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 25)
53 PagesFirst 23 24 25 26 27  Last
on May 21, 2009

A forge world wouldn't have any water bodies left on the planet. Also, it couldn't be a hive world because Hive worlds are not globally populated, population is only in the hives which are enormous spiral fortress-cities. I would picture that a sins desert planet with some hives on it would be a good hive world. That planet there, that you made thrawn, as it is now is probably a pretty good urban/civilised world.

on May 21, 2009

 

Admiral_Kiernyc
A forge world wouldn't have any water bodies left on the planet. Also, it couldn't be a hive world because Hive worlds are not globally populated, population is only in the hives which are enormous spiral fortress-cities. I would picture that a sins desert planet with some hives on it would be a good hive world. That planet there, that you made thrawn, as it is now is probably a pretty good urban/civilised world.

 

That's true in 999/1000 cases. Notable worlds like Terra and Hydraphur are completely covered in hives and layered upon layered. IMO, the players homeworld should be as such. These planets would be some of the most productive (commerce-wise) in the game.

 

on May 21, 2009

i mean if were talkign about holy terra, an area the size of a continet is the imperial palice

on May 21, 2009

ja_147
i mean if were talkign about holy terra, an area the size of a continet is the imperial palice

 

Aye, and another continent is taken by the Administratum. It's just one big archive filled with billions of scribes

on May 22, 2009

while the Ad Mech build on every bit of land possible they often build both up and down so there are giant underground complexes

sometimes these complexes were built above ground and have since been burried under mounds of ferrous sand and look like desert worlds with a few small structures and chimneys coming out of the ground.

either way there wouldent be much in the way of water as they would probbly use it all up or just polute the crap out of it

on May 22, 2009

got a screenie album together where I can easily upload new screenshots when they get taken.

 

http://s117.photobucket.com/albums/o42/xthetenth/bfg%20mod/

 

work is going well on the entrenchment release, going to have the Imperial navy up to the older version's standards and a nice selection of new stuff.

on May 23, 2009

filthy, poluted over croved, worlds , that we all gie our right arm to live on

mind you saying that there is the other end of the spectrum, namly deathworlds which coudl be entire planet covered in jungle, forest, water, volcanos genrally any thing that will try to kill you in 2 seconds flat.

on May 23, 2009

I'm sure that someone has mentioned this on here, and I've read a bit of this thread, but I haven't been all the way through yet, but this beta also works on 1.16, not just 1.1 as the original page where you can dl.  Having never played the table-top, I thoroughly enjoy this mod. 

The only thing is that the battleships/cap ships arrive faster to a battle than do the escorts, which is something I noticed occurs in vanilla and entrenchment, so it's prolly just settings from that.

I'm glad that this mod is going forward, cuz I like it, and I want to see it a little more fleshed out.

 

Yayness!

on May 23, 2009

Well we're currently working on an entrenchment 1.12 version, but it's very good to hear that the currently available version works with sins 1.16. Thanks.

 

I'll try to work on that issue with the big ships arriving in battle, it may be a screwup I made with acceleration rates. If so, I'll fix it. If not, who knows.

 

EDIT: well, the battleships seem to have considerably less acceleration than cruisers or frigates, so I don't think that's it. However the speeds were off, so I fixed those, and that may help. Anyway, the new version's going well, got a good bit of new features added already, planet types are next. I don't think the research tree will make it into the next version, though, I think it'll be in the release after the next one.

2ND EDIT: Does anybody know a way, though planet bonus or ability to make a planet reduce ships' build times in its gravity well? I'm feeling rather stupid after getting my wisdom teeth yanked and needing medicine for the pain, so not having to go hunting for that to make forge worlds work properly would be a great help. Thanks.

on May 24, 2009

I have been following this mod for a long while, and I must say I am impressed with the quality of this mod, if not the pace at which it is being released. To that end, I am offering my services as a coder to this mod.

on May 24, 2009

VoidDragoPhoenix
I have been following this mod for a long while, and I must say I am impressed with the quality of this mod, if not the pace at which it is being released. To that end, I am offering my services as a coder to this mod.

 

While I have no skills like that, I can offer my services in the way of WH40K lore, having read nearly all the books

on May 24, 2009

I have been following this mod for a long while, and I must say I am impressed with the quality of this mod, if not the pace at which it is being released. To that end, I am offering my services as a coder to this mod.

Well, right now the coding end of things is under control, we're waiting for models mostly (I'm out of college now, so I've been working rather long on coding and it's shaping up well). However, there are a few problematic things that we'd love to see done soon that I'd love to have some help on. It's mostly a few creative ability modding problems that may or may not be solvable. If you'd like to help, I'd be happy to explain them in more depth, but know before you volunteer that we're back on track mostly, and will have a new release or two out soon, mostly dependent on model production. However, if you could help me figure out how to get the forge world bonus to ship production speed in its grav well working, that'd be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you for your offer and continued interest, it's nice to know our work's appreciated, it's made working while recovering from getting my wisdom teeth a rather pleasant way to pass my time. I'll try to get a timescale for the next release, but it really depends on how long the models we want to put in it take. (The new ones we have already are real nice, and getting the rest is worth the wait IMO).

 

Fluff nuts are always welcome, we're trying to stay true to the lore wherever possible, and it's always nice to have more people to spot mistakes. I hope you all enjoy what we have right now and what we will soon release.

 

UPDATE: got the vast majority of 40k planet types that I'm adding for now added, enough that all the sins inhabitable planets other than asteroids are replaced now, so the galaxy itself is going to look a lot different. However, in an effort to capture the diverse types of worlds that get lumped together under various categories in 40k (for example ice, desert and lush deathworlds), there are some overlaps. However, all the variety looks pretty and feels warhammery enough that I want it to stay. So, what would you all say to replacing the zoomed out planet icons with actual icons, like a skull for death worlds, an admech seal for forge worlds, docks for fleet bases (when those get added) and so on? They won't appear immediately, but I want to plan that kind of thing for when I have the time to do them. Does that sound like a good way of having both diverse planet types and maintaining ease of use for the UI?

on May 25, 2009

I am glad to be of service. I will look into the forge world problem tommorrow, as tonight I am tired from work.

 

I like your idea for icons and suggest a generic hive spire (think necromunda) for hive worlds, and the imperial eagle instead of a dock for fleet bases

on May 25, 2009

In Uzi's Sin's Plus Planets package, the Industrial planet type gave a 100% increase on ship build time.  If that is the case and the little bit I've played around with modding Sins, should you not be able to alter the rate on your forge world settings to reflect the same? 

I'm not sure what the settings look like for an Industrial and what you might actually be changing in ways of it's abilities, but that is where I would look.

 

on May 25, 2009

VoidDragoPhoenix
I am glad to be of service. I will look into the forge world problem tommorrow, as tonight I am tired from work.

Awesome, I'm glad to have any help, because I'm proving rather dazed and having a hard time finding things.

 

I like your idea for icons and suggest a generic hive spire (think necromunda) for hive worlds, and the imperial eagle instead of a dock for fleet bases

Good idea, thanks, I'm not entirely sure when I'll be able to do the icons, but I've got them planned now, and that idea is definitely in.

 

In Uzi's Sin's Plus Planets package, the Industrial planet type gave a 100% increase on ship build time. If that is the case and the little bit I've played around with modding Sins, should you not be able to alter the rate on your forge world settings to reflect the same?

Ahh, I didn't notice that, I didn't get much time to play with sins plus when I wasn't just making planets. Thanks for pointing that one out. The other thing I want to do is make fleet bases (once I get those in, they're one of the very few planet types not in yet, since they're mosly for larger battles) able to have some sort of passive repair ability to help it work as a regrouping area. But they aren't a huge deal right now.

53 PagesFirst 23 24 25 26 27  Last