TobiWahn_Kenobi TobiWahn_Kenobi

[v0.54.2]Babylon 5 - Sins of the Younger Races Remastered {Rebellion 1.95+} *UPDATE 16.05.2023*

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[v0.54.2]Babylon 5 - Sins of the Younger Races Remastered {Rebellion 1.95+} *UPDATE 16.05.2023*

Babylon 5 mod effort for Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion

from Sins Forums

This is the story of the last of the Babylon 5 mod-efforts. It's goal, to prevent another failure, by creating a place to solve our problems collaboratively. Its a port of call, home away from home, for modelers, texturers, programmers and sound engineers. 

 

Babylon 5 - Sins of the Younger Races

 
Disclaimer:
The authors are not responsible for any damage that may arise from using this mod. This mod may not be sold under any circumstances. It may be downloaded, as long as it does not violate the laws of the state/country you live in. This disclaimer must always be distributed with the mod. For other used please contact me personally.

Thanks to the TEAM:
2D Artist: Tobias Liebhart (TobiWahn_Kenobi), SteinerX
Bughunters: Rob Cummings, cybertx, Darvroth, Peter1x9, ZombiesRus5
Coders: Ronie Albesa (zRazor), Rob Cummings (NewHorizons), Davroth, EvilTesla-RG, Rodney Jenkings (HotRod), Tobias Liebhart, Zvezdochets
Model Templates: Amras-Arfeiniel, James Newman (Firehawk)
Modelers: Ronie Albesa, Amras-Arfeiniel, Fileosoft, Johan Klaver, Koobalt, Tobias Liebhart, Stefan May, Timmaigh, Pauli Valkeejärvi (Hawkwall), Zvezdochets
Musician: Pauli Valkeejärvi
Research: Rob Cummings, Darvroth, Rodney Jenkins
PR: Darvroth, SteinerX
Sounds: Rob Cummings, Pauli Valkeejärvi, Zvezdochets
Texturers:  Tobias Liebhart, SteinerX, TFL_BigBangTheory, Timmaigh, Pauli Valkeejärvi, ZombiesRus5
Moderation: Blake00


Additional support: boshimi336, Lavo_2, myfist0, Gürol Salk (Geopard)

And to
MysticAngel for the Automated Fighter docking ability
The Babylon 5 X3TC team


And thanks to all those modelers whose work is a inspiration and a template for creating ingame assets

If I forgot anyone, please contact me so I can give proper credit. (There seem to be so many decent people involved at the moment)

 

Release 0.54.1 Full Download for Rebellion 1.95+
& Patch 0.54.2

Sins Of The Younger Races Remastered

NEW - Balvarin Carrier and Minor Factions fix!

 

 

Installation Guide:

  1. Download the latest Sins Remastered mod from here:
    https://www.moddb.com/mods/sinsre
  2. Extract the archive into a 'SinsRemastered' folder in your 'C:\Users\%username%\Documents\My Games\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion\Mods-Rebellion v1.85' folder.
  3. Download the latest Babylon 5 Sins of the Younger Races mod from here:
    https://www.moddb.com/mods/sins-of-the-younger-races
  4. Extract the archive into your root 'Mods-Rebellion v1.85' folder instead of a new mod folder as the archive ALREADY contains a premade 'SotyrRemastered' folder inside of it (so if you're not careful you'll end up with a mod folder inside of a mod folder and it won't work lol).
  5. Start Sins and go to 'Options', then 'Mods', and you should see the mods you've installed.
  6. Enable 'SotyrRemastered' and then enable 'SinsRemastered' too. Make sure that the load order is SotyrRemastered first/top and then SinsRemastered second/bottom.
  7. Restart Sins and you should be good to go!

Sometimes the in-game mod loader can be a bit funky so if you can't see the mods you've installed or something isn't working then enabling the mods via the 'EnabledMods.txt' file in your 'Mods-Rebellion v1.85' folder where you installed the mods to is the other alternative. It should look like this to work:

TXT2
SinsArchiveVersion 194
Version 0
enabledModNameCount 2
enabledModName "SotyrRemastered"
enabledModName "SinsRemastered-v0.95b"

 

DISCORD:

https://discord.gg/9AwgByEEKn

 

Old Blog with screenshots and infos maintained by SteinerX can be found here (*OUT OF DATE*)
http://babylon5ins.blogspot.com/

 

Yours TobiWahn_Kenobi

 

modding sins modding
14,161,070 views 5,473 replies
Reply #3751 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting -Norbert-, reply 3731
You could lock up the G.O.D.s beam cannon and only unlock it once Minbari War Victory is finished researching, or implement a new technology that adds the beam to the G.O.D. You could call it "G.O.D. upgrade" or "G.O.D MK2" or somesuch.

fireConstraintType "Research"
researchPrerequisites
NumResearchPrerequisites 1
ResearchPrerequisite
Subject "RESEARCHSUBJECT_OF_CHOICE"
Level 1

Done, thanks.

Quoting HMS-ARKROYAL, reply 3734
Seems that AM was the main issue, although i still see my fleet building badgers when i have not told them to ESPECIALLY when i'm building thunderbolts after i have selected a group of ships, it's not so bad if you go and do it 1 by 1 but that's not always an option.

Probably you selected different ships types at once and then clicked the Fighter build icons - different Ships have different fighters at the same icon positions, depending on loadout.

Quoting Darvroth, reply 3739
TobiWah,

Reworked all the files in ticket 132, they are now Rebellion copmliant and passive as an optimization measure.

Impacted ship entity files will need the new ability names to complete. I changed a couple of the earlier proposals, if you disagree or want to add more let me know.

Thanks, I will look at all this come next week (or the week thereafter)

Quoting Darvroth, reply 3740
Agreed, however we are scoping work and the direction from the mod leader is 0.44 will focus on converting files for Rebellion compliance with little to no additional content. Reworking the race tech trees to include faction specific techs with all the associated files and possible modules and ships will be a lot of work and will wait till 0.45.

80-85% of the needed ship abilities are already done but abilities are a tricky beast that have led to many a minidump so there is extenisve testing that still needs to be done as those are added to successive internal builds. With some of the optimizations done for Rebellion we need to relook at those and ammend as needed as well account for any updates to functional terms within the files.

TobiWahn is our single integrator and it is easy to backlog work so prioritization and periodic testing is required. Testing in isolation is easy but sometimes quirky things are encountered when several new abiliites interact in game. The last thing we want is a build that has random minidumps, that is why so many abilities were backed out earlier in the effort.

Thanks, well said. But the weapons change was easy and I really liked the idea.

Quoting Darvroth, reply 3741
TobiWahn,

Will 0.44 include the titan conversions? If so I'll open a ticket for each proposed ship and do the intitial scope of the conversion.

Yes, it will. Thanks.

Quoting boshimi336, reply 3742
Theoretical Example: IF you're tired of your Narn capitals exploding from strike craft spam from EA ships, change their armor value to that of the titan ships and while they still explode, they would be more resilient to strike craft while still being about as tough compared to everything else.

I'd rather have a 4th weapon for anti-fighter purposes, but still a neat idea.

Quoting Lavo_2, reply 3743
You wouldn't happen to have a link to that lying around, would you?

http://www.mediafire.com/?sb74zh8hutdhp77

MysticAngel said it isn't flawless which is true so if you can make it better, please do so and hand it back to me :')

Quoting Lavo_2, reply 3745

Making new Titans is easier if you make the FrontEnd not spawn an actual map; this means you don't have to make those cosmetic Titans and also can result in faster boot times for Sins.

What? I do not understand.

Quoting boshimi336, reply 3749
I would expect no less! My goal was to show the surprising range with which planetary bonuses can cover. By no means do I intend for them to be "Copy and Pasted' into the B5 mod, but similar planetary bonuses for the B5 mod can be inspired from these, with an understanding of just what can be done. Just offering up a reference for inspiration. [Link for request for DS planetary bonus files (Nacey should ultimately be contacted): https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/335474/page/320/#3288074 ]

I know I know, still, while the possible combinations are not endless (far from it) I'll tale any work that is done as long as somebody can honestly say it's not copied.

Quoting boshimi336, reply 3749
I have agreed, (once B5 has been ported to rebellion), to work with the galaxyscenariodef file and work on planetary militia templates and unique things which have a chance to spawn (like trading colonies / pirate raiding parties etc ...)

Very big thanks in advance!

Quoting boshimi336, reply 3749
You can throw me on the list an official contributor but time is something I have little of. I am involved in too many projects both from professional standpoint as well as a hobby standpoint. I will help where I can, when I can, but I can't guarantee that I'll make any commitments beyond what I already have stated. Just know that I'm around and will help here and there where I can.

Of course, that is valid for all of us, even me :grin: . As for the credits, once I've got the files you will be named in Support and Coding instead of Support only.

Quoting Darvroth, reply 3750
Like you would believe! One class to go on my (while holding down a day job) masters degree. I will be so glad to have that thing done...

Congrats and good luck!

Now that I'm project leader and team leader in my day job as well, there is even less time for sotyr, which I miss dearly. So please bear with me for not posting every day.

Reply #3752 from Sins Forums Top

Something to consider about Titans is that I do not believe they use anti-matter to build strike-craft. I was reminded of this by Seleucia's reply in another thread: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/438309/page/1/#3296134

 

Not sure if this is hard-coded or if it can be changed. There are options to work around this I'm sure, in some capacity.


Titans can be changed to use am to produce strikecraft. See post below.

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3753 from Sins Forums Top

Titans use the same strikecraft code as other ships; if it is so desired one can easily make Titans use antimatter when spawning fighters.

Reply #3755 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting TobiWahn_Kenobi, reply 3751
What? I do not understand.

Rebellion's start up thing has some weird ass functions built into it; namely that, if my understand is correct, requires Titans to have a Cosmetic counterpart (the one that shows up in the start up "map"). Additionally, as it's a randomly generated map, this means that each time you go to the main menu, the game generates a new map. This results in a longer start up phase for the game, and can be avoided by giving the galaxy map called FrontEnd a non-existent star as it's star type, which will essentially make the game load up blank/open space instead of a real map.

Quoting TobiWahn_Kenobi, reply 3751
http://www.mediafire.com/?sb74zh8hutdhp77

MysticAngel said it isn't flawless which is true so if you can make it better, please do so and hand it back to me :')

Thanks!

Reply #3756 from Sins Forums Top

Yep that is how most ships with fighters spawn them...of course some have more than one method; the EA Poseidon for instance. After some internal testing leading up to 0.43 we found we had to give a large boost to AM for most ships with fighters as many couldn't even complete the initial complement. Fighters in SotYR are AM intensive. I suspect AM will receive additional balancing once all the abilities are in game.

Reply #3757 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Lavo_2, reply 3756
Rebellion's start up thing has some weird ass functions built into it; namely that, if my understand is correct, requires Titans to have a Cosmetic counterpart (the one that shows up in the start up "map"). Additionally, as it's a randomly generated map, this means that each time you go to the main menu, the game generates a new map. This results in a longer start up phase for the game, and can be avoided by giving the galaxy map called FrontEnd a non-existent star as it's star type, which will essentially make the game load up blank/open space instead of a real map.

That's nice! Can you give me an example map? Thanks.

Quoting Darvroth, reply 3757
I suspect AM will receive additional balancing once all the abilities are in game.

Yeah, it will need loads of balancing till we have a playable form :thumbsup:

Reply #3758 from Sins Forums Top

TobiWahn,

I've started the entity conversion for the titans but there are parts I will clearly need help: finishing the abilities will come with time and effort, but the UpgradeType I will leave to others, I'll propose the tech path corrections under their own tickets but will leave the tech implementation to others... I'm a little dissatisfied with the current ship level progression and make the following proposal:

Titans as converted are the most advanced level 8 tech ships built by any of the races and for younger races are mixed bag of Vorlon and Shadow/Drahk tech blended with their own understanding. Increase hull/armor/shields per level for each ship over base:

EA Victory 3% / .3 / 3%

Narn Ka'Bin'Tak 3% / .5 / 2.5%

Centauri Adira 2.5% / .2 / 3.5%

Minbari Neroon 2% / .3 / 4.5%

Vorlon Planet Killer 5% / .4 / 3%

Shadow DeathCloud 3.5% / .25 / 5%

A bit more per level than any races other capital ships as currently proposed but much less than SoaSE:R and represents the apex of ship design and manufacture for each faction. Additionally, for the above ships only I'd like to add 0.015 hull restore rate which is unlikely to make any tactical difference but might just be enough to keep the ship alive between engagements, and it is not zero. For Vorlon, Shadow and Minbari that would be above any passive rate currently proposed.

Propose any necessary adjustments to keep in line with your vision.

 

Reply #3759 from Sins Forums Top

Fellow Modders,

Is there a handy listing of the new Rebellion weapon visual and audio effects and what they represent? Also, is there a list of color templates?

Reply #3760 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting TobiWahn_Kenobi, reply 3758
That's nice! Can you give me an example map? Thanks.

Forgot that I flat out removed all planet/star references to ensure no map is loaded, but here it is regardless. http://paste2.org/p/2620112

I will note that with this however there's a chance the first time you load a real map, that Sins will take longer than usual, and only for that first time. This is due to the game loading up a bunch of GSD stuff and such.

Reply #3761 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Lavo_2, reply 3761
I will note that with this however there's a chance the first time you load a real map, that Sins will take longer than usual, and only for that first time. This is due to the game loading up a bunch of GSD stuff and such.

Thanks alot.

Quoting Darvroth, reply 3759
Propose any necessary adjustments to keep in line with your vision.

Will probably do, but looks mostly reasonable. Vorlons should already have higher hull restore rate though (I think)

Reply #3762 from Sins Forums Top

Fellow Modders,

I've been ripping though the Rebellion entity files trying to come to an understanding of the changes and it seems the UpgradeType "TitanUpgrade... is not necessary provided the UpgradeTypeCount is 0. Not to say some ships won't make use of the expanded mechanic but that it is not strictly necessary. Not having it or reserving it for future expansion will go a long way toward speeding up the Rebellion conversion.

TobiWahn,

There a number of new WeaponClassType and I'm going to have to ask that you compile the new list and how it translates into SotYR and post that.

There seem to be format changes to every ship entity file and every ability and buff. I'm really hoping your DB can painlessly make the necessary format changes and things work. I strongly suspect however some abilities will be altered as a result of the conversion (ie not just a format change) and we will have to back them out and retest one file at a time...

Titans can have up to 4 levels of a given ability and the TitanUpgrade can have 5. I'm still figuring out the interplay between the titan entity file, the titanupgrade files, abilities and research. The mechanic seems to make the Titan a "supership" which Vorlon and Shadow aside is not necessary in most cases. The TitanUpgrade can be linked to techs but it will be specific to the one ship that is already at the end of the tech tree... Also not sure if having one Titan is hard coded or if this something easily adjusted.

Reply #3763 from Sins Forums Top

Juding from the threads in this forum, it seems like you can only build one Titan at the shipyard, but you can spawn others via abilities.

Reply #3764 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Darvroth, reply 3763
Titans can have up to 4 levels of a given ability

Really? Is that consistent across all entities or can only Titans have 4 ability levels?

Quoting -Norbert-, reply 3764
Juding from the threads in this forum, it seems like you can only build one Titan at the shipyard, but you can spawn others via abilities.

Won't be necessary at first as there should only be one Titan ship per race (though it would be nice to have a max of two Victory destroyers, just for canon ;-)

Reply #3765 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting TobiWahn_Kenobi, reply 3765
Really? Is that consistent across all entities or can only Titans have 4 ability levels?

Across all abilities; any ability can have a max of 4 levels. You'll notice you'll still have to add the fourth level tags to abilities and buffs even if you only plan on using 3 levels max.

Reply #3766 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Lavo_2, reply 3766
Across all abilities; any ability can have a max of 4 levels. You'll notice you'll still have to add the fourth level tags to abilities and buffs even if you only plan on using 3 levels max.

Yes which is one of my main concerns that the ability and buff upgrades will not be a simple paste of the new required lines of code.

Reply #3767 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Darvroth, reply 3767
Yes which is one of my main concerns that the ability and buff upgrades will not be a simple paste of the new required lines of code.

Actually, assuming you do not need to add a fourth level to abilities, then it is simply a matter of pasting in new lines of code. Goafan helped me out with this greatly, made a script that upgraded all the ability and buff files you threw at it, with virtually no errors at all. All capital ship and Titan abilities can work with a maximum level cap of 3; I know SoGE works without a single ability having a cap of 4 levels.

Reply #3768 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting -Norbert-, reply 3764
Juding from the threads in this forum, it seems like you can only build one Titan at the shipyard, but you can spawn others via abilities.

This is correct. Titans do not lose levels however, they rebuild with the highest level the titan previously had. I could be wrong on this, so someone please correct me if it has changed.

Reply #3769 from Sins Forums Top

TobiWahn, Darvroth,

  The mechanics of the Minbari Stealth ability always seemed a bit odd to me. It made the ship invulnerable for some unknown period of time and would drain AM at 15/sec until exhausted - period of invulnerability wasn't proportional to AM reserves. As it did not use a fixed AM cost it could be used even though a ship had no AM reserves. The ability wasn't set to auto-cast, so you'd have to micro-manage a fleet that was in a large battle, assaulting a heavily fortified system or (now they're awake in 0.43) engaging Shadow/Vorlon capital ships.

I've had a fiddle (first ability I've looked at) and hopefully come up with an implementation that's more like the standard SoaSE abilities.

* Uses 200/150/100 AM (similar to open jump point)

* Triggered when ship takes 20% hull damage

* Duration 10/12/15 sec

* Cool-down time still 60/45/30 sec

* Ability set to auto-cast by default

Does this sound reasonable?

What would be a nice counter (now that stealth requires an AM reserve) is for an Earth Alliance ship to have an AM depleting ability (Ion Bolt/EMP type weapon unlocked via research) which gives the EA a chance to disable the famous Minbari advantage.

Reply #3770 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting boshimi336, reply 3769
This is correct. Titans do not lose levels however, they rebuild with the highest level the titan previously had. I could be wrong on this, so someone please correct me if it has changed.

Titans spawned via ability always spawn at level 1.

Reply #3771 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Lavo_2, reply 3771
Titans spawned via ability always spawn at level 1.

Do spawned ships (titans in this case) count against the faction fleet logistics total? It is possible to spawn persistant ships that consume resources vice AM that in every other respect are as cost effective as the shiptype factory. Provided spawed ships also used fleet logistics it suggests a simple workaround to having multiple titan ships at least for the younger races.

Reply #3772 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting NewHorizons, reply 3770
The mechanics of the Minbari Stealth ability always seemed a bit odd to me. It made the ship invulnerable for some unknown period of time and would drain AM at 15/sec until exhausted - period of invulnerability wasn't proportional to AM reserves. As it did not use a fixed AM cost it could be used even though a ship had no AM reserves. The ability wasn't set to auto-cast, so you'd have to micro-manage a fleet that was in a large battle, assaulting a heavily fortified system or (now they're awake in 0.43) engaging Shadow/Vorlon capital ships.

Concur this has been a long discussion... bitbucket tickets 10, 64 and 118 expound upon the issue and I think there was discussion on origio before that. Ultimately it is up to TobiWahn, the current mechanic is much better than earlier incarnations but is still not a pleasant fit. Pile on and let's see if there can be concensus. <edit: or even spelling... I need sleep>

Reply #3773 from Sins Forums Top

TobiWahn,

I've uploaded revised entity files for the 6 proposed titans tickets: 28, 41, 43, 51, 58, and 61 are germane. (except Neroon which I'll upload tomorrow).

I've not adjusted ability or ship performance but have tweaked IAW reply 3759 above. I have in some cases added a fourth anti-fighter weapon however since there are now new weapon types this needs to be reviewed. Also I've zeroed out the UpgradeTypeCount and removed the placeholder files for possible future use. I've also not touched the prereq research though there are new associated lines of code.

Next step for me will be to begin remapping the tech trees for Rebellion. I will assume the choice can be made within the tech tree and will not require a new rebellion tech tree for each younger race.

Q: Do you want the titan research path from SoaSE or just adjust the entity for capital ships to also build titan? Or if that doesn't work build an ability for that? I can craft that pretty easily if desired.

[edit] I also didn't adjust negative culture which I vaguely recall another poster stating wasn't working as intended.

Reply #3775 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Darvroth, reply 3772

Quoting Lavo_2, reply 3771Titans spawned via ability always spawn at level 1.

Do spawned ships (titans in this case) count against the faction fleet logistics total? It is possible to spawn persistant ships that consume resources vice AM that in every other respect are as cost effective as the shiptype factory. Provided spawed ships also used fleet logistics it suggests a simple workaround to having multiple titan ships at least for the younger races.

 

Correct but if a spawned titan reaches level 7, and your 'real' titan only reached level 4 and dies ... it comes back as level 7. This was my understanding at least with the early implementations of the game upon release. Has this changed?

 

Also, I do know that spawned titans do take up fleet logistics resources. What I don't know ... is if your fleet logistics are maxed out, can you still successfully spawn another titan via ability? GoaFan77 would probably know.