Just fine, and this isn't an error.  The ability can be interrupted early, 20 seconds is good for a duration, not for a cooldown when it's restoring 2k shields over that time

That's because the starbase isn't Dominion, but Cardassian.  As such, it's armed with Cardassian phasers and plasma torpedoes.

In Canon the Cardassian phasers are very similar to the Fed type 10 phasers. In fact in the 1st DS-9 episode the phaser fire from the Galors was almost identical to Galaxy/Intrepid phaser fire. We made the cardie phasers a little more yellow to try to distinguish them. Dont mistake the Cardie phasers for the Spiral Wave Disruptor. Which has its own distinct effect.

I think with the fed phasers need work, but i havent had any time to mess with the particles. There should be different types. The Ambassadors type 9's should have a distinct effect. The Galaxy through Intrepid's type 10's should have a distinct effect, The Sovereign, and Starbase's Type 12's are pretty much the effect we are using right now for all of the Fed beam weapons.

The blue poleron beams are exclusive for the jem hadar, and would look stupid coming from cardie ships. Well see what we can do to distingish weapons fire better. In a huge fleet battle the beam fire would be so thick you couldnt tell who is shooting what no matter what faction it is lol.

Is it enough to only install the .03 update, or do I have to install the prior patch too?

Only the latest, all patches are cumulative.

when talking with a friend of mine about the mod, he asked "why weapons & shield are not dependent on Antimatter?".

Quite intriguing thought. You might look into this?

For the weapons, two problems. 

First, the antimatter firing constraint sucks, it's pretty hard to actually have no antimatter, it doesn't actually use it, just require it to exist.  Energy drains would be awesome and ships that had expensive abilities for burst output would be penalized, ships with a nice stately progression on ability expenditure would never know the difference.

Second, fireConstraintType don't have a count.  It's an either or prospect, no and.  That means no research locked weapons, no weapon upgrades for starbases.

For the shields, it's just not doable without taking up an ability slot on every ship, on your elites, that would be a real big hindrance.

In the early days of the mod we mulled over antimatter usage, and warp travel. Sins was originally designed with open maps, and orbiting planets. Which would have been great for us, because we could have implemented a galactic civ 2 style of warp travel based on how much antimatter ships had, distance between grav wells, and research (to increase the distance you can travel between warps, and reduce antimatter usage to initiate a warp). The Dev's of Sins went with fixed phase lanes to prevent a "whack a mole" style of gameplay that would be present in open maps. Theoretically it can still be possible to do the "warp" plan. However on the phase lane based maps things would be problematic. Once you jump you can travel infinite distance (however long the phase lane is). Then if we wanted to simulate an "open map" we would have to connect every grav well to every other grav well (A tedious task is an understatement). Still we cant factor in limited jump distance based on antimatter, and distance between grav wells, because phase lanes are "infinite". Limited only by the 2 connecting points. Still its something to research, and look into. I wish the code for the open maps was still in the game.

For a failed re-imagined TOS era Starfleet Battles Universe based mod i was planning Antimatter would have played a huge role. I would have used antimatter like the ships "warp engine power" Going by the board game ruleset of 30 warp engine units + 4 units for impulse power, then another 4 or whatever the number for APR, and batterys that a Constitution Class heavy cruiser used. However like Psychoak said all of the weapons would have to be "ability's". For frigate slots that wouldnt be an issue. However for cap ships that causes some real problems.

I always have though that energy weapons are only depend on the power of the ships. I mean if the ship loses power, you loses the power of weapons. I mean even torpedoes goes out, you need the power the lanucher, which is basically an accelerator, plus you don't want to fire a torpedo and have it hit your own ship, so you pretty much need the computer to predict where the ship will be and aim/program the torpedo to fire in a certain direction.

Of course what I would like to see is the fact like in Armada 2 the number of crew you have on a ship affect how your ships perform. Of course that is a wish because the way sins' gameplay programming.

OMG 

Seee wgat happens to  the forum OP when you give out the PW to anyone 

For warp travel.

Wouldn't it be possible to give ships an ability to establish phase stabilizers anywhere within the sunsystem for free? Or if not, let them fire a shot like the current Vasari superweapon, without damage, but with extremely high traveling speed and thus give them the ability to warp almost freely around.

If the ability has 1 sec recharge time and no costs, you could put stabilizers down at your current and target systems and then jump directly, ignoring phase lanes. Of course it would be problematic with capital ships, but most small ships have a slot to spare, and once the nodes are esteblished, any ship can use them anyway, so you'd only need the small ones to esteblish them.

Making every ship into a Gate might work.

I see what you are suggesting, and it is possible, but just because we could do it doesnt mean that we really should. The problem with all of those free phase stabilizers is the extra cpu the game would need to run. We already have massive slowdown in late game in Vanilla from all of the units, and structures. Imagine if we quadrupled the structure counts. Even if there is no physical mesh. Your cpu will still have to calculate all of the phantom phase stabilizers on top of everything else.

Then we have to deal with an idiotic hard coded AI that would just infinitely spam hundreds of these free units in every grav well. If we make them use tactical, or logistics slots that would be robbing the AI of the slots it needs for more important stuff. Like Defenses. As you can see the AI is very important in SoA 2 for the fact that the Borg are intentionally designed to be played by the AI only. We cant mod the AI itself, because it is hard coded, but we can control what, and how much stuff the AI uses.

There is nothing in the entity's or what little coding that i understand that could make the "superweapon" warp possible. The superweapon projectile is exactly that. A projectile. I see nothing that could make ships behave like that.

Making every ship use the phase gate ability? Not sure about that. More research is needed. How would you control the distance a ship can travel? How would you stop a Borg fleet from knocking on your capitals door 30 seconds into a game?

Ok... Its official... MyFist0 is on crack

Scout ships would still have to follow phase lanes to explore.

Another possibility might be to make it cost too much antimatter to even use the ability until research has caught up in the middle to late game.

I didn't mean turning the ships into projectiles, but giveing the ships the ability to fire such a projectile (preferably invisible) as an ability. And if you give the ability to ships that the AI already builds, it should avoid their wasting of slots.

You could tie the ability to a technology. Maybe Tier 5? Of course that would make the transwarp gate almost completely redundant.

I created a crude version of antimatter use for shield and weapons using the 5th ability slot at capitals.

I reduced the overall Cool-down and Restore rates and added this:

numOverTimeActions 1
overTimeAction
    buffOverTimeActionType "DrainAntiMatter"
    drainAntiMatterRate
        Level:0 2.000000
        Level:1 0.000000
        Level:2 0.000000
numEntityModifiers 3
entityModifier
    buffEntityModifierType "AbilityCooldownRate"
    value
        Level:0 1.000000
        Level:1 0.000000
        Level:2 0.000000
entityModifier
    buffEntityModifierType "WeaponCooldown"
    value
        Level:0 3.000000
        Level:1 0.000000
        Level:2 0.000000
entityModifier
    buffEntityModifierType "ShieldPointRestoreRate"
    value
        Level:0 3.000000
        Level:1 0.000000
        Level:2 0.000000
numEntityBoolModifiers 0
numFinishConditions 2
finishCondition
    finishConditionType "AntiMatterDepleted"
finishCondition
    finishConditionType "OwnerChanged"

When the ships antimatter pool runs out, the shield and weapons drop down to normal rates.

About phase gates: To my understanding you need two to travel independent of lanes. If you give the ability to some basic building (maybe even to the planets?), your ships should be pretty free to travel, but not to enemy plants, as there is no gate.

If you give it to ships, they will be able to travel from any point in the system to another planet with a gate or a ship with the gate ability.

What just comes to my mind: What about giving the Borgs a superweapon that can create gates in enemy systems? Not sure if it is possible.

They already have methods for going behind enemy lines, the Scout Cube can set up end points, and the Unicomplex can spawn ships remotely.

The main thing is the sheer complexity of pulling something like antimatter based, limited distance warp (phase jumping). If Sins would have left the open map code in then it wouldnt be so difficult, but with phase lanes there is no way to limit the distance you can jump. In any kind of open map situation you must have limitations otherwise it really does become "whack a mole". GC2 late game is kind of that way when you have max research on drives, and have worlds capped in mid points of the map. That really wouldnt be fun.

Aside from the multiplayer screen fix, this update is mostly cosmetic. Alterations to strike craft balancing. Percent modifiers versus strike craft have been further reduced, durability of strike craft increased. Ability changes to the Dominion Starbase, Hangar and Leviathan regarding the Horda attack fighter. Horda fighters will kamikaze under heavy fire. The Leviathan and Hangar replenish quickly at a steep antimatter cost to further supplement the tactic. 
thanks Psy 

mephistopheles

Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays) SoA2 Modding team and all those involved! Thanks for all of your hard work and dedication, it certainly shines through in this mod.

Nicely done guys! I Thank You for all of the time, and effort you all put in to helping this project! Especially Myfis0, and Psychoak. I am doing what i can, but its not really amounting to very much, and i apologize for that.

Just know that we aint done yet We still got some structures, ships, and more UI to put in

I have been talking about re-porting the mod back to Entrenchment, and Original Sins for those who dont have diplomacy, but we want to get as far as we can with the Diplomacy version before we do this, because if we do port down it will be the LAST time we do it.

Merry Christmas to the SoA 2 Team, and all the fans. As long as there is an interest in this project, and Sins we will keep going strong.

Agreed,  We have several protoype abilities and none of them every could meet our expectations, However one of the abilities did fit perfectly for the borg and a few other factions. Balancing is the hardest part. I do have another solution which will take some time to implement. The basic concept is simple redo all of the maps and make phase lanes at all planets that will allow travel to any other planet surrounding it within a certain range.  thoughts??

thanks jay

NEW SoA2 team Avatar 

Let me know what the team wants if different.

mephistopheles

"IF" the range can be limited (increaseable by research), Cost X amount of antimatter to jump (reducible by research), and not turn the maps into a frantic whack a mole fest in late game. Then it could be doable. Just know that connecting all of the grav wells will be the most tedious undertaking we will try to accomplish in this mod.

Ummm SAO 2 Team??

I got it up and running.  It was very early game and a Romulan scout was moving through my capital planet...as soon as the capital ship fired the game crashed.

Merry Christmas everyone! (A little late)

I had started on the cargo ship but the holidays have slowed me down a bit. I hope to have the model done very soon.

I have quite a few suggestions based on my observations while playing the game lately but I just wanted to mention 2 right now since I find them pretty bothersome.

1. Unlike SoaSE ships, SoA ships move around in circular sweeping patterns. This can look good but unfortunately it really makes them hard to control and lowers their DPS as they keep moving out of weapons range. Since SoA ship weapon ranges appear to be based on what SoaSE used, I wanted to suggest that most SoA ships have their weapons ranges and turn rates increased so they don't keep moving out of range every time they circle around.

2. I also wanted to ask about Photon Torpedo's. The damage that Torpedoes do is often around 15 which I find unusual since phasers and disrupter's are often doing 100-300 per shot. I'm guessing that Torpedoes have a chance to deliver more damage due to shield mitigation (just a guess) but even if thats true, I still don't see how the Torpedo could measure up. Especially since Torpedoes are suppose to be more destructive then phasers (on hulls if I remember right).  I'd like to see a fairly big increase in Torpedo damage and if possible a increased bonus multiplier (2x, 3x?) if they hit a ship with shields at less then 10% strength. I don't know if the game can do that but it would really fit well with lore.

Regarding the talk about phase lanes that go everywhere and wanting restrictions to long range travel.

Also, 1 question. If you could get your "warp anywhere" idea to work would you still make travel between star systems only possible at each solar systems star?  (IMHO I think that should stay in, except for special cases)

Could you have warp travel drain antimatter per sec so the longer lanes need better tech. If a ship runs out of antimatter part way through a phase lane it could......? (blow up? get to the finish line but with a huge debuff, diluted back to the last solar system, just stop moving?)

I also saw something unusual a couple times were 1 ship didn't jump into FT when it reached the edge of a well and instead just kept on flying slowly to wards the next system. Two ship that gave chase also ignored the phase lane.

I was wondering if we could alter the gravity wells of the planets and stars to give us what we need. Such as, maybe some sort of "outer" gravity well from the star that encompasses the whole system and is altered to allow warp travel.

My other idea what to make the planets themselves remote nodes like was already suggested in this thread. What I was thinking was that it could be "controlled" so the AI doesn't freak out by making it either a mid game research item and/or making it a planetary upgrade. If all the planet upgrade keys are currently full we could merge 2 upgrade types into 1 button.

My last idea on this is that the stabilizer node could be hidden in every planets exploration skill.

Thanks for reading. (That was longer then I expected it to be...)