Actually, to be "perfectly cannon", Romulans don't use fighters.

Heres th reasoning:

Romulans, are by far the biggest gamblers in the quadrant. When it comes to it, it is either all or nothing. Yeah,they send scouts and what not, but they are on the same wavelength as the Borg, when it comes to assesing your neighbors' defenses probably worst. Mix that in, with being high risk, they don't use fighters, instead they use their intimidating vessels to strike fear and swoop in for the kill, like scraving vultures/hawks.

To use fighters is almost a waste in Romulan society. For all tht, might as well outfit a cargo vessel as a scouter and masqurade it as a relief ship....

Well if everyone wants to get REALLY picky, then you should barely have any fighters at all in the entirety of the mod. We've only seen fighters in one or two episodes, and in very small numbers. But it wouldn't be Sins without fighters, so they're there.

damn... I was hoping for true planetary defence fighters to be abolished and replaced with fast planetary defence corvettes.... or even older sub-light auxiliary forces.....

I also hoped the carriers would be abolished as they are not really used in the star trek universe. Probably best to replace them with sime kind of long range missile cruiser. So you still get long range hitting power without the fighters being portrayed.

Tried this today guys. It may be a little rough around the edges, but damn there has been a lot of effort put into this. Had  a great time playing. It's really neat because it feels like a different experience from regular sins. 

Postivies

Buildings blow up much faster. This makes raiding a viable option that pays off.

Dynamic movement works really well with the ships

No icons on the mines makes them far more deadly

I like how there are more module and extractor locations for most planets. Goes well with the canon. It was also interesting to see that the buildable area around certain planets has been shrunk to a very small corridor. That made it feel a lot more planet like.

The visual and sound fx's are really cool. Brought me right back to the ST universe.

The ships look really good. The completed models all looked really well done. (I'm not sure if the borg and dominion are complete, I'm assuming no)

Things to work on

As of now, it feels like capital ships are OP. Initially I didn't build too many and I was getting destroyed so I started building only capital ships and I didn't lose a single cap ship. I was taking out massive klingon frigate/cruiser fleets with minimal losses. The romulans and dominion though seemed to really kick my ass when they would attack with cap ships and I had mostly frigates and cruisers. (I played as the Feds)

Ships seem way too slow. Every time I have to send ships through a star it is a real drag. Between planets is ok, still feels a bit sluggish, but for stars, something really needs to be done.

Different Approaches

These aren't really better or worse, just neat changes I hope stay to keep the play fresh. 

Research intensive. It could use a bit of juggling around to make it more balanced, but it feels like you have to be on top of research if you want to win this game. In Sins it's important, but this game it feels way more intense.

this game is not about spamming tons of little ships. The game design is about each ship being a bit more valuable. Each ship feels like it's more important than the vanilla game. It's not necessarily better, but it's a neat approach that works equally well. You can still manage to get large battles, but it's not just a sloppy mess. All the ships will lance with each other and every time one blows up you kinda go, yikes that was a hit I better replace it right away.

I've gotta sit around the house tomorrow so I'll play some more and see what else I can find. It'll be really interesting to see how this progresses as the little knots and bugs are fixed. 

Great work team! 

I like he way the starships lance.... thats the way most battles in star trek look. But yes there is a balance to be had. larger ships should do less lancing. Basically anything thats a heavy cruiser or upwards should do a lot slower dancing. but to be honest i think its fine the way it is. Its the best we will get from sins.

As for the capital ships being OP I do agree here, in a lot of cases its like playing space invaders vs waves and waves of enemy. I feel like I am in command of the ARGO from star blazes with its volcano cannon. Again though it kinda fits the flavour of the star trek series. Some ships need to be heroes. But I cannot remember an episode where federation ships were silly enough to take on tonnes of enemy ships similarly sized or matched.

ship speed is also ok with me... its just right. Stars need to be slow to get out of grav wise. avoid em. If your jumping in to the star system, well the enemy gets a chance to react.

Stars need to be sped up.

Stars do need a speed boost. If the defence is an issue, make it take twice as long to Jump out of a star well or something, but a speed boost in the Star well would really really help. Especially in multiplayer.

Yes Cap Ships may be slightly Overpowered, but lets face it, Sins has always been about that; you could hold off a dozen light frigates easily without breaking a sweat. And it also fits well into the Star Trek Universe- some ship designs simply have the staying power and others don't. The constitution and excelsiors are both still around from the 23rd Century- infact with the retrofit the excelsiors are a very viable fleet mainstay again. Ofcourse, the other cap ships are simply the pinacle of Starship design for the 24th Century, the ships you just can't manage to get rid of no matter what- your Galaxy, Nebula, Sovereign, and pesky Defiant classes. And even the Ambassador class managed to stay a cap ship, even though it too is rather old. But after all, an Ambassador Class was the Enterprise C, and the precursor to the Galaxy (the Rommies have the Melak and the D'Deridex etc). Not every ship can be a hero and survive through everything; but these designs simply can.

Great Mod guys! This has brought me back to Sins.

In regards to the Sun speed boost. This could easily be achieved by adding a speed boost ability to the star entities. Going from cannon as in Star Trek IV, they use the Sun's gravity to sling shot into the past. It would purely be a decision of balancing though. The advantages and disadvantages of doing this. The Stars in this mod are larger than the vanilla Stars but I remember a mod called something like Planetary mod which had far more realistic sized system bodies. The Gas giants were huge and the Stars were unbelievably Large. It would take literally half an hour to cross a Stars full length. In that kind of case a speed boost is essential. But I don't think it is too frustrating in this mod. If anything it makes it even more important that you plan your trajectory onto a star. For example, when leaving a gravity well which is connected onto a star sometimes picking one side of the gravity well to depart from instead of going with the default trajectory can save you alot of travel time when in the Star's gravity well. It can also give you time if you are defending a planet that is connected to a star to organise your defenses against an attack.

Chill out brother, I was just picking on you...lol...

Hi,

When you update the times for online play, could you please make them more readable. Example:

The times are:
4pm EST (9pm GMT) Saturdays & Sundays
9pm EST (2am GMT) Saturdays & Sundays

Thanks

I hate to say it, but in the following of all sci-fi series, anything that is in the movies/T.V. series is considered 100% cannon, everything else (books, comics/graphic novels, video games) is either considered semi or non-cannon.  Though I agree with you that the tactics for using fighters doesn't seem to fit their combat doctrine (sounds something more like what the Klingons would do), it can also be summised that the Federations Perigrine class doesn't quite fully outline well in their battleplan either.  Besides, Sins without fighters kinda sux.

And here comes another swath of reviews AGAIN after we just explained that the product is not finished .  Man, sometimes I swear, I dunno how you developers can handle so much blatent disregard for your effort.

How is this not easy to understand:

1400 (2:00 pm) US-Eastern/1300 (1:00 pm) US-Central/1900 (7:00 pm) UK-GMT

US-Eastern is obviously EST, US-Central is CST and UK-GMT already has GMT posted in it.  If anything, people (like me) out here on the west coast or those in Hawaii have the math to do (though if you live in those time zones, you are normally used to it).  I bet you are also unhappy that they have it listed in military time as well (i.e. 1400, 1300, 1900).

You know what, I hope they start posting game dates in Julian format so that some of you guys really get confused !

Well, that's about enough griping for the day from me.  Anyways, great work on the mod so far guys.  I found that the Borg are a VERY difficult race to play if you don't do them in the right order.  This adds to balance for them (especially if you just let them sit there and build up, than it becomes a real pain in the @$$ ).

So what you're saying is, don't say anything until it's completely done, then expect them to go back and redo the mod? That is terrible planning.

All I was doing was pointing out what I thought they had done right so far and where I think they could go with it.

Then you say that my comment was complete disregard of their effort even though you quoted me saying "It may be a little rough around the edges, but damn there has been a lot of effort put into this."

Quick to draw rash conclusions?

You say "we" like you're on the mod team. I really hope not because you'd be a total downer to work with.

Yeah, I found the borg are a very tough race to play but they are extremely fun to play too.  In the beginning I found that they have immense growing pains, and I can only take 5, 6, or 7 worlds before I really have to start building up defenses and crank out a few Unicomplex's.  The longer the other side leaves the borg alone, the stronger the borg become.  Last night I got my Uni's in place just in time to push the Federation out of my little area, and they kept them at bay until I had built all my military stations, and cranked out higher tier vessels, and by the time I started cranking out cubes, it was too late.

Question for the mod team:  is there any tactical difference between the 4 different types of cubes, (scout, regular, tactical, and assimilation) other than the armor and weapons, are there plans to differentiate them in any way?

Actually I'm curious why the Scout cube does't have the scouting ability??? 

Probably because its in a cap ship slot? and it would mess the AI up?

I understand QTD'd frustraition, but it could have been worded better... I though i was the only one allowed to have meltdowns

I wasnt mad to begin with Just-Jim, In case you missed the major sarcasim intended crack.

Sins MUST have fighters, or the AI goes into siezures. This only applys for the Hangar Defense structures which the game also MUST have. The carriers do not need fighters to function. Go figure. Regardless canon, or not the fighters are there so that the mod will work. Unless of course you want a non-functioning mod?.... We could arrange that. Remember the 0.3E series?

We have a certain vision for this mod. So we are not going to change aspects in mid build just because a "few" people do not like the way we do things. That is the main reason this mod is so popular, because we stick to our guns, and NOT give in to people wanting us to put gayness, and stupidity in the mod. If i wanted to play a stupid dumbed down sugar coated trek game. I would just install bridge commander or legacy. Remember our target fan base are the ADULTS between 25-50 years old. That want a thinking mans trek game. Not the "Tweens", Not the 10, and under crowd. This is also one of the reasons why we leave everything text format in the mod. If one doesnt like something in the mod they can feel free to change it themselves. All we ask is that they keep any changes for thier own personal use.

We plan on having runabouts in the mod (federation, and Romulan). They can be considered a corvette like craft.

Major Stress,

Just commenting on your remark how the mod files are in text format. As of the most recent update, the mod files are in entity format, not text format. I know they had been in text format, not entity, in previous versions, but as of the most recent version, the mod files have been reconverted back to entity format.

Just thought I would make that known.

I was not aware of that. It will be remedied next update.

I think you're getting confused regarding what Stress way saying.  Of course (to support the Sins engine), files have the extension ".entity" at the end.  However, for SOA2, you can view these files as simple .txt files.

Sins "proper" converts them to a slightly different format (Harpo refers to it as a ".bin" format, and his tools allow you to swap .txt and .bin files in either direction).  The reason why is that Sins runs a tad faster if you have the .bin format, but chances are you'll never notice.

Long story short, you can open the current SoA2 files with notepad/wordpad because they are formatted as .txt files, regardless of what the extention is.  This is a huge plus during development/troubleshooting.  Thus, as Stress said, you can open the mod up and tweak it to your heart's content if you're willing to learn a little about how Sins is programmed.

I had a whole big rant that I was going post here and to go into with you Tkins, but I don't want to waste my (or this mods) time by filling up these pages with worthless bickering.  I am sorry I made it seem like you were some kind of huge problem and exactly what Stress said, "it could have been worded better."  I just was getting tired of seeing page after page of people suggesting what would "balance" the mod, and I definitly snapped at you.  Please accept my apology and know that I will try and tone it down in the future.

As for me being a drag to work with and hope that I am not on the team, check the credits in the readme file Tkins, you'll see I am (or more like was) on the team,and I am on a friendly basis with these modders.  I have made actual contributions in the past (gone in and changed files than submitted for approval, but I haven't seen them since the 0.3e series).  I am not a really mean or bad person, I just sometimes get cranky when I see monotony forming.

Oh and thank you Stress for noticing I wasn't angry, only frustrated.

It does???   I put it in mine and it worked fine... but then again I was playing the Borg, the AI wasn't... I didn't try it the other way round...

Shouldn't be too hard to make a cap ship scouting ability, should it??  I'm gonna look at it later when I've had some coffee

Technically speaking, the Phase ship that the Scout Cube replaced did have the roletype of Capital Scout.  I don't see any reason why adding some type of scouting ability would create AI issues, but I will say that such an ability would most likely instigate a situation in which a cube begins scouting the map and attacking whatever it sees.  Not a flimsy scout ship, mind you...a borg cube.  

While definitely fitting into the functionality we see with cubes like those in BOBW and First Contact, I doubt that having to deal with wandering scout cubes would make for an entertaining game.  Still, Jim, give it a go and let us know how it turns out.  It could end up being the identifying factor of that particular cube.

It would make for a really tough game...  But that's just because I like self abuse...hehehe...

OK, I'm afraid Stress may be right...  the AI doesn't seem to understand what I'm doing...  Here's what I did... I checked out the explore ability and didn't see any reason it wouldn't work, so I gave it to the Scout Cube.  I also changed the roletype to Scout, just like the Phase Capital Scout.

I set up a galaxy forge game, 1vs1, 5 planets each with some asteroid belts in between... good 1 on 1 map for a small game... I gave my Borg opponent a scout cube to begin with, along with the standard start, (frigate factury, etc).  Then I started playing as Fed for about half an hour, saved the game and quit, and then loaded it and took over the part of the Borg to see what had happened so far.

The game never crashed or mini--dumped or anything... but the Cube is not acting as a scout.  The AI went ahead and made a couple regular scouts and the Scout cube just sat there doing nothing...  so I don't know if the AI knows how to scout with a cap ship...

Now I have a question... while scanning thru the entity files I came across a Cube Frigate???  Is there one in the works?  Anyway, my next idea is if this Cube Frigate is playable to maybe make a heavy Frigate Cube Scout???  Sounds a little weird, but it would still fit into the storyline of a lone cube wandering about...  especially from Q Who (I think that ws the name) when the Enterprise first encountered the Borg...

Actually, all capital ships with the exception of colony capital ships have a roletype of "Invalid" in both stock Sins and in the mod.  I think giving the cube the Scout roletype is what's causing it to just sit around.  You might try going back to "Invalid" and giving it the Explore ability set on auto. 

In regards to the Frigate, I believe  that was being used as the borg cube found in the pirate base.  It currently is not being used in the mod, nor do I think there are any plans to include it.

Is the scout cube supposed to be a scout??? It just seems silly to have a scout that could wipe the floor with most systems!!

Cselsor:  that's what we've been discussing.  Obviously the scout cube is not a scout in terms of Sins frigate scouts, but Jim was attempting to create a capital ship version of the scout.  If you read my first post on the subject, I think you'll find all the necessary information to address your comment/concern.