Lavo

I seem to have found the culprit; this was occurring due to it's m_weaponIndexForRange being set to 1, putting it to 0 fixed the range. I will investigate what m_weaponIndexForRange does further. Edit: Now I see what it means. Derp.

Update: May 2nd, 2011 Turbolaser Defenses now cost 0.3 tactical slots each. To put this in perspective, if you use 6 tactical slots for Turbolasers, you can have 20 of those turrets. I might put down the tactical slot usage to 0.2, which would allow for 30 turrets with 6 tactical slots, but I'll wait for some feedback first.

Update: May 1st, 2011 Did this while the forums were down, missile techs have been fixed up, the first damage and range missile techs are now for fighters/frigates, while the last two are for cruisers/capitals/structures. Penetration is still for both however This was done in order to bring these in line with the descriptions, balance, and in order to ensure that missiles don't get an obscene range increase. Of course, I'm open to change on the missile damage changes, and have been considering reverting that one in particular; as to bring the total amount of bonuses more in line with their Turbolaser counterparts.

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.

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? 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.

One thing I've noticed with the Lucrehulk, and some other frigates, is that while they are coded to have a 10 000 range, their actual range is significantly less than this. I have absolutely no idea why this is occurring, perhaps it is a model problem, yet it's bothering me so I feel like throwing it out here. Another thing is that I recently realized that the NR is the only faction ingame that lacks both a cruiser colonizer and a ship with Full Squadrons. To remedy this, I think that it might be a good idea to put in either the Endurance or Defender-class carriers to function in the same sort of role as the MC80 SFRS and Escort Carrier, respectfully. This can also replace the redundant Proficient cruiser. However, like with the Sentinel transport I brought up earlier (which is working great), it boils down to yet another model request, and while I'm fine with putting in filler models for now, I'm not sure if you all think that's the way to go.

Update: April 29th, 2011 Venators (all) can now fire missiles from it's sides. Miid Roik (capital) and Clustership's main guns' rate of fire has been changed to 7.5 seconds between shots; this is the standard for capital ships and is something I meant to do with the Vong rehaul, but missed. Upped the Torpedo Sphere's shielding to 20000 and Hull Restore Rate to 4. Imperial Dreadnaught has a shield restore rate of 10, on par with it's Republic brother and other non-ISD Imperial cruisers. Missile Defense now has a shield restore rate of 10, up from 8. Turbolaser Defense's cost has been reduced, shield restore rate doubled to 10, and firepower decreased a good deal (now it's at approx the same firepower as the Tector and Miid Roik's main guns). I have no idea when the switchover will be tbh. Pretty much when Evaders tells me to I'll switch or something... Though I'm a bit tied up now by school, so personally I'd prefer to wait until that's done before doing the switch (as I'm sure there will be a chunk of compatibility stuff to do >_<). More importantly perhaps is that the Vong are nearly well balanced. If the Vong are fixed up before the switch to Diplomacy, this would be ideal, as at that point I can worry far less about ship/faction balancing and focus on the Diplomacy tech tree, stations, tactical structures, plus ship, structure, and research costs (aka. increasing them).

Update: April 28th, 2011 You know those annoying little, useless defenses? They're going to be a pain in the $%& now. All but the Ion Cannon have been updated, as per the following: Turbolaser Defense: Range extended to 20 000, now uses up 0 tactical slots. So while it is still fairly weak, it can be massed in numbers. This also will help the backwater planets that have virtually no tactical slots; make turbolasers. In SW they're a galactic standard, and as they are by no means exemplary as defenses, I think this will be fine. Hangar Defense: Range for main guns and missiles extended to 20 000, secondary lasers extended to 12 000. Missile Defense: Now has a good deal more health. They also cost a bit more, but the trade-off is well in your favor. Golan Platform: Lasers now have 20 000 range. These are not all set in stone and are merely initial changes; as usual feedback is appreciated and encouraged. Edit: Also the Hardcell Transport is now a scout. In reality it was never used for combat; having been used as a transport. The AI also liked spamming these at times for some reason, much to it's detriment, and this will alleviate that.

The Vong if possible.

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.

What do you mean by a "heavy choke". As well, Novalith spamming is something to avoid, not duplicate. As it is, the Imperials have a great planet killer, the Torpedo Sphere. I realize many are probably thinking that it's a useless capital ship, but this is false. It's Planetary Shield Breach ability, when fully upgraded, can do 39 000 instant damage to a planet, provided the owner has done no Defense research and has no shield generators, and 29 900 provided the person has maxed out the proper defense techs and has no shield generators. As a bonus, when maxed out, the Study Target ability can deal 4005 damage directly to the hull of a ship, before armour bonuses are applied of course. To put this in perspective, the ISD Command, Providence, Lucrehulk, Venator, Procurator, Nebula SD, MC90, and MC80 have 4000 hull (and varying armour counts).

Update: April 27th, 2011 Fixed Ion Dispersal Cannon ability, I screwed it up earlier. Also changed the Vong's cruisers' shield restore rate again. Really do need feedback on the Vong.

Haven't noticed that personally, however the Viscount is somewhat lacking in terms of skinning, and thus odds are that engine issue is due to the Viscount being a work in progress.

Update: April 24th, 2011 Vong cruisers have had their shield replenish rate restored to 25; they had been reduced to 15 during the rehaul, but this turned out to be a mistake. Planetary Shield Generators now have shields. Star base upgrade times have been slashed, from 60 to 15, which means that a station can be fully upgraded (once built) in 2 minutes. Starbase constructors and the Vong's station have had their speed and acceleration upgraded. Vong capitals now have 5000 shielding. Minor change in the Deploy Star Base abilities, now cost 0 AntiMatter instead of 0 resources. The Vong constructor has a weapon that does 0 and doesn't fire anything; this was added in to get rid of an annoying error that showed up with ShowErrors on after it was constructed. The BAC can now bomb planets. All cruiser and capital weapons which were 12000 range are now 10000. The Procurator's missiles now have 10000 range. This was done as the 12000 appears to have either been in error or implemented really badly. For example, the ISD I (cruiser and capital) had 12000 range while the ISD II (cruiser and capital) had 10000 range. The main guns on the Mandator and Malevolance have been extended to 12000. Also the Mandator can now fire it's missile batteries from it's left and right sides now. Base Delta Zero (BDZ) and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) abilities have been boosted, peaking at 3000 damage and 360 population killed. The Planetary Shield Breach abilities now kill an additional 50 people per level. Cruisers and capitals now kill 4 times as many people per bomb. These planet bombing changes were implemented due to the addition of NU. The ISD has also had it's bombing a bit reworked, however it's DPS remains the same as before. The NR and Vong now have their own proper faction names and capital ship names. I really lack the former, having 2 for the NR and 3 for the Vong, so suggestions would be greatly appreciated. This update will not break old saved games, though the name changes will not show up in an old saved game. Edit: The Planetary Shield Breach abilities have had their planet damage values increased, capping at 28000 for the laser version and 39000 for the torpedo version.

Yay! More feedback. ^_^

TerranHome is back in, as is DesertHome. Both planetTypes are around. The orbitBodyType has been changed, but this is a non-issue, as only the former is used in maps. I dont seem to be able to find the PlanetDesertHome.entity file anywhere or the terran one ? Neither are listed in the galaxyscenariodef file either. I just updated via svn. As I said, the orbitBodyType, aka. entity file, may be different. I don't know how you aren't seeing them in the GalaxyScenDef file, they are both clearly there. Not only that, but PlanetTerranHome.entity is in the GameInfo file. The entity file for DesertHome is PlanetHighDesertHome.entity. Hope this helps.

TerranHome is back in, as is DesertHome. Both planetTypes are around. The orbitBodyType has been changed, but this is a non-issue, as only the former is used in maps.

Update: April 22nd, 2011 The Vong have been rehauled. All their ships now fire Vong-like projectiles and their weapons are now boosted by research techs. Vong cruisers have had their build time, supply cost, and cost reworked, among other things. Their ships are all extremely powerful, and cost a bit more than all the other factions on average, supply included. Pray that you never get an aggressive Vong AI. They will dominate unless you act hard and fast. Fixed the first capital ship being free on many maps, this should not have happened, and I forgot to check this when I added NU 1.2 to the SVN.

Hold on. Do you mean it's easy to take out the shield generator, or the planet itself?

Erm, they are back in the game. At least, the entity files are.

Is there a point to building them? Yeah, they exist mainly for planets that have a lot of tactical slots, and they make bombing the planet far more of a pain. Though I may up their damage reduction, in an effort to make them more useful. Thoughts?

That was from Sins Plus, not Nova's planet mod, it was a planet characteristic. Certainly, it's possible to make a Death Star tactical structure similar to the Novalith that does 1 million damage and makes the planet uncolonizable for an indefinite amount of time, effectively destroying it, however this would severely unbalance the mod. In addition, there's the fact that there is no way to "limit" the amount of Death Stars a player has, nor display a notification that player X is building one. The reason the Death Star isn't added to the mod isn't due to feasibility, it's due to balance and gameplay, and the Death Star simply does not fit in SoGE structure and style, as Evaders noted.

This is due to the hardcoded limits in the game. You cannot "stop" bombardment, planetary shields work by reducing the damage taken from bombardment, akin to the techs that reduce bombardment damage.

Yeah, the version that was on SoGE until recently was from before the rendering overhaul.

There really isn't an equivalent to the yammosk in Sins, except possibly fleet coordination, aka. boost, abilities, and those aren't interruptable. The dovin bassals can, and are, taken into account via high shield mitigation. And yes, I do know they're supposed to be extremely powerful, and they will be, it's more that their current state is rather broken. Fleet coordination is about what I figured would be the best bet, and it is interruptible, kill the ship lol. With the exception of the end of Star by Star to The Unifying Force that was the only way to defeat their coordination, destroying the cruiser containing it. In terms of a "jammer" Ion cannon disabling a ships abilities would be the closest equivalent. Perhaps make it a cap ship ability? Increased stats that make them extremely tough. Would make it an interesting faction to play in that your capital ship would become extremely centerpiece to your strategy. Keep it safe and you enjoy a strong advantage, lose it and you become a lot weaker. One of the Vong capitals already have a Fleet Coordination ability. While canon is important... This is one of the issues where it's bound to diverge for balance, making capitals have an excessive Fleet Coordinate, or supercapital level one, would break the game, and the Vong are indeed tough as balls with their strong weaponry and massive shield mitigation. Ion cannons would not work in disabling passive abilities, due to how Sins works.