Not possible at all. The AI is virtually untouchable to us modders (there is a slight modification ability in the gameconstants files but not much) so sadly what you are proposing would involve a complete rewrite from the ground up.

You mean use those things and mod them into a different game that is MMORPG?

Yep. I am thinking about using existing solutions for MMORPG network architectures that exist but I have zero 3D/Physics engine skills which is practically already complete in Sins to be used in an MMORPG.

How likely would it be for Ironclad to allow you, or sell you a license, to use those assets?

Because the thing is, if you think about it, very little actual features needs to be added for Sins to be a really nice action MMORPG. You already have:

• Great 3D and physics engine with many good looking models, such as ships, starbases, orbital structures, planets, asteroids etc. Imo they look much better than in Eve.
• AI that is fully capable of fighting each other, indefinitely.
• A "world" that supports at least houndreds of planets/systems/asteroid fields and houndreds, if not thousands, of ships. And I have had games up and running for days (with saves) so it seems to be fully capable of going on and on.
• Ship control system that allows you to control one or several ships.

So what is needed to turn this into an MMORPG (to my knowledge)

• Client/Server architecture that allows houndreds of simultaneous of client connections.
• Allowing player to control only a single ship and modify it to work like a third person shooter. Should not be much work since the camera can already focus on a single ship.
• Add upgrades to single ships. Should not take that much work as capital ships can already have upgrades and research can unluck more powerful weapons/shields/abilities, just need to extend that system further.
• Introduce ways (missions?) for a single ship to gather resources (credits, crystal, metal) so he can get better ships and potential upgrades to them.
• Modify the AI so they dont wipe out each other. E.g. they will only fight each other over a designated number of systems.

Would be a far from complete MMORPG but still quite fun, I would think.

Yeah I know, I am dreaming but hey dreams dont hurt right?

Go with X3 then. Much the same as Eve but single player so if you lose the 10 million dollar ship you just bought you can roll back to a previous save. Has in depth trading networks, lots of races and great battles with whatever weapons you can afford to load out your squadrons or capital ships with.

Very moddable. I was thinking of adding Sins Races & Sins Ships.

So if the code for Sins is not good, what about just using the 3D models and effects. Would that be easy to extract?

And then port them to an X3 or TC mod?

Does that take a lot of work?

EDIT: Also, do you guys have any books or web resources to recommend to make me understand how it works with 3D models in games like these? Because I am a SW developer, so I know how to code, but I have zero knowledge about 3D graphics and related matters as I mostly deal with Enterprise web applications.

Thanks I will look through those. Is it possible for you to share with me these obj and fbx files for the models if I decide to try and make a mod?

For sure it wont be a full fledged mod as I am just one person but I really want to give this a shot as the market right now is really lacking proper sci-fi space games.

@ Yamota - Ya I guess I can upload the collection to filefront. Will use 7zip. Give me a day or 2 to sort it all. No textures though as that will be huge and you should have them if you own SoaSE.

@ FredLed - XSI does that. Choose File --> Export --> Obj file  . Same with almost all 3d programs. EXPORT

Fredled's right, export to obj is disabled in xsi 7.5. Just export it to lwo. If you still need obj for some reason import the lwo into wings and export from there.

Make sure you have the object selected first when exporting to lwo.

A Monkey's guide to adding ships to X3 This looks like what we need 

Requires 3DS max and my trial is over