If your ships were blowing up and not being assimilated then the Norway was helping. Without the Norway the Borg can assimilate your elite ships. It really sucks attacking Borg and then realizing they have your level 5 Galaxy class. This was my second game against the Borg so I stopped that game and started a new one and waited for the Norway.

I may use this for the Fed page

If your ships were blowing up and not being assimilated, then the Norway was helping. Without the Norway the Borg can assimilate your elite ships. It really sucks attacking Borg and then realizing they have your level 5 Galaxy class. 

I wasn't loosing that many capitals to assimilation.  Most of my stuff just popped really fast.  Once I got my fleet composition correct things changed a bit.  My fleet would still pop in a minute or two if I was loosing that engagement however I was also killing stuff.   I think mainly stuff in my engagements just died to fast for anything to be assimilated. I lost a few to assimilation but not many.That's why it was hard to tell. I basically just put them in fleet and ignored them hoping auto cast worked correctly.

The AI however was just spamming max frig/cruiser fleets with the oddball capital every 5-10 minutes on a Borg starbase. Feeding them.  By the time I had secured my border systems from my neighbors and got to Borg space it was like 6-7 hours in. So this had gone on for awhile.  

I played Borg after this game, Huge map AI set to vicious, decided not to assimilate just to see how the AI did.  Early harass was ok as usual. However once I got enough planets for Tactical cubes not even the Borg AI were building fleets correctly to take me on.   9 Tactical Cubes, 1 Queens Diamond, and starbases were all i needed to completely roll the map with little to no pressure felt.  None of the AI players were building good enough fleets.  They all just seemed like a random mix of stuff. 

Started to follow up yesterday in the thread. However I decided not to as I don't want to sound overly negative as I do enjoy the mod. I also understand how much work goes into these projects which was why as well. And well because it says WIP. I'm sure anything I've got to say is already known at this point.

I haven't tested it in the Rebellion release, but in the last Diplomacy release, the Klingons were very smart about attacking the Borg.  Specifically, they would spam their special anti-borg ship (the Fehk'Lhr) and throw a fleet of them at the borg starbases.  Unlike the Intrepid's anti-nanite virus, the Klink's anti-borg ability (borg assault team) can stack up to 16 times.  The damage is much lower than the Intrepid's ability (20 DPS vice 500 DPS), but each stack reduces movement speed and damage by 5%.  5% x 16 = 80% reduction in firepower and speed, and 2.5 antimatter drain times 16 is 40 antimatter gone per second - no special abilities for that station or cap ship!

Yes, but we are still always looking for feedback.

Go ahead if you want to.

New page created soa2.soase.x90x.net/Rebellion_mod_loader.html

For reasons we have yet to understand, SOA2 suffers from the dreaded 1st run crash which can be anywhere between a couple seconds after start, or well after an hour of play. This only happens when the mod is enabled through the in-game menu and only requires a game restart with the mod enabled to fix.

I have created 2 exe files that will now be included in the mods next update, which will start Sins of a Solar Empire with the Sacrifice of Angels 2 mod loaded, along with running a few other checks to prevent failure.

Sacrifice of Angels 2.exe

Sacrifice of Angels 2 Dev.exe

Checks the version of the SoaSE exe and matches this to the mod folder version. If Steam updated SoaSE and the mod can't be found in the new mod version folder, the loader will open our ModDB page and quit with a message.

Checks if SoaSE is already running.

If you place the mod in the Developer folder, and run the regular loader, asks if you would like a junction created, if no, a message to move or copy the mod to the proper folder and the loader quits. Does the opposite if you place the mod in the regular folder and run the Dev EXE.

Running the Developer EXE always wipes out all the settings and resets everything to the games defaults. If the Dev EXE is run, it now backs up the settings files first. If the regular loader is used, it looks for these backups and reloads them. No more keybinds lost or resetting screen size.

Checks if Steam is running, if not, starts Steam and the loader pauses for 5 seconds waits for the Steam Friends window to be active, then continues to load SOA2.

The 2 Rebellion mod loader EXEs are still bEta. Suggestions and feedback are welcome. 

I created these with AutoIt which is based in pearl. You can decompile the exes if anyone wants to verify the code used. Code monkeys can check out the text files here ...

soa2.soase.x90x.net/loaders/Rebellion/Sacrifice of Angels 2.txt

soa2.soase.x90x.net/loaders/Rebellion/Sacrifice of Angels 2 Dev.txt

Damn: 1st WTF, Steam updated when I ran the loader and 5 secs will not cut it, I will need to create a loop that will check Steams status. Drones that stay connected to the collective will not have this problem. EDIT: Possible fix been added.

That is because Steam itself updates practically on a daily basis. I would suggest to leave the steam launch out of it. It is obvious that steam needs to run to launch Rebellion. It is probably better to manually start steam so you can chose online, or offline mode.

Otherwise that's some damn nice work

Sorry stress, I do not let steam run all the time and starting steam, for me, is a big part of why I did this. All I need is a 2 second loop that runs until steam is active and Sins can start without error. Easy breasy. I may try WinWaitActive but I need to wait for Steam updates to test.

Like I already mentioned, if you start steam manually 1st, or leave it running, all it does is verify it is running.

			Process, Exist, Steam.exe ; check to see if Steam.exe is running
			If (ErrorLevel = 0) ; If it is not running
				{
					Run, Steam.exe, %SteamInstall%
					Sleep, 5000
					Run, %RebEXE%, %RebInstall%
				}
			Else 
				{
					Run, %RebEXE%, %RebInstall%
				}

It seems that when Steam is finished updating, and sending all personal info to the collective, then the friends window opens. I will try WinWaitActive, Friends for a bit. 20 secs max before the loader quits with a message.

Process, Exist, Steam.exe ; check to see if Steam.exe is running
If (ErrorLevel = 0) ; If it is not running
{
Run, Steam.exe, %SteamInstall%
WinWaitActive, Friends, ,20
if ErrorLevel
{
MsgBox, Steam will not run or is doing a major update.`nPlaease run the loader again when Steam is finished.
ExitApp
}
Run, %RebDevEXE%, %RebInstall%
}
Else
Run, %RebDevEXE%, %RebInstall%

EDIT: Links updated

Sacrifice of Angels 2.exe

Sacrifice of Angels 2 Dev.exe

Any new surprises coming in the next version?

You guys always seem to make solid additions and alterations.

Probably just getting DLC compatible stuff in and the planet specialization. Me and psy worked our ass off on this since the last Dip and current Reb releases. We need a break.

Fair enough. Thanks for all of your hard work. 

Do you guys know if there is a way to have technologies pre-researched as part of the 'quick start'?

I was trying to have excelsior ship technology unlocked from the get go, since I start off with an ambassador, it makes sense I would have access to the previous generations of ships too in a quick start game.

remove the research prereq from the ships entity, and throw the whole game out of balance while yur at it. 

Well it is. It just doesn't use the new specialization features.

DLC planet bonuses also missing.

While we already have over 100 bonuses in the game already, from Sins Plus and Celestial Bodies, along with a few Trek specific bonuses, a few more never hurts.

Also terraforming is coming.

That is actually not part of DLC, binary planet models are all made by me and are pre-prepped for terraforming as well, textures from various web sites. psy is doing the all the planet stats.

Terraforming will be DLC only? Noooooooooooooooo. May have to get it.

One thing I did notice the other day. In the tech trees there is still H-class research but I haven't seen H-class on any of the maps I have played lately. Did the X-class replace the H class?

We will take a look at the planet lists again, they were all just redone and balancing out class types can be tough.

Terraforming has been in the plans since before Rebellion was released.  It's not new, we just weren't bothering to inform anyone.  It's entirely unrelated to the DLC.

Oooops  ...  

Has anyone uploaded replays I can watch?

I like the Trek-style planet classes, but I can't remember all the different types. Could the planet descriptions include the Sins class? eg "M-class terran planet", "J-class gas giant" etc...