Lavo

Yeah, you should. That's what I had in mind when I said to post up a link, it would help a good deal of people.

Update: July 16th, 2011 Sentinel now has a model, a huge kudos and thanks goes out to Nome3D for it! It also has a full set of icons forthcoming, also made by Nome3D, just need to put them in. Hardcell max mitigation reduced to 50% from 80, Vong Gunboat's increased to 70%, and Alliance capital ship's Backup Shield TimeElapsed reduced to 10/15/20 from 20/25/30. The latter of these is really in testing; it is most certainly not set in stone and is something I'd like to get feedback on. The previous levels made Alliance capital ships virtually indestructible at higher levels.

Might I suggest posting a link to Large Address Aware instead? Modding the EXE, or posting it, isn't the most legal thing in the world. I do however already have a Large Address Aware version of Ent, which might explain why I'm not getting minidumps like MrPhildevil is.

*Facepalm* I don't get why Sins isn't giving me errors if that's the case, fixed however, for real this time.

Woah! Did I do that? I didn't even realize it did that lol... I thought it only worked for your units... wow. In theory it should work for enemy units, judging by the buff code, though in practice it only effects your units. In fact, it doesn't even work for allied ships, even though they are counted as "Friendly" by the Sins AI.

Not only does he provide models, but icons too? Now that's simply epic. I'll have these up by 11 PM EST, if all goes well (can only get on late Saturdays).

Update: July 13th, 2011 This is the latest update, posting for reference due to the server crash.

That red color isn't a glitch; some suns have odd lighting. Disable skyboxes, should fix that. Also by Coruscant, what planet type do you mean? Found it.

Update: June 21st, 2011 Custom maps have been fixed and now load properly. Issue with the Imperial Torpedo Sphere has been fixed. Edit: Fix for regular Ecumen planets added.

Eventually move to Diplomacy, and more importantly, Rebellion.

I really wish I could answer this question. I have absolutely no experience when it comes to models and skins, let alone the fact that I didn't make this part of the mod. The only one who can answer this is Nova, or someone who can "read" the various models in NU. Diplomacy has had more resource optimization than Sins. I personally do not believe that Diplomacy will notably increase or decrease RAM usage in Sins. I might be wrong however. I've heard that Rebellion will have far more; though that's awhile off.

Hold on, you're getting a minidump ingame? And atop that often? I haven't heard, nor personally experienced, much of this. Please, do give more details if you can, I want to investigate this right away. This might seem odd, but try disabling the tactical grid and skyboxes; the latter is known to create some issues at times. I've personally played Huge random maps, albeit later on in the game with a ton of lag, fine.

Can you tell me specifically which maps are giving you problems? It's known that some maps are, unfortunately, broken at the moment.

For the Torp. Sphere you also need the missile penetration tech (level 6) in order to build it for some reason. ...Come to think of it that's like forcing the Malevolance to require Heavy Ion Cannon research done before building it. I'll fix this.

Unless anyone has any ideas, there aren't really any areas to trim RAM usage... The planets are what's killing the RAM; I've integrated the few TSOP elements I could into the mod (very few, the nice plus was trade/refinery ships).

This is quite good to see. I'm glad to see some improvement... I'll look to implementing versions for the larger maps. It is indeed possible to decrease the odds/number of non-colonizables in smaller maps; would be as simple as making a new GalaxyScenDef grouping and putting that in place of the current groups in the map. For the placement, this was somewhat of a necessity; it's the only way for me to realistically "force" the rest of the map to not be atop the new Col 1-3 colonizables.

Your quad core isn't good enough for Sins. Sins can only use one core, that's due to how the engine is. Unless you get an uber powerful single core, Sins will never run to it's full potential, which will basically never happen. NU has indeed lead to a decrease in performance; I noticed this after the shift from S+ to NU. It's a shame that the galaxy test run I asked you to do didn't do that much... This would mean that a planet's gravity well size doesn't make much of a difference. Or, the Large planets, as they are 40k larger than the standard planet size, slowed down the game as well and thus killed the test. More likely it's the former.

Added the buffer to one map as mentioned here; requesting some trial runs if possible.

Update: June 17th, 2011 Added a less strenuous backdrop for the main menu, did some minor string work, and attempted another fix to the AI's lack of expansion. This fix works by attempted to create a sort of "buffer" between a player's homeworld and the general slew of the map, with planets that require no research or the Ice colonization tech (level 2). Unfortunately, it is not entirely possible to create a true buffer; one can spawn right next to an Industrial planet along with others, or have two planets connected to you, but one is a dead end and the other leads to a Shipyard, to give some examples. So far this has only been implemented on the standard Medium Random map. I'm requesting testing on this, as I'm not sure if this fix helps much, if it all. It may be the secret to getting the AI to work, or it might be a total waste of time.

This is absolutely normal; I've experienced flat out freezes versus partial ones when loading a Sins game on my netbook, whether it be SoGE or vanilla. I've added a less strenuous backdrop for the main menu, tell me if it helps.

Seeing as how 80%+ of minidumps are caused by RAM issues, and in accordance with a theory on NU's lag that I developed earlier, I'm going to try and reduce the RAM eaten up by the galaxy backdrop of the main menu... While it might not help much, it's the only thing I can do, as I really have no idea what causes this minidump other than the game going "FFFFFF- TOO MANY PLANETS DDDD:" and crashing.

Nope, it had to do with the SWR servers.

I haven't been getting minidumps like that. The latest revision pretty much destroyed any save games it seems, likely due to the tech changes, you probably have but, has this been happening even with new games? I really have no idea how it's minidumping ingame, as I haven't suffered from these other than during testing things (like attempted fighter shielding) which I'm sure will minidump. The loading screen always freezes during loading; this is how Sins loads a game, as stupid as this may sound.

Nah, this does wonders, and gives me exactly what I need. And the buffer idea is yours really; it's the best way to implement the core suggestion of yours. I'll make the maps sometime today; will likely get the Medium/Medium Large (Single) maps up first.

These are really good points. 1) While the civilian research does not surprise me, the military research absolutely baffles me. I noticed that the AI liked to research both trees after the implantation of NU, even though the AI did not do such military research to extent that it does so now, with a virtually identical military tech tree. 2) There isn't a way to prioritize which research structure the AI builds, nor what it researches. I am hesitant to lower the tech requirement of volcanic/bureaucratic planets,, as they are intentionally not easy to get. However, your suggest to make Tech 4/Volcanic planets appear further away from the outer sector of a map, even if just for a small amount of planets, is a very solid and feasible suggestion for Random maps. It wouldn't be too hard to make a planet grouping which only includes Terran/Desert/Ice/Asteroid type planets and sandwich that between the regular random groups and the extraPlanetGroup (aka. the planets that are ALWAYS near your starting world), which would allow for a small buffer that will allow for a decent start and more logistic slots. The Sins AI has indeed been created with the idea of "expand, expand, expand" no matter what. A small buffer would likely allow for a feasible, yet light, early expansion which would pave the way to higher tech planets. Might I ask for the Random map(s) you used, did you start with extra planets, or not?