Announcing Sigma

posted on February 13th, 2010, 11:50 pm

I adore that nebula 

posted on February 14th, 2010, 12:52 am

The mod has really gotten more polished since the teaser.  The battle scenes look great.

posted on February 14th, 2010, 1:15 am

The mod has really gotten more polished since the teaser.  The battle scenes look great.

There's still tons of bugs sadly.... I just tested the first multiplayer game with Archeon and lots of things showed up  I imagine the FO dev team probably plays enough multiplayer bug hunt matches to drive anyone nuts.

posted on February 14th, 2010, 2:04 am

hmmmm u could use foot print buffer codes in the odfs to space ur stations out more. I enjoyed watching the combat....but I didnt notice any impact effects of weapons making contact. Also your outlines of the future races sound ambitious I look forward to the release even more. Sigma looks very cool so far

posted on February 15th, 2010, 9:21 pm

I can't believe I never thought of using footprintbuffers.... thank you Ryderstorm. You are my hero for the day

posted on February 15th, 2010, 9:40 pm

Glad I could be of help

posted on February 15th, 2010, 9:53 pm

Get Sigma out and you'll be our hero for the day!

posted on February 15th, 2010, 10:46 pm

Yeah there will be 5 races total as of now. Each one is going to play drastically different. The Zevestivan seen in the first video are the only race that plays like stock A2 races. For instance one of the races will be able to move very rapidly across the map and hog resources, though they need hundreds of tiny ships to do actual damage since they are so weak. Another race has stations that break apart into smaller mobile ships so they can move around the map. The last race has a single starbase that can continually expand itself and get bigger.  Cheesy

The 5th one u played in the video, right? I like diversity and I always enjoy a good fantasy RTS, so for those reasons alone Im really looking forward to Sigma

Im also glad u're getting rid of the engine effects and adding misty thingy Correct decisions IMHO.

Now about the new video:
Im glad u played as the other race this time. Their speciality seemd to be upgrading little ships into bigger ones. Should be interesting gameplay wise

The battles in themselves looked good, but as Ryderstorm said, there seemed to be no weapon hits - but I suppose u just didnt incorporate that into the mod yet. Another thing that bothered me a bit was the number of ship classes... out of the "normal" combat ships there only seemed to be a destroyer, cruiser and battleship class ships? Are you planning to add more, or will those be the only primary ships? 1 more little thing to note that I wasnt very fond on. There only seemed to be 2 types of resources. Now that isnt necessarily bad, since it could be only for this particular race and other races use other resources as well, which would add more diversity into the game. But I hope there wont only be those 2 resources for all races, when you can do so much more with this game engine
Oh just remembered another thing, it isnt exactly a complaint, but IMHO if you would add a little more HP to the units, the battles could last longer and they would be more exciting IMO. Especially that goes for the battleships, which I think should be able to take more heat BTW will shields be present for any of the races?

Now the things I did like:
- That Nebula effect looks fucking awesome
- the AI seemed to be pretty good
- artilery strike effects were quite good
- and more of everything I mentioned in my 1st post 
- the hero ship! <--- cant wait they add this to FO as well

All in all, your mod remains to be a very good prospect for the future, especially with all those different races and different playing styles. Note that I know that this is a very early version of the game you are showing us, so dont take my "complaints" as negative, as my only agenda is to help you make the as good as it can be
Looking forward to more footage 

posted on February 15th, 2010, 11:01 pm

The ships that can upgrade are the V.R.A., basically the humans.  You build either destroyer, cruiser, or battleship chassis and have 3 selectable options to specialize them.  You can try out TUN's teaser version and play with them.  There's actually tons of hero ships for that faction.  It really seems like this will be an exciting mod.

Could you imagine having to specify if you're playing FO or Sigma in Tunngle chat?

posted on February 15th, 2010, 11:07 pm

Is there areas where your open to ideas? Like weapons or stations?

posted on February 15th, 2010, 11:09 pm

Looking good mate, some great process there. 

posted on February 16th, 2010, 2:15 am

I imagine the FO dev team probably plays enough multiplayer bug hunt matches to drive anyone nuts.

I'd bet they do.

I am runing into the same problems with my mod.

posted on February 16th, 2010, 2:56 am

The 5th one u played in the video, right? I like diversity and I always enjoy a good fantasy RTS, so for those reasons alone Im really looking forward to Sigma

In that video I played as the V.R.A, which are essentially the second race players will likely take command of. They deviate a bit from the standard stock A2 formula with modular ships and stations. They are pretty much the micromanager's kingdom come. They basically have a ship that can counter any strategy, it's just a matter of using the ships at the right time.

Now about the new video:
The battles in themselves looked good, but as Ryderstorm said, there seemed to be no weapon hits - but I suppose u just didnt incorporate that into the mod yet.

I'm awaiting the next FO patch before I add in explosion effects since the next FO patch is adding in some awesome new features in that department.

Another thing that bothered me a bit was the number of ship classes... out of the "normal" combat ships there only seemed to be a destroyer, cruiser and battleship class ships? Are you planning to add more, or will those be the only primary ships?

There's more then just three ships for each side, just on average all ships generally fall under those three categories. The Zevestivan have seven ships (1 destroyer, 2 cruisers, 3 battleships, and 1 utility), while the V.R.A. have about 11 ships total (3 destroyers, 3 cruisers, 3 battleships, and 2 utility ships). Zevestivan ships tend to be more well rounded and balanced while each V.R.A. ship has a general strength and weakness.

1 more little thing to note that I wasnt very fond on. There only seemed to be 2 types of resources. Now that isnt necessarily bad, since it could be only for this particular race and other races use other resources as well, which would add more diversity into the game. But I hope there wont only be those 2 resources for all races, when you can do so much more with this game engine

Yeah other races will use other resources, the Zevestivan and V.R.A. just only have a need for Ore which replaces Dilithium and is basically various raw materials used to actually manufacture ships, and Currency which replaces Tritanium and is used to pay for things such as ship supplies. The third race known as the Sov has a need for three resources, while the last two races use two other resources I've yet to put in the game yet.

Oh just remembered another thing, it isnt exactly a complaint, but IMHO if you would add a little more HP to the units, the battles could last longer and they would be more exciting IMO. Especially that goes for the battleships, which I think should be able to take more heat BTW will shields be present for any of the races?

I'm tempted to add more HP... as soon as I get rid of the engine sprites I most likely will. I mainly kept HP low because too many ships with all those engine sprites caused all sprites to vanish... which means invisible weapons. The 5th race uses shields.

Now the things I did like:
- That Nebula effect looks fucking awesome
- the AI seemed to be pretty good
- artilery strike effects were quite good
- and more of everything I mentioned in my 1st post 
- the hero ship! <--- cant wait they add this to FO as well

- I have to thank Yacuzza for his epic Space Transformation Pack: Space Transformation Pack Download, Star Trek: Armada 2 Celestial Bodies I just touched up on his sprites a bit but he deserves the credit.
- The AI shifts between being good and stupid... it's mostly on expanding to other moons though that it tends to fail. Also the V.R.A. refuse to rebuild add-ons if they are destroyed so that's a major flaw.
- Artillery ftw. 
- Hoorayness 
- Yeah each avatar can be summoned into the battle. Be careful though... once they die they are dead.

All in all, your mod remains to be a very good prospect for the future, especially with all those different races and different playing styles. Note that I know that this is a very early version of the game you are showing us, so dont take my "complaints" as negative, as my only agenda is to help you make the as good as it can be
Looking forward to more footage 

No problem, I love complaints because they help me improve and make things better. Despite everything though I doubt this mod will ever top FO... Fleet Ops has been my inspiration for a long time and I'll probably always be looking up to it.

Is there areas where your open to ideas? Like weapons or stations?

Most of the races are pretty fleshed out already as far as who gets what. The idea for this universe has been around since about 2003 so that's a lot of time I've had to develop things.


Also to note it's probably best we leave the FO forums open for FO related topics, hopefully I'll have time to update the Sigma forums so stuff relating to that can be talked about there.

posted on February 16th, 2010, 11:25 am

no problem, feel free to fill the modding section with mod-related talk that what it is here for

posted on February 24th, 2010, 12:58 am

if anyone would be interested in cleaning up models for Sigma (removing the ugly engine emitters, adding hp's), I would greatly appreciate the help. My modeler has been remarkably busy lately so I'm going around trying to find temporary replacements.