Invasion 2.5 Released! (April 14, 2010)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
Version 2.5 of Wing Commander Invasion is now available. It adds the highly anticipated third playable faction, Nephilim, to the mix. A handful of other graphical improvements and game fixes are also implemented with this update. While there's plenty of new stuff to try out now, more items, skirmish maps and a conquest mode are planned for future editions.

There is no upgrade patch, but the full version of the mod is just 45 megs and can be copied over an existing Star Wars: Empire at War (Forces of Corruption) installation. Complete instructions are included with the zip. Download it here.

Well after several weeks v2.5 is up on moddb. As usual there's still a shed load to still do, but the Nephilim are working as expected. This time around the mods been released as a full version so theres currently no patch version. It can be freely installed to directly overwrite the previous version or installed directly as with other mods. I've done extensive bug checking and I've not found anything untoward. Other than that theres not much else to really say about the current release but there shouldn't be any serious issues.





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Original update published on April 14, 2010
 
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WING: Commander Invasion 14/04/10 update

Well after several weeks v2.5 is up on moddb. As usual theres still a shed load to do, but the Nephilim are and working as expected. This time around the mods been released as a full version so theres currently no patch version. It can be freely installed to directly overwrite the previous version or installed directly as with other mods. I've done extensive bug checking and I've not found anything untoward. Other than that theres not much else to really say about the current release but there shouldn't be any serious issues.
 
Right that does it. Every time I see this mod pop up on the CIC I really want to try it out, which would mean buying Empire at War first, although it's pretty cheap on eBay now. Can anyone tell me, would it be beneficial to play through the original game before starting Invasion - or is it a pretty simple game to get to learn?
 
Ok am I just being stupid? I download the mod but the folder dont contain the .bat file mentioned in the instructions
 
Right that does it. Every time I see this mod pop up on the CIC I really want to try it out, which would mean buying Empire at War first, although it's pretty cheap on eBay now. Can anyone tell me, would it be beneficial to play through the original game before starting Invasion - or is it a pretty simple game to get to learn?

The original game and its expansion are good games, but not really necessary to play before diving into Invasion. I found the pop caps were insanely low for the vanilla games preventing it from having that epic touch, not to mention the what the heck moment from making a huge fleet and not being able to use it all at once when entering combat. A play through the original tutorials should suffice before playing invasion.

Youngblood Ok am I just being stupid? I download the mod but the folder dont contain the .bat file mentioned in the instructions

I downloaded 2.5 last night and did a clean install but had it previously so I didnt need to check for the .bat file. if it isnt in there, you can download a previous version and just unpack its .bat, it'll work.
 
Oh well we all forget things from time to time not to worry. I did a download of V 2.0 to get the file works no problem, however only had a quick look at skirimish all the AI seemed to do was just sit there.
 
Huh...I thought the AI did that because I was playing on easy. I got attacked (I think) by minor forces (a few fighters and towards the end those light carriers for the Kilrathi). The Nephilim worked well, though, they kept hitting me with leviathans throughout the match.

Big problem I have though is the Nep station is way too powerful. It took whole fleets of Plunketts and Confederations to make significant headway and I had the Midway and Behemoth at play as well (course I initiailly didn't know how to use their primary weapons).

Other critiques:

-the Leviathan should probably be higher up on the build tree
-more fighters (esp. for the Neps) should be in play
-better fighters (ferrets are fine for reinforcements as they are meant for scouting but medium and heavy fighters I would expect to see coming of the bigger carriers including the confederation class...also I was kind of hoping to have some control over what fighters each carrier could deploy)
-the kraken and dreadnought should probably also have special powers for a powerful attack like the midway - however I can understand if you are having difficulty in making changes to special powers

Overall, though, it is a lot of fun to play and really cool to finally get to use Plunketts and Hades duking it out with Nep capships.

PS One thing that I think would make a vast improvement in the experience: replace the speech and music, it is a little immersion breaking hearing imperial voices coming from a Nep cruiser.
 
@Iceblade.

The AI tends to assanine with exactly what its going to do. Sometimes it will attack with various ships. Sometimes it'll just send ship after ship of the same class. The stations are supposed to be powerful. Thats why the population cap was increased so the player needs to build a substantial fleet to take it down.

- When you say higher up, do you mean further up the tech tree or lower down?? The thing is the Nephilim have no dedicated tech 1 carrier and thats the Leviathans job. If its moved then there will be one capital ship for the Nephilim which will be a pain for anyone attempting to defend when playing as the Neph.
- I only have a limited amount of usable models and the Neph suffer in this department. As for the starting units. Its more down to the fact that whilst you have a single fighter and bomber class it forces you to use carriers and other capital ships.
- I have one selection of fighters and I didn't want to include a shed load that wouldn't serve any particular purpose or become redundant. Thats why your limited to the selection thats available. With regards to choosing which fighters a carrier has. Unfortunately thats something thats never been looked into and I think the game engine limits the ship fighters launched to what you have in each XML.
- It depends what you mean with regards to the Kraken and Tiamat. Both have the extremely powerful plasma shot which can take out a hardpoint in one shot. The thing is I have to attempt to balance playability with canonicity and it can be quite difficult.

What music would you have in mind?? I dont usually have music playing as it causes my game to lag a bit. With regards to the speech. I have been endeavouring to get hold of speech but this is proven VERY difficult. Resources are extremely limited and I've spent hours looking on the net. I would prefer to use more authentic sounding speech than something that I've recorded myself. If, in he event I can't get any sounds then all speech will be disabled from every unit.
 
The problem with the Neph station is that it is too powerful compared to both Confed's and the Kilrathi's. Reducing the number of those nasty outer rock turrets should even it out.

Also the Barracuda seems rather nasty for just a corvette. It attacking damage is fine, but I think its HP is too high.

I think a little reordering is in order though for the ships: the Orca destroyer I've always seen as being more an anti-destroyer/corvette/frigate ship especially since it has fewer anti-capship weapons. The Hydra though I see as being quite a bit nastier with those three prongs. The Leviathan (fighter complement of ~200) I think should be at least one tier higher while the Orca (now reduced in effectiveness) could be placed into the Tier 1 with small complement of fighters (~20 in the canon...kindof). From the games, the impression is that the Neph fight more in a swarm like fashion with more and presumably cheaper ships. There would also be a better match up I think between the Durango and the Orca (maybe 1.5 of these) actually in role. Especially I think the durango has a complement of 30-40 ships.

The rest of the tech tree seems alright to me for the Neph with the Leviathan at tier 2, since it is rather quick compared to most everything. Btw, this document, while not officially canon and containing some inaccuracies, could prove useful or of interest: https://www.wcnews.com/chrisreid/shipsalien.doc

As for the fighters, you picked some curious craft to make bombers: the wasp (an interceptor) and the Eskhapi (an atmospheric fighter). Really fighters/bombers are rather minor concerns (ie nitpicky), I still think that more traditional bomber type craft would be more fitting. The vaktoth would fit well for the Kilrathi light carrier bomber role, but for Confed, I'm not sure. I see that there is a crossbow here (never saw him in battle though). Btw, what are the heretic, X36 and Foxbat supposed to be? In any case, if you don't mind adding another craft you could include the Thunderbolt or the Sabre to fill out the light-carrier bomber craft role. If not I would think that switching the T-shark with the Wasp would feel more fitting canon-wise (though it also marginal as the T-shark is just multi-purpose and not very heavy).

In any case, the fighter thing is really minor and not worth a bunch of extra work on my account.

For the Midway, Kraken and Tiamat I was expecting something more along the lines of at least being able to wipe out corvettes and light destroyers (like the Murphy) in one blast. Canonically however, the weapon should take out a fleet of 5 heavy ships in one blast but for the sake of balance, we can just assume they are using lower power settings and short cool down cycle (especially in the case of the Midway as it should blow up when using it more than once).

As for music, well it doesn't matter too much at this point. Something either from the WC games or fan-made by one of the communities talented musicians would be nice. In any case though, I'm just playing wc music in the background with the in-game music off, and wow what a difference it makes. For speech, while you could get a few people to record some quick lines (something that shouldn't be too difficult considering Standoff has done it with 10 to 20x the number of voice-actors and 100x the number of lines that this project would require. Granted, new speech may not be possible, then I definitely think the speech should be turned off.
 
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Okay, I've found the crossbow, heretic and bearcat MkII and I have a good guess as to the other fighters.

I do wonder how hard it would be to bring some of these ships, maps, and files over to the first Empire at War. Basically have two similar mods but different in era. A mod set during the Kilrathi War for Empire at War with only Kilrathi War era ships and an altered version of this mod with the mostly newer ships mixed in with the some of the older ones that make more since. The Kilrathi would probably not change much between the two mods though.

Well it was an idea.

If you need any help with design work on the in-game ship stats, class-types, Tier ordering, or additional ships to add to the roster...I'm available.

I also could out with building the maps, once I get an idea on how to actually get the editor to recognize the new ships/stations.
 
Well the models and texture files are compatible as are the XML's (for the most part). There are a few special weapons which won't work and the FoC specific projectiles won't work either. It'll be a shed load of work even to get a full range of ships in game but its definately not impossible. I just wish I could rig and animate ground units as I've got a good list, but I'm afraid my skills in this field are pretty limited.
 
Dang, there goes the PTC and the Behemoth.

So what do you mean by a "getting full range of ships in-game"? Are you referring to just getting the ships coverted over from FOC or do you mean coming up with ships to replace the Vesuvius, Midway, Murphy, Plunkett, and Hades?

I've got tons of ideas on setting up the Confed for Kilrathi War Era only.
 
Well as you know the GUI build buttons for the ships will only support 28 possible buttons. It would be possible to have a map object which could be a research station of some sort (for upgrades) which would free up space on the bar but you may still need at least one spot for the starbase itself. EaW has exactly the same amount of build spots so all the ships would probably fit on it without using a secondary station.

Mind you. Even though you would likely lose the PTC it still might be possible to create some sort of projectile based on one of the ingame ones.
 
GUI build icons aren't a problem as I any convertion to eaw would just rearrange some ships and replace others. I think a fully implemented ptc like weapon would be cool. So was that kraken weapon projectile available in eaw?

The Concordia would also make a great hero unit.

Hmmm...Say can you help get a mod setup for testing out the confed and kilrathi ships in eaw? Btw are you thinking about building a campaign for your mod?

If you help me out with getting a skirmish-based kilrathi war era mod for EAW (mostly getting your resources imported and functioning (excluding missing weapons) and the additional models for replacement of post war ships - 6 capships and 4 or 5 fighters, all Confed), I could help you build the campaign (design work and missions) as well as build some custom maps (which I'll probably do anyway).

Just a thought.
 
No. The kraken/tiamat main canon weapon is the projectile from one of the consortium capital ships.

Unfortunately, I work on one project at a time. My free time is pretty limited and it stops confusion when working on more than one project. My original campaign was a complete failure due to the AI doing absolutely nothing but staying at its home planet. I do plan to try again but not for a short while.

I'll probably need some help with maps but for the time being theres other things to do first.
 
You know what, there really is no reason to transfer parts of this mod over to EAW, when a kilrathi war faction set up can be done with FOC. I just need to remove or leave blank the third race. The rest is just altering what is already there.

Okay, I'll take a look at some things and see what I can do. Expect some questions from time to time.
 
Got it started. Now confed is only using kilrathi war era vessels. I notice text is limited on length. I've got a few ideas around this.

I got the squadrons now at 2 fighters (a wing or flight basically). Btw, can I import any premade ship into the game or will the models require adjusting?

Just a note, this mod will be basically tied to yours only in a different folder and with a new batch file. A mod of a mod basically.
 
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