Rather than make a new thread, at least until I decide this project is going to be a serious attempt given that I already have to finish my last SC mod and I have another potential project on the backburner, I'd like to post some of the mod's concept and get your guys' feedback on it. Let me know what's possible, what's not, ect.
The Black Sun: Tears of the Apocalypse
Conceptual basis:
My conversion will transform SoaSE into a more fast-paced, action-oriented game. As it is, I find I can max out my tech far too fast and far too easily. I can get any ship I want within 30 minutes game time and starbases are too readily available. After that, the game turns into more of a chore, especially if the maps are very big. Large battles can take an extremely long time with both sides constantly reinforcing and unless the two sides are very unevenly matched they can even reach a point where they never actually end.
This mod is a combination of my personal ideas and yet another attempt at trying to make a representation of some ships from one of my original universes. As Sins is extremely small scale, all of my ships will be micro-sized versions of their former selves. Because of the weapon limit, only the most prominent and important systems will be shown.
Technology trees will be larger and more significant. Most capital ships will be unlocked through research. Capital ships in general will be far more powerful than in SoaSE, even in large-scale conflicts. Ships will generally do more damage than in SoaSE and battles will be shorter and much bloodier.
Since ships limits you to so few ships, I'll have to split some races into multiple factions. The Xy`Kranasha will be split into Llan and Amon Prophet swarms.
Smaller ships, like corvettes and gunships, will be turned into strike craft. This means that overall Strike Craft will be significantly tougher.
Races
I'm only going to talk about two races for the time being.
The Undead; the Undead are a demonic race from the Abyss, a dimension upon which Creation (physical space) encompasses only an insignificantly miniscule fraction of space in. That is to say, physical space is not infinite, and nor is the Abyss. The Undead construct vessels out of energy, forming a kind of energy-metal. A part of their tech tree will involve "Syncronizing" their energy-metal to physical space which over time increases their speed, agility, and shielding. As Undead are a very shield-intensive race, their physical armor is less impressive than that of the Xy`Kranasha.
Undead are heavily oriented around numbers and large terror weapons. All of their weapons are based on elemental energy, either Deimos; a crimson plasma-like element, or Dread; a devastating base element used by Guola, basically the Devil.
Most Undead ships have a specific purpose. The Artemes Battlecruiser is designed for range, the Spirestorm is designed for close combat. Most Undead ships do not possess weapons geared for multi-role engagements and so it is important to mix and match. To make full use of these ships, your syncronization will need to be maxed out. Undead possess a lot of offensive strength, but are generally less defensively capable and squisher. The exception is their hull regeneration which is far higher than that of any other race, thanks to their energy-metal compounds.
Undead ships don't use cannons for their weapons - they focus energy through proptrusions in their ship's hull. These spikes and horns are both for show and very functional, capable of harnessing Deimos energy to a point where they can slice through stars and planets like a hot knife through butter. These ships were originally planned to be used inside SC2 once it came out, but I later decided it would be wasteful to put them in a 2d game.
Capital ships;
The Undead will unlock new capital ships through research. Initially they have access to lower-end vessels, but they can gain access to the Spirestorm, and even the Fear later on.
Spirestorm concept -
The Spirestorm is a tremendous, slow-moving behemoth. Canon-wise, it's larger than a star system. In sins, it'll be about the size of a planet. It has two weapons - close-range pulse-beam weapons, and a primary Deimos accelerator cannon.
Abilities;
Spectral Shard Cannon - The Spirestorm gains a passive ability that has a random chance to fire a Spectral Shard when using its Deimos accelerator. The Spectral Shard Cannon will 1shot almost all lower-end ships and deal significant damage to larger ones. Levels increase damage.
Lockout Aura - The Spirestorm produces an aura that prevents ships from entering hyperspace when they are nearby. Levels increase radius.
Disintigration Aura - The Spirestorm produces an aura that disintigrates nearby enemy ships with psionic energy. This is basically a DoT to any enemies in range. Damage increases with level. At max level this will be significantly strong.
Dread Cannon - Ultimate ability. The Spirestorm charges a colossal AoE attack that devastates groups of enemies and leaves behind a lingering fire DoT.
Appearance - Undead will be very glowy. Their ships are typically black and emit a light-absorbing glow with a crimson tinge. Their ships have pulsating veins of glowy on them. In Sins, I know the black glow is plausible, but I don't know about the animated veins, which I'd make player color ingame.
The Xy`Kranasha;
The Xy`Kranasha are created by a virus known as the Scitor. Their story is fairly lengthy so I'll focus more on their technology in this post. Their ships are made out of both metal and machine, protected in a highly resistant film-like substance capable of absorbing traditional physics with no consequence. Supernovas, mass drivers, and other forces typically have no effect on Xy`Kranasha. Just like the Undead, their technology is extremely advanced even though as a race they had only existed for around six years. Xy`Kranasha ships will have high amounts of armor but only moderate shielding. They are also highly regenerative.
Xy`Kranasha ships typically possess full weapon compliments. The Gorekhan Premiere Destroyer, for example, has four beam weapons that cover the upper and lower portions of the ship in pairs. These beam weapons can attack any enemy around the ship, except for behind. The Gorekhan is also equipped with advanced Proteus weapons showcasing the Xy`Kranasha's mastery of this element, basically giving it long-range lightning guns. This will basically be beam weapons with a fancy texture and hopefully some way to add noise to the animation, like the Visari's siege capital ship ultimate ability. The Gorekhan also has close-range Kato cannons. Kato is another plasma-like substance, but it's not an element.
The Gorekhan ranges between 400km to 600km in length. The model is based on the B5 Primus cruiser, as the very original Gorekhan was basically the primus hacked apart for a SC mod 6 years ago. I've kept to the original design, but strayed away from B5 elements.
Kato is one of the Xy`Kranasha's primary weapon focuses. It appears like bright orange fire, and is fairly easy to create.
Whereas Undead move through space by psionic waves like fish in a pond, Xy`Kranasha use psionic waves to "bounce" off of each other and other objects. Their maneuverability is comparable to that of the Undead, but they are not as fast. While the Undead's comfort zone is close range, the Xy`Kranasha favor medium range the most.
Alright, I told you about two of the big players, and what I'd like to do with them. Now I have a bunch of more questions before I begin! Yay! This forum's search function is broken for some reason and has yet to be fixed, and so finding what I want to find is proving to be ridiculously difficult.
burstCount 1
burstDelay 0.000000
I'm not quite sure how damage works in Sins. I notice that it is very laggy, and doesn't occur when a bullet hits. It also seems that the display is not updated that often.
I'm most curious about the TEC Kol Battleship. iirc, it has a multitude of turrets, the beam weapons, the side cannons, and I think laser guns as well?
How do weapons tie to turrets and stuff? When you have a turret burst, is each shot actually doing damage, or is it faked?
muzzleSoundMinRespawnTime 0.100000
muzzleSounds
What is this RespawnTime? Is that a delay for the chargeup sound and effects to play before the weapon fires? If not, what controls this?
DamagePerBank:FRONT 240.000000
DamagePerBank:BACK 0.000000
DamagePerBank:LEFT 320.000000
DamagePerBank:RIGHT 320.000000
This is pretty confusing too. Damage per bank is presumably referring to weapon hardpoints, yess? How does it know which hardpoints to fire from? If you have 4 beam weapons on the left side, does each beam weapon still do 320 damage? How do you set the radius of which a weapon can fire from?
PreBuffCooldownTime 10.000000
PreBuff? 
Can you give me more details about the sound limit? How many new sounds can I add? And, lastly, how can I control the functions of music? Can I make different music play depending on the size of a battle?
I plan to replace every sound and every piece of music with my own, and my own voice acting as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LFDhGkPges
An example of my voice acting and sound editing capabilities.
You can also see some of my Undead ships that I put into Homeworld 2 a while ago. This may give you an idea what I plan to do in Sins.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5mHZdkur40
Thanks for your time, gentlemen. I look forward to showing you a little piece of my world.
(Okay I don't know how youtube tags work for this forum, and it isn't linkifying.)
