Well yeah I can't skin or texture or uv or anything so none of my ships will ever have more than a tiling texture on them. So I can't really turn some of the details into normals or something like that. Really it's turrets that jack up the polycount by a lot.

I don't really ever expect to finish my mod in the first place though so I'm not too worried at the moment.

Also tangents tend to destroy half the detail on the model that it would have otherwise, anyway.

I will have to use every trick i learned modding HW1 to deal with the Sins 2 gig brick wall. It is kind of ironic that HW1 and sins have similar brick walls. In HW1 we had a 32 meg hard code texture limit. Sins is limited by 32 bit (2 gigs). Obviously much more room to play with than HW1, but we also have to take into account that Sins loads EVERYTHING into memory. I have plenty of optimization plans that i will attempt for 0.5D. 1st on the list is to reduce ANY 4096 texture by HALF. Be it Vanilla, or Mod. 4096 is totally unnecessary. Especially on a 32 bit game. The computer elitists will whine, but i want everyone to be able to enjoy SoA 2. Not just the guys with high end rigs. Dont matter, Sins crashes on high end rigs anyway when it goes over 2 gigs.

Yes the Borg share textures, but the meshes themselves need a look through. The standard cube should be just 12 tri's (6 sides 2 tri's a side). IIRC its in the 2000 triangle range.... WHY? I didnt build the model so it is obvious the person that did thought that cramming tri's in the mesh would make for a better model...WRONG. Remember my last post.. "Portray the best art possible with a few polys as possible". If a detail can be shown just as well by textures, and bump maps. Then that should be how a mesh is done. My Excelsior at 1900 tri's is better looking than the klingon starbase at 8000+ tri's. 8000 tri's WHY?! The klingon starbase has many hidden faces, and redundant polys that should be removed. The Vanilla starbases are 10,000 tri's with 4096 textures..WHY?!  I was going to do the optimizing just before real life smacked me in the face, and left me unemployed. Some meshes you must add polys otherwise they look like total crap. Federation saucers are an example. However there are some tricks you can do to keep the counts to a minimum. Yet retain the details. You can texture details on a model you dont have to mesh them. Eye candy is nice, but if it pushes the game over its limits, and crashes the game then it is pointless.

The mods shield meshes are very low poly spheres, and use much less resources than the vanilla sins higher poly "hull hugger" shields do.

We may have to reluctantly remove the volumetric explosions mod again... Just to make sure we dont hit the brick wall.

The UI uses a HUGE texture to represent each function in the build menus, The normal, curser over, pressed, and disabled status. Thats FOUR 4096 textures. We had to copy this to make room for the extra factions in the mod so now that count jumps up to EIGHT 4096 textures. EVERY aspect of the UI has a normal, curser over, pressed, and disabled texture. This is ABSURD. We havent got to the ship icons themselves yet. There MUST be a better, more streamlined way to do this. Ether by breaking up those huge ass textures into many "tiny" textures, or mapping the UI to just ONE single sheet that can be 4096x4096, but the game will load only that ONE sheet. This is why i asked the dev's for GRID TEMPLATES for the UI textures, and recieved stoic silence in return. Obviously we will have to fumble with the UI grids in the brush files ourselves, and learn the hard way.

The Skybox's can be reduced by half too. 2048 res textures "should" look identical to the 4096. Maybe some detail loss, but if it keeps Sins from dumping SO WHAT, Better than disabling them so sins wont hit the 2 gig brick wall. Eve online is an example to follow as far as skybox's. Their skybox is exactly that.. A BOX with 2048 textures, and it looks great. I think this is the next mesh i will make for the mod. a sky-BOX, not a 6000 tri/4096 res sky-sphere. Much ram is wasted in sins just rendering the background.

Its late i am tired long day ill talk more later.

Actually, the regular Borg cube has around 5,000 polygons.  There are a ton of little rectangles and shapes all across the sides to create the various hull plating effects, which the texture does not do, unfortunately.  Still, it's rather hard to tell there are changes in surface depth.  Personally, I'm totally with you on the 12 triangle aspect, but a new texture will be needed to simulate the recesses, angled plating, and protrusions.  The Next Generation cube is one thing, but once you get into the First Contact hull plating it's a whole new ball game.  Honestly, I'd say that particular job is best suited to a polypainting program like ZBrush.  The surface features can be added to the model in ZBrush, the texture applied, and then create a normal map based on those surface features rather than the basic piping, all without every actually adding any polygons to the mesh itself.  

That's how I understand it at least.  I'm still in the infant stages of learning the program.  

Incidentally, try not to look at the tactical cube until I get a chance to redo it, please.  I'd rather save you from having another meltdown or heart attack.   It was my first model and texturing job, which I can now do much better and also, as fortune would have it, more economically.

You are correct. That is because the Fed phaser turrets take up 6210 freaking triangles! ....WHY?!!!

The other structures that "I" made like SB 375, and the regula type stations are in the 4k range, but that is as low in tri's as they can get without looking completely stupid. I did use every optimizing trick in the book on those meshes. Same with the Ambassador at 2500 tri's The Excelsior based ships. None over 2200 tri's. The Constellation at 2800 tri's which is a marvel considering it has 4 nacelles. The Trekmods work never exceeds 3k. Its the damn 3rd party crap that has excessive overkill as far as poly counts. It is obvious there is some mesh rebuilding to do. Because 6k, and up for meshes that shouldnt be any larger than 2k to 3k is totally UNACCEPTABLE. The 3rd party work has to go. It was nice to have for placeholders, but now these overkill high poly models are causing more trouble than what it is worth.

Sigh, I tell people what the freaking poly limits the models need to be before they import them in game, but nobody listens. This is the end result, and we wonder why we have so many problems. Most of the 3rd party ships i chose for the mod are well within the limits. That model, and some other models that were imported during my hiatious are definetly NOT, because if i was online when that model was imported it would have been WAY optimized before it got in game. The importation was well intentioned, but obviously the importer didnt realize what kind of problems we would run into. I am just now beginning to see how serious these issues really are.

The 3rd party models will remain for the 0.4 series but now it looks like i am gonna be doing some SERIOUS mesh building for 0.5.

It will all get fixed, Just need some time to get it done.

With bump mapping you can simulate the borg plating. You underestimate my texturing skills.

I noticed the same thing, the smoke trails are gone.  It's not any big deal, I just thought they looked cool... is there any way to enable them again?  Or does that eat up even more memory??

A bit of polishing?  Seriously?  I won't go off on a rant, but please take the time to read the information provided thus far.  This mod is still very much a work in progress.  Polishing is being done by at least one person nearly every waking hour of the day.  Pirates are on the list.  Additional content is on the list.  

I doubt very much that new planet types are on the list.  We're trying our best to cut back on as much as we possibly can due to the 2 gig memory issue that causes minidumps in all versions of the game, most notably in Diplomacy.  Honestly, when we're done I doubt that you'll be able to cram much more content in without suffering from the minidump.   

I've been adding planets from the Distant Star mod into my copy... but only for my own personal use...  I can import new planets, but not all the other features included in DS... plus I don't have permission so I'm not going to repost it.  But it's not hard to add a few more planets if your into re-modifying a mod...

The hardest part is re-writing the GalaxyScenario.def file for all the new planets... it's tedious, but do-able.

My biggest problem is I don't want to get into a full scale Distant Stars add-on kinda thing because SoA is still a WIP... I don't want to getinto anything big until this is done, or I'll just have to do it all over again...

EVERYTHING .. ALL game assets get loaded into memory upon sins startup. So yes adding extra planets, and map objects will only add on to the problem. Its not just an SoA 2 problem.. EVERY mod has this problem. I intend to make my own planet meshes, and replace the vanilla sins meshes.. Can anyone tell me how many tri's a vanilla sins planet is? More than likely some ridiculosly high number.

To answer your question just jim, the way sins works (which is also stupid IMO) Is a separate planet mesh must be used to represent the different planet types.... WHY?!! Its just a freaking sphere! But hey i didnt build this game.. The way the texture system works is a terran planet must be on one individual mesh. Desert on another mesh. Ice on yet another mesh, and so on, and so on. You cant share textures between planets meshes. Which would make a hell of a lot more sense, and save that much more resources. Adding more of anything effects poly counts, and texture usage.

We used the latest volumetric explosions mod.. The smoke trails dont seem to be in the new version. Which surprised me as well. Regardless it has to go. I dont want to remove it, but due to the situation it must be removed.

As far as "polish"... You are joking right? (goes into "smug mode") This mod in its present condition despite all of its problems is far more "polished" than ANY other "professional" Trek game in existance! Show me a recent trek game, and ill show you how "dumbed down", absurd, and childish it is. Most trek games are targeted for KIDS. We are ADULTS! We demand better! We demand a story that makes some sense, and for it to at least look like someone over 12 wrote it. We demand to remove everything that made Berman, and Braga trek so damn absurd, and retarded to begin with. I think we achieved that. You can thank SoA 2 Team for that. Even in my absense they knew the standard i wanted for the mod, and followed it brilliantly. Sure there were some bumps, and mistakes made, but hey we are only human, and sins is a broken game. We are doing the best we can with what we have to work with. You want "polish"? Go play crysis, or some other no brainer FPS.

If the mod doesnt conflict with anything we modded then yes you can run add on mods like celestial bodies. We did modify our galaxy folder, so be careful. The only thing i can suggest is experiment.

wow either you guys are complete dicks  or some ones in a bad mood. Its called being constructive.  I'm not some fanboi yes man.  I like the mod and I know your working on it. BUT ITS NOT PERFRCT. And yes you are working hard to sort it. And hey if you guys were not so rude I may have even lent a hand. I was gunna write a full review when I have time. Rember a good review points out the good things as well as bad no matter how good a game/mod is.

When I ment polish I ment yes there are some small thing that need working on. And I know full well your working on it all.

Anyone would think I called your mod crap or rubbish. I did'nt, its a good mod, and yes better than the others around. But it not perfect and that not againt the skill of anyone working on the mod, it to do with a broken game and time.

And as for suggestions? WELL ITS A BLOODY MOD, fan based content, therefore fans have a right to make suggestions.  If you take them on board is up to you. Its only to add input you  may of havent thought about.

Anyway I will leave you brainless fanbois to brown noise the developers.  Just remeber your no diffrent than a borg drone.

O and in my RL job I know what it like to run a project and construct stuff only to have someone pull it apart. I also know how satisfying it is to prove someone wrong at the end of a project. I also know how to accept people giveing there input in and help even if it not wanted.

Stress:  Every planet mesh is 2,320 polygons and measures 9914.642 units in diamter, with the exception of the gas giants.  Those are around 50% larger, but the polygon count remains the same.  I haven't tinkered with the galaxy entity file, but surely the planet entity files could be altered so that each individual mesh entry uses the same mesh with different characteristics applied to it.  Now that I've finish the Orbital Weapons Platform I'll look into.

Crazywok:  Be constructive, not critical.  We know it's not perfect, so we certainly don't need you or anyone else to tell us that.  Make that one change, and you can expect a far better reception from all involved.  Trust me.