Four Years Onward news - Legend of the Galactic Heroes - Sea of the Stars mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

Today marks the forth anniversary of the release of this mod, as well as the -1,587th of the Battle of Maladetta. It seems wrong to let the date pass without anything, but I'm afraid I don't have any content to show. What I can do is to give a retrospective of my time working on this project.

The biggest influence, at least for me, were the official games by BOTHTEC of the '90s, since they were the closest thing any of us could get in terms of hard data for the ships. Having never played them myself, I had to rely on playthrough videos and statistics extracted from the game, the latter still forming the basis for ship statistics and balance.

All of these (minus the seventh game, a short-lived MMO) were turn-based and tactics-based, so while they were indispensable in informing how the game should work, they weren't much help for how it should play. In late 2008, the eighth official game, this time by Bandai Namco and in real-time, was released. I played and enjoyed that game (and would certainly encourage anyone to try the demo and buy it if you can), but I also felt that a fan project shouldn't simply copy the official game; it felt wrong to me, both from a creative and moral perspective.

So what were the biggest RTS influences? For me, personally: Sid Meier's Gettysburg!, the Total War series, and Conquest: Frontier Wars. Gettysburg and Total War were the first real-time games to really tackle pre-modern combat, although there's an obscure title called The War College that also tackled it in 1995. Of the two, Gettysburg is definitely closer to a traditional wargame, but both have many similarities. Units are grouped into larger formations; morale is important, as is taking advantage of terrain and keeping your lines intact. Conquest is a rather more obscure title, but it was the biggest influence on our supply mechanic. Ships in the game have limited supply, and need to be serviced by dedicated supply ships; if they run out, they can't fire, and you have to pace your advance with the construction of supply bases and "wormhole gates", which allow supplies to flow from one star system to another. it's definitely underlooked and underrated, and cheap now on GOG.com.

One of the great themes of the series, and one which I always tried to emphasize, is the importance of logistics over tactics. Battles are won and lost as much as through bread as bullets; an army, as Napoleon said, "marches on its stomach". Trying to represent that in Sins of a Solar Empire was a tall task, and not entirely successful. The first release of the mod gave every ship a supply pool which drained the more time it spent away from friendly space; when it ran out damage was repaired much slower and shields were less effective. Unfortunately, the amount of calculations required for this slowed the game to a crawl, sometimes crashing it. which was a problem that plagued all versions of the mod for the original game. It's still an idea that I'd like to pursue, but I've accepted that it won't be with this engine.

Outside of design influences, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention izelone0079 and Asahiwa (Japanese only) who provided invaluable reference and support regarding starships and background information. The mod certainly wouldn't look as good as it does without them, or be anywhere near as accurate.

I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to play this little fan mod of ours; you are the reason we do this. Every time I see it mentioned somewhere, or watch a video of it, a giant smile appears on my face. As silly as it might sound, working on this fan project has been one of the proudest and most rewarding experiences of my life. I hope that we've done justice to Yoshiki Tanaka's work, and hopefully swelled the ranks of the 銀河英雄伝説/Legend of the Galactic Heroes fanbase a bit. To all the creators and fans: this is for you.

renner
2014.1.16