In the next.... or so?!!  lol Can we get a correction? That was just a tease.

Sorry if I missed it, but do we have a Romulan starbase yet?

Not yet waiting on then new model.

thanks jtaylorpcs

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but do the dominion seem underpowered?  I mean, yeah, their capital ships really kick butt, but that does not seem to make up for the fact that the rest of their ships are crap lol.  Does anyone else notice that the other races beat them really easily?

does anyone else notice their ships like to dance rather than fight and seem to go way off the grav well?

Has anyone noticed that there are still people that dont bother to read several pages back, or under the download link that is in RED This release is not final nor complete in any way shape or form? and that the mod is indeed far from finished? and will not be fully balanced until we get all of the ships and structures in?

Has anyone noticed?

Don't get discouraged Stress, the work done is greatly appreciated.  The Mod is coming along beautifully

*Timidly looks around and raises hand* I usually just poke my head in to read to keep myself in the loop but actually lost track of this project for awhile and came back and got the most recent update and have been enjoying it. The mod is coming along great and I think that you all have done a great job on this and I thank you for putting in the time and effort since I didnt have the skills needed at any step of the process to assist with modeling or coding.

My bad, I was under the impression that Darkshimmer did all the balancing and that it was in already.  Oh and Haiyooo, to fix that, if you are the dominion just tell the ship to attack whatever ship it's attacking again, or jus to move back towards the well.  If you're fighting the dominion, I guess you have to lure the ship back into the gravity well with your ships lolz.  And yes this mod is an awesome mod, I meant no disrespect.  Excuse my ignorance lolz.

If it wasnt for my crazy 14 to 20 hour a day work schedule that forced me into a pseudo-retirement. Much of what was said would be done already.

We still need to finish the ship lineups (Especially for the Borg). Get the civvies, and diplomatic ships in. We need to Make some, and finish the existing structures that we have in work, and find a way to disable the superweapon slots without disrupting the already touchy, and schizophrenic AI. Once that is done then we can truly balance the mod which Darkshimmer said he was willing to help do.

The ships drifting out of the wells is an AI, and weapon range issue. I explained this before and now i am doing it again. Sins ships only like to fire at their maximum weapon range. They will ALWAYS try to move to their max weapon range. The Elites have a range of 7000 so they will always try to move to that range to fire on a ship. Frigates have a range of 3000, and will always try to close to that range. You see where this is going. Without dynamic movement ships would just stop and shoot. With dynamic movement they will always try to shoot at max range. It is an AI issue that we cant fix by messing with the AI because its hardcoded. However, we can adjust the weapon ranges to try, and minimize the instances of ships trying to leave the wells.

No worrys no offense taken was trying to be sarcastic in a funny way. Sometimes it doesnt come across well in text.

Downloaded the mod for the first time  in a while ..   

Amazed at how far its come so far,   cant wait for the Optimization to be meshed with it  and final balances and changes to be added.

Keep it up

I am curious tho..  the fed starbase  has the interior  model done..  you can look in the space doors that are open..   given your obsession with saveing  space   i have to wonder if adding doors  and only doing the outside of the station would save some space.. even if its minor?

The starbase isn't an original model or texture.  That said, the model and texture are of a pretty low quality, and no extra texture was needed for the interior of the saucer, which utilizes the exterior texture.  I will say that the texture maps and UV mapping could be redone to save a quarter of the ~16 mb that are devoted to the starbase textures, though.  It's a fairly minor change that would take more time than it's worth at the moment, especially considering we still have additional models and textures that need to be created.

Thanks for bringing it up, though.  Keep looking for ways to save.

The Fed starbase is a very old model done for SFC by Moonraker back in 1999/2000. He meshed in a very basic interior. I liked it. so i left it in there. The texture itself is very low res. though it does take up a large sheet. I tried to fit all of the "little" textures on as small of a texture sheet as i could. There is a lot of waste that really couldnt be avoided. At 4000 tri's It is MUCH lower in tris, and resolution than the vanilla starbases, and uses no upgrade meshes. The vanilla starbases use a ridiculous 4096 resulution texture, and the meshes can be as high as 12000 tri's. Our Klingon starbase is high on the poly count (due to a very unoptimized mesh), but even at 8000 tris it is still lower than vanilla. We know the AI likes to spam starbases so you can see how the vanilla meshes can bog down a system in late game.

If the guys wants to put doors on the Fed base and remove the interior that is up to them. Most of the models and textures in SoA 2 are much lower in polys, and res than the vanilla ships they are replacing with a few exceptions. This was by design. Once all of the units are in we wont need anything from vanillas meshes or particles. You will see a tremendous performance boost then.

I think in the case of the Fed starbase it's worth the extra space... being able to see inside is pretty cool looking...lol...

Exactly there are no plans to redo the fed starbase or any other model at this time. Once we have all slots complete with models then we have planned to go back and optimize or replace third party work. But as with all mods time is a concern. Things are going well for Soa2 the next release is being finalized. With the next release you will find a few new models, New abilities, error fix, strings, and we will be reverting back to Vanilla sized planets and slightly altered gravity wells. You should notice that the borg romulan and dominion forces are now more on par with there counterparts both in research and tatical capability.  Balance is still being worked on!!  Also we will have a standalone stackable mini mod . Titled Soa2 fleet mod. Simply put it,  increases both cap and non cap ship counts.  We also will have another that will lower the ship counts. titled TBA. These mini mods are meant to supplement soa2 till the balance is complete and may or may not be supported in future versions of Soa2.

thanks jtaylorpcs

Hey, love the game...anymore planned internet games coming soon?

yes due to real life we on the team have not had the chance to arrange any, however feel free to use these forums as a staging area. or contact someone on the team and we will post in the header for you.

thanks jtaylorpcs

Hey,

I'm new to posting and everything, so I don't know if anyone has maybe asked for this or if this is something you plan on doing, but I was wondering if you could incorporate the extra fleet capacity and new planet types from the Distant Stars mod? I think that your mod, which is already amazing, could be even more so with those additions! =D 

Awesome thanks man, Ummm...first thing to prob do is see if anyone else is interested on having a online game, if you are just write below and try and i'll find a night or day when everyone is free!

Dave

the answer you want is in post 1490

harpo

Correct Harpo, and as for the other half of your question jozmar, "new planet types from the Distant Stars mod"?

the answer you want is a couple pages back in post 1430

First of all, I like where this mod is heading. When its going to be finished it will be one of the best and I can't wait for it ^^.
Sorry if you have already discussed this, but i was too lazy to read 60 pages. So im going to add a few ideas which Dom ships would be nice to have.

Jem'Hadar strike cruiser as a medium criser, after the fighter (Dominator) in the tech tree.
http://webhome.idirect.com/~tomyee/ioc3_files/ioc3preview_picture13.jpg ( its right above the fighter).

http://misc.thefullwiki.org/Jem'Hadar_strike_cruiser

Instead of the Keldon class a Cardassian Hutet, as a Carrier.
http://img399.imageshack.us/i/hutet01tm5.jpg/
http://www.chrisjonesgaming.info/images/thumb/e/e5/Hutet2.jpg/180px-Hutet2.jpg
If i remember right the borg cube can dock a sphere (its also written in the description). So meybe it is possible for the Hutet to mount 2 Keldon or Galor like
in this vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFuR8NJd9Kw at 2.21.

And Meybe a Jem'Hadar Supercarrier.
http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070514151957/startrek/images/thumb/d/de/JemCarrier.jpg/400px-JemCarrier.jpg

I could add more pictures if there is a need.

I think tht would be all, any opinions about this?

The "Hutet" just looks like a Keldon with a big... thing... on top. The Jem'Hadar strike cruiser is just something that takes elements from the Dominion fighter and the battleship. I'm not going to even bother with the Jem'Hadar carrier.

And what in the name of all that is good and holy was that last federation ship?

All of the ship lineups are set in stone. No more ships are needed.

The cardassians are a "slave race" of the dominion in this mod. The founders wont allow a race that could rebel at any given time to build a battleship. The real reason the cardassians are not their own faction is because there are not enough units to make them a separate faction. We aready tried this and it didnt work. Most fan designs leave much to be desired, and we dont want ships that are nothing more than "stretched" galors, but called a new class of ship.

We are still working on the cardassian "mutiny" ability. Where during combat there is a small chance that a cardassian ship will turn on their masters, and auto retreat to whoever faction it joins. As the mod lore says cardassians will look for any opportunity to escape from the dominion. The Keldon is the exception. It is crewed with the most loyal to the dominion. The ability should be similar to the borg assimilation, but the ship casts it on itself. The chance to rebel should be very small. Otherwise we will have the same problem as we had the the pre-nerf borg assimilation.

Actually stress we now have a working mutiny ability in-game .  Kinda nifty ability that psychoak made amongst alot of new custom abilties He has made.

thanks jtaylorpcs