Thanks and some modding questions!

[Heyiforgot]

Hello everyone, before I start with the questions I just want to say thank for the great mod to the team. I am brand new to both Sins of a Solar Empire and mods for it so I had a few questions about if and how easily a couple of things could be done. I'd like to make my game set up for a slower paced single player game similar to the old Star Wars Rebellion game. I think a big part of this would be editing the build times of all the ships, correct me if I'm wrong but shouldn't this be as straight forward as editing the build time figures? Where would I find them? I would also like to edit the map to have the imperial factions start out with many planets and the New Republic/Rebels start out with just a few but maybe with bonus's on certain worlds. From reading it seems as though there's a map editor so it ought to be possible but has anyone tried it with success? How big of a deal would it be to edit the starships to be different classes, such as making the Dauntless class so I could name it? Is there a way to make larger ships like star destroyers capture-able? Anyhow thanks again for the mod and thanks in advance to anyone who could provide more info or point me in the right direction!

[Corey]

1. This is actually fairly easy to do all at once using the game options. If setting everything to "slowest" stilkl doesn't do it, go into gameplay.constants with notepad. Search for "buildspeed" and then you'll see a bunch of fairly self-explanatory multipliers for certain things.

2. That's a bit more complicated, and would involve having maps with locked starts (so, for example, to play as the IR/NR on the same map, you'd actually have to have different copies of the same map. One where you're forcing the first player slot into each faction.

3. Only capital ships are nameable, so you'd need to entirely recode the unit you want to be able to name as a capital ship.

4. Yes, by changing target filters in the boarding ability file (although this would make it super easy to capture any capital ship you fight).

[Heyiforgot]

Thanks for the info! So I can open that constants file in notepad2 and save edits without harming right? Just checking before I get carried away. And so for the map thing it sounds like I would need to treat it as making a scenario for what ever faction I wanted to play as rather than just a map to be used in a random skirmish, that sounds like it makes sense, I think I get it. Thanks again!

[Heyiforgot]

So I'm looking at the target filters in the boarding party file and it has -
numObjects 2
   object "Frigate"
   object "Capital"

I get that the "frigate" lets it target frigates but what does the "capital" do? other abilities that can target capital ships have "CapitalShip" in the objects part of the target filter and I know this ability doesn't target cap-ships. I'm going to try just adding a "capitalShip" entry into it to see how it works for now.

EDIT-
Ok Tried that and I will have to do some more tests for confirmation but that seems to at least let the boarding party ability target star destroyers. Will test more to see if I can successfully capture it. What situations work best for capturing a ship because in my gameplay so far I know that they seem to get destroyed as often as not. This test I just did had each of the two cruisers I had attacking the destroyer shoot at least two parties or more at the single destroyer. Which so far is fine, it shouldnt be Easy to capture, I just want to make certain that its possible.

[Corey]

That should do it, and the Capital thing is just a borken tag. It should work the exact same way as frigates. The best way to make sure is to have the number of ships attacking it be as small as possible, and to manually cast the boarding party ability.

[Heyiforgot]

Thanks, I'll get back to testing soon and confirm but I believe you are right and it is working. Am I right in thinking its best to try to board when the ship is significantly damaged or at least has the shields down? I remember you had mentioned concern about the game being unbalanced due to being able to capture too many ships,  I was thinking of balancing this for my personal game by making the craft with the boarding ability a smaller specialized ship which would require lots of support to be successful or just make the imperial ships quicker to build or something, mostly just thinking out loud....

[Pali]

The trick to boarding is two-fold.  First, the ship has to "die" while still under the effect of the ability, so you need to time the ability to cast when the ship is close to death.  Second, any weapons fire that is already on its way to the target when it is captured will still hit the ship and do damage, and the boarding party ability doesn't heal the ship that much when captured (especially at low levels), so you need to ALSO try and time ordering your ships to do other things so the ship isn't blown up after being captured by your own fire.

The larger the enemy ship, the harder timing the first is, the easier the second.  As a rule, only larger ships are really worth capturing anyways, and as boarding party heals a percentage rather than a fixed amount they are less likely to be destroyed by still-incoming friendly fire... but they are a bit trickier to have a handful of ships be certain to "destroy" them while the BP ability is still affecting them.  You'll have to learn to feel out the timing, but once you do, rushing boarding party is already a viable way for the NR to build up its fleet early on.  Having a dozen free Vics and Dreads captured from garrisons in your fleet early on can be a significant advantage.

Also, in truth, the MC80 is already filling that support ship role.  In a 1-1 it is no match for any other capital ship in the game, and most of its usefulness comes from its abilities.

[Heyiforgot]

Thanks, I figured it was something along those lines. Another quick question is, does the build speed in the gameplay.constraints file also effect repair (hull restore, I guess) times?