I was inspired over the last couple days with all the work going on here (good on ya', Lavo!), so I whipped up a new set of portraits for each of the factions. And I didn't stop there: I also redid the loading screens. Yes, they now feature concept art from both the OT and the Prequels (from Ralph McQuarrie and Ryan Church, respectively).Yeah, it's kinda elementary, but with the time required to go through all of the formatting (URGH THE ENDLESS FRAMES!), I deem it to be more a labor of love than anything to sneeze at. The intent of this quick project was to deepen the immersion factor when playing, as well as give it a bit more of a "Sins" flair (IE: drawn, rendered portraits rather than realistic pics, etc). I earnestly hope you enjoy them, even if they may not make it into SoGE 2.0e.

http://www.speedyshare.com/file/qU77X/New-Portraits-and-Loading-Screens.rar

(Drag n' drop the items into your Textures folder, and you'll be up and running. Mind the modcheck number, though...)

PS - A big personal welcome to Warb_Null! I've been tracking your projects since you started your modeling thread on Filefront years ago, and I'm very pleased you're working with Lavo. I'm still digging that Derriphan-class battlecruiser I bugged you about, BTW. Perhaps now that you're with the team, a KotOR-era mod may now be possible...in the very distant future, naturally. Anyway, keep up the great work.

Oh yeah, you too, Lavo.

I have alway been curious as to what tools and programs you guys use to do the work you all do, primarily concerning models, skinning, and rigging them for ingame usage. I, as well as a number of the people to show from time to time here, are familiar with the EaW process of rigging and such, modeling notwithstanding; is it not much different when it comes to SoaSE, or is it another process entirely?

All this info is available in one form or another of the SoaSE forums, but since you guys are, by and large, pros at what you do, why not go to the pros and ask them? So, if you guys would be so kind as to list the programs you use to work your magic and some pertinent tips towards using them successfully, I know I would certainly appreciate it.

Here're my general-purpose tools:

Entity editing: Notepad++ (Props to Lavo for this recommendation)

Graphic design and editing: Paint.NET

Very awesome work to the SoGE team and especially you Lavo, I know without you maintaining this project it would probably not even be alive now.

Observations so far:

- Despite the overwhelming awesomeness of the new visual fidelity this mod has got, I have but one complaint in this category. The new missile effects are too over the top for me. I like the anonymous effects and visuals of the old missile effects considerably better. Star Wars does not come to mind for me as huge on effects all-out overwhelming missile spam/size of missiles with glow effects etc. But this is a matter of taste. I like the more"clean" old version. This is for missiles only however. All other fidelity is superb.

Bugs:

- Graphics for gun effects ie laser etc seems to be massively toned down from the entrenchment releases. Not sure if this is a bug or intentional, first I thought maybe the faction I played was not ported right to rebellion but its the same everywhere, my friends commented on this as well. Lack of explosion effects, lasers etc, major detractor of fun. In fact prob THE major detractor of fun. We see the debris left from dead vessels but only little in effects. They are there, just brief, rare and far in between.

- Some ships adapt the Player Setup color choice entirely. This has to be a bug? It looks fantastically lame to have a full blown orange vessel etc. The grey base line is nice the color adaption is not.

- Issues at the time of this post with NR during text file enable of mods. This causes me and other who has reported this to crash before ever loading the game. This is not because of in-game mod enabler (we don't use it) Credit goes to Didact to find the temporary workaround: Remove NR folder and edit the mod count and entry listing in the text file enable. FIXED

- Playing Republic, The Mandator Titan causes automatic minidump if the "Combat Platform" is active both manual deployment or if using auto-level

- "Mouseover" crash to desktop issues? seems to happen only when I am mousing over some ships ? (uncertain as of yet) seems to be only when playing Empire

- Titan class ship playing NR is severely bugged trying to "get built" in the Titan Foundry. (I tried several loads and finally managed to wrestle one out, but not sure how I finally got it out. Random Map. EDIT: Found out its because its all weird. When researched any titan, a timer starts on the titan foundry, when done the auto-cast makes a titan, but free of cost. Reproduced in all games all factions weve played since our re-entry to testing

- NR Titan (the big one forgot its name) cannot attribute ability points manually after 1st one. However auto cast ability gain seems to bypass this problem

- NR Battle Dragon has ability point that can never be used. In fact tons of capitals have this same bug. I think maybe this is intentional due to the way caps work now?

- Vong ships explode the instant they're construction cycle is finished, which in turn make them unplayable for obvious reasons as of this post. This behaviour is also reported by others (see Didact post on this) FIXED

- Research Icons playing Empire faction shows under weapons research way out of the actual box in the middle of space to the extreme right of the screen.

- Upgrading Golan platforms have 2 icons who are different and whom both grants "Volley Fire" which one is correct? are they both correct?

- Random dump to desktop. No/few mini-dumps are generated/reported just "sudden death" overall stability has decreased substantially since pre-rebellion for me. Good news is the game can be resumed if saved and can continue on, so not sure what plays a factor here.

Questions Section:

- Does it matter how high we set our graphics settings ? I know a lot of mods recommend various settings from high going down and/or bloom disabled? is there any pointers here or can we do whatever we want without it having adverse system stability issues?

- Are we still supposed to use Mantis bug tracker? http://warlords.swrebellion.com/mantis/view.php?id=502 - and if so, its giving me a lot of red text errors ATM like:

SYSTEM WARNING: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MST/-7.0/no DST' instead

PC Specs I am running this on:

i7 - 3930K Cpu

Windows 7 - 64 bit

32 GB Ram

Gforce 690 GTX

- Nothing is overlcocked

The Game Settings:

All effects set to high

Bloom is disabled

Shadow Quality is set to high

Resolution is 2560x1600

Anti-Aliasing is set to x8

Texture Filtering is set to x16

So here i am

For those who don't know me, i'm a modeller mostly for Empire at War. I'm a complete noob when it commes to sins modding.

I hope to lend my assistence in the modeling and skinning department.

So, the important question : how can i help. what is needed ?

I ask this because I do build my own custom maps that are focused on unfair, i.e. rapid expansion on both AI and player (very high resources for both), one choke point for major battles (major rush to that, sometimes beaten to it), and after the choke point very hard expansion with tons of connections and flanking possibilities. Basically think the maps that I make as a daisy, with the choke in the middle and the petals all overlapping each other after the middle.

I will put more things here once I play more with the 1088. I have a ton of impressions regarding the 095.

Addedum due to pc constraints I play usually with empire, NR, alliance, vong occasionally. CIS and republic have too much fighters and kills my poor 2009 notebook

PS: if anyone is interested on the current map I can post here, right now its mostly terran planets with some urban hubs for fleet construction, apparently from what I read on the SVN reports ORD and shipyard planets are the best for that

The goals:

A) Convert the current vanilla SoSE maps for use with SoGE.

B) Create maps based off of existing Star Wars astrographic charts and maps as closely as possible.

Here are my proposals for the Star Wars maps:

Small Maps:

The Ardan Cross

Carest Space

Sith Space

The Taris Theater

 

Medium Maps:

The Corporate Sector

The Greater Javin

Moddell Sector

 

Medium-Large Maps:

The Centrality

Chiss Ascendancy Space

The Enarc Run

Mon Calamari Space

The Tion Cluster and Neighbors

 

Large Maps:

The Arkanis Sector

The Gordian Reach

Hutt Space

 

Huge Maps:

The Hapes Cluster

The New Territories

The Senex-Juvex Region

Post any other suggestions below for discussion!

me and my friend keep trying to play multiplayer but it keeps de-syncing almost instantly

we've empited the mod folders and re updated from svn a few times in a row to ensure all files are there and tried running with just the core module.

any idea here?

also got some screen shots of an alliance fleet if your interested.

I have heard this is an issue with rebellion, but I was wondering if anyone had a fix for it. First off, love the mod, been following it since the early days of original SOSE. The issue I have is that on large maps or mid/late game on the smaller maps, all the weapon effects, explosions etc all disappear. The weapon sounds still play and ships still indicate damage, just none of the effects display. I have an ATI 6900 with i7 quad core and 16 GB of ram, so power shouldnt be an issue. Also on my laptop the issue isnt there either. I have all the setting set to low and everything else as recommended by the mod installation instructions. I have messed around with the max particle settings in the settings folder, but it hasn't helped. If anyone has any ideas on a fix, please let me know!

Oh and my graphics drivers are upto date.

Cheers

First off: Tradefed FRGs as cruisers? No idea what prompted that but they're still at frigate prices and damage. I use them like frigates, because the CIS now lack a combat frigate. Otherwise a fine addition to the fleet.

The mines: these need a longer range. The homing mines need x3 the range, and the others +300 to make them even worth using. Right now its only good against planet bombers and structures. No defensive worth whatsoever- the homing mines have such short range that they almost never detonate.

Also, there are two "Detect mines' abilities- but one destroys them. Consider renaming the one that kills em to 'Destroy Mines' to avoid confusion.

Core ships: (the ones that are now frigates for some reason). These arent responding correctly to fleet attack commands. They respond fine to attacking ships, but only when i select them on their own.

Also, a bug: I made a colony ship for the CIS attack a Gunship Analogue, which was about to crew a neutral extractor, then decided it was a better that it crewed first. Crashed the game- legit crash, no mini dump, just back to desktop in an instant.

And may want to look at the spread of planets in random maps- got penned in by two v high level planets (One needed sector gov, the other needed Arcology Shielding II) adjacent to the first planet from the home world. I saw an AI with NO asteroids (i had one in a dead end lane) and two terran worlds next to it. Poor bugger couldnt even leave the home world for the first 20 minutes of the game.

Game crashed, so expect more feedback after i have another game.

Sith Space Defence, Sith Space Invasion, The Adran Cross (this one needs an asteroid in a dead end jump behind the start planets also. Otherwise you can't move very far), The Centrality, The Chiss Ascendancy: metersPerGalaxyUnit 5000.000000

Taris Defence: metersPerGalaxyUnit 6000.000000

Mandalorian Space Shootout, Deep Core, Mandalorian Invasion, Gordian Reach, Hutt Space: metersPerGalaxyUnit 7500.000000

Leave as is: Interconnected.

Only two Large maps and both felt fine for phase jumping.

The easiest way to use Subversion is through TortoiseSVN - a client for Windows

http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads

1) Please download and install TortoiseSVN

2) Next, navigate to your Mods-Rebellion v1.0XX folder (located in ...Documents\My Games\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion)

3) Right-click the folder and select "SVN Checkout" (NOTE: You will need to do this six times in order to add in all the folders of the mod)

4) Set

URL of repository: svn://swrebellion.com/warlords/SINS/SoGE Beta Reb - CORE

and the checkout directory name

Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion\Mods-Rebellion v1.0XX\SoGE Beta Reb - CORE

(See http://www.swrebellion.com/evaders99/sins-svn.gifimage for an example[/img])

(NOTE: This must also be done for the following folders: "SoGE Beta Reb - Alliance" "SoGE Beta Reb - CIS" "SoGE Beta Reb - New Republic" "SoGE Beta Reb - Republic" and "SoGE Beta Reb - Vong")

5) Click Ok and let it download. The CORE module is rather large, well over 1 GB. Slow connections be warned!

It is known that at times the download will abort while downloading. If this occurs, run SVN Checkout again, and do not delete the folder you already have, overwrite it instead.

6) You should now have a full directory with a green checkmark

7) To activate the mod, open the EnabledMods.txt file present in the Mods-Rebellion v1.0XXfolder and edit in the mod like so (this includes all races, like file included in this rar; make sure to leave a blank space at the bottom of the txt file):

TXT

Version 0

enabledModNameCount 6

enabledModName "SoGE Beta Reb - Alliance"

enabledModName "SoGE Beta Reb - CIS"

enabledModName "SoGE Beta Reb - New Republic"

enabledModName "SoGE Beta Reb - Republic"

enabledModName "SoGE Beta Reb - Vong"

enabledModName "SoGE Beta Reb - CORE"

In order to reduce RAM, it's recommend to remove the modules/mini-mods that you aren't using, and update the enabledModNameCount accordingly. For example, if you're playing a game with the Empire, Alliance, and New Republic, you don't need to load up the CIS', Republic's, Vong's assets. It doesn't matter what order you load the mods in, as long as the CORE is on the bottom of the list.

To update:

Just right-click the six directories and select "SVN Update".

Please do that before any game you start, to pick up the latest changes.

That's it. There are still discussions needed research, abilities, etc... but if you notice other bugs, please report them.

Let me know here if you have any questions.

EDIT: New instructions via Lavo, thanks

http://www.swrebellion.com/evaders99/sins-svn.gif

rejuvinator class sd, ability reads preformance boost.

i came across 37 holonets on an enemy planet, that was all that existed there. but uhm 37? it was a small random map. These things tend to happen fairly regularly, the ai love to spam those things. How abouth like a cap of one per planet and then balance it according to this or whatnot.

gravity well generator messes up the ai, he tires to leave but then just stands there indefinitly or close to it, and you can easily pick him off a ship at a time/attack him in the rear without him dooing anything. Its because hes simple mind is set on leaving and he dont understand its impossibly. Suggest making a jump poss after some time, it may not be canon but its better than an entire fleet of ships suddenly falling asleep every so often.

heavy scout ship of the vong concussions missile salvo dont work, when you purchase it it dont show up as a usable ability.

But as it cyrrently stands they are as much as threat as an extra player. I am not sure if the pirate vessels are too powerful ship wise, but they do come in huge swarms which make that issue not relevant. Here is an example: I had 3 fully uppgraded golan platforms, like 30 turbolasers and a cap ship giving them all a nice damage bonus. Research wise i didnt have every uppgrade but i had quite a few. And along comes the normal huge pirate swarm and just mowes through my defences. I mean come on, these are frickin pirates we are talking off.

I suggest reducing the number of pirates. And this is not a matter of me crying because i cant handle them, its easy to do so, you just send them at your opponent every time til you have a defence that can handle them. But thats very booring because it forces you to do JUST THAT and nothing else. And also it forces you to be a weakling that has to deal with pirates instead of blowing them away. (which makes me an angry panda)

Another thing, i would humble suggest that you started focusing on individual research trees to make each faction more unique. Right now it feels more like the same faction over and over with a fresh new paint to sprite things up. Whats the point in having multiple factions when they all feels like one? =)

This is also very easy. All it takes is some creativity and then some booring work to get it done, and offcource the 2d pictures if you want something beyond the standard sins stuff. Im assuming this is all very booring stuff to do, but in my humble oppinion this is what the game needs right now. Not some tiny graphical uppgrades or small fix that most people wont even notice.

And finally, thank you for this great mod and for all the effort put into it.

Playing on small random map, the factory is on autocast. I research the needed stuff to build the executor and get the needed funds, then the autocast goes off and the cooldown starts, once cooldown is down i get a message that my titan has been destroyed and a bit later a friendly executor spawns, the only problem is that its completly motionless. Guns and all work and i can build fighters but it just floats there. I think it originally said "returning to position or sumthing" ive waited like 15 mins for it to move and it wont.

Sorry if this has been brougth up before.

I've researched the technology but it says a "super-capital factory is required."

After reading the forums for a while it sounds like it's an ability assigned to a capital factory, but I see no option beyond building the starting captial ships.

Thanks.

The easiest way to use Subversion is through TortoiseSVN - a client for Windows

http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads

1) Please download and install TortoiseSVN

2) Next, navigate to your Mods-Rebellion v1.0XX folder (located in ...Documents\My Games\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion)

3) Right-click the folder and select "SVN Checkout" (NOTE: You will need to do this six times in order to add in all the folders of the mod)

4) Set

URL of repository: svn://swrebellion.com/warlords/SINS/SoGE Beta Reb - CORE

and the checkout directory name

Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion\Mods-Rebellion v1.0XX\SoGE Beta Reb - CORE

(See image for an example)

(NOTE: This must also be done for the following folders: "SoGE Beta Reb - Alliance" "SoGE Beta Reb - CIS" "SoGE Beta Reb - New Republic" "SoGE Beta Reb - Republic" and "SoGE Beta Reb - Vong")

5) Click Ok and let it download. The CORE module is rather large, well over 1 GB. Slow connections be warned!

It is known that at times the download will abort while downloading. If this occurs, run SVN Checkout again, and do not delete the folder you already have, overwrite it instead.

6) You should now have a full directory with a green checkmark

7) To activate the mod, open the EnabledMods.txt file present in the Mods-Rebellion v1.0XXfolder and edit in the mod like so (this includes all races, like file included in this rar; make sure to leave a blank space at the bottom of the txt file):

TXT

Version 0

enabledModNameCount 6

enabledModName "SoGE Beta Reb - Alliance"

enabledModName "SoGE Beta Reb - CIS"

enabledModName "SoGE Beta Reb - New Republic"

enabledModName "SoGE Beta Reb - Republic"

enabledModName "SoGE Beta Reb - Vong"

enabledModName "SoGE Beta Reb - CORE"

In order to reduce RAM, it's recommend to remove the modules/mini-mods that you aren't using, and update the enabledModNameCount accordingly. For example, if you're playing a game with the Empire, Alliance, and New Republic, you don't need to load up the CIS', Republic's, Vong's assets. It doesn't matter what order you load the mods in, as long as the CORE is on the bottom of the list.

To update:

Just right-click the six directories and select "SVN Update".

Please do that before any game you start, to pick up the latest changes.

That's it. There are still discussions needed research, abilities, etc... but if you notice other bugs, please report them.

Let me know here if you have any questions.

However, with the advent of 64 bit systems that can handle more than 2GB per program, a fix for this issue can be achieved. By activating the "Large Address Aware" executable flag, 64 bit systems (and 32 bit systems that have been hacked to allow more than 2 gigs allocation) more RAM can be allocated, removing the problem completely.

HOWTO:

Requirements: Windows XP/Vista/7 (64 bit preferred, but not required)

More than 2 gigs of RAM. Actually, more than 4 is advised, but if you have less than 2, then just ignore this post. IT WILL NOT WORK!!!!!!

There are 2 ways to achieve this. The first way is less complicated, but I find it slightly quirky. I use the second one myself.

1st way:

Use the "Large Address Aware" program created by "FordGT90Concept" on the PowerUp forums.

Link with instructions here: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=112556

2nd way:

Mod the .exe yourself. There is a tutorial on this on the Civilization IV forums (Civ IV has the same problem).

It can be found here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=224178

Just change the exe you're editing to Sins instead of Civ, and you're set!

This also gives instructions on how to allow 32 bit systems to be able to assign more that 2GB for a program.

For reference, the file path to Sins Entrenchment is as follows:

For 64-bit systems:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Sins of a Solar Empire Entrenchment.exe"

For 32-bit systems:

"C:\Program Files\Stardock Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Sins of a Solar Empire Entrenchment.exe"

If you have any questions about this, feel free to PM me. When you do, please tell me the specs of your system, including RAM and OS, OS version (x86 or x64), and which way you used.

As a final note, the reason I recommend 64 bit systems is due to the lack of allocation in 32 bit systems. Even if you make it capable of handling more than 2 gigs for a program, there is a hard memory limit at 3.5 GB. This includes system RAM (RAM sticks), VidRAM, and anything else that might require memory addresses. This severely limits system capabilities.

More information on the 64 vs 32 bit systems can be found here, at microsoft's support site: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946765

I will stress this is just initial post I will add the "why of fry" later as well as add all in-depth observations but its 05 AM so im gonna crash and edit later

To all of you who makes it happen i salute you. Nothing short of epic work.

So when I post below do not read it as me being bitchy. just observations

Mantis is still down right? because I went to the addy I got but nothing is happening yet?

Just making this so i can edit my own OP with list of features/ideas and bugs if thats ok.

I will add the Mantis items once I have done the list.

Observations:

- New Republic needs massive balance changes. The shield regeneration ability inherent in almost all Capital ships as well as some sub-caps is crazy overpowered in 1 on 1 fights combined with offering from basic to all the way up to the biggest super-capital that can chew out the SSD due to the very same shield regeneration. Non-cap ships with 18k+ shields is also madness.

- Empire needs an overhaul. Meant as the premier bad guys maybe with the exception on the Vong they lack severely in the "omg we are all going to die" opression factor. Theyr capital range is very small, very outdated, very underwhelming and its all (SSD+150 fleet cap) or nothing (lolol underpowered capitals)

- Republic (classic) seems pretty good to me at this juncture. Mean but can be taken out due to somewhat limited shields.

- Love the "extra planet" option. I play this option always now including with my multi-player friends.

- Build is stable. Back in the day I got mini dumps to no end, have not had any whatsoever since this BETA went out.

Bugs:

- Bothan Assault cruisers seems to not trigger their shield regen ability when they need to or rather consistently. Sometimes they do, sometimes they dont. This bug seems to affect most shield regen abilities across all ships who have them in New Republic fleets.

- When choosing the extra planets version of a map for this mod, the first "asteroid" class system you're given refuses to build LEV construction frigs to make upgrades like trade ports but all neutral later-to-be-conquered asteroids seems fine. So just the asteroid class you begin with only seems to have this bug. Not even extractors. It will Que them but they will never actually be built.

Question: Did the missile upgrade fixes get sorted yet? some gentleman was pointing out some wrong reference date between phased and actual missile uses?

Defence/Structures:

- Needs total overhaul. Woefully inadequate ATM. Massive gravity wells (which I love) but inferior engagement ranges, poor survivability combined with limited slots, massively overpowered Ion Cannons, etc, need total rework mechanics/stats wise.

- Not sure how the warp prohibitory defense structure is working currently but would be nice to know what the range is or if it is the entire system and while its fine it nukes antimatter etc I think hyper-space initiation slow-down is much better. Gives you and actual chance to destroy fleets who raid your system all the time

- Weird movement behavior when engaging Broadsides. They will keep going out of the gravity well if they're alone in an attempt to flee perusing vessels with your ships ending out in no where waaaay outside the gravity wells. Same goes with end-tier Republic capital. Its turn rates sometimes bugged and it ends up doing a massive U turn that sends it hurtling outside the gravity well before it returns in.

Wish-listing:

- Eclipse Super-Capital for Empire (cannot stress how epic this would be, would also give some much needed boost to whats roughly the biggest villain faction in the game.)

- Sovereign ^^ same as above. sex on hyperdrives!

i had 3 venators, 2 of which were cap ships, 3 victories, 2 acclamators and 12 bayonet star monitors and 10 pirate FRIGATES, destroyed my capships and the rest of

my ships within a minute taking out my entire fleet, and both cap ships were level 4 wth has happened.

tried some more, i outnumbered them by about 20 ships all mine were cruisers with 3 capital ships, they killed all of my capital ships with 25 pirates. they killed them like they as fast as frigates are destroyed

any way that's my first bug report and only the 2nd thing i have ever posted on a forum

when playing a 1+hard ai republic vs 2 hard ai CIS

when trying to use the clone reinforcment ability of the mandator the game crashes with a mini dump.

specs are

i7 3.4ghz

16 gb

nvidia 670m

all effects are on and textures set to high

aa is at 2x

and linear filtering

its a nice addition to not only have cruisers gain experience but also see their names. i can now track a ship that has proven itself and keep it alive

perhaps though more names should be added to the ships name lists. maybe start a thread for ship names? add more variation

all good so far not had any crashes or weird things happen.