Beta Observations and Thoughts

[Lavo]

easy to take the planet. With a large fleet, the shield is basically not there.

Not sure how durable the structure itself is. The ai ignores the shield and goes straight for the planet so afterwards I don't really care to look and see.

 

Imo the shield, if it can't stop bombardment, should give the planet 100% mitigation, or some sort of "max damage it can repel" value so heavier ships can break it. Having a shield that lets bombardment through really doesn't fit in sw :S Since the structure is in space and not ground base, it shouldn't be imbalanced.

 

Edit: Where did the population upgrades go? Now the civilian tree looks empty -.- Also why is volcanic moved to 8th research and super ice requiring volcanic?

The Shield Generator, when fully researched, absorbs 80% of damage done during planet bombing. Making it any higher would kill the AI, as the AI does not understand that there are shield generators there, and regardless of this the 80% can be instrumental in delaying a planet bombing and prolonging planet life.

 

The Civilian tree changes were implemented with the upgrading of NU to version 1.2. Planets, and likewise techs, were entirely reworked, and population boosting techs do not fit in with these changes.

[magnus64]

Currently it seems like the defenses themselves are fine, but there are just WAY too many tactical slots available. It took literally 30 minutes to break through a maxed-out planet's defenses with a full bar Imperial fleet. This was with me prioritizing repair platforms first, then having to work through about 6-7 Golan Platforms with constant enemy reinforcements popping up. Turrets not even costing any tactical slots worsens the issue quite a bit.

 

From what the IC said a while back, the primary purpose of planetary defenses is to scare off smaller forces and to hold off bigger ones until friendly reinforcements can arrive, NOT destroy/rout large fleets. I do understand that statement was meant for vanilla ENT and not your mod, but there is wisdom in what they envisioned. It helps to keep turtling to a minimum and keeps things interesting on offense without too much a grind.

 

Other than that, I'd say that development costs for planets are my only other real concern. I'd look into standardizing some of your costs across different types of planets (ex. 450G for level 1 on civilian infrastructure on an asteroid which caps at level 1, but 1200G on a terran at level 1? I suggest having each one start out at 450G for level one and then go up incrementally or exponentially for each level, regardless of planet type, just have different planet types cap at different levels.), but I'm sure those are just work in progress anyway. Thanks again for the chance to test!

[Lavo]

Currently it seems like the defenses themselves are fine, but there are just WAY too many tactical slots available. It took literally 30 minutes to break through a maxed-out planet's defenses with a full bar Imperial fleet. This was with me prioritizing repair platforms first, then having to work through about 6-7 Golan Platforms with constant enemy reinforcements popping up. Turrets not even costing any tactical slots worsens the issue quite a bit.

 

From what the IC said a while back, the primary purpose of planetary defenses is to scare off smaller forces and to hold off bigger ones until friendly reinforcements can arrive, NOT destroy/rout large fleets. I do understand that statement was meant for vanilla ENT and not your mod, but there is wisdom in what they envisioned. It helps to keep turtling to a minimum and keeps things interesting on offense without too much a grind.

Big planets are heavily defended; that's just how they are in SW. The Golans however are on the list to be reworked, so don't worry about those, for now anyways. The Turbolaser Defense costing 0 slots was done a few days ago; this was mainly done as it's a rather bad structure and to make planets which have too few tactical slots be a bit more defensible. Though the Turobolaser Defense is a WIP, seeing this I'll consider nerfing it's power a bit more, so thanks for this.

 

While you say it keeps things more exciting, I must note that this is a matter of perspective, there are those who find defending entrenched systems far more interesting than constant steamrolling. If I can ask out of curiosity, for your "full bar" fleet, how many capital ships and ISD cruisers did you have?

 

Other than that, I'd say that development costs for planets are my only other real concern. I'd look into standardizing some of your costs across different types of planets (ex. 450G for level 1 on civilian infrastructure on an asteroid which caps at level 1, but 1200G on a terran at level 1? I suggest having each one start out at 450G for level one and then go up incrementally or exponentially for each level, regardless of planet type, just have different planet types cap at different levels.), but I'm sure those are just work in progress anyway. Thanks again for the chance to test!

This is intentional. Planets have been entirely reworked from vanilla; they are two different entities. Planets are tiered by "tech" levels in this mod, and perhaps more importantly, in this mod it isn't a simple colonize everything, you have to think about what to colonize. I'll let Nova explain this more, as he made the thing himself.

[magnus64]

While you say it keeps things more exciting, I must note that this is a matter of perspective, there are those who find defending entrenched systems far more interesting than constant steamrolling. If I can ask out of curiosity, for your "full bar" fleet, how many capital ships and ISD cruisers did you have?

 

Another thing I should have mentioned is that this was a maxed-out capital ship-only fleet. Six Imperator Command Ships, six Tectors, two torpedo spheres, two Executors, and four interdictors to prevent escaping rebel scum. I use this cap ship-only build for my assault force, and then build Gladiators for capping nodes, ISD cruisers and interdictors for defensive purposes and reinforcements if need be (I rarely do, this case being the exception which is why I brought it up).

 

One thing I must compliment you on however, is that your mod makes it entirely possible to do a capital ship only build while still keeping up with other players who put frigates and cruisers in the mix. I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, and this isn't necessarily because I find the other frigs a cruisers not useful; it's because I admittedly have a fetish for ISDs and playing this way satiates my particular play-style quite nicely.

 

This is intentional. Planets have been entirely reworked from vanilla; they are two different entities. Planets are tiered by "tech" levels in this mod, and perhaps more importantly, in this mod it isn't a simple colonize everything, you have to think about what to colonize. I'll let Nova explain this more, as he made the thing himself.

 

Ah, I see. I guess the new system will require some getting used to. I have a pretty strict build order in vanilla, but this is quite a bit different. I'll see if I can work out a new pattern that satiates my OCD build order.

 

Thanks for the replies!

[Lavo]

Another thing I should have mentioned is that this was a maxed-out capital ship-only fleet. Six Imperator Command Ships, six Tectors, two torpedo spheres, two Executors, and four interdictors to prevent escaping rebel scum. I use this cap ship-only build for my assault force, and then build Gladiators for capping nodes, ISD cruisers and interdictors for defensive purposes and reinforcements if need be (I rarely do, this case being the exception which is why I brought it up).

 

One thing I must compliment you on however, is that your mod makes it entirely possible to do a capital ship only build while still keeping up with other players who put frigates and cruisers in the mix. I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, and this isn't necessarily because I find the other frigs a cruisers not useful; it's because I admittedly have a fetish for ISDs and playing this way satiates my particular play-style quite nicely.

And it still took 30 mins with TWO Executors? Damn... I'm somewhat surprised that's even possible but with all the variety of things I've heard from this mod, I'm not going to rule anything out. o.o

 

This isn't so much intentional as much as it is an unsurprising side effect; capital ships in SoGE are extremely powerful and dominate. Not every faction has a colonizing capital. Frigates have low health, but they bring large amounts of firepower and abilities when used in numbers. Cruisers are really the mainstray of most fleets, having solid health, good firepower, and useful abilities. Capital ships are the tip of the sword, strong in every respect and field, able to crush anything under it.

[wbino]

Although I love the love and feel of Nova's planet work, I feel it is a big resource hog, this mod used to be silk smooth to me. Since the update of planet resources the game is barely playable with a decent size map and teams.

[Lavo]

Although I love the love and feel of Nova's planet work, I feel it is a big resource hog, this mod used to be silk smooth to me. Since the update of planet resources the game is barely playable with a decent size map and teams.

This is mainly due to the size of the gravity well of some planets, namely the Titan, Supers, Huges, and possibly Larges. Hrm... Perhaps a trial without the first three is in order. wbino, would you be up for such a trial? I'd send you a modified GalaxyScenarioDef, all you would have to do is slap that into your GameInfo folder (and of course back up the actual one).

 

Edit: For anyone who wishes to try the above out, here is the modified GalaxyScenarioDef, as the description says, I can only confirm it works with all Random maps except for Small.

[wbino]

I'll be willing to do anything to help out,although my first shot at it would have to wait until the weekend as my weekdays are 16 hours long.

[Lavo]

I'll be willing to do anything to help out,although my first shot at it would have to wait until the weekend as my weekdays are 16 hours long.

Fair enough; there's no rush. That should do the trick however, as Nova himself said, Sins was never meant to have planets of those sizes.

[wbino]

Lavo ////// Do you need my email address? And just give me specific instructions to test the change in well sizes.........

[Lavo]

Lavo ////// Do you need my email address? And just give me specific instructions to test the change in well sizes.........

I don't need that. And as for instructions; simply slap in the new GalaxySenarioDef file and play a Random map (excluding a Small random). That's all you need to do.

 

By editing the GalaxySenarioDef file, no planets which have a large gravity well will show up. I want you to tell me how the game preforms with that. I will likely make a more refined version of this, assuming it works, and release it as an optional, semi-unofficial, patch.

[wbino]

Lavo did I simply take the downloaded file and swap it with the same one in the game file? Or do I have to open it in 7 zip?

[Lavo]

Lavo did I simply take the downloaded file and swap it with the same one in the game file? Or do I have to open it in 7 zip?

Just swap the downloaded file with the one in the game file.

[wbino]

Last stupid question...well maybe, the SOGE folder, or my Entrenchment folder where I download and update thru SVN? (the one with all the green checkmarks)?

[Lavo]

Last stupid question...well maybe, the SOGE folder, or my Entrenchment folder where I download and update thru SVN? (the one with all the green checkmarks)?

The one with the green checkmarks. Just be sure to keep a backup of the file I made you download; you'll probably have to re-paste it there after you do an SVN update, as it will overwrite the "outofdate" GalaxySenarioDef file.

[Busser]

Some very early thoughts on the béta after a few hours of gameplay. I had a lot of reading and catching up to do so forgive me if I mentioned some things that are already known.

 

First game: starting with the Vong (not the best starting choice) and got immediatly overwhelmed with the drastic changes this mod has made in comparison to SOGE 1.0E.

 

- the stronger pirates and pirate bases work very well. (perhaps some other models for the pirate bases in the future ?)

- the custom planets add an amazing strategic depth to the game, especially the extra costs affiliated with colonizing and the more "realistic" spread of resources.

 

- noticed the return of the typical "bobbing" of ships, present in the original Sins but not in SOGE 1.0E. Ships clustering together en masse and moving close to each other barely touching.

- some eratic frigate behaviour; frigates moving suddenly backwards for a considerable distance.

- the relative weaknes of defense turrets and the considerable decrease of the space-mine limit makes a huge difference. What is the motivation behind this and in what way are they, or defences in general, supposed to be used now?

- Construction frigates seem to freeze/idle when given the build order for Hangar Defense and do not respond at manual orders. They only respond when the building order for the hangar(s) is cancelled. (had this happen in two consecutive games.)

 

 

I'm currently in my second game playing as the empire on a lager map.

some minor remarks:

- the market prices seem to be very volatile, to say the least

- noticed allied AI idle for a considerable time in the beginning of the game (I suspect this is supposed to be this way).

- a considerable increase in memory usage and some lag when trying to use abbilities (using the "capture neutral" abbility in a huge gravity well with 10+ mines = massive lag when the grid comes up ).

- minidump on gamestart followed by a minidump when i restarted the mod. (unable to recreate)

 

 

These are some things i've noticed after a combined 5-6 hours of total gameplay. In my second game I was able to experience the mod's full potential. Epic scale, graphical improvements, more strategic depth, . . . Truly the first time an rts game has captured the true essence of Star Wars for me. I must add that this mod is actualy the sole reason I even bought Sins.

[Lavo]

Hurrah, more feedback!

 

- the relative weaknes of defense turrets and the considerable decrease of the space-mine limit makes a huge difference. What is the motivation behind this and in what way are they, or defences in general, supposed to be used now?

...

- the market prices seem to be very volatile, to say the least

The mines difference was something implemented by NovaCameron, the maker of the planets mod in question, as a way to make some planets different... Admittedly he's the one to ask this and not me, he isn't a particular fan of how mines work. On defenses, the Turbolaser Turret is meant to be a weak, but cheap, turret to slap in. It can be improved by research (both in terms of health and firepower). Other turrets, such as the Missile Defense, have much longer durability, and others, like the Hangar Defense, work extremely well with Golan star bases, which are the cornerstone of a solid planet defense.

 

And yeah, the market fluctuates, much like a real market.

 

- Construction frigates seem to freeze/idle when given the build order for Hangar Defense and do not respond at manual orders. They only respond when the building order for the hangar(s) is cancelled. (had this happen in two consecutive games.)

Did you have a Tactical Slots upgrade in queue at the time? If so, that's the issue. If not... I really have no idea why this is occurring... I have yet to see this myself. =/

 

- noticed allied AI idle for a considerable time in the beginning of the game (I suspect this is supposed to be this way).

Yeah, I've noticed this, with the addition of NU, the AI likes to research a ton of stuff at the start of the game now no matter what AI type it is. I believe it has to do with the volcanic planet colonization tech, which is at tech 8.

 

- a considerable increase in memory usage and some lag when trying to use abbilities (using the "capture neutral" abbility in a huge gravity well with 10+ mines = massive lag when the grid comes up ).

Sins isn't made to handle the large gravity wells in NU; I'm having someone test out a map/game which has most/all massive gravity wells out to see if it reduces lag... Admittedly he hasn't gotten back to me. >_<

 

- minidump on gamestart followed by a minidump when i restarted the mod. (unable to recreate)

Sins simply can't handle SoGE+NU at times, which causes it to crash. I've seen this plenty of times personally Really as long as Sins is fine ingame and doesn't minidump there... This isn't too much of an issue.

 

Truly the first time an rts game has captured the true essence of Star Wars for me. I must add that this mod is actualy the sole reason I even bought Sins.

Likewise. Would you believe me if I said that the only reason I got Sins was for this mod as well? As it is.

[Busser]

Thanks for the reply,

 

The new approach to defense did become much clearer. The weaker turrets and the space-mine limit make room for more creative defensive setups. In 1.0E it was possible to create impenetrable fortressworlds of minefields and turrets that made planet sieging by the AI almost impossible. Turrets indeed become much stronger after research but the larger gravity wells make it very time/money consuming to attempt to create such a fortress. All in all i agree that no type of static defense should become unsiegable and should only be a factor in slowing down advancing forces or could possibly be bypassed. The larger gravity wells do make this type of WW2 style "island hopping" campaign more feasable and negates the potential power of chokepoints.

 

Furthermore i applaud the addition of extra phaselanes on the new maps. This makes for a more canon-style gameplay in accordance to the Star Wars hyperspace jumps and makes surprise attacks possible. (suddenly seeing a CIS fleet arriving at my homeworld Clone-War style out of nowhere made my day) However i did notice that some of these phase-lines are not visible on the map, is this intentional ?

 

Now for the non-NU related questions. When a unit-info card displays the laser and phase missile damage what does the order in which they are listed mean? Is it the damage vs. different shiptypes or something completely different ?

 

I've read several posts about the AI preference for building frigates and i was wondering if it was possible to change these to a more correct setup ? I don't mind the rebel scum using that much frigates but i would prefer the Empire (for example) to use more SD's. Perhaps even make them use smaller squadrons of SD's and other formations as in listed on Wookiepedia for example. I do realize that making the AI focus on certain ships could result in very monotone gameplay.

 

This brings me to the CIS faction which uses far to little lucrehulk battleships. Is it possible to make a "cruiser" variant of the Lucrehulk ship so we could se more of them? Like you guys did with the Venator, Imperator class, Providence SD, . . ?

I could not find info on the Trafed Carrier and the Trafed II FG and I was wondering what they are based on.

 

Last but not least, a while ago I compiled a small file that combined unit stats etc. and attempted to look at figures like attack/supply, attack/cost. The new maps and the abundance of resources make the last formula outdated. However, the attack/supply gave me a lot of thought. Is a sum of all attack-stats enough ? How should I incalculate squadrons ? Perhaps a reference file like this is allready floating around on the net or in the game-files ?

[Lavo]

Furthermore i applaud the addition of extra phaselanes on the new maps. This makes for a more canon-style gameplay in accordance to the Star Wars hyperspace jumps and makes surprise attacks possible. (suddenly seeing a CIS fleet arriving at my homeworld Clone-War style out of nowhere made my day) However i did notice that some of these phase-lines are not visible on the map, is this intentional ?

These lines are invisible because they actually aren't real phase lanes per se, if you've played as the Vasari in vanilla Sins, you would notice they have a Phase Gate structure. This structure has an ability which in essence creates an invisible phase lane between it and other planet with the same structure. In SoGE, this ability was added to the Broadcast Center, however it has been coded to work for both friendly and enemy forces. Admittedly, due to how the engine works, it doesn't always function exactly as intended, but it's had a very nice effect. Credit for this wonderful addition goes to sloosecannon.

 

Now for the non-NU related questions. When a unit-info card displays the laser and phase missile damage what does the order in which they are listed mean? Is it the damage vs. different shiptypes or something completely different ?

The order has nothing to do with their damage and whatnot, they appear in the order that the weapons appear in the ship's entity file.

 

I've read several posts about the AI preference for building frigates and i was wondering if it was possible to change these to a more correct setup ? I don't mind the rebel scum using that much frigates but i would prefer the Empire (for example) to use more SD's. Perhaps even make them use smaller squadrons of SD's and other formations as in listed on Wookiepedia for example. I do realize that making the AI focus on certain ships could result in very monotone gameplay.

This due to how the game engine functions... Sadly impossible to do.

 

This brings me to the CIS faction which uses far to little lucrehulk battleships. Is it possible to make a "cruiser" variant of the Lucrehulk ship so we could se more of them? Like you guys did with the Venator, Imperator class, Providence SD, . . ?

This isn't possible.

 

I could not find info on the Trafed Carrier and the Trafed II FG and I was wondering what they are based on.

The Trafed Carrier is based off of this freighter, at least in terms of it's model. I'm not sure where the Trafed II FG originates from.

 

Last but not least, a while ago I compiled a small file that combined unit stats etc. and attempted to look at figures like attack/supply, attack/cost. The new maps and the abundance of resources make the last formula outdated. However, the attack/supply gave me a lot of thought. Is a sum of all attack-stats enough ? How should I incalculate squadrons ? Perhaps a reference file like this is allready floating around on the net or in the game-files ?

The costs are going to be reworked soon, in order to take into account the abundance of resources. I'm not sure what you mean by an attack-stats sum.

[Busser]

Interesting, so you can jump between planets as long as both of them have Broadcast Centers ? That's some creative modding

 

concerning the "attack-stats sum"; I tried to bundle all the offensive capabilities of the ships (aver. laser dam., aver. phase miss damage, . . . ) into one figure so i could easily see which units gave the most bang for your buck, or have more attack power relative to their supply cost. Doing this I struggled with how exactly i should add in the squadrons some ships carry.

 

About the reworking of ship costs. Would'nt it be easier to scale the numbers down a bit ? Since the amount of resources has increased a lot and so have planetupgrading costs. Perhaps it would be easier to scale things down a bit , say divide everything by 10 instead of increasing supply and ship costs ?

 

Are there any specific things/situations/elements you guys would like the béta-testers to focus on ?

Thanks for the fast replies.

[MrPhildevil]

What is that "NU" you guys speak of?

[Lavo]

Interesting, so you can jump between planets as long as both of them have Broadcast Centers ? That's some creative modding

It works via ability, which is something all structures can have.

 

concerning the "attack-stats sum"; I tried to bundle all the offensive capabilities of the ships (aver. laser dam., aver. phase miss damage, . . . ) into one figure so i could easily see which units gave the most bang for your buck, or have more attack power relative to their supply cost. Doing this I struggled with how exactly i should add in the squadrons some ships carry.

That's a very bad method of figuring out the attack power of a ship... The infocard gives you a very wrong idea of how powerful a structure is. For example, the Missile Defense has an impressive output of 240 per volley before modifiers, but as it fires forward and doesn't fire from it's sides or back (it's a turret after all) the game says it has an average output damage of 60.

 

About the reworking of ship costs. Would'nt it be easier to scale the numbers down a bit ? Since the amount of resources has increased a lot and so have planetupgrading costs. Perhaps it would be easier to scale things down a bit , say divide everything by 10 instead of increasing supply and ship costs ?

No. It would take a lot more work to rework the planets... And besides, those are already balanced out perfectly. Supply cost of ships will not be changed, only the the cost per ship will change. Accordingly, the starting resources per player will be greatly increased as well to compensate. I already have a version of this working on my end, which also contains the new NR HUD icons, which will likely be added to the SVN soon. I believe that I may not have increased the unit costs enough (twice as much as they were previous), but they seem to do the job.

 

Are there any specific things/situations/elements you guys would like the béta-testers to focus on ?

That's a good question. Soon it will be the cost of units... Though for now I believe that the overall balance of all factions and simply how the game plays is something to look out for.

 

Also, NU, aka. Novus Universum, is NovaCameron's planet mod.

[Busser]

The AI on Easy/Normal difficulty seems to struggle a lot with the rebalanced ship and structure costs.

Tested on a 37-planet map 4 players free for all. Took a full hour before AI started producing scouting ships, after 2 more hours still no significant fleetbuilding on the AI side.

 

Higher difficulty levels seem fine though.

[Lavo]

Interesting. The reasons the costs were upped is that NU has greatly increased the amount of available resources, in comparison to stock Sins. I'm shocked that it takes that long for the AI to build things on Easy/Normal, though admittedly I play on Insane every time.

[Divine_Wrath]

Since This mod has now taken a new direction in gameplay features will we be seeing a new structures as well for each of the SW factions? If models are issues isnt there now other games that now have them? hope we cn see them soon