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 4)
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on Dec 09, 2008

Purification by holy fire is what we need for these beings so corruptet by the prince of pleasure!

defences sounds good, it may be that i'm just not that good, but it can be a real pain to guard even relatively bottleneckt planets, when ships go "popcorn"

also is it intentional that the pirates have such weak forces garrisoned at their bases?

on Dec 09, 2008

I will vaporise you for the Greater Good HivMnd!

on Dec 09, 2008

Purification by holy fire is what we need for these beings so corruptet by the prince of pleasure!

I love the smell of prometheum in the morning...

defences sounds good, it may be that i'm just not that good, but it can be a real pain to guard even relatively bottleneckt planets, when ships go "popcorn"

Yeah, and the whole psychotic attack thing is a bit too aggressive for most peoples' taste, but if you cede the momentum as it is you're in a lot of trouble. Defenses are a bit fragile too, but they tend to do pretty well at making an enemy slow up. They have even better firepower than escorts for cheaper with the same durability or considerably better for still rather cheap. They're going to get cheaper as I start balancing them probably, but they're already pretty good if you know what you're doing with their placement. Right now I've got WB turrets and hangars in there, and eventually there'll be

also is it intentional that the pirates have such weak forces garrisoned at their bases?

It's more that I haven't put in the kroozers that'll be there. And maybe a corsair eldar cruiser or two. I'm thinking about 6 cruisers in total. The main reason for this is that originally there were about 8 cap researches worth of cruisers sitting in the grav well, and I deleted a round number to make it easier to deal with (I was in a hurry). I'm thinking about 8 cruisers or so would be a good garrison, what do you think?

 

Hooray for the greater good! However, he is making good points, so I'd say the greater good is to keep him around for a bit.

on Dec 09, 2008

Will tau have both SG and FW ships or just FW? I remember very early screens of the FW models ingame...

on Dec 09, 2008

They have said both will be in-game.

on Dec 09, 2008

Dude, I explained the mechanic for encouraging a player to switch from the SG fleet early in the game to the FW fleet as a late game fleet =p . Yeah, they're getting both fleets, it'll give them a good sized fleet selection and some interesting gameplay mechanics.

EDIT: Nice quickpost, beat me to it.

 

Oh, and if you want to look at and comment on my dev journals without becoming a member at modcraft, I've started an impulse blog here.

on Dec 09, 2008

I like your idea X about the Tau ship transition later in-game, though I assume you can still build the old ships? Also, I really like the GW Tau ships...A massively wide space vessel doesn't really seem to make strategic sense. (FW...)

Also, Tau culture should be teh pwnz, along with their trade....so they should be the economic beast of the races

 

EDIT: Forgot to mention this but then realized it was in the description on main post. The Battleships are strangely smaller than the cruisers but I see you know that lol...it's just wierd.

 

on Dec 09, 2008

I like your idea X about the Tau ship transition later in-game, though I assume you can still build the old ships?

Yeah, of course, it'd be way too much effort for them to not be available even if I wanted to make it that way, and I'll even try to make some options for strategies that use the SG fleet just for you.

 

Also, Tau culture should be teh pwnz, along with their trade....so they should be the economic beast of the races

They'll be very good at both, don't worry, but chaos culture's gonna be real nasty too, but in an entirely different way. Tau trade will be the top by a good margin (especially because the SG fleet will be cheap enough to allow for some good early investment, paving the way to the more expensive but less supply hungry FW fleet if you want or economic beastdom if you don't), though, then Imperials (they run a surprisingly huge amount of trade) and then everybody else kinda sucks at trade.

on Dec 09, 2008

and then everybody else kinda sucks at trade.

 

Chaos trade ---> Fail

on Dec 09, 2008

I think the big blue book was marvelously understated when it said that chaos really couldn't find anybody on their side who wanted to ship supplies. Kind of forces them into the whole fast raiding thing, doesn't it?

on Dec 09, 2008

Lol...anyone want to sell these slaves of nurgle....no takers...?....ho hum guess we go raid....

 

On a different note, I hope you're putting Grand Cruiser in!!! My suggestion would just put the Avenger Class in as it's the most unique one. Port and Starboard WB THAT'S IT! But, they pack a meaner punch than even the retribution.

on Dec 09, 2008

Well, the flagship of my chaos fleet is a repulsive, so I'm not letting iNert not get away with not putting that one in, and we've got an idea for chaos and the IN where you start out with only the Grand cruisers available as capital ships (IE they get experience and you get one as your flagship) so by the time you get battleships, you've got a levelled GC that can keep up decently because of its experience. I think this'd work better for chaos, where the GCs are very much a flagship lite ship, and keep them as support ships for the Imperials, as they seem to fill something of an auxiliary role in the Imperial fleet. Wonder if I can make GCs cost half a crew instead of a whole one? Or make all the battleships cost 2 and double the crews researches give you. Still, they're not coming for a while, iNert doesn't even have GCs started. They will make it though, hopefully.

on Dec 09, 2008

Well in the TT GCs are used basically to drive straight into the enemy formation and broadside the *&%$ outta them. Anyway to make that happen in game? :3

on Dec 09, 2008

yeah, it's called right clicking in the middle of the enemy fleet =p

And yeah, that'll be there once we get the models, it's not that hard to do, and it's a tactic that's low on micro if you catch your opponent off guard and can force him to react in a way favorable to you. They're definitely on my list of stuff to add, they're an interesting change to the IN approach to things, and chaos works great with them.

on Dec 09, 2008

With the increased importance on broadsides it'd be fantastic if the fleet formation options were expanded, rather than just the tight, normal or loose coherence from vanilla sins. Then again it is equally achievable with micromanaging. Anyway the first release is excellent for an early alpha, definitely moving in the right direction. The only real issue I had with it was a few pathfinding woes with my cruisers who on a few occassions decided to jump the opposite direction to which I told them. I love the increased sub-space movement, really brings tactical runs into consideration. Also the models are looking sharp.

 

Like all 40k related games, the lore is so expansive that you can take the mod in a dozen different directions. Should Foreworlds be available from the get go or be researched. In gravity wells with warp storms, randomise their occurence so fleets can not jump whilst they are active or a step further (if even possible), turn your fleet rogue if they are caught in one. That would make travelling through a warp storm a real risk-v-reward scenario. Will boarding torpedoes be dealt with as an exectuable ability that deals dps, much like volatile nanites from vanilla? Alternatively you could pay a fixed fee for each boarding party you launch, arguably representing the requistion costs of launching Karskin/Stormtrooper/Marine boarding parties.

 

Finally the approach you are taking to the Tau with the two fleets sounds excellent, as does starting off with a Grand Cruiser for the IN.

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