turn ur graphics / settings down ?

Loki - Pretty sure it's not the graphics settings, 'cause my rig only crashed the one time and I changed nothing.  That meshes with what other people say too.

At least, I'm pretty sure Sins isn't automatically turning down the settings.

Personally, I still think it's rig-related.  Don't know what (prolly not a RAM bug or something), but seems likely based on discussion.

It's research related.  You don't crash when no one researches the offending subjects that unlock botched references.

This mod is pretty sweet, but I am having an issue dealing with the Borg. I just played a large map with the AI set up for 3v3v2. On my side all grouped together is me as the Federation, allied with the Klingons and Romulans. The other team of 3 is the Dominion. The 2 of course is Borg.

Each Borg AI is easily alone dominating a team of 3 alone. I had a fortified Desert World with a maxed out Starbase, maxed out shield techs (and the shield hardening and tegeting tech) 27 or so defense platforms, 2 hangars and 1 of each shipyard, a few minefields, 2 level 4 Galaxy Class, a level 4 Ambassador and about 14 assorted frigates and cruisers. The Klingons and Romulans both had 2 or 3 capital ships each and probably double the number of smaller ships I did each. All of us defending at that planet. One Borg AI player rolls in with 3 assimilation spheres, 2 diamonds, about 9 of the rectangular looking ships (coffins maybe?) and 2 or 3 other smaller ships I didn't really see that much of along with 1 Mothership or somesuch.

 The small Borg fleet destroyed everything and only lost the big mothership, 2 spheres, and maybe 5 of it's smaller ships. My allies were steadily warping in backup but it was pointless. I was carefully micromanaging my starbase, platforms and ships for maximum effect. It looks like their ships killed 10 of ours to 1 of theirs. Seconds after my Galaxy Class ships lost shields there were assimilated. I reloaded and tried 3 times with foreknowledge of what was to come and it made very little difference. I understand the Borg is tough and all.. But that seems a bit much. Should I never put more than 1 Borg player in a game? Do they do especially good with certain AI goals (Research, Fortifier, etc)? Both the ones in my game were set as Researchers. All this went down maybe 40 minutes in.

Your inability to win is completely understandable.  The Borg, in your case of 3v3v2, are easily twice as strong as all of you combined.  You should have left them solo.  They're designed to kill you all, not 1v1 you.  On a large map, it's all but a forgone conclusion that you will lose, handily, without teaming up on them.

Heh, okay, so they're pretty nasty as they should be. Good to know I should keep them solo.

 Should be interesting to play against them.

psychoak - the research problem doesn't seem likely to me.  The couple times I've crashed was only about a minute after starting the game, and has never recurred.  I've played with and against all of the races on the hardest settings.

Unless somebody can name the research, my money is still on rig.

Greeting everyone.

Just wanted to drop in and give a update for all.  The mod is progressing well. We have new models and new code to be introduced with the next patch as well as a refined, pact system.   There is no dump issue , there was a issue with some removed code and a reference to it in the remaining code. That was fixed. I have been play testing the same game for over a week now. A very large 300 planet home made map. With no issues. With the exception of some missing string ref.  But please all do post in the soa2 debug area as we cant catch all the errors all the time .  We will be releasing a update this month.

thanks jay

Thanks for the update.jay.

I assume it's Sins fault itself and not your mod, but I'm about 8 hours in to a game and like someone flipped a switch the game's performance tanked horribly. It went from running smooth to a 1.5 second pause every 4 seconds, and when it's not pausing it's a little skippy. Minimizing settings made no difference at all. I think I have at least another 3 hours before I might be able to win, and this pausing all the time is really frustrating. It doesn't accept input during these pauses.

  You'd think it'd actually be running better now since the biggest empire in the game is almost gone and the others haven't changed much and appear to be turtling. And watching my resource usage it makes me think Sins doesn't use more than one core? It'll full out use one of my cores, and barely touch the other one. Then the core it was hammering goes down to 50% or so, then the core it wasn't using spikes up to 50% as well for a few, then it reverts back. It's like it refuses to use more than 50% of my CPUs.

Sins doesnt multi-thread, thats why stupid powerful single cores are always recommended on these forums. And even then, if the game is long enough, it will start to lag, thats just the way Sins is made.

I see, that sucks.. With a game that can have the scale this one does it boggles the mind that it still hasn't been updated to utilize multiple core processors which I know have been around longer than this game.

 In my current game, 2 stars at 90 planets the game started getting slower for me around 5-6 hours in. I finally have taken out most of the Borg. The game got really choppy around 6:52 to 7 hours in during my final push for their last few worlds. Curious, I reloaded a game I had at 6:45 min in but this time didn't continue my push. If i just sit there and wait, I move up on 7 hours in with just slower speed and no choppy. If I go in and take their next world and sit and do nothing the game is freezing constantly. wtf? I'm no expert but that makes me think the Borg AI is doing something screwy and it's chowing resources.

I know that the mod crew went to great lengths to make the borg nigh-unbeatable, single player, unless you had a team, but... Challenge Accepted...And Annihilated!!!!

The gory details are down below, but they are font that is black (same as background) and thus can't be seen unless you highlite the text.  I've hidden it so that those who want to figure it out on their own have a fair spoiler alert.

The secret to beating the borg is your tactics, clearly, but also race and board.  Granted - if you set the borg AI to aggressive, you're pretty much toast, but you don't have to do that.  Fortifier leaves a string of fully-upgraded Unicomplexes in their wake, and economist and researcher keep hitting you with random fleets of tough cookies.  

The way around these problems is to select a large map and get to colonizing early on.  Defend the systems you have by setting up starbases (or trade stations for Dominion) to keep them out.  A fully-upgraded starbase can take on a Queen's Diamond and a couple other ships, and you usually can upgrade it after the QD gets into the system.  Also, don't underestimate the power of putting a dozen or more turrets around your starbase.  As you expand, work through the tech trees and snag all of the updgrades, 'cause it will be expensive once you grow your fleet.  

Next, attack with overwhelming force, and don't be afraid to lose a few dozen ships (if your supply is 1500-2000, don't be surprised to lose 500+ supply worth of ships).  Use a leapfrogging/island hopping strategy, taking a system, building lots of culture stations, take the next one, build some shipyard to heal and replenish the fleet, etc..

Finally, select race well.  The Federation is actually a poor choice, since your ships are fairly expensive to replace when they are assimilated and useful to the borg.  I initially though the Dominion was good, but the loss of a single cap ship can set you back drastically, and lose them you shall if they focus on it for more than a few seconds.  The Klingons and the Romulans are much more effective - the Klingons have cheap, fast-building ships, but the Roms have a huge advantage: anti-matter draining attacks.  The D'Deridex warbird can drain a fair amount of AM per hit, and the D'Veridex (colonizer) special attack drains massive amounts of AM from every single ship in range.  That means no assimilating your ships, since they have no AM for abilities!  A borg fleet with no assimilation is usually a dead borg fleet, since they wind up relying on that quite a bit.

Using this strategy, I was able to beat an easy borg opponent 1 vs. 1, then moved up to two hard borg, 1 vs. 1 vs. 1.  At this point, I can even make a good run at hard borg 1 vs. 1, winning about half the time.

Toss down the gauntlet against those borgy bastards.  Next up?  Playing as the borg and taking on 6+ races (same team) on hard/unfair.

A few points.

Borg AM draining.  The Romulans do have this down rather well.  Large numbers of Intrepids or Fek'lhrs will be quite effective at this task as well however.  The Dominion can't drain their antimatter, but they can disable frigate abilities with energy dissipators.  You also have a limited window of opportunity with this tactic.  The Borg gain a 300% antimatter boost at max tech, making a level 1 Assimilation Cube start with a thousand and regenerate 6 a second.  High level Cubes at max tech are effectively undrainable.  You'd need numerous D'Verix warbirds, and a high level Queen will make them immune to the disable so they'll destroy your fleet anyway even as you drain them.

Should you try the lone wolf tactic in a game where the Borg have sides to feed on, you're probably doomed.  They're quite ridiculous at high levels.  I doubt a large map can be done with all sides filled and only one Borg at medium+ difficulty.

I finally wiped out the Borg on my game about 8 hours in. About 2 minutes after I defeated them my game stopped freezing every few seconds (even though at one time their empire was about 12-15 worlds and it ran fine) so apparently they were causing it. They were set on Normal/Research

 I eventually just attacked their worlds until I saw their fleet heading in to protect it, then I warped in deeper bombing their worlds one at a time while staying ahead of their fleet. This took down their economy enough where they mostly just used diamonds and spheres, and only a few cubes here and there. The Klingons helped a little, mostly with defending my worlds bordering on Borg space. The Romulans did a good job keeping the 3 Dominion empires busy while protected by my heavily fortified border worlds.

I actually did best against their fleets with almost only capital ships. I could warp in with 20 Akira class ships and almost all of them would get assimilated in minutes. And using Norways to try and protect with their anti-assimilation proved ineffective since they seemed to prioritize those ships in combat, making them useless since they'd get vaporized in a few seconds. Warping in my Sovereigns in just ahead of the others helped quite a bit since they'd take the initial brunt. I still have the 3 Dominion Empires to deal with now. All in all fighting the Borg was a satisfying victory since it was hard earned, but I feel they assimilated my ships a little too fast and often. I am quite confident 70% of Borg ships I destroyed were assimilated Federation, Klingon, and Dominion vessels. I targeted their Assimilators first with the hope of reducing it, but no such luck. Attacking with more than just my capitals actually made them stronger and simply wasted my resources.

This is... either insanity or hard core.  Not sure which.  The notion of taking out a borg when you also have other enemies (3X Doms?!?!) is pretty nuts - even with allies (unless they are cruel setting).

There's only one rationale response to this - I must try it immediately!  Order up another round of Glenlivet, Scotty, 'cause we're gonna be workin' late tonight!

(P.S. - I've fallen out of love with the Federation.  Which means I must play as them for this game.)

Eight hours?  I know you don't have eight hours, so I'll do it for you in two.  And before you ask, yes, I always multiply my brag estimates by a factor of four.  How else would I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?

Well.  Now.  That was fast, and I'm willing to blame it on luck just this once.  

I exaggerated - it took me almost three hours (vice the two I bragged about - but I never lie).  One borg on hard researcher (because I'm a glutton for punishment), me as Fed, Rom and Klink allies on unfair, and three Doms on another team (also all unfair).

Well, I got lucky on the map (Aerolian Sector).  I was right next to the borg.  Normally, this would be reason to c#*p my pants, but I decided, hey, what the heck, I have allies, right?  I built a station (which I didn't need), started culture bombing them, built some Excelsiors, and had a grand old time.  With my allies, we beat the borg in about 20 minutes (thus the luck for having them next to me).  After that, running the map on the 3X Doms was a joke.  I got the win about a minute after the Autosave 11 (2 hours 45 minutes) flashed up.

Okay, so I didn't do it in 2 hours: so sue me.  I'd rather be lucky than good.

Looking forward to the update and some online games - 

Grand Admiral Prawn

wow remind me never to play against you in mutliplayer as i may have a heart attack lol

I've noted that it's easier to deal with the Borg if you deny them crystal and worlds, especially those with many logistic slots so their research suffers. And they need SO much crystal. Don't let them have ice worlds. And they suffer more from early well done rushes as defending against them is more costly and slows down their expansion and research. Letting them build up their empire and strength is dangerous.

 In the game I was playing at the time of my post, was 2 Stars and 90 planets (custom map by me with lots of resources and defensible worlds) I play quite defensively and rarely attempts rushes. I usually intentionally try to steer the game to last awhile as it hard earned victories are so much sweeter than quick rushing ones.

Team 1

Federation (me)

Klingons (normal aggressor)

Romulans (normal researcher)

Team 2

Dominion x3 (all normal aggressor, fortifier, researcher)

Team 3

Borg (normal researcher)

I've since learned that even hard non-Borg AIs are fairly weak unless you're a new player. But even normal Borg can be deadly if they have time to build up and other empires feeding them ships to assimilate since those are free of resource cost.

 I have the same problem game after game. Whenever I accept one they send, or if I send one, they just rapidly accept/cancel the treaty spamming me with audio reports.

And about the minidumps, I got one less than a minute in during my first attempt to play this sweet mod. I restarted and I've never gotten one since. My installs are all fresh and I have nothing else added to the game other than a custom map. If you haven't tried reinstalling clean, it's worth a shot.

Does the fleet minimod not work? If i try to load it in front of the mod I get a minidump. After the mod and i don't really notice the difference.

Hey, just wanted to say awesome mod. Good job and keep up the good work!

I was wondering if there has been any custom maps made for the Diplomacy version of this mod? I know when I played the Entrenchment version it had 2 custom maps with a recreation of each factions starting home system. I was disappointed when I picked up Diplomacy and it didn't have those custom maps. So I was wondering if someone had put together any custom maps?

Silly question. I downloaded SoA2 for the original sins. Where is the link for the readme file?

just copy them from the entrenchment mod's galaxy folder and then paste them to the diplomacy mod's galaxy folder

should look something like this: C:\Users\[YOUR USER NAME]\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods-Diplomacy v1.2\Soa2 diplomacy 1.19rc\Galaxy

Wow, now I feel really dumb.

I just didn't think it would be compatible for some reason. Thanks!