Sins Modding Stardock Forums

The effect is determined by the first header line, not the ResearchSubject line. The way to read this entity is as follows: artifactHullRepairOverTimeIncreasePercent # Increase HullRepairOverTime ResearchSubject "RESEARCHSUBJECT_ARTIFACT_HULLREPAIROVERTIMEINCREASE" # The amount of increase is determined by the amount of research done on this subject Base 0.0 # At level 0 of research (no research done), the "base" improvement is 0% Delta 0.050000

Reply to Only 2 last modding questions unanswered in Sins Modding Stardock Forums

Hmmm, nothing stopping us from changing our star meshes into black hole meshes. Now if we would could just make 'black holes' dangerous to ships That's not so hard. The area around a star already has a constant effect on ships: +5 antimatter/second. It's trivially easy to change that to -50 hull/second, and call it "tidal forces buckling the hull."

Reply to Mass in Sins Modding Stardock Forums

Oh, and I ran across this because in my mod , I use this ability to launch space mines, with a much lower mass. When I initially tried it, the impulse from the unmodified Sova ability threw the space mines at breakneck velocity across the gravity well. They didn't stop at the boundary either, just kept flying into the void.

Reply to Mass in Sins Modding Stardock Forums

Here's one specific example, and the only one that I'm aware of: the Sova Carrier's Missile Turret ability. More generally, capital ships can create other ships on the fly. When these ships, like the missile turret, are created, they are "kicked" away from the mothership with an initial impulse. (Check out AbilityDeployCombatTurret.entity.) The initial impulse is combined with the mass of the created ship to determine its initial velocity. After launch, normal ship movement takes ov

Reply to Weapon Hit ratio? in Beta Feedback Stardock Forums

Only strike craft (fighters and bombers) can currently be missed. The data for everything else is set to 100% (barring the enemy's use of counter measures). In the Sins Universe, technology has advanced sufficiently that hitting large massive objects with minimal manuoverabilty (i.e, frigates, cruisers and capitalships) is a virtual guarantee. Even today, the use of computers and our knowledge of Newtonian Mechanics makes targetting pretty much a non-

Reply to End Game Graphs in Beta Feedback Stardock Forums

I'm entirely in agreement. I mostly see the issue with capital ships. Let's say I build two at 45 minutes into the game, and then an hour later I lose one. Currently the graph draws a straight diagonal line from (0:45,2) to (1:45,1). What I'd like to see is more like a horizontal line from (0:45,2) to (1:44,2), and then a very sharp drop from (1:44,2) to (1:45,1) to show the loss. After all, I did have 2 capital ships for an hour!

Reply to More constricted firing arcs in Beta Feedback Stardock Forums

Correction to 3) above: I meant to mention the "Flak Burst" as an example of a 360 degree ability. Hooray for copy-and-paste!

Reply to Supplies Concept in Beta Feedback Stardock Forums

My mod, Kin of the Stars, implements a supply system for antimatter. The basics of how it works: 1) Antimatter is not lost during phase jumps. 2) Ships cannot regenerate antimatter themselves. 3) Supply ships can transfer antimatter from their own supply to nearby ships with less than full antimatter. 4) Repair platforms refill antimatter of nearby ships with less than full antimatter, including supply ships. It works fairly well. Download the mod <a href="https:/

More constricted firing arcs in Beta Feedback Stardock Forums

Sins currently has three types of firing arcs with varying amounts of "tolerance": 1) Weapon systems (front, back, left, right) with 180 degree arcs 2) Abilities with the "needsToFaceTarget" flag set -- like the Kol's Gauss Blast -- with 0 degree arcs 3) Abilities without the "needsToFaceTarget" flag set -- like the Kol's Gauss Blast -- with full 360 degree coverage We really need more flexibility in setting weapon arcs for both weapons and abilities. Visually,

Rate of Fire randomness in Beta Feedback Stardock Forums

Right now all weapons fire based on a fixed cooldown delay. What this means visually it that if several ships start firing simultaneously, for example if an enemy fleet jumps into the gravwell, that group of ships will *always* fire simultaneously for the duration of the engagement. It's hard to imagine crews being able to coordinate their fire that perfectly, down to the fraction of a second. It looks especially bad when rapid fire weapons (such as those on the flak frigate) are invo

Reply to Star Wars Mod in Sins Modding Stardock Forums

Wow, there's a lot of confusion in this thread about what is/isn't possible with Sins *right now*. The quick answer is that it's easy to make a ship with a phase inhibitor that has a limited range, or that affects friendlies as well as enemies, or that costs antimatter to use, or that has a limited duration, or that forces the ship generating the field to be immobile, or many other variations on the effect. I've been thinking of writing up a document with everything I've learned about

Reply to Release: Kin of the Stars, a mod to bring Sins into the Seikai universe in Sins Modding Sins Forums

And just for the fun of it, here are some pictures of a very nice plastic model of a Lauth-class cruiser. ( http://yosiza.hp.infoseek.co.jp/seikai/gousurosu/gousurosu_1.html ) There are more on the page ( http://yosiza.hp.infoseek.co.jp/seikai/seikai.html ) for a pair of Roil-class destroyers (<a href="http://yosiza.hp.infoseek.co.jp/seikai/ba-suro

Reply to Release: Kin of the Stars, a mod to bring Sins into the Seikai universe in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Version 0.03 has been released! This is a big one, here's the changelog: The buildable area around planets is now much smaller, representing the real space pocket inside the star system proper. This leaves a much larger area between the buildable region and the edge of the Sins gravity well where ships can engage in combat without being in range of planetary defensive structures. Line ships can also safely park in this region and fire their mines. This is intended to represent

Reply to Grafx Glitch in Beta Feedback Stardock Forums

That looks like texture corruption on the skybox to me. Note that all the ships and trails and UI elements look fine. The only problem is that horizontal band around the skybox and one other section. I had similar texture corruption on an older video card when I managed to get water on it. It worked fine otherwise for weeks, then died completely without warning. I also only got the texture corruption in one game (Company of Heroes). So I would be concerned about whether som

Reply to Retreating ships to fire at enemies within range. in Beta Feedback Stardock Forums

Ships will fire if they have anything in their firing arc whether they are moving or not. This is most apparent with capitalships because they have weapons in many banks (often even in the rear so as they retreat you will see them firing back). You don't see this as often with frigates because most of them only have front firing weapons with narrow cones. In my experience this works if ships are moving, but doesn't work if the ship's current ord

Reply to Sins Beta 2 Change Log in Sins of a Solar Empire Stardock Forums

+ New Trade Ship system. Made much less opaque and longer trips are worth substantially more. This is probably the change I'm most looking forward to. Economy is everything in 4X and RTS alike. I don't see anything about ships shooting at targets of opportunity. It really bothers me when my Kol's side and rear guns are just sitting there silent, even though th

Reply to A ship idea. in Beta Feedback Stardock Forums

Quite frankly, the existing cruisers should be called "destroyers," given their relative power level to the smaller frigates. Besides, a "cruiser" generally is a capital ship in most naming conventions. As for the main issue here, is there a hole in capability between the current "cruisers" and capital ships? Yes. Is the right way to fill it to add an all-purpose ship without a clear counter? I don't think so. Beef up the Kodiak, both in power and cost, I say. It should sti

Reply to Let's chase the colony ship! (Extreme AI behavior). in Beta Feedback Stardock Forums

if theres still a problem you could have new colonies start with injured infrastructure... I like this solution. It's not like a colony springs fully formed from the bay of a colony ship. Make it spawn at some lower level of infrastucture and then slowly build up (repair) to full. In the meantime, your fleet needs to be able to screen the planet from any siege in the area.

Reply to Map Layout in Beta Feedback Stardock Forums

I don't see how whack-a-mole becomes a problem when we have phase disruption. Going go an open system means that any of your worlds can come under attack, but if you have phase disruptors spread around, the enemy can't exactly wander from planet to planet to stay ahead of your defensive forces. At each planet, they need to fly from the edge of the gravwell to the center, destroy all phase disruptors, and then fly back to the (proper) edge of the gravwell to move on to the next planet. This se

Reply to Release: Kin of the Stars, a mod to bring Sins into the Seikai universe in Sins Modding Stardock Forums

I haven't actually changed costs or income, so you're experiencing a basically unmodified economy. I have plans in that area to address costs and the early credit shortage. I can tweak the buildable area on a per-planet-type basis. Right now the asteroids have a 2000 unit build zone, up to 7000 for most planets. Do you feel that it's too cramped even for your homeworld?