Lavo

For some reason I forgot to change up the Corona. Fixed.

Serves me right for not checking if moving Golans down a tech makes it overlap with anything. Will fix. Edit: Fixed.

Update: February 20, 2013 | Revision: 1031 Please welcome the return of heavy defense platforms! Now you can build star bases as tactical structures, though they wont have access to the fancy star base-only perks, and in the case of the Vong, mobility (Vong tactical SB has more health/firepower than the "actual" SB to compensate), decreased cost of missile/turbolaser/hangar defenses, increased cost of stationary gravity well generators, increased cost of star base's weapon and toughness upgrades by a grand total of 1100 (275 per upgrade), increased population on the starting homeworld terran from 350 to 500, decreased capital world designation upgrade on starting terran/asteroid/low terran by a factor of 10, gave Escort Carrier a third squadron and "Heavy" armor, tripled Goodwill bonus (envoy's ability), tweaked a few weapon damage modifiers, modified pact relationship requirements. (R1030) If all goes well, this is a release milestone. Edit: Of course there was a bug. As of 1031, this is now fixed, and I also tweaked the "your envoy died or left" relationship bonus decay rate.

Update: February 19, 2013 | Revision: 1028 Replaced Intercept with a new ability on Assault Frigate Mk.I, Defender, and made all ships focus-fire by default.

Update: February 19, 2013 | Revision: 1027 Buffed Supercap Factory's health a ton. Nerfed combat frigates. They're still very efficient, firepower per supply wise, but not so much cost wise anymore. Buffed mid/high tier capital ship's damage versus combat frigates for balance purposes (i.e. anything as strong as a Battle Dragon and higher), Core Ship/Malatok no longer need research, and did a ton of regen tweaks for frigates/cruisers.

Update: February 15, 2013 | Revision: 1026 Bayonet hull doubled, supply increased to 0.6 from 0.4, TradeFed II now will only fire from the right weapon bank, has had it's health decreased, weapon range increased to 10000 from 8000, plus it's cost/build time/supply have been reduced, starfighter torpedoes now have a 2x damage bonus against medium (aka. frigate) armor making them an effective anti-fighter unit (with the exception of anti-fighter units), and missing file added. Frigates will be getting a large overhaul soon. Additionally, the VSD-II has removed from Republic for balance purposes. Originally, the VSD-II was put in to serve as an all-rounder which had cruiser ion blast. Now, with the addition of the Rothana, this role is now filled by two ships, and I've been seeing that the Republic is simply a little too capable with VSD-II in some MP matches, where often the VSD-II and Bayonet forms the bulk of Republic fleets. Plus, the VSD-II was only put into production after the formation of the Empire, and thus it does not fit canonly.

Update: February 13, 2013 | Revision: 1025 Buffed Procurator's missile damage, fixed Backup Shields for Bulwark, some MC80s (just a proof-of-concept), redid Venator's missile hardpoints, other minor shield mesh bits done too. Edit: Forgot to upload a file in the Backup Shields chain; will fix when I get home, current iteration will crash the game.

The Broadside cruiser's cluster warheads upgrade is actually a downgrade; it increases the time between volleys but decreases AM usage. It's primarily there for the AI to better micro-manage itself. When I get the time I'll make a couple of dummy abilities that people can sink points into, mainly for the formally-cruisers-now-capitals that can't upgrade their abilities to begin with, but this won't be for awhile. Nothing can be done to get capital ships to stack or stop giving out that "X was destroyed!" message. It's an unfortunate aspect of Sins' hardcoding. I totally agree that it's extremely annoying, and I'd change it in a heartbeat if I could. The AI's capital ships are all built at level 3. This is done for two reasons, one is that the AI will change it's build order and thus build more capitals and two, it makes up for the AI's severe tactical ineptitude; it will lose capital ships very often without any regard for said ship's capabilities and leveling. As for the speed boost siege frigates; this is also primarily an issue with Sins' hardcoding. The AI adores it's siege frigates, and will always amass them as quickly as possible. A planet bombing damage rescaling is in the works; once the current ability troubles and tech bits are ironed out that's my next project. The AI not researching much is a bug with Sins itself; we've tried doing what we can to mitigate this, though there's truthfully not much more that can be done in this regard. Setting the AI to researcher won't change anything, in truth.

Seriously? It seemed to work fine in my quick test. Back to the drawing board then...

It's mainly a balance thing; capital ship interdictors is something I'd rather not put in, with some exceptions. Interdictors as it is are very powerful, preventing ships from entering hyperspace is arguably more powerful than say in EaW, as this allows for a true "lock down" of a region or area. The Imperials also only have 2 capital ship slots open, 1 if you want to use VSD-Is, which doesn't leave much breathing room. The Imperials in particular have one of the best interdictors in the game; the Immobilizer 418 and Vua'spar have the best range in the game, after the Geonosian SDN (CIS supercapital; the CIS has no frigate/cruiser sized interdictor) and the system-wide stationary Gravity Well Generator. The two aforementioned cruisers have a range of 50000, which is very much outside the range of any ship/structure's weaponry and abilities.

Aye. Go all out, do whatever you want, and have fun! The beauty of Vong ships is that they can be anything from an organic animal-like object to something out of a mountain or volcano; the only thing remotely close to a limit is nature itself.

I really like what you did with the Vong GWG, namely it's non-dark purple parts. Those two are really nice, and I believe that having more detailed skins like those would make the Vong much more nice visually speaking. Would it be possible to whip up some new skins for the Ro'ik Chuan Mara, Cluster Ship, alternate skin for the Yorik Trema (the trade ship/starbase constructor), and something that properly fits the Malatok's UV mesh (or rework it's UVs)? I also had an idea for a Vong refinery; take the current trade port mesh and replace the cylinder-like top half with a sphere or square-like shape.

Update: February 8, 2013 | Revision: 1024 Added new skins to Ro'ik Va'lh and Suuv Band D'Krid made by myself using parts from the Vong GWG's skin, removed 30% mitigation from all Vong ships as a balance measure, consolidated Extremely Strong Militia (used on Ecumens, High Shipyards, etc) to only have one possible militia group for balance, removed Mandalorian Training from Republic, fixed up Procurator's Weapon Jam and changed it's Communications Jamming ability to be a passive ability, fixed up a bunch of abilities such as Backup Shields, fixed Malatok crash bug.

No. The odds of it being added are very low. If you're worried about losing an Immobilizer 418 or two; keep it slightly away from the main battle, this is easily done thanks to it's large GWG range.

The Diamond Boron Warheads is pretty deadly in combo with the early game missile penetration tech; gives Broadsides a 50% total shield bypass for it's missiles, which can let them kill some lower hull ships much more quickly. The main ability to turn off is Cluster Warheads, that ability can also be "leveled up" once so that it has twice as long a cooldown, but consumes half the regular antimatter cost.

Thankfully, you cannot clone capital ships.

The best use of the unit isn't as a front-line ship; I don't blame you for finding them useless. Unless you enjoy micromanaging kiting carrier fleets (a common tactic in vanilla Sins), I don't see people liking Escort Carriers much. Though those who can use them properly... Can be pretty brutal. That being said, a cost decrease may very well be in order. When you get a ship, you get a ship, abilities and everything. As the Republic, getting a few of those is invaluable as the Republic has no units with Full Squadron; use 'em to speed up your ship production.

1. Will fix. 2. You know, the ship won't build without the proper research being completed. Odds are you lost a military lab, which made the tech inoperative (the tech requires that labs are still fully functional). The ship is indeed working, I've seen them in use personally. Yeah, you can turn off the Intercept ability. The latest beta build has changed autocast to be off by default; this will be included in the next patch.

I see then you likely have not seen someone, or even an AI, make good use of the ability, nor have you used it yourself much. In high pitched battles where fighters drop like flies at times, the ability makes a very, very big impact. The ability to speed up the construction of all ships at any planet, is also extremely powerful; on top of that the Imperials are the only faction with easy access to a Full Squadrons ship. The BAC and Liberator require research, while the Lucrehulk BB and Cluster Ship require being at level 5. Unfortunately, we must agree to disagree on this point, as I'm not willing to change the Escort Carrier, least it become grossly OP in the right hands.

Check out the Steam group we've set up for MP. Just hop in and mass-message whomever you see online asking if they're up for MP. Chimaera and Mick666 like to MP whenever they have the chance. Unfortunately, this particular week is busy as balls for me, so I won't be able to do much gaming period most likely.

Indeed, the Broadside does have 1.1 less DPS than the Torpedo Sphere on it's main weapon, however it has Diamond Boron Warheads (passive shield bypass bonus), Siege Torpedoes (out-ranges any structure), Torpedo Salvo (missile swarm against a single target which does a large amount of damage), and Cluster Warheads (does massive damage to fighters). The Broadside is also considerably cheaper to produce, both in resource costs and supply. In terms of pure DPS, and considering only frigates, the Strike Cruiser has it beat when using it's side banks. Further, the Strike Cruiser is nearly equal when only considering it's front banks, even if the Strike Cruiser hits two targets at once, and thus the Torpedo Sphere has better focus fire, but it costs much more to field than one or two Strike Cruisers.

That's an awful idea. Do you have any idea just how powerful it's Full Squadrons ability is? Have you ever even used it? It can be used to drastically shorten unit production times, or essentially make squadrons invulnerable while the ability is active. For the Empire whose fighters are unshielded, this is a massive boon. A small number of these carriers can attain total air superiority over any enemy fleet as it's fighters just do not die. Additionally, it's the cheapest Full Squadrons ship in the game, both in terms of resource cost and supply. Keep those carriers away from the battle, where they are safe, and let them keep throwing fighters, or bombers, at the enemy.

I mean, one can reduce the possibility of a moon/crappy planet with high colonization tech spawning severely, even to 0, but that's it. If/when I get the time, I intend to do yet another series of random maps, one which does not have any planets high militia (ex. industrial, high terran) or high colonization requirements.

Aye, it would mean doing it for multiple computers. It would also affect the AI, and usually not for the better.

You've been an unfortunate victim of the random generator of Sins. Stuff like this happens at times.