That's weird... I was experiencing something similar lately, after doing some of the AI research tweaking mentioned elsewhere, though I've since fixed it. You wouldn't have happened to have attempted something along those tweaks, would you? Either way, that just sounds really, really odd.

We as the mod developers didnt notice this issue, because the mod is always enabled on our test build. So it always loads straight to SoA 2 instead of Diplomacy, then SoA 2 after enabling it. I think it has to do with something that the latest sins patches added that borked up the mod loading at 1st run. The MD's at startup didnt start happening frequently until after the 1.3+ updates. Unless there is an elusive old incompatible file from pre- 1.3 still in the mod that we havent found, or noticed yet.

Team i suggest looking at ALL of the files, Comparing them to the latest set of reference files, and making sure everything is 1.34+ compatible, and what we dont need is NOT there. I'll b doing the same.

You have any idea of how many file changes there are to go thru? May as well rebuild the mod. Definitely not on my list.

Talk one of the DEVs into looking at the mini-dump or tell us how to.

Just wanted to stop by and say hello 

I suspected memory usage was the issue a while back, but on testing, there is near zero difference.

It may dump ten seconds in, but you can even load a game of vanilla sins up first, the assets are unloaded from ram on switching to a mod.

Yo Shimmer!! Hows it going ?

MyFist0 it wouldn't be the first time Myself, or Shimmer had to rebuild this thing from scratch, and it probably wont be the last time considering the frequency of Sins updates. I lost count of how many times SoA 2 had to be rebuilt from scratch for each new major update that came out. Believe me i DO NOT want to rebuild it yet again. Though it may be just a simple matter of replacing stuff with the most current reference files, and editing accordingly. If anyone has any better suggestions i am all ears.

Research is the only real bastion of stock at this point, and it's been gone through so many times it's not funny, the files are also handled from top to bottom.  With it not being a handled error, it's a needle in one of the 4208 haystacks, and one's been there since at least entrenchment, if not the original SOA2 release.  With two handled but untraced, non crashing and apparently entirely inconsequential errors(pretty sure one of them is a bad particle), a rebuild would be a few hundred hours of my life down the drain, probably to end up with it still there in the end.

If we do have a crashing error that isn't just a first run issue, the mod is still more stable than most games are.

Just wanted to post that I'm enjoying your mod although that drops if I throw the Borg in the mix. I know their suppose to be powerful but I haven't found them really usable yet. I just tried a 3 on 1 with everyone just set to hard with me (Fed) and AI (Kling) and AI (Rom) vs AI (Borg) and I can't even get to the 30 min mark without already knowing that we're toast. I think the 1 turret I checked out for the Borg did something like 600 dmg. The Diamond cap ship has 70 armor and does 225 and 325 dmg.

I figured that a 3 on 1 vs the Borg would be a good fight but it wasn't even close.

My pet peeve now is Elite Assimilation. I just watch (and facepalm) as damn near every elite unit i threw into the fight becomes Borg in less than a minute lol. Yes Borg are supposed to be very powerful, but i wasnt expecting my entire fleet to convert lol. We might want to consider toning it down a bit.

You can order your allies to attack, and coordinate it with your own attack. However if your allies arent teched up, or if their economy is stalled they wont be of much help except for fodder to be assimilated. Donate to boost them.

God i hope we dont have to rebuild this yet again :/

we could use a whole separate research block dedicated to anti Borg research which can be ignored if none are in-game. Will help with n00bs picking research also.

Its not to bad in a huge multi 10 player ffa with 1 Borg. A few die off and usually 3 or so left to help me beat the Borg. Once they are gone I back stab the others.

    I personally never play against Borg because, while I don't mind my ships going boom, losing them to assimilation is just not fun...

 Any thought of using the new colonizing shuttlecraft model to replace those butt ugly mining ships?

 Little shuttles moving about would be much more Trek than the current model.

 Are the self replicating mines new? Or they from another mod?

btw great great work.....Stopped me from playing Skyrim..for now.

If you mean the Fed refinery ship is just a place holder. Its the Advent refinery ship that Ironclad never used and the texture was or UVs were never completed. This ship is meant to be a transport hauler for large amounts of metal or crystal and a small shuttle definitely would not fit that role.

Better off to pick a cannon ship from http://www.shipschematics.net/startrek/federation_data.php?filter=Transport and maybe a modeller will get one up in a future update.

NON-Cannon from Armada game but i kinda like it. Find a cannon transport something like this.

NEW http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Self-replicating_mine

The mine was using a placeholder model before, but the ability design has been in a few versions now.  A psycho original.

Assimilation is getting toned down a little, it's a bit overly effective with the mod running smoother.  Action delays changed the frequency of conversion quite a bit.

"I personally never play against Borg because, while I don't mind my ships going boom, losing them to assimilation is just not fun..."

Exactly right.

Assimilation is annoying as it is now. It is ok if Borg are overpowered, i already doubled the hitpoints of all cubes because they were too weak, but loosing ships so fast is annoying.

I find the Borg regen ability is to strong when you add it up with all the other things they are strong at. They hit super hard, they have really high armor, and (at least the lower ships) can enter their hibernation mode and regen HP at 45 a second. I think some have even higher regen. This does make sense for the Borg but the problem is, in the early game you can't kill their ships because you need to reach a certain "critical mass" before you out DPS their regen. When I fight the Borg I feel like I'm either unable to touch them, or I've reached a state where I can overwhelm them with shier numbers. Theres no middle ground where your both equal.

Also, I find their early colony expansion is to high, even for the Borg. In a game I just recently played the Borg had 6 planets colonized 2 minutes into the game. I do think that the Borg should be fast expanding and self regening but I just think a lot of these stats are just to high currently.

I also have a question. Are the Borg getting some form of shield mitigation even though they don't have shields in the game? Maybe its just the high armor thats making me think that.

Regarding what you posted about an anti-Borg research tree, I think thats an interesting idea. You could also include that type of research in the current research tabs depending on what category it falls under. It would also let you put higher level skills more naturally further up the "tree" intermingled with all the other research.

Also, for what you said about a transport ship for hauling goods around. Its been shown in several of the shows that civilian ships are often used for this and theres lots of different ships shown over the years hauling cargo. The civ cargo ship shown in Enterprise is similar to the one in Armada and it would make sense that the overall design wouldn't change all that much over the years. (A truck is a truck.)

BTW if theres a model you do need made you can let me know. I haven't done a lot of modelling lately but I should be able to make whatever you need. 3D modelling for games is what I took in college.

Just let me know, I'd enjoy making something for this mod.

Edit: Maybe use the long one like the one from Armada for "goods" and use one of the Antares varients for "ores"?

that ship looks horrific.

Haha that Antares is the same model I looked at 1st. Its in the edits of that post but was not sure if was cannon (to late to look it up). Lots to pick from that are cannon and I just liked style from the picture I posted.

I pretty sure the team is open to model submissions. We still have a lot of place holders that need ST cannon, SOA era models. 

I am open to the Antares as the refinery ship. I did some research on it myself at ex astris, and it is canon. The problem is it was also used for various other ships of the week (Just as the Tammarian ship was). So that is what sparked the debate over if it was actually a Federation ship, or not. I believe there are SFC/BC models already out there of the ship. The quality of the models IMO is somewhat questionable. The few i saw looked pretty much just slapped together in less than a day. If i had the free time i would just mesh it myself. If you want to mesh it Darkmatter we can use all the modeling help we can get.

The Anti Borg research tree is a brilliant idea. How difficult would it be to implement? Also would it be faction specific?

Yea though assimilation is part of the Borg, and it needs to be there, I think it is pretty safe to say our current system is a little too OP even for the Borg. Perhaps we need to tone down the chance of getting assimilated a little and see how that works out.

Either or requirements are impossible.  Any tree structure has to be mostly complete, as requirements will be uniform.  As such, it's impractical to have a single "Borg" solution across the multiple sides unless they all have identical options.

Borg solutions abound though.  I played a game with a couple other people, and ended up in a system by myself with two allied normal AI Borg opponents.  As Romulans, with no Borg specific counter measures, I held them off for a solid two hours and put myself in a position to take one of them down by culture from their own desert planet.

I'm currently working on the assimilation problem, but the overall Borg are too weak I think, not a side so strong they need another research tree to be handled.

  What if the Borg became the strongest cultural power by 10x and they assimilated whole systems by culture instead of individual ships? You would have to take out their civ centers to lower the threat.

btw The ship from the original Space Seed episode would be perfect for a mining ship. KHAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey good buddy, hows ya doin? I see you guys are still modding this game. Well it seems i have some free time here and there so i'm thinking of contributing again. Do you guys need help with anything specific? or in general?

If the Borg can kill someone by culture, they're doing something very wrong.  You should be able to hold back a full desert with two stations.  Low culture values, very high resistance.

Borg shouldn't even have culture, and they should be immune to other factions culture.

Is that something the game can be made to do?

Not really, which is why they're all but impervious, but push very little.

In absolute Agreement about Borg Culture, but culture is a part of the Sins engine. We cant just remove it without the game breaking. The Borg "must" have it. Making them immune to others culture is easy enough to do, but removing Borg culture from the game is absolutely out of the question. The Sins AI will have a stroke if you cant build any broadcast centers. However, we can make it to where they produce very little culture from their broadcast centers (perhaps 1/2 or 1/4 of the other factions). This obviously would be for the sole purpose of the AI not spazzing out. If you play as Borg just dont build any broadcast centers.... errr i mean transwarp communication hubs   (EDIT: Ack Psychoak beat me to the post)

Hey Shimmer get with Psychoak/Jay, and see what all needs doing. There is a lot to do still. Glad to see ya back old friend

NO on the DY-100! It's not that we dont appreciate the suggestion. It is a Pre-TOS era sublight ship. I happen to have made a model of the DY-100 for another mod. If it fit into a TMP/TNG era Federation lineup dont you think it would be in here already? I think we are gonna stick with the Antares (TNG era. Not remastered TOS version) for the Fed refinery ship. What we really do need is refinery, and trade ships/structures for the other factions. The D-5 Tanker is slated for the Klingon refinery ship, but we got no mesh for it. I obviously had zero time to make it myself. If someone can pull that ship off you will make this modder very happy. Romulans need some civilian ships, and structures.. I Prefer original ideas. for example the Romulan trade ship being similar to the old concord aircraft, but "romulan-ized". Dominion will use Karemman transport for both its trade and refinery ship. I got a mesh for that one. Borg will just use a box.. Not that they need civilian ships, but AI cant function without them.