Specifics on the difficulty involved in taking down the Borg 5v1?

Should anyone start playing with Borg as rebels and pirates, major work involved.  You need to undo the research work into the mechanics of the side, unlock the locked abilities, give them decent antimatter levels, etcetera.

  we do have plans for the planet defenders and pirates

It took a little adjusting, yeah, but I got it to work just fine.. played for maybe 3 hours and then scrapped the idea & deleted the entire thing.  It was a nightmare, and I lost both other AI players about an hour after the rebels began to jump in... it's a good idea, but the AI can't hang.

As for taking down the Borg 5on1...maybe.  if you are fast and careful and really concentrate on ships with anti-Borg technolony.  The big thing is to hit them as fast as possible.  Borg combat labs are expensive and take a long time to build, but once they get past 4 or 5 you're screwed.  So you need to move quick, and if possible make sneak raids to take down labs.

I like playing the Romulans against the Borg the best... You can seriously screw with them using a cloaked Capital ship or 4... things like sneak raids, or messing with them before an attack.  If I know they are massing for an attack I like to jump into the planet they're massing up in cloaked, go to the far side of the planet and then uncloak just to screw up the attack formation, or get right on top of them, uncloak and hit them with the Quantum vortex thing... the one that disables everythng around it, take out as many ships as possible, then cloak or jump back out.  Do it right and you can seriously screw them up without losing a ship.

And again, if you get past their ships cloaked and into their home system and take out a combat lab or 2 it will really mess them up.  You might lose a capital ship, but get enough labs and they will lose the ability to make future cubes, which is worth sacrificing a ship or 2.

If this mod gets any better, I will have to quit my job.

Could you do away with superweapons entirely, and make the tech tier something the ai actually builds?                           I know that the ai not building superweapons is a Sins issue ( one the devs never bothered to fix btw)

Do you want a Cruel or Vicious AI building superweapons?  With their resource cheats, they could have them in a fraction of the time it would take you.

That's going to be a problem, because it's most definitely getting better when we put out the diplomacy version, no more Borg ally nonsense.

Eh, I hate super weapons, if I can get rid of them, I will.  Will have to see what happens.

Yes, that's why they don't have an anti-Borg ship.  How's the Unicomplex absurdity?  I've been thinking it's a little too beefy, but I like the damage output.

Just wait till the transwarp network is deployed hahhaa.  The model itself is amazing. She will only be built from the unicomplex.  

I liked the bigger Unicomplex mesh... the newer one is much smaller.  I liked the look of the bigger complex.

The toughest feature is obviously the assimilation ability, but if you can get a cloaked Rommie Colony Cap ship in close and disable the Unicomplex, you can at least start to take shots at it.  The trick is to have at least 6 or 8 Rommie Colony Cap ships and keep track of the unicomplex.. disable it with one cap ship, and as soon as it begins to come back online hit it with another one...  don't let the cap ships autofire it or they'll all shoot at once... do it manually so you can spread them out one at a time and you'll actually have a little time to maybe do some damage.  But you still need a massive fleet behind the cap ships to do enough damage to make a difference.

I'm beginning to think the trick isn't to defeat the Borg so much as to try and keep them contained and bottled up... then slowly pick away at them.

Query.

If you were side X and you formed an alliance with side Y, what technology would you share?

If i were team x and out of logistical slots, I would like to be able to build trade/civil and military labs in a trade partners (Y) wells.

Thanks, helpful ideas on pact bonuses there...

Just wanted to drop by and voice my opinions about the mod.  I've been playing it since the first version came out for original sins and also faced the "updating" wars that plagued you modders and the players!  But before I point out some needed improvements I would like to greatly thank the mod team for giving the community such a great treat.  It has been a wonderful journey so far.  KEEP IT UP GUYS!  Note: I actually haven't had the time to read all 82 pages on this thread and I'm playing the 0.4.5E version of the game so some glitches may be repeats.

First off, I would like to point out a mere glitch that actually has happened several times now when a Romulan AI would fight against any sort of "generic pirates."  It happens when the first available Romulan Capship (the one with the Singularity Vortex) makes a quick "strafing" run and then continues pass the target.  I noticed that you modders added the "attack runs" so that ships do not stand still when fighting each other (ala Vanilla Sins), it adds a lot to the game, but has its quirks.  If the Rom Capship fails to destroy its target after its "attack pass"  AND the target manages to try to attack the Rom Capship things get messy (or more like boring).  You see, since both ships have the EXACT same speed, and the Rom Capship does not have any rear weapons, so both ships continue on a straight line forever under impulse power.  Effectively, the pirate tries to chase down the Rom Capship, while the Capship tries to get far enough away to end its "strafing run" and begin a new one, but it can't get far enough away since the pirate is still chasing it (distance remains the same), so it just keeps on going and going!  Soon whole AI FLEETS join the chase.

I've warped into systems after 2 hours of play to only find that 100 ships are WAY off in the distance (like out of the solar system).  The AI would fail because it would just keep sending off more ships in a futile chase before taking the planet over resulting in a basically dead Romulan faction and makes for a very, VERY boring game.  I hope I explained myself clearly.  Modders just need to make ship speeds different, or apply a disengage timer on the attack runs.  This glitch only happens to ships without rear weapons BTW (otherwise the rear "chaser" ship would be destroyed after a few minutes).

Another note about the "attack runs."  It heavily benefits the Feds (since their ships usually have 360 coverage), but even the Feds don't utilize it to their full advantage.  When most of the Fed Ships attack (espeically the CapShips) they have to go far away (usually beyond their weapons range) before circling back for the next strafing run.  Consequently, they use their front and rear weapons 2 times per cycle, but only use one side (either starboard or port) weapons once (as they pass the target).  It would be better to program the ships to make their attack turn at the edge of their weapons range to fully utilize their firepower.  But it's a small quirk that allows players who micromanage their ships to win against greater odds.

Klingons and especially Romulans HAVE to be micromanaged to be fully effective (to the point where it unbalances the game in their favor).  Since ALL ships perform the swooping "attack run," I see that you modders modified ships with only frontal weapons to have insane cool down times (to balance the game since these ships only attack 25% of the time during their entire runs).  When I place a Romulan fleet STATIONARY while facing a target, it gets annihilated 4 times faster than on "autopilot."

OK, enough about "attack runs" and their inherent glitches.  Let's talk about the Feds...  They are OVERPOWERED!  One Fed race can fight 2, 3 or even 4 AIs at once and win with a fleet that's 1/10th the size of the others.  The Fed starbase once upgraded with the shipyard ability can provide repairs to ANY Friendly structure/ship at an ungodly rate and duration.  I mean Com'on!!!!  115 hull AND 115 shield for 60 SECONDS?!!!!  That's a total of 230 health points PER SECOND for EVERYTHING within the radius!  Not even the BORG can regen that fast.  And since the "repair" ability is only limited to radius, one starbase can effectively make a whole defensive fleet and defenses practically INVINCIBLE for 60 seconds.  It also restores antimatter too!  I've defeated massive fleets (over 400 ships owned by 4 AIs) with a fleet of about 50 using this ability.  If you have another Fed Human, he/she can build a starbase in the same system that 'heals' your starbase and it would provide FULL coverage (ability lasts 60 seconds but has 120 sec cooldown) to surrounding fleets/defenses.  No other race, save the Borg can defeat such a perimeter.  Too easy!

The Dominion...  They are now WAY underpowered.  The Leviathan for example is slower than all of the other starting Capships and its shield REGENERATION rate is almost nothing.  You have to wait hours before its shields are fully replenished.  And it costs too much resources.  From monetary value alone, you might think that it should be the best out of the normal (non-Borg) races, but it is actually the weakest.  I know that you modders intentionally made the Doms weak (too many players whining about how their Ambassadors can't take on the Leviathan), but com'on, now the Leviathan costs more than a Sovereign, but it can't even take on an Ambassador after one small battle?  It only takes 1, maybe 2 small-medium battles before its shields are useless and you have to rely on its hull for the remainder of the game.

Also, the Dom ships are way too slow.  They should at least have the chance to outrun/catch the other races.  Make their speed the same as everyone else.

Now, onto the BORG!  They are the best thing that has happened to this mod.  "Finally, an enemy that is worthy of my attention!"  Just wanted to congratulate you guys on a job well done here.  Counter to what some of you guys have said, it is possible to defeat a FULLY researched Borg faction while playing as different faction....  You need Human players!  My friends and I (three total) usually play against 1 unfair Borg, and it is possible to create a stalemate, where the Borg will just not attack due to your team's sheer number of fleets/defenses.  And when you finally get up a huge fleet (I mean where EVERY player has max ship slots) you can attack and wipe them out like nothing!  Wolf 359 is a favorite Borg fighting ground.  I usually play against 1 unfair Borg with 2 hard AIs (Federation) on my side, and it is pretty straightforward to win.

I hope that's enough to chew on for awhile!  Happy Holidays, and I can't wait to the next version is out!

Shhh!  Tell me about it, the fighter movement system sucks, but it's the best we've got.  That said, no, they don't.

The K'vort, the best possible example of this, has a 5 second cooldown, there's nothing insane there.  If there were, the K'vort would have massive damage numbers compared to similar strength ships.  Forward firing ships make very good pursuit vessels.  They are better than rounded out ships at this particular task.  They are not worse in a dog fight simply because their one facing is only firing a fourth of the time.  If you have four facings working out to the same value, they're still only firing a fourth of the time.  It's the same damage output.  Yes, if you put them on hold you can do massive damage to a stationary target.  That's quite true.  Of all sides.  Most ships have far more damage forward than the other directions.

Since the AI will never abuse this cheeseball tactic, and we can't do anything about it...  Don't?  It's your game, you're responsible for how you play it, exploits can be ignored.

Thanks for pointing out the starbase issue.  I'll have to kill someone later for reverting my change, might have been me.

Well, yeah.  It takes a little longer to restore them.  If you have a fleet of them and no empire it even takes a rather lengthy stretch.  Commentary regarding hours is just retarded.  The regeneration rates for the shields on an Ambassador and a Leviathan are ten percent different.  6.6 compared to just 6.  The difference is the Leviathan has 12000 instead of 6600.  It's simple enough math.  Feds take one thousand seconds to restore their shields at base rates, Dominion take two thousand.  On the other hand, the Leviathan restores them almost as fast by virtue of having so many more in the first place, so the complaint is null and void.

Their speed is what makes them playable.  I didn't listen to anyone whining about how their Ambassadors can't take on a Leviathan.  Hence the current situation, where they can't without having one hell of a level advantage.  Pretty screwy considering the Leviathan is a support ship with no offensive abilities to aid single combat.

You just complained about a resupply ability giving you insane regeneration.  Where is your support here?  You have a massively powerful ship that takes down counterparts without breaking a sweat.  Your trade off for this is logistics.

The Ambassador can run away.  Solution?  Take the fight to your enemy.  Eventually, they have to stand and fight.  If you're both at full strength when this happens, you win.  Period.  It's as good as being Borg early on.  In return, you have to take significant measures to be at full strength.  You have to set up supply points and restore your lumbering behemoths.  Your Barkus class cruiser will give you limited mobile shield restoration, bringing you more in line with other sides passive regeneration rates, or more depending on your perspective.  Your trade stations, which are armed as well, give you access to more speedy restoration increases.  You can't do it in 45 seconds like the Feds can(after I nuke their starbase ability...) but you're plenty fast from a fortified position.

Passive hull repair rates are also equally slower.

OK, maybe I was exaggerating a little bit, but I still believe that the Cap ships (at the least Roms) have pretty quick cooldowns on their forward batteries.  It's a flashing green torpedo/disruptor fest when anyone attempts (and fails) to outrun my Romulan capship fleet.

Maybe I suck playing as the Doms, but my opinion is my opinion.  It just irks me that a Leviathan can't even lift a finger against a ship that costs much less than it does (ex. Sovereign class).  IMHO, you should bring the costs down a bit on some of their (Dom) ships to a more reasonable level.

BTW, has anyone beat the Borg (unfair) whilst playing as the Dominion?  They (the Doms) are obviously the weakest race against the strongest in that case.  I regard myself as a pretty good player, but I don't think I can do it.  The Doms are just too slow and their heavy cruisers just don't compare to the likes of the Akira/Vorcha that other races have.  Whever I play as the Dominion, I find myself spamming Capitals since the cruisers/frigates always seem to die out.

I hope you can fix the "chasing into oblivion" issue as well.  Although I think I'm the only one here that has mentioned it, it has to have happened to others as well.

Notes for Future Releases.

It would be pretty neat if the modders diversified the ship roles a little more (maybe even exaggerate them).  Say, have some ships do the current "fighter attack run" while others stand WAY back (like out of "normal" enemy range) and bombard a target from a distance (like vanilla sins).  That way you can have "artillary" units in the RTS.  Some cap ships (like the Sovereign) will stay with the current "attack run" while others (Nebula) don't do that, but fire an insane amount of torpedoes with a relatively long cooldown time and lowered accuracy/larger spread.  Just a thought.

Don't know what you can do in Diplomacy, but giving the factions truely unique powers would be cool.  Feds should benefit greatly from diplomacy (much easier to get rewards in the forms of population/alligence/funds and such) but are very limited to weapons.  While Klingons are much harder to form alliances, they gain lots of weapons.  Roms would have the best survalliance/spy network.  Maybe they can even steal (or share) research that allies are conducting, or just have speedier times on what others have already researched.  IDK.  It all reminds of the Star Trek mod for Galactic Civs, where every faction had to play differently to succeed.

Regarding superweapons, maybe add faction superabilities.  Say when the Feds build their "superweapon" in orbit, they gain diplomacy rewards, Klingons gain weapons (plus 25 to weapons).  Kind of like discovering an artifact, it affects the whole faction but doesn't really act as a "superweapon."  Or maybe it should be a super-research station that allows for even more research (again, gains on the magnitude of artifact discoveries) but they are set at an ungodly price/time for completion.

Or, you could go for the old-school route and make it a defensive cannon (ala Fed Mars defense) that once deployed, automatically destroys any selected ship/ships in one, blinding shot.  It would basically be a Novalith cannon against ships instead of planets.  Kind of like a comet-shooting-spaceship-sniper...... Or something....

As far as pacts go, here are some generalizations at least based on what i know of each race. Might not be much, but might be a step in the right direction.

For feds, i'd want Trade and Culture bonuses, mostly.

Klinks would want weapons/armor bonuses, maybe mining as well.

Rommies might want antimatter to help their stealth generators. I'd also say armor to aid in their survival.

Dominion would want weapons and shield bonuses. especially sheilds. Maybe mining and fleet point upgrades as well, from slaving.

Borg is obvious. Weapons and armor, as well as Logistics slots (these would be a must).

The Sovereign is one of the most powerful ships in the quadrant, the pinnacle of Federation tech.  It's an unholy badass, not a single support ability, purely individual combat advantages.  The Leviathan is a support ship, and the starting colonizer.

If you look at the stats, the Leviathan wins.  It uses 85 points instead of 95 for the Sovereign, and has more damage, more than negating the disadvantage in shields.  It only loses because all of it's abilities are frigate support, so obviously you shouldn't be using all capital ships.

That would be why...  Try large groups of Virulents or Dominators escorting a Devastator with Glory to the Founders maxed out.  You'll be cursing your oversight on this one.  Lets just say the damage output between the capitals and the frigates is a lot closer than you think it is, you just need the right conditions.  They do blow up fast though, but this is canon.  The Dominion send huge numbers of rapidly grown cannon fodder into a fight with small, highly damaging ships, and lose most of them before the next batch is ready.

Me too, because it's driving me nuts.

Oh, when I meant "costs" I meant cost in terms of resources.  I get that a Sovereign is better than a Leviathan, what I don't get is that the resource cost of the Leviathan is so much higher.

Because one is available from game start.

     Happy New Year 

Just another quick though that I don't know if you guys would like to implement into the next release - economic purchase repercussions.

It basically means that whenever you buy a specific type of ship, it increases the cost to deploy another one of the same ship.  I think Rise of Nations did this.  That way it adds more tactics into the game.  You just can't spam your best cruisers/capships due to the increasing economic inefficiency of the whole thing.  That way frigates won't become obsolete and sending fleets of ships on suicide runs will backfire since redeploying them will cost more.  It also motivates the player to retreat and save ships rather than have them destroyed.

Of course, the increase cost of deployment doesn't have to be the same for all races/ships.  Maybe something on the lines of 10% for heay cruisers, but only 2% for frigates.  For example, this means that your 10th Akira will cost double of the 1st one.  You would have to make 50 Mirandas to double deployment costs for a Miranda since they are kind of like cannon-fodder anyways.  The modders could even add another research tree to lower/eliminate the whole thing too.

Yes, I know that increasing fleet research lowers your income rate already, but in its current state, it is pretty unrealistic and basic.  It's probably hard-coded, but fleet upkeep should be based on the number of ships currently DEPLOYED rather than max number of ships available.  It would make games much interesting - should I have a large fleet at hand and hinder my economy, or cut back and save up?  It would allow races that get annihilated to bounce back quicker (since they would not be using many ship slots anymore due to their destruction, their upkeep would be much lower).  Don't get me wrong - I still want fleet research to increase the max amount of deployable ships/logistics - I just want fleet upkeep (the resource penalty) to be recoded on the basis of current number of logisitics used and as such, it would fluctuate during the game.  I find it laughable to see that ONE ship (or zero for that matter) can take up to 75% of all resource rates!  Unfortunately, the Sins AI doesn't have a sense of economy, so this may be challenging to implement correctly.

Anyways, that was a long rant.  I still have a lot of ideas that I would like to see in the future releases and if you guys still want to hear them, just ask.  Otherwise I'm sure that you guys have your own ideas to mash together.  Happy New Year Mod Team!

Happy new year

couple of suggestions

on planet stats replace population with 'garrison', most species ingame do tend to hold back from genocide its a small immersive detail.

the passive subsystem targetting ability on the sovereign, defiant etc would actually be a nice ability of most ships ingame, as long as it is reasonable rare it would make combat ingame more interesting as you have to quickly adapt to changing circumstances as well as it being a realistic aspect of star trek combat. Your Cap ship's engines are disabled, regroup your frigates or the cap ship will be unable to assist etc.

is it possible to decrease the Line of sight as the result of an environmental effect ingame? e.g. entering a nebula ingame. having areas that have much smaller lines of sight would be useful tactically ingame, especially in retreat. It would also give the oppotunity to give more importance to ships ingame that would be considered scientifically minded in star trek- for example the Nebula class, or the nova class which have superior sensors.

what I'm really interested in seeing in SOA2 is more planet types, abandoned capturable defence/trade space stations (epok nor type stuff), more nebula types, e.g. nebulas in which shields do not operate, weapon ranges are decreased, nebulae with damage done per second, nebulae with antimatter regen (e.g. they can collect deuterium or something)

I'd also like to see the cost of starbases increased accross the board, the AI spams them everywhere without upgrading them sufficiently to make them a challenge, they are fun, useful, impressive ingame and their cost does not reflect that in my opinion. I also dislike it when starbases get built in orbit of enemy systems as it doesnt reflect the effort required to build such structures, increasing the time to build by approximately 180 seconds would be sufficient since at leas then starbases being built would be more vulnerable thus preventing that tactic albeit in a circumvention.

anyway, happy new year don't hate me for vomitting my ideas everywhere

I don't know about the LOS issue... I think that's set in stone.  But some of the other things you ask in nebulas isn't too hard.  Once the mod team finishes up the Rommie starbase I'm gonna take a shot at again merging this with Distant Stars to see if I can't add some more planets, nebula's and such. With everyones permission obviously. Then I can see about changing what happens inside a nebula.

I also agree it's much too cheap building a starbase... I would think the cost would be massively more than a ship, even with replicator technology.  A Starbase is a huge structure compaired to even the biggest capital ship, and I think the cost and time involved should reflect this.  But I guess having replicator technology is a good excuse to be able to build one fairly quick in an enemy system. 

Good points trekky_rudd.  Another Federation glitch is that they are able to spam starbases like crazy since their "constructor" (Norway Class) is so much cheaper than the other races.  Instead of costing 2000 latinum, they cost just 450 and you actually get a pretty useful combat cruiser to boot.  I just think that the modders overlooked the other races (Doms, Roms, Klings) on that aspect since they still just the generic starbase contructors.  Hopefully you guys will fix that soon since it is actually quite a big Fed advantage.

BTW, starbases constructed in enemy territory do take longer to make (at least for some races).  Some of the races can increases contruction time in enemy territory through research.

I also liked another poster's suggestion on limiting the effect of the Fed tracer beams.  Enemy cap ships and the heaviest cruisers shouldn't be affected by them.  It would make fighting the Borg (as the Feds) that much more difficult.

Another FINAL suggestion! 

It would be pretty neat IMHO if you guys could add in unique "hero" units for each faction.  Say for example, the Feds could deploy only one "Picard" Sovereign (the Enterprise) during the whole entire game which would have unqiue meshing to differientiate it from the generic Sovereigns (of course you guys would have to remove the Enterprise name from the generic Cap ship list too).  Roms could have the Scimitar, etc.  Of course each hero unit would have greatly increased speed, health, weapons, and regen rates (I'm thinking on the order of 2-3 times the health and armor) along with a high research cost (or maybe a unique fleet research cost like it takes 20 capital crew logistics or something), but only can be fielded once.  If they get destroyed - too bad!

I know you guys are trying to be close to cannon as possible, but a few unrealistic tweaks could make for a funner experience.

Oh, just wanted to add something more to my "hero" unit thing...

It would be absolutely AMAZING it you guys added unique selection sounds for the heros.  Take sound clips from Star Trek Legacy for example.  Although the game (Legacy) wasn't top notch, I really, really, I mean really, loved hearing Picard or Kirk responding to my commands.  It kind of immersed me into the Trek universe when I heard Krik saying "Enterprise Here" upon unit selection.  It was Brilliant!  Recognizing voices (especially of people you admire) enhances the commander's experience that much more.

It's a lotta work, but would add that 'cool and immersive' factor into the game.