I only play as Feds, so take it for what it's worth, but anti-matter seems to be in abundence.  So much so that it is usually the last tech I upgrade.

Can I get more info on that?  Which ships have issues using theirs up, how they handle in respect to drains fighting the Borg, etcetera.

Heres something I thought some of you might be interested in having input in as its based around the idea of warp rather than hyperspace.

I've been tinkering with Galaxy Forge to see what kind of things can be done, and here is the basis of the map I'm making

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/57/bahum.jpg

the idea is that warp capable ships are able to go wherever they want in the local area, though (following the logic of the game 'Star Trek Bridge Commander' you have to start on the outskirts of a solarsystem then warp in to the inner planets.

For strategic variation I will be using asteroid belts to further limit the choices of destinations, so you'll have to go to the outer areas of a solar system, warp to the asteroid belt, then warp to the inner planets/sun.

If you look at the center of the map (remember this is a WIP) the complex collection of phase lanes etc is what I call a 'cell', these cells will surround every major solar system with 2 non-colonisable 'planets' (plasma storms etc) from which you can warp in to the solar system. This increases the fluidity of the game giving many more choices to attack from while slowing an attacker enough to allow defenders to respond. when a habitable solar system is surrounded with cells there will be 8 possible locations to attack from, and you are able to leap frog surrounding non colonisable planets 1 at a time if you really want to circumvent a solar system (i.e. it takes you a little longer)

Eventually what I'm going to do is review the star trek Lore to find the relative positions of certain landmarks and then set up relevant solar systems to reflect the Lore, so Vulcan would be a desert planet etc. I'll make a could of versions of the map to add in a bit of the beta and delta quadrants with phase lands/wormholes reflecting the difficulties of moving between those areas. Then the problem will be balancing.

The primary problem imo is that there isn't enough variation of non-colonisable planets to keep it really interesting in this system. I've read that a couple of other mods like distant stars have capturable trade ports etc, but thats pretty easy to add later I think. What would be lovely are a selection of nebulae with differnet benefits/penalities, such as decreasing LOS, or just weapon range, or engine speed, shield mitigation etc etc; this would give more choices to the player, if you're losing a battle and choose to retreat - you probably have the choice to retreat to an area which nullifies offensive capabilities to an extent, like plastma storms cause fighters to dock now.

Any suggestions welcome; I want it to be Star Trek centric

I never liked the super weapons either, especially in the mod.  I much more like the idea of the best capital ship or something like that being the big 8th level research prize.  Something super-tough, but still within the storyline.  If it were me, and it wouldn't crash the AI I'd just take the other weapons or culture things, whatever, right out.

So Dominion rebels, eh??  I have nothing going on, I'll fire up a quick game as the Dominion... you have me curious now.  And I do want to really check out what the new starbase can do.  Dominion rebels... I wonder... hehehe

One thing I'm curious about is when the rebels begin to attack, is it based on how many planets you have, or after a certain time limit, or when the pirates are gone?  I wasn't really paying attention, I just know it was awhile before they showed up, but once they did they were a constant pain in my ass... hehehe.  Not knowing where they'd show up next made for a much more interesting game.  I like them way better than the pirates as far as adding to the game.

Rebellion code has a max three stages, those stages are unlocked side independent.

Klink, Feds and Rommies all have one of the stages.  So, eventually, for each respective side, there is a periodic rebellion trigger against all opposing sides.  When triggered, a randomized fleet is sent to a random target amongst each players territories.

Just some comments about 0.4.6E.  Toyed quite a bit with the Dominion and Federation.  As far as ships go:

Federation:  Respectable offensive and defensive power all around, IMO.  Where the Feds really kill is that there's a fancy trick for every occasion.  Disabling, attack boosts, repair / replenish aids, group aids.  Everything and the kitchen sink, provided you do the research.  Not to mention boosts to old workhorse ships to make them even more useful, i.e. Miranda.  Utility is Starfleet's game, and their Capital Ships, esp. the Galaxy and Sovereign are tough to bring down in a battle. 

The other thing that really must be said about Starlfeet ships is that with proper measures, they recover very, very fast to push on for the next attack.  Repairs can be done quickly, but where Fed ships dominate is shield recovery.  It really doesn't take long to have a once battered fleet ready for the next fight.  Pop in a few frigates for replacements.  Over the course of a handful of minutes and decent facilities, the entire fleet's Hull & Shields are at 100%.  Once the Feds start a steamroll, it's hard to stop with the cross supporting ships and their persistency.

Not to mention the swarms of fighters/bombers a Fed fleet will have.  It's like a whole other fleet free of charge acting independently in the battle.

Lots of cool stuff with the Feds.  It also makes playing them very easy.

Dominion:  Quite a few differences from Starfleet's ships.  The Breen frigate and assault cruiser are key points in a Dominion fleet because of their debilitating effects.  They play a big role in breaking up the overabundance of Federation special abilities.  To make the Breen ships even more important is the stark fact that Jem'Hadar non-capital ships have essentially no utility.

Jem'Hadar warships... across the board their firepower is respectable.  Their frigates and cruisers have average staying power.  Very little special abilities, if at all.  I really wanted to get a much larger Jem'Hadar ship count, but their Cruiser and 1 frigate type just failed to even be respectable considering their costs.  The only non-capital Jem'Hadar ship I favored was the inexpensive, fast Dominator / Bug Ship.  They can be cheap fodder for Kamikaze attacks.  You can get alot of them.  And on the pursuit, the only light ship / frigate that comes close in performance in that role are Klingon B'Rel BOPs.

Now, Jem'Hadar Capital Ships... their claim to fame is sheer attack power and toughness.  Their first accessible Cap Ship is a carrier with 15k shield strength, and with a bit of work, minor group buffing.  Not to mention a way to keep those pesky Cardassians in check.  Its firepower is considerably nice early on and only gets overshadowed about mid-game.  Even with the more massive Jem'Hadar ships being introduced, I liked having a few of the carriers for the group aids.  The big ships of the Dominion, compared to Starfleet, have very little utility or cross support.  They're mostly geared for the single ship performance, namely churning out hot death.  Very little team support.  Still, the middle of the cap ship lineup are very tough by themselves.

The siege specialist of their Capital Ships can also access, with a bit of experience, Opening Salvo.  Very good attack in whittling down large frigate groups and wearing down a bit anything else that survived in the area.

Then there's the Enslaver, the biggest ship the Dominion has.  Heavily armored and shielded.  Excessively armed to the teeth.  Can access Opening Salvo early on.  Their highest ability, "Victory is Life!" is a very nice offensive boost to any nearby Jem'Hadar ships.  A pair of Enslavers with maxed out Opening Salvo are absolutely amazing in clearing the field of enemy frigates as well as damaging badly anything else that didn't blow up.  These became easily my most sought after and most numerous of Dominion cap ships.  Very, very tough and hard hitting.  Top of the priority list in attaining.

From my Dominion fleet selection, I tended towards Enslavers, a Carrier (for group aids), a bunch of Breen ships, and lots of Dominators.  What makes the Dominators important is the smaller footprint they leave in Supplies required.  A full compliment of Enslavers in the war are extremely costly in supplies.

Oh, and the Cardassians in the Dominion lineup.  In the previous version, I did get a bunch of them.  But they rebel and that left a bad taste in the mouth.  I haven't given them a try with this version.  I have no need for untrustworthy forces.

The last thing I have to say is a sharp contrast in fighting compared to the Federation.  The Feds can regroup and be ready to go with 100% hull and 100% shields after barely any waiting.  Very easy to attack, attack, and attack again in a short time span.  The Dominion can't.  Repairs take longer compared to the Feds.  And shields take FOREVER to recover.  The hull repair rate I can live with but the poor shield recovery is a detriment.  Very hard to maintain the momentum of an offensive against determined resistance if you are playing with the Dominion.  If the fighting is tough, even the big shields of Enslavers get worn down.  It's a very long wait if you want to send your Dominion fleet to the next fight with recovered hull and shields.  But in a campaign you may not have that luxury.  Sometimes you have to push because of a strategic opportunity, and doing it with your fleet's surviving ships at poor shield strength.  The frigates are easy to replace, but I cringe and hesitate when I have to keep pushing again and again with my expensive and highly experienced capital ships in a weakened shield state.

Some notes on the Dominion.

Your lumbering beasts of war are what makes the lighter Jem'Hadar useful.

Glory to the Founders, the passive buff on the Dominator, is a self replicating system.  For each Jem'Hadar frigate, the effect self propagates to all other affected ships in range, maxing out at ten times the base line effect.  It looks minor, but it's really quite huge.

The ultimate on your Leviathan, Founder Command Ship, again a passive, has double the effect on Jem'Hadar as the other ships.

If you add in Victory is Life and Ketracel White, also Jem'Hadar only, you're looking at a ridiculous advantage over Breen and Cardassian allies.  10% chance to hit, 20% angular thrust, 10% range, 155% energy weapon cooldown, 5% physical weapon cooldown, and 150% weapon damage in buffs they can't obtain.

Your Jem'Hadar also tend to suicide over lost founders as well, so there is that to worry about, but as long as you don't lose your ridiculously tough ships you don't have to worry about Victory is Life or Founder Command Ship backfiring on you.

Btw, take a second look at trade stations if you're having serious problems with shield regeneration.

Thanks for the pointer about trade stations.  I'll give it a whirl.

Even later in the game and when I get a good lineup of cap ships with the Dominion, I worry about even my high level Leviathan carriers.  Tough as their shields may be, the AI really, really hates them.  It makes things really simple as far as knowing what the computer will be going after, but I've lost a number of these ships.  They're bad as hell early on and until the mid-game.  But once mid-game hits and you start seeing better opposing ships and platforms / SBs, they're actually juicy targets.

I'll also try mixing up the cap ships more with the Dominion to get a better range of abilities.

The only capital that lacks very nice support capabilities is the Harbinger, it's just a tank.  Having a Keldon tag along will greatly increase your Leviathan's survival rate.  Domestic Intelligence wont help them, but Fleet Command comes with a mitigation buff.

@Trekkie_Rudd.. We already thought of and experimented with some "open" maps like the map that you made in the past. I am all for an open map "if" it doesnt screw up the game play. However the sins mechanic itself is not very friendly to open maps in the vanilla game. It is much worse in SoA 2. I dont think people want a borg diamond knocking on earths door in the first 30 seconds of game play. Unless there is a way to limit jump range ether through antimatter cost per jump, or through research, perhaps both then open maps will get old real fast in both sins, and the mod.

Apologies guys for getting absolutely nothing accomplished yet again. Yesterday i put in a 22 hour day at my real job, and i am still averaging 12-15 hours a day at work. Just wish i was getting paid hourly instead of being on salary :/

I need a list of the "worst offenders" from your point of view of models that do not "look right". It is obvious i do not have the free time to fix all of the meshes. Some need a total rebuild from scratch. Some i can tweak the existing mesh without having to rebuild it. So we will have to settle for what i can fix in the free time i do have. Which is not very much. At this rate it is looking like i can only fix one mesh per month. Unless someone else wishes to contribute, and help us to get rid of the mesh errors.

Just out of curiosity why was the B'rel removed from the long range slot, and replaced with the "WTF is that ship with its mesh inside out"? Where is the D-10? and where is the B'rel other than being used for defenders?

Say what? B'rel is still in the long range slot...

The inside out mesh guy(WTF makes sense there) isn't in the long range slot, never has been.  The D10 is still the anti-fighter slot.

Could someone post a link to the idiots guide to update a patch?  I'm brain dead today.

wbino here is a link to a guide for placing mods, and the patches just get put over the mod(as in the same folder)

harpo

Just a few things after playing with the Klingons:

A couple of things on the B'Rel BOP:

* Why are there 2 versions of the same type of ship?  1 in frigate slot, 1 in cruiser slot.  The costs are identical but the one in the cruiser slot has very minor stat improvements.  The cruiser slot one also has a much larger model and it looks like you can see the insides of it.  How about getting rid of the cruiser one and have only the frigate version?  It uses the classic BOP appearance and I think the frigate versions are the ones that spawn from some of the Klingon cap ships anyways.

The SuQ'Jagh capital ship, once it reaches Lv10, has no skills that it can spend the last point on.  Everything is maxed at 9 and clicking on any of the skill slot boxes, blank or not, doesn't "spend" it.

The Raloz Heavy Contructor unit lacks a zoomed out icon and it also lacks one for the unit lists on the left side of the game.  Since the unit is very, very tiny it's a pain to pick out.

Note, the Raloz is a blank icon, but it's still there to be clicked in your unit lists.  This will get fixed eventually.

I just fixed the typo on the cloak levels, thanks for the find.

The B'rel nonsense.  Work in progress models and temp entities are what you're seeing there.  This is true for some duplicate Borg entries as well.

Just another quick one.  The Negvhar also can't put the 10th level skillpoint into anything.

You have to do it the good 'ol fashioned way.  Manually bringing over the patch files into the SOA2 mod itself, which should be in the entrenchment mod folder.

I usually disable the mod ingame first and getting out of the game again before doing any patching.  It may be excessive, but that's just how I do things when toying with mods and ensuring a "clean slate" for the game.

Wombat, when I move the patch folder into the soa2 0.4.5e folder, it doesnt change or copy any files, it just becomes a subdirectory folder along with the galaxy, string , particale folders etc..... how stupid am i....lol  / plus snow bound today   ....help

wait  ..highlight all files in patch folder...not just move folder over into soa2 folder? correct? seen a copy over files prompt....

playing game now but still see mod file in- game named / 0.45e check sum / 189787393 does patch change available mod name?

Thanks in advance

The mod name is determined by the folder label.

Your Checksum should be 181723595.  I'm on irc if you want help in real time.

If you patch over the 0.45e folder the mod name will not change in the mod selection menu. What you can do is rename the folder to SoA2 0.46e then patch if you are confused over which version it is.

Perhaps we should start adding a version number to the startup menus to avoid this problem in the future.

[WIP] LCARS-PlayerSetup.png

[WIP] HappynessLevel.jpg

I had no problems with the B'Rels.  I've played a couple games now and other than the Raloz constructors, I haven't spotted anything wrong. In fact I've had a couple really good tough games... the AI seems to be getting a little smarter and more agressive... have you altered it?

I found how the rebels work... facinating.  I'm not gonna say how to do it on here and spoil things, but if you want to make a really terrifying game, switch the ships so the attacking rebels are BORG.    Remember the TNG episode where thousands of Enterprises were jumping in from parallel universes, and one of the ships was from a universe were the Borg were winning and Riker looked like death and the ship was all beat to hell...  switching the rebel ships with Borg ships was kind of like that... it was so hard I ended up switching them back.

But if someone wanted to make a real BORG death-mod, you could in theory switch out the rebels (except I would leave the dominion alone) and swap the pirate ships and raids with Borg...  As long as the raiding number of ships stays constant it doesn't seem to crash the AI...  Then fire up a game without the Borg as a regular player, but now with constant Borg harassment.  The biggest problem, actually, is the other AI players getting wiped out before you can get to them yourself.  You want to keep the raids simple, just scouts and coffins, maybe a diamond... sending in spheres is just asking to get assimilated.  But you can have a cube or 2 standing guard over a pirate base... Oh, and make the base itself an assimilated world... yeah, that could make things very interesting!!!

You know, this might not be a bad idea... it's definitly too hard to take down the Borg 1on1, or even 5on1...  but if you make the rebels and pirates into "assimilated" pirates and raiders, you could incorporate the Borg ships into the game without having to try to tackle them as a full blown player...

I'm not suggesting you do this... most people would probably hate it fast... but I'm not most people, I'm gonna make a copy of the mod and then change things around and see if it works...  

Welcome to Borg Space!!! 

I like the players setup, and I am all over that happiness Level!!!  I'd nibble on those antennia anyday!!  hehe