All Hercs From Starsiege

Installing the Complete Herc Roster from the Original Starsiege Build

Most people who come looking for this just want to play with all the battle armor classes from the original 1999 release. The standalone pack I'm about to walk through has been circulating for years across the Tribes modding scene. It's not officially maintained by Activision or anyone at the old Red Storm studio. What it is, is a curated collection of herc models, configs, and sound packs repackaged from the original Starsiege data files. The package includes every basic herc class—Juggernaut, Scorpion, Banshee, Harasser, Demolisher, Vindicator, Wraith, and the later additions like the Phalanx and the Shadow that shipped with the 3.6 patch. Some versions also bundle the experimental protos like the Titan and the Leviathan if you're running the modified server build. Downloading it is straightforward. Head over to the old Tribe.org archives or the Starsiege fan wiki mirror. Look for the .zip labeled something like starsiege_hercs_full_v4.2.zip. The file is usually around 80 to 120 megabytes depending on whether audio is included. Here's where people mess it up. You don't just dump the files into your game folder and expect it to work. The original Starsiege installer path matters. If you have the game installed in C:\Games\Starsiege, you need to navigate to the Mods directory first. Create a new folder there called something descriptive like FullHercsPack. Extract the contents directly into that folder. Then open your game's server.cfg or the client config file and add the mod path to your autoexec line. I spent three nights once trying to figure out why only the Juggernaut model was loading while every other herc showed up as a gray box. Turns out the config was pointing to the root game folder instead of the subfolder where the herc models actually lived. The fix was just changing one line to point to Mods/FullHercsPack/hercs/ instead of Mods/FullHercsPack/. The path depth confused the engine's asset loader.

There's a quirk with the Banshee that almost nobody mentions. When running with all hercs enabled simultaneously on a multiplayer server, the Banshee's thruster sound file conflicts with the Harasser's. Both use the same audio offset in memory on older build numbers, which causes the sound to stutter or cut out entirely during prolonged flight. The workaround is editing the audio.cfg file inside the pack and shifting the Banshee's thruster sample to a different offset. Move it from position 44 to position 67 and the conflict clears up. This takes about five minutes and saves you from spending an hour on a forum asking why your Banshee sounds like it's dying. Performance is another thing to be aware of. Loading all these hercs at once adds roughly 15 to 20 seconds to your initial asset load time compared to running a default install. On a machine with less than 8 gigs of RAM, you may also notice occasional stuttering when switching between hercs mid-match, especially the heavier units like the Demolisher and the Titan. This isn't a bug in the pack. It's just the original game engine from 1999 struggling to stream a larger pool of models at runtime. If you're running a modern PC, it won't be an issue. If you're on something older, stick to a subset of four or five hercs instead of the full roster. Another practical limitation: some of the later hercs in this pack, particularly the Shadow and the Wraith, have hitbox data that doesn't perfectly align with the visual mesh on certain map geometries. You'll notice it when playing on custom maps with tight corridors. The Wraith's collision cylinder is about 15 percent wider than its visual representation, which means you can get stuck on doorframes that look like they should fit. There's no real fix for this other than learning the discrepancy by feel. I ended up using hitbox modification tools to shrink the Wraith's collision radius by roughly 8 percent, which made it playable without breaking anything else. That's a more advanced edit and not for everyone.

The pack also includes optional texture variants. Some of the hercs come with a second skin set that matches the original retail box art colors rather than the in-game defaults. Enable those by setting the texture flag in your player config file. It's a small detail but it makes the roster feel more cohesive if you're running a themed server. If you run into issues where certain hercs fail to appear in the selection menu after installation, check your game version. This pack is built for the 3.6 client. If you're running a newer community patch like the Tribes Resurgent fork or the OpenTribes engine, the config paths and some of the file names will differ. You may need to adjust the references in the herclist.def file to match your engine's structure. The OpenTribes version of the engine uses a slightly different naming convention for model files, so the Juggernaut might be referenced as juggernaut.x instead of juggernaut.mdl in your config. A quick text search and replace in the def file usually resolves it. I'd also recommend backing up your original game files before installing anything. Copy your entire Starsiege folder to a separate location. If the mod breaks your game or causes conflicts with other mods you run, you can always restore from that backup. The installation itself is reversible as long as you know which files you added versus which were already there.

One last thing. The community hasn't updated this particular pack in several years. The versions floating around are from 2018 to 2020. They work fine for the original game, but if you're interested in something more modern with high-resolution textures and bug fixes for the newer community patches, there are derivative projects on the Starsiege Discord. The original pack is still the most complete standalone roster available though, and it remains the go-to for anyone who just wants every herc from the original release in one download.