Mass Effect MOD

The Normandy SR-1 class of frigates could be the basic scout frigate for the Alliance.  They're small, poorly armed, extremely fast, and it could have its stealth systems operate similar to SoA2's cloaking, and the cloaking would be unlocked via research to prevent it from being OP.

I think the Normandy SR-2 should be a cruiser as its too small to be a capital/dreadnought.  You could unlock the Normandy SR-2 design by research, and it would be a bigger, slower, and tougher version of the Normandy SR-1, but still be armed solely with GARDIAN lasers, just more powerful ones than the SR-1.  The advanced upgrades such as Multicore Shields, Silaris Armor, Thanix Magneto-Hydrodynamic Cannons, and Helios Thrusters could all be added in as expensive research which unlock them as active and passive abilities on the SR-2.

And why do you want to make the Geth enemies?  This forum doesn't have spoiler tags (shame on you Stardock!), so I can't go into greater detail than that. *coughLegioncough*

@SpardaSon21

It doesn't really matter if he wants to call the Geth enemies or not, unless he wants to make a campaign as well, it's a moot point.

Geth can be the Pirate faction.

PLEASE do not put the SR2 as a dread because it is FAR from it. The SR2 is a frigate/cruiser class.

Good choice for races is Asari, Alliance, Geth (Pirates), and the Turians.

Well i was saying the normandy as a dread cuz you could limit how many you could make but i like the idea for research, the SR1 was pretty expensive so id go with a heavy scout maybe. Yeah i know legion, i was thinking more along the lines of the heretic faction of the geth but i agree with spardason so i guess that works, as for the pirates im still  leaning towards the collectors or mercenarys. Thanks for the input!

any thoughts on gameplay?

I wish you luck, Viper.

I remember a Normandy model drifting around the 7DS forums a long time ago, but that was before we lost everything. Don't know if it got archived or even hosted.

yeah i remember asking about that, danman said he'd look into it but i never got anything back.. oh well I guess it can't hurt to ask again.

Yeah well the collectors are collecting humans to make a human reaper.

We could make a collector base only avaliable for building in the star.

Sorry for the spoiler, but still, LOL.

To be honest I think you should not particularly worry about the normandy at the start just try to get the default fighter, interceptor, frigate, crusier, and dreadnoughts for each race.

The normandy sr2 is still a frigate crusiers have a crew of 800 ( I may have got that wrong but I am fairly sure it is correct).

yeah thats true, im probly gonna make some kind of alpha that uses sins meshes till i get someone to make the actual models. i do have the nifty little mesh resizing tool so that could come in handy

Perhaps you should start small and then expand - for example, have only 2 factions to start with (Citadel and Reapers/Geth/Collectors) For the Citadel, you could have all the Alliance vessels, all the Turian frigates and dreadnaughts, and the Destiny ascension. You could also use your imagination for designs, just as long as you stick to the basic design dynamic.

You could eventually expand the factions to become seperate (Geth seperate from Reapers, Cerberus seperate from Citadel, etc).

Also, for pirates, what about the Migrant Fleet? They weren't explicitly 'pirates', but, rather, scavengers. Would certainly be interesting.

Just my 2 cents.

Two thumbs up to Vipervenom for starting a new discussion to seriously talk about this mod. The Mass Effect universe is too interesting and developed in story for Sins to ignore. I'm no modder but as a Mass Effect fan and someone who would play this kind of a mod, I'd also like to contribute my thoughts if no one objects to hearing them.

K, well first off, on instinct I really like the idea of converting wormholes into a mass relay network. It's the most logical option in order to include them. However, I might suggest making a research requirement for you to be able to activate them once they're found. Might make expansion a bit more of a challenge and slow things down nicely. And as for star travel, I don't know if I would take it out completely. The point to the mass relays is that when you go through them, you're not limited to that single star system, but to the entire local star cluster. However, I don't know if it's possible to implement any kind of system like that in the game, so if that can't happen then oh well.

Second, I liked Yanxa's suggestion as to starting with only two factions. For a beta or a first release it would be easiest for a modding team to just create a Citadel faction and then an opposing faction, whatever the team decides that to be, Geth, mercs, etc.. We've seen several different ships throughout the two games so far, but barely enough to constitute entire individual fleets.

Third, the ships and factions. The singlemost important element to the success of the mod. The Alliance Navy is the easiest - or the least difficult, that is to say - to model ships for, because we have pictures for three of their ships and codex details for how the other components of the fleet operate. We have the first Normandy to have a basis for small frigates, the Alliance cruiser from the Battle of the Citadel, and there's also a picture of a fighter on the "Starships" main page on the Mass Effect Wiki. From these three we see that the common element to Alliance ships is their wings and engines, running parallel to the main shaft of the ship and hanging at an angle. Also, on the carrier we see two main guns projecting out of the front of the ship. Also, from codex details we know that dreadnoughts have a similar cannon running almost as long as the ship itself, so we might assume that this as another common detail to powerful ships.

It's the other Council races which would probably make up the main factions that present a problem to a modding team. For the salarians we have absolutely nothing to go off of. With the Asari there's the famous Destiny Ascension, but we don't know how this dreadnought relates to the rest of their fleet. The same goes for the Turians, where at least we have a common cruiser from screenshots. All you can do is focus on the prominent elements of those two ships, and try to apply them to other ship types. With the Asari, you have that abstract four-point cross design and a hollow middle. Oy vey, all I can say is good luck with the asari, that's hard to work with. For the Turians, at least they're a bit more straight to the point in style. Long broad shaft opposed to the roundness of the Normandy or the narrow boxiness of the Alliance cruiser. And their wings are more at an angle like a V shape, not parallel like Alliance ships. Might be easier to apply to different ships.

With the release of Mass Effect 2, we also got a new look at the Quarian Migrant Fleet. There are plenty of views of some of their ships, and since we have that, I don't think they should be left out of the mod. I don't know if they can be included in the mod, but I think it would be a waste of starships to ignore them.

The geth have their dropships, which have been labeled as frigate-class. Also in Mass Effect 2 we saw a geth space station. I suggest look at those two and compare for ideas.

I really wish that there were images of krogran spaceships, I don't believe they should be left out of the mod, but maybe they'd be better for a role as pirates or something.

And remember you even have a new model for trade ships by replacing them with Kowloon-class freighters.

Normandy SR-2 is a cruiser according to the CE art book.

Destiny Ascension is a dreadnought yes, but according to Joker in ME1 it has no firepower. Apperently servering some other purpose (capital envoy ship? :D).

About the other ships, my memory isn't as good as it could be but I don't remember that many different types of ships seen in the game. Everything looks about the same, and considering there are like 5 frigates, 5 cruisers and 5 capitals for each race in SINS that makes it an awefull lot to figure out on yourselves .

Will be insteresting to see where this leads though

Wow, shows how little I know lol, I didn't even know  there was that concept art book out til you mentioned it and I looked around on the web for it. I'm gonna have to check it out in more detail if it has starship designs in there like it's advertised to. Ugh I need to pay more attention to the extras that come out for Mass Effect.

The problem is that even if you could make the council races as seperate factions (which I would love, btw), you'd also need to include someone for the to fight.  Having the Taurians and the Aasari slug it out is a little silly and non-canon, I think.

That's not true - I believe it's either Ashley or Kaiden who, upon seeing it on approach to the Citadel, note that the guns on it could take down the kinetic barriers on any ship in the fleet - proving that it has immense firepower, as opposed to none.

My bad, you're correct. Will have to replay that ME1 part though cause I'm sure Joker say something along those lines... Anyway, you were right.

Edit: If I was wrong about that, I thought I might be wrong about the Normandy size-class too so I checked it up in the art book. It doesn't say SR-2 is a cruiser, it only says it's twice the size of SR-1. I'm no ship engineer so I can't say what classifies as a frigate and what as a cruiser, but for me it does sound a bit odd that SR-2 would be a frigate and still be twice the size of another frigate. Unless SR-1 was boarderline fighter/frigate that is, which would might make the two two extremes for the frigate class.

Also, there are fairly good pictures of several types of ships in the art book.

That's a good point about enemies. The geth are an option always, the "Heretics." Batarians, or a faction labeled as the Terminus Systems might be an option. Personally with the storyline of Mass Effect 2 out I would recommend the Collectors as an option.

As for Destiny Ascension, I wouldn't doubt it if Joker was downtalking it, his character loved the Normandy so much. But yeah I'm pretty sure I saw it somewhere on the wiki that it's supposed to have as much firepower as the rest of the asari fleet.

I got to see the pictures from the art book, some of the starship concepts were pretty cool. I don't know how much I liked some of the turian ship concepts, but that's not for me to decide what goes in a mod or not. Glad they included that description though of the defining features of a turian ship, that it should look like overlapping metal sheets to look like ruffled feathers.

I actually really liked the salarian ships though, and their description as well that they should look like ocean-faring vessels. Honestly they reminded me of the Advent a tiny bit too in some respects.

Maybe you could use the various stages of design (for instance, some of the early concept images) as a different class of ship.

For example, Normandy as a scout cruiser, concept image of Normandy as the anti-structure ship, concept of Salarian ship as anti-fighter, etc.

That would mean you're at least sticking to the design ideas.

But it's your call, of course.

geth should defenatly be playable

Im not a modder but I have a couple ideas

As a more core part of the game then just new skins what about replacing artifacts with Prothean data disks it would really just be a change of name but still would help with conversion.

Also would it be possible to put the citadel into the game as a capturable point.?

And Omega could also be a planet but on the opposite side of the galaxy and capturing on of them should give a bonus to your empire.

Also heres a link to another topic for a mass effect mod I made a long time ago on my first account their are some good ideas on there. https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/321571/page/1

thanks people! like the ideas i've seen so far, ive actually implemented a few of them. right now im working on the gameplay of the mod, basicly ive got the foundation done but for now im stuck with vanilla sins meshes till i can get someone to volenteer to model for me.

Why stop with the geth? Why not go all the way and add in Sovereign? Heres my idea:

Alliance:

Capital Ships-

1. Human Dreadnought: Battle Ship.

2. Destiny Ascension: Carrier

3. Salarian/Quarian Ship: Mother Ship

4. Normandy SR-2: Support Ship. It could have abilities like electronics warfare to fry enimy systems Only one at a time. Extra long build time. Upgrades would parallel the ones you get in ME2. 

5. Turian Dreadnought: Heavy Assault Ship 

Agents of the Reapers:

Capital Ships-

1. Sovereign: Battle Ship.

2. Geth Dreadnought: Carrier (Based off of the design of the geth drop ships)

3. Geth Ship: Mother Ship

3. Geth Ship: Support Ship

5. Collector Ship: Heavy Assault Ship

The Destiny Ascension should either be the battleship or assault ship, not the carrier.  Remember its freaking huge main gun?  To replace it as a carrier, why not add a Human Carrier?  Its stated in the codex somewhere that the Humans are the biggest users of fighters.

I don't know if I fully understand a7on's list of ships. It seems a little arbitrary.