We... haha.. I mean "I" (I am my staff) am currently working on a module designed for people who like to take things slow. It uses the Distant Stars mod as a base and is designed to use wormholes as the primary method for getting around the galaxy. Anyone who has played Starfire (the game, not the mod) knows what I'm talking about. It will be designed to be played on a map where every star has at least one wormhole and all players either start with wormhole technology or it is very easy to get. In general, the idea is to allow larger fleet sizes, but make it take longer to put together huge fleets. Players will have to pay attention to casualties and establish reserves
Mod is being developed for Entrenchment v1.041
General changes from the vanilla:
It incorporates The "Distant Stars" Mod developed by Nacey. [Excellent mod, Nacey]
The colony frigates and colony battlecruisers for all races have been merged and turned into a cruiser. This vessel looks and costs like a capital ship, but has only the firepower of the original colony frigate and can be built in the frigate shipyard. It also has some bombardment capability and can construct starbases (when the tech is researched) [Yes, I am aware that makes them disposable]
Pretty much everything takes a LOT longer to build and resources are gathered much slower.
Research times have been increased more than anything else, so it will take a long time to work through the tech tree.
Population maximums on all planets have been increased by a factor of 100 and population growth has been reduced by a factor of 10. Taxation has been reduced by a factor of 100 to balance the max pop. The actual income from taxation evens out. It just takes longer to get there.
Ship speeds are a tad slower than normal.
Interstellar jump speeds are reduced to a crawl and the technology is way more expensive (at this time, I am unsure whether to leave the technology as it is or remove it altogether and replace it with something else) Interplanetary jump speeds have been left as is.
Frigate supply has been drastically increased and capital ship maximums have been increased for each level.
Each player starts out with a moderate sized fleet (to give some protection against pirates early on).
The frequency of pirate raids is drastically reduced (at the moment the issue of pirates is still trial and error).
Starbases are more expensive
All light frigates are in fighter mode.
All ships will be at least slightly more expensive and frigates and cruisers will get a slight defensive boost (shields, hull, armor, etc)
The weapons on scouts are removed and their speed has been increased (I never understood why they had weapons in the first place) and the cost of scouts is now HIGHER than the standard light frigate. I plan on adding one or two non-combat things for scouts to do to make the cost worth it, but scout fleets are no longer practical.
All cap and cruiser carriers will get more fighters (so will hangar modules)
The Novalith and Kostura cannons have been eliminated. All races will get AA modules for planetary protection (I am contemplating an AA capital ship, but that seems too specialized... possibly a new cruiser design)
Cruisers will get resized to something in between frigates and capital ships and be up-gunned (making them true cruisers, not just slightly fat frigates).
Specific changes
The Advent will be completely overhauled (ie replaced with a race that works)
A new race is planned (in addition to whatever the Advent become) as an offshoot of the Tech making a total of 4 races. This new race will use modified versions of ships the Tech use plus one or two others.
fyi - I am just now dabbling in the wonderful world of race creation, so this is an extreme back-burner feature. Technically, I am not abverse to adding more races, but only one addition is planned. Anyone who would like to take it on or has an idea for the Advent, please contact me (this forum or a PM) I do want to keep the number of new meshes down, both because I was apparently born without the artist gene and because of the hard limits in the game.
The design is still a work in progress, so I welcome any feedback and questions about anything I've laid out for you (if you want to tell me I'm insane, go right ahead, but be aware I already know it). I'm still balancing the economy and pirates with the changes I'm making and working on fleshing out some new ship ideas. I haven't played the Advent as much as the other races, so if you can give me a good reason, perhaps I will spare them. It's just me, so progress will be less than lightning fast. Anyone who absolutely can't live with that is welcome to lend a hand (anyone who wants to create meshes and other graphics will be my friend for life).
The idea was to create a game that needed a lot more thinking and planning, but still had impressive battles and some fleet tactics. Economic expansion is at a snails pace, but without the huge stockpiles of money and resources it seems is common to the standard game. This is a game where you can have fun with, but can go get the occasional cup of coffee or answer the door or watch a movie and you won't have your empire taken from you while you're looking the other way. More planning and thinking, less minute-by-minute babysitting. On the flip side it probably isn't very suitable for multi-play unless everyone can stay connected for most of the day (week? 
) as it will LONG time to finish a game. It makes wormholes extremely important strategically and I'm toying with the idea of making interplanetary travel so no one has to follow the phase lines or at least putting it on the research tree for all races. More playtesting is certainly going to be required before I rule on that.
In a few days, I'll put up the map I'm currently testing so you can get an idea of just how insane I am. It currently has 44 stars and 400 or so planets and I keep adding more all the time (I think I might stop at 100 or so) In the meantime, I'm on version 0.0000001 right now, so it will probably be some time before I get a playable beta.
