A collection of developer journals for the Battlefleet Gothic mod for Sins of a Solar Empire.
Bringing the Warhammer 40k universe to Sins
Published on December 8, 2008 By xthetenth In Sins Modding

The Battlefleet Gothic mod is now compatible with Entrenchment 1.041 as of 1/17/10, and has a new version (1.30) out as of 1/17/10


This mod contains the Imperial navy in a fully modelled state, and Chaos, the Tau and the Orks in a proxied state.

 

BE WARNED: THIS MOD IS STILL RATHER BETA AND IS MISSING MANY FEATURES, INCLUDING:

-A research tree (unlocks, colonization, fleet supply, cap ship crews and long range jumps are quite literally all that's there (well, there's a missile tech, but it doesn't do much, and you WILL be able to get late game ships early)

-GUI elements. some 2D icons aren't done yet, and the ones we have are a bit odd. They will be fixed eventually.

Things that we know about (IE we know about it and it's odd, but it's either a design decision which will be explained or something not implemented):

-Counter description text. It's wildly off and somewhat arbitrary, but the ship descriptions are pretty good and should give the player a decent idea of what to expect, and I'll write more on them on our forum (link here).

-Shield Mitigation. It's gone, but it says it's at 15%. Trust me, it's gone.

-The Emperor Battleship. As a compromise on its heavy dorsal armament that can be fired to either broadside, we made it have the strength of the dorsals and a broadside point forward, and slightly stronger broadsides. We think it works pretty well, but please tell us what you think.

-Chaos ships and tau ships in the Additional Races Compendium are odd. The chaos prow weapons are locked to fire left, so they can broadside well to one side without turning into brawlers and tau weapons are locked forwards so they can concentrate fire, but they lost their ability to fire at half strenth to the sides because multi-arc weapons are impossible in sins as far as I know.

-No stock sins races. GW wouldn't let us include them, and they have a very different gameplay mechanic anyway, and need a very different setup for damage types, much to my chagrin, seeing as I want to know how it'd end up .

 

Okay, now that that's out of the way, we can get to the fun stuff. The ships are working great. If you know the tabletop game you'll know the key things that I need to tell everybody else so they understand the game.

-Ships turn and fire SLOWLY. You need to think ahead, and you can fit in a lot of micro if you know what you're doing. This is intentional.

-Shields recharge VERY VERY VERY VERY FAST. This is a legacy of it being a tabletop game where focusing fire is a big achievement. Shields will fully recharge in the time it takes for you to fire a second salvo of your weapons. Firepower supremacy is big here, and so is using your weapons to their utmost. However, hulls repair rather slowly, so protect them.

-Ships will go up like popcorn, even caps if your fleets get big enough. A fully experienced cap has quite a bit of damage absorbing ability, but it isn't even close to invincible. They're about twice as valuable as a cruiser, and if you're careful, can absorb 3 times as much damage easily. It's a great bargain, but they will die, don't get attached to them.

-Oh right, cruisers. There are cruisers in this game, and frigates are now fragile scouts and flankers. Frigates are cheap, expendable, and surprisingly dangerous in numbers. Cruisers are a lot bigger, much tougher, and carry a good bit more firepower, but a really big price tag. Battleships come in on top, and are really durable, and host a lot of long ranged firepower.

-The weapons are different too. Weapons batteries and Lances are your basic weapons. Lances are focused beams of energy that do best against escorts (accuracy) and armored ships (penetration power, but with just the imperials that isn't that big an issue). Weapons batteries are massed guns that do best against battleships because they can actually be expected to hit a lot. They aren't that different, and the range and strength of the guns means more than their type. Torpedoes are great. They punch through shields 100% of the time, but tend to drop off against bigger targets, which boast the point defense turrets to shoot most of them down. They make great escort killers, and are your best weapon in smaller fights.

-Attack Craft (fighters and bombers) are also very different, they come in squadrons abstracted to one ship, and are much more fragile. They're also much more dangerous. They, like torpedoes pierce shields and can do a lot of damage, especially against smaller ships (including cruisers, battleships are nasty to them though). However, every ship has turrets that can kill them, but if they stagger their waves, they can hit home very hard. They also replenish quite fast until their parent ship runs out of antimatter, so they're really quite good. Fighters are quite capable at interception duties, if you have more fighters than the enemy, your bombers will be able to strike enemy ships while your ships are safe from enemies.

 

Please note!

-Planet capturing is quite different from in standard sins. The transport is your one stop shop for planetary warfare and colonization. They land troops instead of bombarding. The whole idea is a little bitcomplicated, and I encourage anybody who's interested to read the thread I'll post on our forum shortly. The short version is that you build transports, use their bombardment ability to pound your enemies into dust, and then return them to the munitorum depots (they have the advent antimatter recharger icon for now, shouldn't be hard to find on the screen) to refill. It should especially suit the Imperium's style of defend and counterattack.

 

Now that you know the basics of the game, you can download the mod here:

DOWNLOAD (7ZIP, 109 MB) (This should work properly but I've been having lots of problems with it, if not, please tell me so I can remove the link while I fix it. )

7zip or winrar both can open 7zip files, and both are available for free, and much smaller than 50 MB.

DOWNLOAD (ZIP, 162.63 MB)

And please visit our forum at Modcraft if you want to learn more about the mod and what to expect, volunteer or give detailed feedback:

OUR FORUM

 

Dev Journals: These guides will help you know what to expect in the future and understand the current state of the gameplay.

Dev Journal 1: Ships of the Imperium It explains all the imperial ships and their fleet's way of fighting. Should be useful.

Dev Journal 2: Fleet tactics of the Imperium It focuses on the use of the Imperial ships in a fleet. Definitely good food for thought, may apply more to tabletop than the mod, I need to test the theories some before I fully endorse them.

Gratuitous screenies:

Gothic class cruiser pummeling a dictator class cruiser

Gothic class cruisers pummeling a Dictator class cruiser with lances and torpedoes

 

Retribution class Battleship firing at an enemy cruiser

Retribution class battleship firing its prow lances and torpedoes at an enemy cruiser.

Finally, the trailer for the Imperium (thanks again, Thrawn!)

 


Comments (Page 19)
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on Feb 08, 2009

no, they're metal as well. i use them as Inquisitorial Stormtroopers for my Grey Knights army.

on Feb 08, 2009

Do I have to buy more to get 10 without needing flamers, because I really don't want flamers (grenade launchers are fine, makes 'em look like swat teams. also, anybody more up on their GW goddip than I able to confirm whether the guard codex I hear things about is coming out? (I almost hope not, I really don't want special characters to decide your special rules, part of my imperial guard strategy is being able to tell my opponent the most important thing on the table to me is a junior officer, and there's nothing to focus fire on).

 

Dilemma: I'm trying to design a guard army, and I've learned the hard way there isn't enough cover out there to keep two heavy weapons platoons safe, so I'm sticking the heavy weapons in my infantry squads. So I have a bunch of heavy weapons to parcel out to my guys, and I'm thinking about giving my hq squads (junior officers, no big deal) the lascannons so fewer lasgun shots get wasted. Is this a good idea or is meatshielding them in a ten man squad a better idea even though it wastes about 12 lasgun shots all told. I'm thinking giving my infantry AT squads of 10 missile launchers.

 

Wow, that's a lot of OT. In other news we're doing well, but whenever I try to work I keep thinking about this guard army I want to make. Could you do me a favor and propose various types of planets for when I stop being distracted and get to work?

on Feb 09, 2009

Obviosly:

Forge World

Holy Meca

Craft World

Just for the hell of it, I would include Metropolis worlds, and make a map with only one of them and call it Holy Earth.

Some Kind of Backwater Planets

ect (in other words, I don't know what else.

on Feb 09, 2009

okay, sorry, I forgot to include what I already have (I'm generally following the _________ world trope to the letter)

(As you'll gather, danman's been extremely generous enough to let us use the sins plus meshes, so that'll help us get the planets looking good. Thanks!)


Forge World:

Resources: None, they're all long gone
Population: Medium
Appearance: Sins plus urban/industrial
Extras: some means of boosting production, high logistics slots for now.

Bastion World:

Resources: Not many (1 asteroid each or so)
Population: lowish
Appearance: Sins plus industrial/Relic
Extras: high infrastructure, very high tactical slots, perfect for bottlenecks

Agri World (may not appear for a while):

Resources: pretty good (like 2-4 asteroids)
Population: Medium
Appearance: Sins plus paradise/Stock terran
Extras: Empirewide boost to population/credit production

Mining world:

Resources: good-excellent (like 4-6 asteroids)
Population: low
Appearance: Stock Volcanic/Sins Plus Barren
Extras: nothing special here, just a lot of resources

Deathworld:

Resources: fairly good (2-3)
Population: low
Appearance: Stock Ice/Volcanic(?)/Desert/Sins Plus Swamp/Forest
Extras: Huge infrastructure, takes a lot to capture one

Hive world:

Resources: low (1-2)
Population: frikkin 'uge
Appearance: Sins Plus Urban
Extras: an above average infrastructure (See armageddon)


Inhabited world:
Resources: medium (2-3)
Population: medium
Appearance: Stock terran/Sins plus savannah/forest/old naval base
Extras: nothing, just bland

Asteroid research facility (really rare):
Resources: none
Population: none (no taxes levied)
Appearance: Stock asteroid
Extras: research bonus, infinitesimal infrastructure

on Feb 09, 2009

xthetenth
okay, sorry, I forgot to include what I already have (I'm generally following the _________ world trope to the letter)

(As you'll gather, danman's been extremely generous enough to let us use the sins plus meshes, so that'll help us get the planets looking good. Thanks!)


Forge World:

Resources: None, they're all long gone
Population: Medium
Appearance: Sins plus urban/industrial
Extras: some means of boosting production, high logistics slots for now.

 

You could borrow the ability it already has of doubling ship production speeds.  Or if that isn't sufficient for a Forge World you could triple or even quadtuple it.  That would defintely make them worth fighting for.  Also, gas giants could be implemented somehow since they have lots of hydrogen in them and shipboard fusion reactors need that for fuel.

 

P.S.  Can't wait for proper tech trees.  Chaos will not be denied Chaos technology!

on Feb 10, 2009

It would be cool if the Necrons were included, as I love playing as the Necrons in both PC game and in the table-top game.

on Feb 10, 2009

Mod isn't done yet

on Feb 11, 2009

Hi there all, Firstly id like to say , whata wonderful job you are doing, ive waited year for a bfg game. Second id liek to check with you that i am up to date with my versions of this mod. i have 1.13 installed and the Gothic_Sins_beta_0.2.7z installed is this the latest version of mod as i only able to use imperial fleets and alot of the ships arnt textured and some building are just cubes. If there is a more up to date version could you post a link to it. If not then ill wait and shut up and let imperial feet take imperial fleet.

on Feb 12, 2009

yeah, that's the newest version. next release will have all ships textured and some more meshs.

right now these ships are textured:

Lunar cruiser

Tyrant cruiser

Overlord battlecruiser

Mars battlecruiser

 

all escorts (transport has no mesh or texture)

 

All buildings and capital ships are untextured.

on Feb 13, 2009

New fighter models, very reminiscent of Homeworld imo And the enormously powerful Ramilies (WIP texture)

on Feb 13, 2009

A RAMILIES!?!?!?!?! *faints

on Feb 13, 2009

WOOT! Ramilies in the next release?

on Feb 13, 2009

 

on Feb 13, 2009

Fighters look rad.

 

Textures are great (though will undoubtedly be greater!).

 

Models are fantastic.

 

Can't wait for release!

on Feb 14, 2009

 Great stuff guys, ive been playing this mod and game fora few days now. i pruly brought this game for thsi mod btw. i cant wait till he next add on, you dont mind thoug if i give you feedback on things i find or suggestiong of improvment do you . i dont want to tead on ya toes. I presume you guy have got a idea on what the space structures building are goan look like ,(realy thay can look like anythign as you dont see many sapce structures in 40k art work. I woudl say guy. i woudl say get the imperial fleet doen and the chaos and you got your self a winner. see look there i go treading on toes. lol. keep up the good work guys ive been telling so many peps about this mod there getting excited.

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