Bridge Commander was pretty good, if it didn't fucking crash all the time with the sheer weight of all the mods I put on it.

Also, why are you so angry at Voyager? I may have been shit, but you make it sound like it killed your family and raped their corpses.

Ok to clear some things up . BRIDGE COMMANDER wouldnt make a pimple on SOA2 's rear end.  Also  We on the team really get tired of people asking for this that and whatever. When they dont read the read me files or let alone the freaking forum boards we are speaking on.    These subjects have all been covered before. Countless times over.  All we ask is READ things 1ST . Then you may ask  questions if they havent been asked and answered before.  Unless of course you enjoy the verbal abuse , and or want to purposely piss us all off.

Well thats my 2 cents worth

Jtaylorpcs

Thats because it DID kill my family... As far as raping the corpses, you might want to ask Berman and Braga.. they came over to collect the dead bodies.

All jokes aside. Neither Voyager, or Enterprise (except when Manny Coto was producing) did Trek any justice. The Killer B's (Berman, and Braga) earned their name for a reason.

Tell me that you DIDN'T want to toss Saffi out of the nearest airlock, and bitch smack "the rock", Mr Blue, and his gay (not that theres anything wrong with that in trek) counterpart accross the tactical station, or tell picard to F**K OFF when he was barking the orders instead of you. Of course this (and Birth of the federation) was the beginning of the "lets stretch, and distort a galor class, and call it a new class of ship".  On top of other unimaginative artwork. BC, SFC3, Armada, and Legacy was all pure shit. Klingon Academy was 100% better. Despite it being extremely dated. Rick Knox is an excellent modeler, but Legacy as a game doesnt do his art any justice. He deserves a better game.... Like SoA 2.. Ok so i am a "little" biased.

Verbal abuse is reserved for those that absolutely deserve it. I try to be patient with people, but sometimes there are some idiots that just drive you over the edge. Unlike professional game makers we can piss off our fan base without worrying about loss of sales, because we are doing all of this for FREE. So expect us to respond to ignorance, and stupidity with equal, or greater sarcasim. Our fan base knows us, and it is all in good fun

I want 5m of my life and the $30 bucks i spent on that s*** called Legacy back....

Keep up the good work SOA teeam!

Weak!  Tell those bastards to get back up.  You should have the stones to sit through Voyager if you're prepared to survive this cruel world...

I will admit. I really enjoyed Klingon Academy when it came out. It was WAY ahead of its time, the movies really got you involved in the storyline. Especially the mission where you have to sneak up, cloaked on a secret meeting between 2 enemy houses and you have to get closer and closer - your literally crapping your pants at every point closer you get until your almost touching there hull! When you get detetcted it comes as an unexpected suprise then you have to high tail the crap out of there. i was on the edge of my seat.

This is what gameplay is all about. Legacy IMHO was pure vomit. SOA:2 has me on the edge of my seat just like KA. Watching fleets warp in to engage each other, or watching a Galaxy class using its deflector to recharge an allies shields is just pure eye candy - and for your hard work I want to say thank you. Infact I'd buy you a pint.

I would join in on the verbal abuse, but I guess that I hurt too many peoples feelings when I do, so I'm out .

On the other hand, I do believe that Stress and Co. have made a fantastic input into the Star Trek gaming community with this mod and I believe that everyone here should let them continue with their vision before trying to add your own suggestions (still a work in progress guys, so back off of the developers).

I also like your comment about not worrying about pi$$ing off the fans Stress.

Was curious about the Federation refinery.  I didnt find the info anywhere, and dont have my manual to Sins anymore, but I was curious when you put it out and I see quotas appear on the asteroids.  Is it helping to produce more ore?  I notice 1 refinery  will make the quota 1 of 3 on 3 rocks and then adding more will of course increase that to 2 and then 3.  Was hoping to get a quick explanation so i understand them.  If this has been asked, sorry im a goof and didnt find it elsewhere.  Im so enjoying the mod and play it at work(I work nights at an addiciton help facility).  I have even had a few clients who have come in and seen it and wanted to go out and buy it, thinking it was a new ST game, and I told them the truth and they were blown away!  So grats on that!!

Since im on the topic a bit, are there plans for a manual for your mod?  If not, no biggie, but im a  manual guy lol.  I get the game, sit down and browse thru it, and then play.  Strange I know, but its been that way ever since the days of Nintendo on up.  I looked thru the read me, but didnt find anything, so thought I would ask.  Im not requesting one or anything, was just wondering if perhaps this was planned for the day you have everything else done.

So great job!  Keep it up and hope all the best for everyone who is working on this!

I did sit through all seven seasons of Voyager, and all 4 seasons of Enterprise... Unfortunetly.

Can you sit through all 3 seasons of the Original Series, and all 7 of TNG?

AFAIK no changes were made to the refinery's. The feds may have an issue because the advent dont use refinery's, and the mods refinery is an add on (using the trade ships by mistake instead of refinery ships which the advent do have). We will look into this some more.

First of all great mod!

Keep up the good work.

But I'm having some issues playing as the Borg:

The Force of Nature ability for the Transwarp-Gates seems not to work. There is no ability and after 20 minutes nothing happened. What does it exactly do? Spawning some random Borg ships? Allowing you to travel to another quadrant?

Please explain!

I haven't tested the borg out in a while, but according to the entity files that ability simply allows the local planet/star to act as a transwarp conduit endpoint (you can transwarp to that star).

No manual is planned right now. It should be pretty self explanatory what the ships, and structures are supposed to do. Especially since i added the roletypes to the build menus (dunno about the borg, but if roletypes are missing that will be corrected in 0.5D). We do plan on making "faction overviews" with a summery of each factions strengths, and weakness's. Right now we are pretty busy fixing 0.4, and working on 0.5. So a manual is low priority. We will get to it eventually.

You think the Sins community is tough, and hard to please? You should see some of the post on ModDB. Epitomy of ridiculous. They make the Sins community a dream to work with. Not that i really give a damn what ModDB thinks of this mod anymore. I thought you all might want a good laugh.

Stress, I don't know how you can STAND working in the ModDb community on a project like this.  From all of the other mods that I follow there (Republic at War for SW:FOC, Eastern Front for COH, Nid mod for Dawn of War, e.t.c.), if you have a heavy community following you (like yours and the first two examples I gave) and you don't update EVERY week, they go ape$#!t and become whiny little bitches.

Sometimes I am in awe at how patient you guys are.  I mean, I am a VERY patient person, and it often takes a lot to make me mad, but sometimes dealing with people like that (especially on a daily basis), it just isn't worth it.  I am in customer service and deal with stupidity everytime I go to work, that's one of the reasons I only work part-time, but everyday is just ridiculous.

Oh, Believe me i learned the hard way about how ABSURD that community can really be. Nit picking minor ship details that are according to them the "wrong color", Demanding the stupidest shit. Like totally idiotic looking non-canon ships that look like a 4 year old made it, and it belongs on mommys refridgerator... I even recieved DEATH THREATS over how i ruined someones Star Trek experience, because i refuse to include 8472 or the Scimitar, or any other totally absurd, and cheesy thing about trek in the mod. Believe me my patience is constantly being tested. However being 45, I have the ability to ignore "whiny little brats", and their ridiculous demands. This mod is targetted for an Adult audience. Not the 18, and under crowd.

As far as why i keep the mod there, i already explained. Its FREE web space, It looks halfway decent, The community shouldnt have to pay for my beef with them, and its a nice mirror link IF you can ignore the BS there. Most of the stupidity is outright comical.

Troi is hawt!

Stress posts just have so many openings...

Edit:

I have, the only one I didn't survive was Enterprise...  Between thinking about Quantum Leap drag episodes, and grumbling over the hormonally unbalanced Vulcan, I just couldn't make it through the absurdly high tech Romulan ship that would totally kick ass in the TOS era.  Kirk would have been owned if he'd gone up against that thing.

*Hugs Stress* There, there....You've done a good job so far.

Tea and Biscuits for the team! (Beer and hotwings?)

beer and hotwings !!!!!  I second that .  If the rest of the team can make it to NC USA I will buy us all some grub and a couple kegs!!!

One of the great things about trek in it's entirity is that it had such hawt ladies that graced the screen in each and every series.  My favorite actress Was Lt Commander. Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell).  Man I would have loved to play "count the spots" with her, but if I had to choose a lady of my choice from Next generation, I choose Gates McFadden (I dunno, just always had a thing for red heads I guess).

Just a fyi we are plannning to release a update to the mod to add some more content, within the next week or so.

thanks jtaylorcs

Count the Spots... WOOHOO!!!  I always wanted to play that... in fact, I think when they killed off Jadzia was when I really started to lose interest.  I am totally with Stress on this... I watched pretty much all of Voyager and Enterprise... but they mostly sucked, except a couple amazing exceptions.  I never payed much attention, but I'm betting the Killer B's didn't produce those ones...

Sorry, I was 6 (or maybe only 5???) when the very first Trek episode (The Man Trap) aired... that salt sucker scared the hell out of me...  I seriously had nightmares for days.... lol... and I was hooked good.  I'll always be an original Trek fan more than any of the rest.

Awesome!!!!   More content???  Rommie star base???  Maybe???  Please???  Buy ya a beer...lol... 

What i am going to say may disturb some people. I want to make things very clear that i do not want this to de-volve into a "My hardware is better than yours", "My OS is better than yours", "My dick is bigger than yours" pissing contest. Nor do i want it to be a bash session of the Sins developers. GOT IT?! Flames toward the Dev's, and computer "elitist" remarks will not be tolorated.

As you may, or may not already be aware Sins has a very big issue that has existed since its birth. It cant use more than 2 gigs of ram. on ANY system. No matter how powerful it is, Or ANY OS. Regardless if it is 32 bit, or 64 bit. Some peoples milage may vary depending on their system, but the results are usually the same. An out of memory crash dump somewhere when SINS itself uses over 2 gigs of ram. This is not including what your OS, and/or other programs running are using. This is SINS itself. My dumps happen between 2 to 2.5 gigs of SINS ram usage. This is of course on MAX settings, and on two different machines with two different OS's. One a 32 bit, and one a 64 bit. Others have reported similar issues on various hardware, and OS's. Since Diplomacy was released it has become a major problem. Both for the Sins, and the Modding community.

Sins started out as an "indie" game before Stardock helped support Ironclad on this project. Sins has existed since 2006. So naturally Sins was programed in 32 bit. Based on the average hardware, and OS's available in 2006. With a 2 gig memory limit just like any other game at the time. Sins was also designed to run on very low end machines at the time. Which Ironclad did an outstanding job of achieving. When Original Sins was released in 2008 the 2 gig memory limit was not a big issue, because Sins itself at the time (version 1.04 IIRC) rarely if ever went over 2 gigs on max settings. Then came Sins 1.05, and Entrenchment. Some things were changed in the game. The way textures were handled for example. ALL mods had to be re-built from scratch. The SoA 2 0.3E series turned into an abysmal failure due to relentless minidumps, and had to be rebuilt yet again for the 0.4 series. The minidumps happened due to the mod hitting the Sins hard code limits. Which we corrected for the 0.4 series.

Now we have Diplomacy. Now Sins is dumping well enough on its own without the help of any mods at all. The hard code limits have been increased for Meshes, and Textures, but one hard code limit remained the same... The 2 gig memory limit. Which the hard code was put in place just before Entrenchment was released. Original Sins had a 2 gig limit, but there was no hard code. The worst thing that would happen with Original Sins when you went over 2 gigs is the game would slow to a crawl. Now the game just dumps when you go over 2 gigs.

Unlike other games that most of the time load its resources only as needed, Sins loads EVERYTHING into memory at once on startup with maybe the exception of effects, and sounds. This means ALL Meshes, Textures, Entitys, Strings, Maps, Skybox's are all loaded. In developer exe sins will give you an error immedietly if there is an entity, string, mesh, or texture problem. It only gives effect, and sound errors after the game is running. This answers my question that never got answered if Sins loads everything at 1st run, or not. How much ram you use depends on what your effects settings are, How many factions are playing, and how large your maps are. Since Entrenchment, and Diplomacy added much more content than what Original Sins had, Ironclad made the very same mistake we made with the failed 0.3E series, and went over their very own hard code limits. Perhaps without even realizing it. It is also the reason why everyone using mods. Not just SoA 2 are dumping left, and right.

There is no point in putting blame on anyone. It has happened. It is what it is. The question now is.. What can we do about it?

On the SoA 2 Teams end the 0.5 series of the mod is being completely Re-Thought, and Re-Worked yet again. Thank god i didnt get very far into it. The focus will be on reducing the amount of ram the mod itself will use. This will NOT effect the 0.4 series at all. This is only for the 0.5 series, and any future updates from there. What i intend to do is reduce the texture resolutions even more than what they are now, AND reduce the poly counts of models. New poly limits will be set. Structures (of any kind) are not to exceed 5000 tri's, Elite units are not to exceed 3000 tri's, Frigates are not to exceed 2000 tri's (1500 tri's is prime goal). Strike craft not to exceed 700 tris. Texture resolutions will be reduced for elite units from 2048 to 1024. Frigates will not exceed 1024, but prefer 512 if we can get away with it. Structures are not to exceed 2048, but prefer 1024 if possible. Strike craft will not exceed 256. All of this will mean some of the mod ships MUST be re-built, and re-textured to meet these new standards. The Skybox's themselves will be reduced by 1/2. As well as the planet textures. Right now both exceed 4096. Right now the mod as it is uses less ram than Vanila sins does, but it obviously is not enough. More steps must be taken for the mod NOT to exceed the 2 gig limit.

As far as Vanilla Sins itself. I suggest to patch it back to pre- Original Sins v1.04 standard, and remove the hardcode for the 2 gig limit. The game is built on 32 bit. It cant be re-built for 64 bit. It wouldnt be cost effective. Patching it back to pre-Sins 1.04 will remove the dumps, and the worst thing that will happen again is a massive slowdown once you hit the 2 gig mark. We will have to wait for Sins 2 to hope for 64 bit capability.

Wow, long post Im a trek fan from the much younger generation (being only 18, TNG ended when i was 3...) so i never really got into original star trek, but to each his/her own i just wanted to say that SOME 18 and under crowd is mature enough to enjoy this game, lol. keep up the good work, and let's hope the new problems dont set you back too far (you have already put more work into this than some devs put into their games)

I have a theory that may work (at least in my case, I'm not sure how this mod is structured) to completely remove the texture/mesh sizes enforced on the game by vanilla data.

But the question must first be asked - if you replace, say, the Kol mesh with your own mesh, does the game also load the kol mesh out of the vanilla folders as well as your mod's mesh, even though yours replaces it?

If not

Create 0bk files and rename them to replace every texture and mesh from the default game you are not utilizing elsewhere. Put these in your mod data along with everything else. Sit back and smile.

The idea is that the game loads these instead of the vanilla files because they're getting replaced. Since you aren't actually using the files but the game loads them anyways, this will massively reduce the memory impact of doing so. Now, I'm not sure if the game will asplode when parsing a 0kb mesh file, so you might need very basic null data in that file. But it'd still be microscopic in size compared to an actual model. The game didn't crash loading a model of mine without any null data at all though.

I also imagine you can remove unused entities from the entity manifest.

If so

If the game loads the base directories anyway, you can still do this, but it'll require modifying the base directories which could be simplified with a GUI utility or a simple bat file or ten seconds of end-user work.

It's something I plan to test when I start modding again. There is no easy way for me to reduce the polies on my ships as they are already heavily optimized and barely fit the sins limit. My ram usage for my mod is typically at 1.6gig but I have scarcely begun doing anything, and I will be adding potentially hundreds of small custom textures for particle effects.

Just an idea.

Once we replace a vanilla mesh say with one of ours the game will not load the original mesh. It is one of the main reasons we are below sins ram usage at this point.  Your ideas do show merit and will be looked into further. The end user changing something I would say no , to that one. Just too many cans of worms .

thanks jtaylorpcs