Lavo

Please refer to this thread, the "old" SVN was pretty much gutted and remade into something new.

I don't understand, they are clearly skinned. Picture below is from the latest revision. Can you show me a picture of what you are seeing? http://i919.photobucket.com/albums/ad33/Lavo_02/SoGE/ScreenShot_22.png

Most excellent. I should get those in fairly soon once I get back into model work.

Uhhh, what? You're on a really old revision if the Viscount is not skinned. It's been skinned for months now on the beta. Even the public version, 2.1, has a properly skinned Viscount. In addition, the SVN has been entirely redone in order to reduce resource usage, please read this thread.

The economist AI will build them faster if it gets a hold of a high population planet (High Terran, Ecumen, etc). Otherwise, the researcher will probably get it first as it will have researched more economic techs (resource boost, cost reductions) within a given period of time. But, that's just my experience.

They are choosing not to build capitals; I know they do research the max cap slots.

There hasn't been any notable changes to the AI in a long time; certainly not in the last revision. Sometimes, when the AI gets a planet like an Ecumenopolis or High Terran Cultural, they spam the hell out of Broadcast Centers and dominate culturally. While I have yet to lose a home planet to such attempts, I have seen the AI build 15+ Broadcast Centers at a single planet multiple times. It's unusual as the AI does not tend to build many logistic structures per planet period, and even then they tend to have a mix of trade/refinery/culture.

Update: March 23, 2012 | Revision: 849 Added new Gravity Well Generator models, reduced Avek supply usage, and edited some carrier stuff.

Update: March 22, 2012 | Revision: 848 Hello and welcome to the first post-overhaul update. Fixed targets per bank count on Tector, Rejuvinator SD, and MC90, bringing them in line to the standard 3 per bank, adjusted speeds for many NR and all Vong units. Vong units have a slightly lower speed than their galactic counterparts, but they have a faster rate of turn. All Vong units, bar the Avek and the Suuv, have a higher speed than they used to now. I also played around a bit with the Vong's frigateRoleTypes, tell me how the AI uses them!

That alone would not solve the problem.

Yes. You can also just select all six folders at once and then hit SVN Update. Forgot to mention, for whatever reason you might need to run SVN Checkout multiple times before it installs completely. If you get a lockup, try checking out again. If that does not work, go to the main folder and, assuming you can see hidden folders/files, delete the '.svn' folder and run SVN Checkout again. This way you will pick up from where you left off in a sense, as the already present/downloaded files will be versioned already. This was pretty much what I figured. Thanks for a lot of that goes to psychoak, his ability fixes helped stop buffs from piling up and sticking around endlessly. For example, in my testing, I had a medium or medium-large (forget which) map going on with the Imps/NR/Reps, an hour and forty minutes in Sins was only using a little under 900 MB of RAM.

Technically, the game itself has that. But it can't handle a mod the size of SoGE that well unfortunately.

Or in other words, what I've been doing to the SVN for the past number of days. If any of you have had the misfortune of attempting to update since the last "real" update, I apologize for all the weirdness that must have come about due to this. That being said, I believe everyone deserves an explanation of what I did and why. If you prefer to skip the explanation and just get the update, skip to the second to last paragraph of this post. Over the past few months, SoGE has been growing. Maturing into something more fully fledged, or however you wish to call it. Notably, it has acquired large amounts of new models and skins, such as when Novus Universum was added, and more recently with the arrival of Warb_Null. These models, being of high quality, demand large amounts of resources. Due to the nature of Sins' 32-bit engine, this leads to a CPU bottleneck and the game begins to lag very early on in a new game. Recently, it has also become unstable, and has begun mini-dumping, or flat out crashing, mid-game due to high resource usage. This is entirely unacceptable and was not something I would personally allow. To alleviate this issue, there are three possible solutions, at least to my knowledge. 1) Compress/lower the quality of existing textures. 2) Remove content. 3) Split up the races into stackable mini-mods, in a fashion similar to Sins of the Fallen and the abortive Sins of the Creator. I decided that, due to my refusal to decrease the quality of the mod, and flat out the impossibility of #2, to go with the third option. Now you might be wondering, "Well that sounds nice and all, but what did you actually do, and what does this mean to me?". It means a few things, first off is you will have to download more stuff. Second is, if you choose to fully utilize this, is to choose which races you wish to play with before you start the game. Of course you can choose to use them all, but this means the instability and crashes will continue, unless you feel like lowering settings, which may or may not help. To put it more visually, here is an example of an EnabledMods.txt with all races enabled. To play with only the CIS and Republic for example, you would remove the Alliance, NR, and Vong folders from that list, as they are not necessary, and changing the enabledModNameCount to 3. The Empire is integrated into the CORE of the mod, as their ship models are widely used in militias and by pirates, making the benefits of splitting them off minimal. As for what order you should stack the mods in, it does not matter, as long as CORE is on the bottom, and if you are playing multiplayer matches, that all players have the same order. I've done some slight tweaks to the SVN, namely some minor pirate tweaks, giving the Procurator a new ability, beefing up the Procurator's Front/Left/Right missile banks while dicing the Back banks, decreasing the power of the Miid Ro'ik (capital) and Cluster Ship's missiles, and some other little changes. As for installation, the instructions for the beta installation, here, are still valid. However, the url name, needs to be changed. The url name is the same as the folder names in the EnabledMods.txt I linked earlier (i.e. "SoGE Beta Ent - CORE", etc), and change the checkout directory names appropriately (I personally have my folders named "SoGE Beta Ent - CIS" and such). In addition, I have a neat little trick to reduce the amount you will have to download (please note, this is all optional, you can just ignore it all). Right-click your current SoGE beta folder, go TortoiseSVN -> Export then make/choose the folder you wish to use for SoGE Beta Ent - CORE and export to there. After, when you are using SVN Checkout, export to that new folder, even though there are files currently present. Once that is done, right-click the new folder, go TortoiseSVN -> Clean Up. Check "Delete unversioned files and folders", uncheck "Include externals" and hit okay. If you are really low on bandwidth/slow speed/etc, you can copy over each races' Meshes and Textures to their respective folders before you Clean Up the CORE folder. Then do the Checkout -> Clean Up trick on those folders.

I'm completely reworking the SVN. Basically tearing out it's guts and transforming SoGE into multiple, stackable, mods. This way, you can choose which races to load, and if you don't choose all of them, RAM usage can be decreased tons. Using 3 races or less easily halves Sins' RAM usage. You will still be able to use all six races at once however, it's your choice.

Eh, doesn't matter if it's on it's side, for now it works, and that's what counts. Plus, I can probably import it into MAX, flip it, then re-export it myself. Will try and slap in the Vong ship today or later this weekend.

Update: March 13, 2012 | Revision: 719 Fixed up the Malevolence's Ion Dispersal Cannon for good now. Next update will be something very notable, stay tuned!

Yeah, I used the Yorik-Trema as the Vong's freighter. I'll see if this one works, thanks. Ohhh, that sounds good. Very, very fitting. A DA texture isn't necessary, in reality the game works without them. In fact, several ships don't even have a DA texture, or some, like most Vong units, have filler texture, which is just a black block. The only textures the game needs, in order to not look like a total POS, is a CL and NM texture. Seeing as how the NM is made from the CL texture, this isn't difficult at all. Also, for the EaW-style GWG, I didn't flip that one, kept it straight. From what I hear, this becomes even more prominent in rebellion, due to it's re-hauled lighting system and shadowing; not having proper tangents might be the kiss of death for some models. On the flip side, Titans can have up to six weapons. Imagine the Executor with it's current loadout, plus proper point defense batteries and ion cannons. Edit: Game minidumps when I attempt to zoom into (aka. actually see) both GWGs and the Yorik-Trema. Doesn't have anything to do with meshpoints, this is really odd.

You got most of the Scout Ship's holes, and thanks to sending the .max version I was able to slap it in. There's only two holes in it now. Thanks for the Vong constructor! Both the galaxy well generators look great, but for some reason their spheres and disks aren't rendering properly. It's odd as they appear fine in XSI; picture here. And yes, the disk GWG is straight while the sphere one is flipped on it's side. I think it adds a nice flavor and variety to the two, or am I wrong? If you can get them exported properly from 3ds MAX, this would work great as well; as there's no positioning issues I can easily slap in the nulls in notepad. I'm also wondering, would it be possible to give those yellow arrows team colors? Edit: Seems the game doesn't like the Yorik-Trema either. As with the GWGs, if you can export it from MAX I can easily slap in the nulls.

Update: March 9, 2012 | Revision: 718 Fixed Vong Gunboat mesh (thanks Warb), changed a bunch of shadows (particularly noticeable in the Executor, World Ship, Viscount), fixed Point Blank map, added new starbase constructor mesh for all but Vong, fixed Ion Dispersal Cannon's firing animation, changed/added World Ship research item.

Welp, yeah I realize now that I didn't even try getting the one you sent to me to work. Unlike the Scout Ship, this one's centered and the weapon nulls from the old mesh work fine on this. I'll take a look at the Ro'ik Va'lh later today.

Can you send me the one you exported from MAX (or did you do that already)? I'll take a look at it and see what I can do with it. I'll make use of both versions of the gravity well generator, one will be for the CIS/Alliance, other for the Reps/Imps. Not sure which I'll use for the NR, that remains to be seen. Much thanks for these three models!

It's showing up fine on my end, all files present on the SVN. Are you sure it isn't textured?

Update: March 4, 2012 | Revision: 717 Added CIS starbase and hangar defense models, fixed some more shadows, and scaled up the XQ-1 hangar defense.

What Evaders said holds true. Go out and have fun! That's what modding is all about, even if I'm not a huge fan of that idea personally. ...Though now it makes me think about making EVERYTHING a capital ship, though that would basically make the AI BSOD as it would "lack" ships such as anti-fighter frigates and LRFs, which obviously would not work. Edit: Or, now that I think about it, you could leave things such as the Galofree and Lancer frigates, but make non-specialized ships, such as the Munificent and Strike Cruiser capital ships with fixedlevel0 abilities (aka. unlocked from the start). Assuming the AI has all the frigates it "needs" this could in fact work, even moreso if you give the AI a tweaked FORCEAID file, specifically making it spam capital ships. You're making me think too much.

You probably have, but have you checked the Gunboat for five-sided polygons? Seeing as it renders fine in XSI, this may be the issue, like the Harrier.