I've been following this mod since the initial demo release, and this edition has been of huge enjoyment so far, I've honestly probably "wasted" about 30 hours on the previous demos, this is probably the most enjoyable game I have to play on the PC .  A big thanks to Stress and Shimmer for all the work theyve put into this so far!

Was a bit disappointed not to see the Saber/Norway classes represented, but then again outside of First Contact they don't exactly have a high profile!

I really love the mod though, in the previous mods I would build up the federation with everyone set to easy then suddenly bump the Cardassians/Dominion/Breen to the highest difficulty and slug it out with some impressive fleet battles.  I especially loved holding a federation fleet in a gravity well adjacent to a dominion planet, setting it as an ally attack target for the klingons and romulans and then timing my warp so we all arrived at the same time.

And just a minor note on the sound - I'm pretty sure one of the federation voices is saying "all sections report", which is why it sounds like sanctions.  I guess peope are getting confused as they are expecting it to say "stations"?

Hey, How come the capital ships won't upgrade when they level up?

Also i find the Federation cruisers to be kind of unbalanced. The Akira is by far the best. The Defiant costs too much, I would just get a capital ship. The Intrepid just isn't worth the cost, the Akira does more damage for less cost. The last cruiser doesn't have enough antimatter to make the repair ability useful and it doesn't have enough fighter/bomber squadrons to be useful either.

In this update did you fix the ship raping weapons or did you install a chastity belt *shields* to the ships.

Or none of that yet?

The download worked before...

All i changed in 0.03a2 was to replace the mod content that was missing in 0.03a1. Some effects tweaks were also done.

Talk about the way a pendulum swings.. In 0.01, and 0.02 people were complaining about the battles lasting way way too long. That a galaxy class should kill anything with just 1 shot, and the defiant should be an invulnerable cloaking ubership. Basically the trek crowd "ubergeeked" on us trying to shape the mod to thier own image of what trek should be. Ok you guys so you got what you wanted, Quick battles, Overpowered weapons, and Instapopping ships. Now you want it all reverted back to the way it was?! Could it be?! Am i seeing this right?!

No, i am not trying to be mean, or sarcastic right now (ok maybe a little bit, but dont take it personnal), because i think this is all very funny. I personally think that Shimmer did an excellent job with the balancing. Could any of you have done any better? Would you have even tried? or would you all just sit there, and continue arguing about what should do what? or about whats canon, and whats not? All the people saying they could have balanced this better did not voulenteer to do so when i DID ask for help. So i hand all of you armchair quarterbacks a bag of STFU. Dont like the direction the mod is going or who i trust to make it right? Dont play the mod. Remember we are doing this for US. Not you. We just happen to be sharing it with you.

Does the balancing need more work? Of course it does. MUCH more work. We wouldnt be doing demo releases if we thought this was "perfect". If we thought it was then the mod would be done, and we would move on to better things.

In this mod remember this... There will be NO such thing as perfection! We can get it as close as possible within the limitations of sins, but it most certainly will NOT be perfect. In some cases not even close to perfect. We can only do the best we can do within the games limitations. Perhaps the whiners, and naysayers should learn to mod themselves, and see what a pain in the ass it was to get things to this point. But i guess that is asking too much.

DO NOT PM US bitching, complaining, or bragging how much of a better job you could have done with this mod!! I know better. I know the likes of people like this. They just sit around bitching, and complaining hoping that we will make the mod "Their way" just to shut them up. WRONG! This is MY hobby. I am doing this MY way.

If any of you whiners, and naysayers had any skills at all your mod wouldnt even be accepted into a 1st grade art competition. Let alone function without errors, or crashing. Again i hand out the bag of STFU. You think you can do better job? By all means do so (without ripping off others work). Consider that a challange. When i was playing Eve Online in Ascendant Frontier our rivals BoB had a saying "Proof, or STFU". You think you can do better? Proof, or STFU.

In the mean time DO NOT PM US we will not respond.

Shimmer, and I do hear what you guys posting on the boards are saying, and we have a plan to deal with the instapopping ships. However think about this... If 100 Excelsiors were firing on only 1 Ktinga, how long do you think that Ktinga would last? That is what Shimmer was trying to simulate here. He succeded IMO. However, I happen to agree with the crowd that the battles are way too fast, and the ships die way to easily. For gameplays sake we need to find a happy medium.

So i ask you guys now like i asked opinions on other things. Do you want the SoA 2 battles to be long slugfests like the vanilla sins battles? Do you want them over with in a few seconds like they are now? Or do you want something somewhere in the middle?

Gah shimmer beat me to the post

Well I dunno about the volume of naysayers you're getting Shimmer, but I think you did a heck of a job.  I actually have a college degree in video game design, so I know what it takes to do proper balance, the work, the math, the testing, the refining of your figures, and I certainly don't envy you the job.  Too many games get lazy and just make one side, draw different art for it and call it a second side.  This mod didn't do that, it has sides that are actually different, and that makes balance a herculean task.  I know what the job entails, and I think your work has been exceptional.

Incidentally I think making the Defiant a cap ship and the Lakota a cruiser is a great idea.  The Lakota always seems sort of 'last gen' to me, where as cap ships are otherwise next gen (Ambasador I know isn't, but a colonizing cap ship is a heck of a good thing, so I overlook the fact it's an older design).  The Defiant is definatelly a current high end model for the Federation though.

So thank you Shimmer and Stress.  I like the mod, and you know what, if there's parts I don't like, well, I go change them.  That's the great things about mods, end users can customize them (not for re-release mind you, just a custom little thing for personal use.)  So to people not happy, well, try less complaints and more tweaking.  It's a much more produtive use of time.

Major Stress and Darkshimmer, I think you all are doing a great job. I am amazed anyone would complain about such a great product you all put out for free. And then to do so over PM is incredibly cowardly.

As to your question, I advocate for a happy median between the long slugfest of vanilla sins and the current demo. Vanilla Sins, in my opinion, is too slow. It can get boring, and as I said earlier, looks ridiculous for a cap ship to take minutes to destroy a frigate. I love how the Sovie can just brush aside with casual ease the light frigates of the opposition if they are few in number. Also, vanilla Sins' slow combat contributes to games lasting too long. How often can one find four hours to dedicate to a game? Or, by the time four hours rolls around, how much do you care about winning anymore? Finally, since this is suppose to be somewhat true to the source material, how many times did we see in TNG the Enterprise get hit only a few times and their shields down to 60%? Pretty much every other show. So combat shouldn't be too drawn out.

On the other side, if it's too fast than you can't enjoy the battle, have a chance at retreating with any kind of sucess, or rush reinforcements from adjacent systems. Also, it's enraging when you spend 10k on a Sovie, and be very careful with it throughout the game to level it up, just to have it killed in the opening volleys of the final, decisive battle of the game. In light of those observations, I believe a certain amount of slow down is in order. How much? I leave that to the experts.

I understand how difficult it is to balance a game based on Star Trek. That's why I am not doing it! The show often contridicts itself or some other choices just don't make sense. You all are doing a great job in light of all the difficulties, and I look forward to the future updates. 

First off you guys are doing a great job and I am glad to see you get milage out of this engine than what became of Nexus, even though what you guys did was still top notch. (you knew I had to throw that game in ) I, unfortunately, haven't had time to check the new update since the wife took over my computer with the Christmas gift I got her. damn, that King's Bounty

Since I haven't gotten teh new mod yet I really can't comment 100% but I would say that the battles should not be short.  As far as the complainers, I really wouldn't worry about them although I can understand them being annoying. Most are not prob Trek fans anyway.

First let me say good work guys did great on the texturing.

I have one complaint: Why can't there be a Picard, or Janeway pic?

All I see are Sisko *which is fine* and two guys I don't know.

The sounds are from Armada 1/2 I believe?  I never played as the Klingons in either of those so I don't know about those, but was pleasantly surprised with the Federation sounds .

Still absolutely loving this, haven't had this much fun since I got my first PC with Birth of the Federation on it   .  I have a quick question about one of the ships though (and this isn't meant to be a detraction; the curry class model seems a bit off, the "Engineering" hull seems to be protruding a bit further than I thought it would?

Again though, I suppose that is all down to where you source the model from, it does look a bit off compared to the DS9 TM or the "corrected" images that are floating around, but I noticed it looks alot like the model from the Nexus mod, so I guess they are related?

After Playing a full game as the Klingons (huge multi) and a full games as fedys (Same map) I can say that It was indeed more balanced than It had first appeared (sorry ). That Said, I still advocate slowing down the battles. I saw my Sovy take on a Galaxy, 2 Akiras, and a Defient with 3 Exelsiors. To sum it up, two of my Exels blew up, both the Akiras spun out of control and died, the Defient ran right up infront of my Sovy and blew up into tiny peices (it was rather comical as it looked as if it had rammed it), my last Exel flew out past the Galaxy and blew up, and finally the Galaxy started sinking slowely down and exploded with all the glory that the enterprise did. After all of this happened, My Sovy was killed by the fighters. Yeah, that didn't seem right to me. In less than a minute, a total of 24k creds and thousands of metal and crystal got blown to bits with no winner at all. thats kindof rediculas. Though, I must admit, It did feel like an episode of trek: The USS Ikea (my sovy) takes on an enemy fleet with a small under powered task force, manages to defeat the enemy but suffers a warp core breach. Just felt to fast forwarded.

Another little humurous thing I found, The AI doesn't seem to target Scout ships unless they are the only type of ship left. This doesn't help the feds all that much, The Miranda is in no way comparable to the Exel, but it did help the klinks out a lot. I found that after I could support whole fleets of Cruisers, supporting them with BoPs changed the pace of quite a few battles. The BoP proved nimble enough to hit the enemy where it hurt, and the cloak made it often the only kind of ship that would be able to retreat if the battle went bad. I kidof like this, it feels a little like the BoP felt in the show, but I just wanted to let you guys know.

Overall, the only flaw I can find is the fast forward battles, and that can be trumped up to a matter of opinion. It also would technically be easy to fix, just scale defenses up, or weapons down. (I think, this is bassed on my opinion that the balance is good otherwise).

Size comparisons/for the hell of it

Theres one with the Dominion, Romulans and Klingons.

While talking about the B'rel, i've had a lot of fun with them using hit and run tactics to complete diplomatic objectives.

Combined with the Martok voice over i can't wait to start hitting Dominion targets.