Mass Effect?

Some thoughts

from Sins Forums
I am just using this as an opportunity to voice my thoughts about the potential of a Mass Effect mod. I remember playing ME around its release and going back and forth between that and the SoaSE beta in my free time, and finding lots of similarities and possibilities. The two have similar methods of interstellar travel (in terms of what the Iron Engine is capable of doing.) Since we are all familiar (hopefully) with the way that units travel in Sins, I will just explain the ME side and let you draw the conclusions. In Mass Effect, ships use simple FTL travel to move between planets within a solar system, which still takes a little bit of time. They use the large one-way Mass Relays to instantly travel vast distances. I could see the possible implementation of these by way of removing the phase lanes between stars and using the Mass Relays in the same way that wormholes function The ships we know of via the codex in ME also have very similar roles to the standard classes in Sins. As we really only know about the Humans extensively from Mass Effect, I believe that they would be the best ships to model. Here I want to state, I do plan on acting on this eventually, I just don't have the time at the moment, as I would like to graduate High School and get in to college, and simply need to place possible modding projects on hold (school is a bitch right now =( ). Here is what I have in mind, however, and if anyone wants to take this idea and run with it, that is absolutely fine by me, and I will offer what assistance I can. I would like to do a rudimentary proof of concept mod, simply creating the standard scout class, fighting frigate, fighting cruiser, Battleship, and Carrier. Any other support classes would need to be completely original, and would require much additional conceptual work, as we already have limited enough imagery of the other classes, save the Frigates (the Normandy). The purpose of this would be to add the Human Systems Alliance to the already existing pool of races to see if they would integrate well into Sins. I could see this eventually turning into a Total Conversion. But would like to start small and build up from there, adding in Support classes and expanding the research tree to turn them into a truly unique race over time. Sorry for the relatively large post, but I like to be thorough. Anyone have any thoughts?
6,078 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Sorry for the double post, but my formatting didn't seem to go in the first time =\


I am just using this as an opportunity to voice my thoughts about the potential of a Mass Effect mod. I remember playing ME around its release and going back and forth between that and the SoaSE beta inn my free time, and finding lots of similarities and possibilities.

The two have similar methods of interstellar travel (in terms of what the Iron Engine is capable of doing.) Since we are all familiar (hopefully) with the way that units travel in Sins, I will just explain the ME side and let you draw the conclusions. In Mass Effect, ships use simple FTL travel to move between planets within a solar system, which still takes a little bit of time. They use the large one-way Mass Relays to instantly travel vast distances. I could see he possible implementation of these by way of removing the phase lanes between stars and using these in the same way that wormholes function

The ships we know of via the codex in ME also have very similar roles to the standard classes in Sins. As we really only know about the Humans extensively from Mass Effect, I believe that they would be the best ships to model.

Here I want to state, I do plan on acting on this eventually, I just don't have the time at the moment, as I would like to graduate High School and get in to college, and simply need to place possible modding projects on hold. Here is what I have in mind, however, and if anyone wants to take this idea and run with it, that is absolutely fine by me, and I will offer what assistance I can.

I would like to do a rudimentary proof of concept mod, simply creating the standard scout class, fighting frigate, fighting cruiser, Battleship, and Carrier. Any other support classes would need to be completely original, and would require much additional conceptual work, as we already have limited enough imagery of the other classes save the Frigates (the Normandy).

The purpose of this would be to add the Human Systems Alliance to the already existing pool of races to see if they would integrate well into Sins. I could see this eventually turning into a Total Conversion. But would like to start small and build up from there, adding in Support classes and expanding the research tree to turn them into a truly unique race over time.

Sorry for the relatively large post, but I like to be thorough. Anyone have any thoughts?
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
An interesting thought but isnt there very little else known about Mass Effect in terms of ships and stuff? It would require a lot of stuff to be made up but potentially possible.

Races I could image:
*Human Systems Alliance
*Geth
*Turian
*Asari
*Also the creators of the Geth maybe, forgot their name now.
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
You forget the Batarians and the Solarians. They are also some power players in that galaxy, although the Batarians are more of a independent race of the Traverse. It would be interesting.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Not enough is really known, have to wait for the next one to come out. Or some books are released.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
yea wait a couple of years, till i finish school too, and i can help :D

also, have the batarians been shown yet? i dont have xbl so i dont know if the new contents been released?
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
yes, there is a picture of them on the offical site and they are releasing DLC in March with them in it.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
you can at least look at making ship models, their are actually a lot of them shown in the game, like when you get to the citadel, and at the very end.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
A TC is more than models. What gameplay changes could be made?
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
If you would read the post more closely, I am not talking about making a TC, I am saying that I see possibilities in it becoming one over time. I do see enough changes that could be made to sins to make it more "Mass Effect-y" that it would be considered a TC, however that is beyond the scope of what I have in mind.

All that I personally plan to do at some point is to model the Generic Battleship, modify the model of that ever so slightly to create the carrier (as is what the Carriers in ME are), create the Generic Frigate (the Normandy), and a scaled down lighter version as the scout frigate.

For the cruiser some original thought would be needed but I feel confident in my ability to create a ship in between the two classes that has the original spirit of the race. And furthermore, I believe there are some screenshots of the the cruiser in the final fleet engagement at the end of ME. There are definitely images of both the Dreadnought (Battleship class) and the Carrier class.

Anything more than that at this point would be going beyond the scope of what we know about the Mass Effect universe. I was just suggesting this to get some "brain juices" flowing.

Cheers!