Hello.... I am needing some advice.... I have been playing against one borg unfair aggressive with around fifty planets, and I don't seem to have much trouble beating the crap out of them. I have tried giving them plenty of time to build, and I have never seen them build a cube, or their unicomplex! They build the ships to build the unicomplex, but they just sit there. I have been playing as the feds... Any ideas?

Is the map you are playing a random map, or one of the pre made maps?

The Sins, and Entrenchment AI seems to need a kick start sometimes. However in Unfair/Aggresive the AI seems to have the least issues. That doesnt mean you wont run into the build freeze problem in every game as you have seen already. The only thing i can suggest is to start over until the AI finally wakes up. The build freeze seems to be a random thing. Ether that, or the borg are missing a roletype that the AI depends on. I will check this later.

The AI itself is hardcoded, and if indeed the borg do have all of the roletypes then we are at a total loss as to why the AI freezes up like this. The AI seems to perform better on some pre-made maps like systems of war.

A lot of designs from Star Trek are kitbashed models with no real design philosophy.  This is due to time and budget reasons.  Some of them are good, like the Nebula.  Some of them . . . aren't. 

What I'm trying to say is, I'd pay real money if you replaced the Shelly-class with something that wasn't obviously a studio model of the Excelsior with the saucer superglued to the middle.  Even if it was fan-made and had three engines for no reason.

I feel your pain about the Shelly, but it is something that most fan based designs are not.. Canon. For the feds canon takes priority. There is an over abundance of canon ships for the feds. So that makes the feds the only faction that has more canon ships than there are slots in sins to fill them with. It makes them the ONLY faction with an all canon ship line up. It also made the feds one of the hardest factions to fill ship slots.

Of course we have the "must have" ships in the line up. Constitution, Excelsior, Miranda Soveriegn, Galaxy etc. It was the not so popular ships that we had some very heated debates over which would be in the mod. In the end functionality was the best choice over looks. Despite some being "frankenstien" they do serve a purpose. We have seen the Shelly in the dominion war, and it is classed as a support ship (at least on ex astris scientia). So that was the role we gave her. We also seen the Centaur in the war vs a jemmy bug.. Hence its anti strike craft role. The Constellation was a logical choice as a planet bomber. You may also notice that all of the Fed frigate slots are TMP era ships. That is intentional as well, and part of the mods design. We put the smaller TNG era cruisers in the cruiser slots, and the late TNG-DS-9 units with the exception of the Ambassador as Elite units. We had the Akira as an elite unit before, and it didnt work out that well. We also had two versions of the excelsior. We also had the Defiant in the heavy cruiser slot at one point in time. So the lineup did shift over time. I think we have our Fed lineup where we want it now. The best unit for the role it is given. Canon frankenstien is one thing, but fan frankenstien is out of the question.

The Galaxy X is an alternate timeline so no we will not use it.

On a brighter note, thanks for making the D'deridex kick so much butt.  It's an awesome ship, and it deserves to be awesome when it's featured in games.  I was a bit disappointed in how much Bridge Commander neutered them, to the point where they were minor enemies in the first mission.  Those things are huge and their appearance should scare the bejesus out of the other factions.

OK, I have to share this... I am in the middle of possible the best game I've ever played in terms of fear factor and all that... hehehe.... this one has been amazing.

Small galaxy forge map, 20 planets total.  basically 1 solar system, 5 planets on each side of the sun with a ring of asteroids and belts in the middle connecting both sides... no connections to the star itself.... both sides as even as possible, no cheating. This is one of my favorite small 1vs1 maps. 

So I was experimenting last night with the Rommies...  I swapped out icons and all that with the tramsport one so I could see it, and for laughs I went ahead and swapped the entire mesh so in my version the Rommies now have a Klink starbase.  I figure they steal everything else from the Klinks...lol...  Truth is I just don't like the Vasari base, and this looks better until the MOD team gets a real Rommie base.   Amazingly it worked... no minidumps... I made swap out trade posts next... hmmmmm...

Anyway, sorry, I'm babbling...  I thought about the story the MOD team wrote, the Romulin encounter... and said, yup... Rommies vs. Borg...  Let's see if I can prove Stress wrong and stand up to them by myself...hehehe.  So I fired it up...    

Cselsor... this may tie in with what you said...  the first game I played nothing happened... I had the Borg set to unfair, only it was Unfair researcher... It just sat there... I finally quit and restarted it at Unfair aggressive...  I began the game like always, and focused on defenses, especially getting starbases going.  Learning from past games with the Borg I avoided frigates and crusiers because they get asimilated too easy, and instead focused mainly on building and upgrading cap ships...  This is really a Warbird Fleet. 

The only frigates I have are a few siege to keep planet bombing moving fast, and a small scout squad...  I was very careful with these guys, cloaking into systems and moving around militia to get to the asteroid belts and steal all the resourses...  very stealthy... it was quite fun.  And with my own resourses in the belts, I can moniter what Borg ships might pass by...surprisingly the Borg have made no effort to capture these... so right now I have the advantage in resourses...

So I'm working my way down my row of 5 planets, and I get to the inner most, a volcanic world...  and to my horror the Borg are already there!!!  OMG!!!   5 planetary assimilator spheres, a pyramid and a queen diamond...  and they've just assimilated the planet... and are turning their attention towards me...

So I hauled it back to my planet, positioned myself near the starbase and waited...took about 2 minutes and sure enough, the Borg followed me.  5 spheres, a pyramid and Queen diamond vs 4 my warbirds, but with a starbase at their backs...  It was pretty ugly, but my ships survived... the diamond and spheres went down and the Pyramid fled...  Knowing they just took a bad hit I immediately followed them back to the volcanic world and tore into it.. the Pyramid kept running... 4 cap ships can bomb a planet fast, and I captured it before any more Borg arrived.. which didn't take too long.  This time another Queen diamond and 6 spheres... I thing some were regular assimilators...   and a unicomplex builder!!!  But this time I was ready and they went down fairly quickly.  They've since sent in a 3rd wave... same thing with a few coffins along... no cube... yet...

So I kept building, and sent out more scouts to access this nightmare...  From what I can see, there are 2 Asteroids in the exact center of this map, one on each side of the Sun.  This is midpoint, no-man's land...  And the Borg own both of them.  Worse yet, there are 2 small Unicomplex's, 1 on each.  Only maybe 1 upgrade each, if that...  but bad enough, if I don't take them out now I'm screwed...

So that's the situation...  Until now i've been able to hold my own and inflict some serious losses on the Borg... but it's only been 2 hours gametime and so far no signs of a Cube...  This worries me, I know they have enough planets and my scouts last count was 6 military labs...  they can research a cube if they can get up enough resourses...  I have to take out those Unicomplex's before that happens... 

So there it is... I finally got my wish, a deathmatch...hehehe... I'm scared to death playing this.  It was midnight last night at this point, so I saved it and shut it down for the night...  I'm about to fire it up and see if I can live thru this... 

It it a good day to die... hehehe

JTAYLORPCS and I have already addressed some roletype issues with the Borg and Romulans both.  The capital colony ships for both races had an invalid roletype, which I just recently changed to COLONY to match the other races.  I've yet to test it out in length, but it will hopefully give those two races the kick-start they need.

Additionally, I believe the Borg now have a surprise starting line-up to help with their early game strategy.

I built the original foundations specifically to fix the roletype issues (among many other issues). The borg were built by someone else. Glad to see you found the problem. I can run a few test today.

The odd thing with the Romulan roletype issue is that the entity files were based completely off of the Visari when you rebuilt, so they should behave fine.  The Visari colony capital ship has an invalid roletype as well, though, so I'm wondering if that hampers the the AI when it plays that faction in OS as well. 

I'm still having missing texture problems, especally with starbases and photon torpedos.  It doesn't happen consistantly, but it does crop up fairly often.

Is there something I can do to fix that, or is it a rough edge that you guys haven't smoothed out, yet?

lol stress you can blame me you know

"borg were built by someone else"

i am fine if you blame me

This actually has nothing to do with our work on the mod specifically (I don't think), but with how your Sins directories are set up.  I've gone through a good deal of the particle effects to make sure they are looking in the mod directory itself for textures, but I certainly could have missed some.  As far as starbase textures, no, there should be no problem there unless it's a stock starbase.  Even then I don't know what could be causing that.

If you could provide more specific details about your issues I'm sure someone would have a better idea of how to answer your questions.

I think the  issue is due to entrenchment 1.05 and older fx  files simply locate the following  files in the Soa 2 mod  pipeline fx folder location.

 GS_Asteroid.fx
GS_Planet.fx
GS_Ship.fx
GS_ShipBuilding.fx
GS_ShipPhasedOut.fx 

 and delete. this has been corrected with the upcoming patch. Also the borg and romulan issue can be considered stock related!!  .  Considering they were clones of stock races. No biggie .  Been corrected and the ai seems to act much better.

thanks jtaylorpcs

Onre thing I noticed in the game I'm in right now concerning the Borg.. I'm still playing my Romulin vs Borg game, and I'm actually making some headway.  It took damn near an hour, but I've secured 2 more asteroids and a gas giant... what a hoot!!!  I'll tell you about that in a minute.. but this is relivant...

Between my homeworlds and the Borg are 4 asteroid belts, 2 asteroids and 2 gas giants..  Now the Borg went for the Asteroids... one of which I just mentioned I took back...  But they've totally ignored the Asteroid belts... totally.  I took 3 scouts, cloaked them, slipped past the Borg and captured all tritanium and dilithium asteroids in the belts I could get..  And still the Borg ignored them...  I can watch all their movements back and forth thru these belts like I had a ship there... they don't seem to be interested in capturing the resourses back from me...  it's a big disadvantage for them in terms of attrition and it gives me vital intelligance into their movements...

For example, the Gas Giant...  What a riot this was!!!  It's right next to my volcanic world, and because I have to captured tritanium asteroids on the Gas Giant I can watch the Borg there, and they were massing a fleet... When I first noticed it was 6 planetary spheres and 2 assimilator spheres, along with half a dozen LR cylinders.. but they were just sitting there.. then I noticed back a couple more systems a sphere moving thru one if the prievously mentioned asteroid belts, and I knew the invasion fleet was still building... they were just waiting for more ships...  and then I spotted a Queen diamond a few more planets back also headed for the Gas giant, and I thought, lets have some fun...

I took 8 Warbirds, 2 D'Verix, 2 Norexan, and 4 D'Deridex...  all currently 5th level... cloaked them, turned off autofire and jumped into the other side of the phase lane from where the Borg were gathering...  I manuvered in tight with the Borg ships... right on top of the Queen... No-one attacked, but I noticed the Borg siege spheres were backing off...  then I uncloaked and hit the queen with everything they had...  took about 10 seconds and she blew with the most satisfying explosion...  I took down 3 more spheres, but was taking some pretty good damage, so I cloaked everyone and backed off...   but only a bit...  The planetary spheres were retreating, so I went after them, uncloaked and took out a couple before they got out of the system, re-cloaked, then went after the remaining assimilation spheres.  If you target 8 Cap ships on one Sphere, uncloak, hit it hard and fast and then recloak you can pretty much drop it and maybe 1 more without taking much damage, even from half a dozen others nearby...  I was having a ball, and before long I had the Gas Giant to myself... I immediately brought in 2 starbase constructors and set up shop...  Now the Giant is mine.

Nest was an asteroid with a small 13k uni-complex...  using the same strategy it took about a minute and was gone...hehehe.. I blew up my first uni-complex!!!  So anyway, I'm loving the Rommies... Stealth is everything...

Now I'm thinking of raiding their homeworld, maybe take out their cap ship factory or something just to screw with the AI...

I just would like to say that this mod is by far one of the most well made game modifications I have ever seen. Thank you for putting all the effort into this project, its amazing. I have only ran into 1 problem and its no where near game breaking, for some reason a bunch of UI and ship sounds are only played from my LEFT speaker. I have played around with my speaker/surround settings and nothing seems to help. Other then that its wonderful!

I Get the same problem with the sound only coming from one channel

Annoying as heck, but I love the mod.

I would like to take credit Prawn, but I think it was actually Stress.

Man, you REALLY need to get some video of that action, because you describe it in great detail!  I didn't know that Fraps isn't freeware anymore, but I still have an old installer for it.  If you guys want it, you can download it here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?mwmgdjuizt4

Sorry I have been AWOL for the last day and a half, busy and all, but I do understand what you guys were trying to refer to when you were talking about the Yamato Class Battleship.  I had forgot that it had been destroyed, so a new ship line of that name isn't out of the question IMO.

Regarding the Borg, I think the reason they don't take asteroid fields is because they have no ships that can do so. At least, not as far as I could see from playing as them. The only way to do it is by building a unicomplex near them and upgrading it to have the assimilation ability. But even then, you don't gain any income from them, so taking them is moot except for the purpose of depriving the enemy of them.

Actually did some checking the borg do have the abiltiy to capture neutral entity

borg colony ships have that ability. Was in the fifth abiltiy slot moved to 1st and dropped explore. thanks jtaylorpcs

Jtaylorpcs is right, the Borg Colony Ship (the pyramid) is able to capture resources.

When the Diplomacy version foundation is built i will make sure that all of the factions have all of the roletypes they need, and the ship abilitys for each roletype that the AI requires to function are all there. One thing about the diplomacy foundaation is that most if not all of it will be interchangeable with entrenchment. Wish it were that simple for Original Sins.

Already tried this, and it didn't help.

i just wanted to say that i dont care one bit about star trek but i really have been enjoying this mod despite its imperfections and imbalance.

i also wanted to say that....its unclear, perhaps because i dont know much about star trek, what ships do what and what types of ammunition do what and how much power or armor a ship really has. i take a fleet into fight another fleet of comparable size and make up and most of my ships die in like 3 seconds and only a few of theirs die....this is confusing

Has anyone else had a problem with the latest installer that goes a little something like this?

"Operation ixoFileCopy called out of sequence"

I assume its a problem with the Windows installer, so I figure I should just try and repair it but alas there has not been a release of the redistributable for Windows 7, the latest only works for Vista (4.5).

I'll check out FRAPS later...  I've never used it, but no big deal, how hard can it be?  I will say however I'm turned off of the idea of no sound...  But hey, I'm a wanna-be musician...lol... I've got some good sound recording equiptment, I'm gonna experiment and see if I can somehow record a seperate soundtrack and then attach it to the vid.. I've done it with my music, the hardest part is just timing it correctly.. 

Hmmm... there was a pyramid wandering around... was....hehehe... And I know from where I distroyed it there were some asteroid fields it must have passed thru... I wonder why it didn't grab up the resources???   Without those, and with the AI sending Diamonds and spheres after me, I don't see how it's ever going to have enough to afford to research a cube...  That being the case, I may win this one yet... hmmmmmmm... but I want to fight a cube!!!!