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 29)
53 PagesFirst 27 28 29 30 31  Last
on Jul 03, 2009

Yeah those are mine in Gothicomp. Ive been meaning to finish up my Chaos fleet to submit this year.... but the combination of it being yr 12 and a new zealand ski trip in 4 days makes it hard =P

 

Im great thanks. So did you want me to make a trailer (Once I have entrentchment)?

 

Also, last I remember, you guys were having trouble finding someone to do textures, who did you find in the end? They look great BTW =]

on Jul 04, 2009

Yeah those are mine in Gothicomp. Ive been meaning to finish up my Chaos fleet to submit this year.... but the combination of it being yr 12 and a new zealand ski trip in 4 days makes it hard =P

I'm trying to get a chaos cruiser together for that, but other than the sweet bridge which isn't a particularly impressive conversion as gothicomp conversions go most of what makes it good is metallic gold and a deep blue enamel paint, and neither can stand up to really good detail work or non metallic metal painting. Plus, I'm not quite sure how to paint it. If I can get a focused picture of it, I will post it though. It does look rather nice even if it is a simple scheme (thousand sons if you haven't guessed yet).

So did you want me to make a trailer (Once I have entrentchment)?

I think thrawn's already volunteered to clean up/redo the one he's made once he gets back from vacation, but there may be a few things that could use videos.... (cough ramilies cough) and if you want to do them that'd be great.

Also, last I remember, you guys were having trouble finding someone to do textures, who did you find in the end? They look great BTW =]

Actually inert. He's about as good at bootleg skinning as he is modeling, but he's not much of a fan.

 

Anyway, I'm getting held up on the patch, but it'll turn out to be a lot better than it was going to be, so please bear with me.

on Jul 04, 2009

Heres a bit of a WIP of my Chaos fleet (This is only a couple of the ships, but the scheme is the same throughout the fleet)

 

 

Just gotta do all the metalics and details, but otherwise the main colours are there.

 

 Got any shots of yours so far?

 

(Soz for thread hiijacking lol)

on Jul 04, 2009

I don't have a good enough camera, but I do have some incredibly blurry shots of the bridge conversion here: http://s117.photobucket.com/albums/o42/xthetenth/bfg%20ships/

The painting isn't nearly done on that one and I'd made some mistakes with the gold. It's a very simple scheme, though, the blue provides a nice varied base for the gold detail. Looks sharp, easy to paint (relatively, can't get the gold to stick if I drybrush), but not nearly as technically advanced as yours. My skills are more in nifty and easyish conversions anyway, although that only happens to my chaos ships.

 

Now that I get to do an update that gets attention without double posting, might as well show off one of the (good) things that's causing the delay in the patch:

Ramilies Class Star Fort

Now all we need to do is make her work as well as we can and she'll be ready for initial testing. Looks good though, and the emitters are fine. Be warned, you may need to take a free upgrade or two once you've set it up. Not sure about that.

on Jul 04, 2009

Ok this may've been answered before but I really dont want to read through 17 pages of stuiff to look for it, usually I would but I'm tired. Sorry. I really want to play this mod but its not installing right. I copied the mod path exactally as it said in the entrechment mod bit. C:\Users\My Name\Local\AppData\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods-Entrenchment v1.03 I extract it to there and then I open up the game and nothing. I can't figure out what the problem is, and any help would be really appreciated because this mod looks and sounds amazing so far. I have vista in case that matters.

on Jul 05, 2009

Have you enabled the mod in Entrenchment?

on Jul 05, 2009

Cause I'm just "that" stupid. No I figured out the issue. The file path was supposed to go AppData\Local not the other way around. now it works, btw dont use the black color scheme on your ships they're really friggin hard to see lol. Great mod so far if this is the beta I can't wait to see some more realeases. two thumbs up.

on Jul 05, 2009

Back from Dublin. I got some models at the Gamesworkshop there (yay). I got an assault terminator squad, the new Vanguards, a tactical squad and some devastators. I'll try to get a better trailer out by next week, I'll wait to start it until the next patch. And I say try to get it out by next week because I might be too distracted by my new models

on Jul 05, 2009

You know I'm gonna have to envy you your assault termies' 3+ invulnerable save, right? My poor outdated templars don't get that, they get the old 4+ in melee or whatever it is. Crusader squads are still awesome though  . Thanks for the trailer offer, there should be plenty of stuff to work with in the mod.

 

LordHood, you're right, I really need to brighten the textures a bit, it's just a bit hard doing it by hand in photoshop, editing the alpha channel is nearly impossible in elements which is what I have. I'll probably end up getting gimp, works a lot better for that even though I hate the interface. I will brighten the textures though, I got way too familiar with how much too dark they can get when I was taking some screenies.

 

I may even get the nova cannon working right. The way it's likely to work it'll be a pair of nested area of effect damage abilities with damage depending on whether I try to make scatter work somehow or just use mathfleet gothic on it.

One major thing is that I'm going to be reworking the damage types and weapon strengths so that the weapons strength is approximately the damage it'll do to a generic opponent, rather than 2 (lances) or 6 (WBs) times that. That should make all ships turn the proper side to enemies.

on Jul 05, 2009

hey, BFG team, I had a couple of things I'd like to ask/point out

1. is it just me, or do most of the Imperial Navy cruisers look alike?

2. is it legal (according to GW copyrights), and do I have your permission to heavily modify and then use the ship/strikecraft models, and only those models, in my mod (search 'The Legions Mod', for more info)?

3. where's the patch for the mod? (you said it'd be coming out in a couple of days on July 3, today's the 5th)

on Jul 05, 2009

No, you can't use any of GW's IP with any other IP, except your own, and your IP has to fit with the framework of any of GW's IP.

on Jul 05, 2009

thanks for that info SpardaSon21, though I think having an alien race that uses a lot of advanced technology and is expansionist, and also prefers to settle things peacefully (pretty much the GW's Tau), it wouldn't be copyright infringement, as that's just an idea.

also, to clarify reply #430, question #2, the search item is for the Sins forums.

on Jul 05, 2009

You can do a Tau ripoff, you just can't have them use Tau ships.  They can be similar in design to Tau ships, they just can't be Tau ships.  I think that modifying some of GW's IP (such as spaceship designs) violates their IP.  It would be best to just build them from scratch.

on Jul 05, 2009

3. where's the patch for the mod? (you said it'd be coming out in a couple of days on July 3, today's the 5th)

I'm a lying bastard who got dragged on a vacation to a place with terrible internet, so I decided to make up for it with gratuitous feature creep to pass the time. For example, the ramilies star fort is now going to be in the patch in an initial form. Sorry, but it'll be better in the long run. I'm also getting the time to try to make nova cannons and turrets work better and for the modeller to make the defense models, so I think it's worth it. Plus, I'm not uploading a quarter gigabyte on flaky, slow internet, which would drive me insane, so that's another benefit . It should be sometime this week, though, as the features I've started on (and really want to finish) get done.

on Jul 05, 2009

thanks for the update xthetenth, I totally understand where your coming from with that, and that would probably drive me insane as well (considering a 256 MB file uploading really slow (say 25.6 kb/s) will likely take days LOL)

didn't know if this is something you already knew, but the 'Fire Turrets' ability on the capital ships has only one level. Is this because it is used for multiple ships? Also, the ship and factory models look awesome, though they look a little like they would on the tabletop (no, I've never played tabletop Epic, 40k, or BFG). This is based on the sizable number of pics that I have of various GW/FW Warhammer 40,000 models. Also, something I suggest for the IN's capital factory, instead of calling it the 'Capital Ship Shipyard', which sounds a little redundant (no offence intended), why not instead call it the 'Capital Shipyard', or the 'Battleship Shipyard'. Admittedly, the 2nd idea also sounds a little redundant, but it is a little more descriptive (the IN's caps are both battleships).

once again, didn't know if you knew, but most of the ship name syntax is like this 'Emperor battleship' or 'Cobra frigate' or 'Lunar cruiser', and so on. This is just my opinion, but (once again, no offence intended) it seems a little as if you just spared a cursory glance or look-over the ship class names, as they look a little unprofessional.

last thing- I'm working on a mod that adds (so far) 2 new races. They will have custom ships and structures and so on, and I wondered if you could share how you put in the custom capital ship names, like 'Ex Cathedra' (that's a freakin' awesome name dude!) and 'Thunderchild' (also pretty sweet)? If you can, that would be much appreciated.

53 PagesFirst 27 28 29 30 31  Last