What's going on with this mod? Did people quit making it, or is it getting a big makeover?

I know there are still some team members on this project. I just noticed that the posts have been coming slower on this forum, and the patches seem for some reason to be going backwards?

I remember the good ole days when I could play all races that were going to be in the final release. Now I'm stuck with 2 races. The ships in this were absolutely beautiful. Now they seem to be just an odd tone. Not sure if thats my graphics card or the mod itsself.

The mod is still running at a pretty fast pace, actually.

The reason the patches seem to be going "backwards" is that they had to convert the game to entrenchment, and that was taking a toll when it came down to all of the races. So they gave us an "early" release with feds and klinks so we could play, and now they are finishing up the rommies. The next update after that might have the dominion and later we will have borg .

As for the ships, i believe they said they are using third party placeholders until they can get their own original models into the game.

Right now there seems to be a fuss over getting the mod to work with the latest vanilla sins update, so they had to scrap what they had and now they are completely rebuilding it.

Though i know it's very difficult for them and i dont want to rush them, i can hardly say i dont want a release now but all i can say is Good luck SoA2 Team!

1.041 literally destroyed the mod, but it was partially our own ignorance of things as well. Which we all learned about the hard way. Like about the mesh/texture hardcode limits, and unmodded older files in the mod folder that didnt need to be there. The re-build is well within all of the limits and i am hoping when i am done with the romulan foundation that there will be enough mesh/texture space for 2 more factions. With room to spare since i am eliminating all of the vanilla factions.

The klingon foundation is almost done. Just have a few more units to do, and to re-import all of 0.3e's voice's Then we will be almost at the point before 1.041 broke the mod. Jaylrpcs is working on re-incorporating the researches.

The 0.3e.9 beta will be much leaner, and meaner than any of the other mod releases, because no vanilla files will load except for what is needed to run the sins engine itself, and the maps.

Before on average settings i would use over a gig of ram on startup. Now i cut that down to 700 megs (this is if you use sins default video settings). Same ships, same textures, same effects. I Just got rid of the redundant "junk".

I may re-incorporate Manshooters volumetric stuff if i have the room for it, but i need to look over all his files. Manshooter did you mod every single one of those files in your mod? If you didnt they dont need to be there. For right now we are using nothing but vanilla explosions.

The way sins the patches broke the mods forced us to go backwards. It more than likely will be more of the same when Diplomacy is released. The difference is now i know what i am doing

I have intended from day one to give ships ability's that would make the weaker "cannon fodder" units more useful in the later game, and to distinguish them so that when you did build a sovvie, negh' var, or d'deridex it wouldnt be just a bigger version of the same thing.

The plan for the early game was to have nothing but "tmp" era units. With the exception of your first "elite" unit. which should be the ambassador for the feds. Similary powered units for the other factions. Then research, and work your way up to the newest, or most powerful units. You will notice that most of the mid to late tng ships are almost at the highest tiers. We are the only mod AFAIK that makes you research elite units (capitals). That is designed as well to make you use your lower end units until you meet all the pre-req's.

By the end game you "should" have every unit available. The TMP era stuff "should" be obsolete, but still useful in a background support role for your elite units. However you are right, the end game is all about the elites. That is by design. We did however tone down the "instapopping" of the fodder units. You will notice though one on one fights last damn near forever.

The Starbases are WIP's until we get everything in the mod. We know they need work.

Like what was said above. The way the sins patches lately have been breaking the mods we wound up moving backwards instead of forward. We do have many more abilitys planned. Once we get the foundation working error free again. The important thing right now is to get the foundation working again. For those that dont know what i am talking about. The "Foundation" is the bare bones version of the mod. Just the ships, sounds, and effects. Then we add on the rest of the mod (researches and abilitys) to the foundation. I plan on keeping several backups of the foundation just in case another patch pulls yet another catastrophic failure of the mod.

I am glad i am not the only one that noticed the lack of "good" trek RTS's. The current "professional" games seem targetted toward the "Tween", or the 10, and under crowd. They are annoying to play as well as look at. Especially for someone my age. I dont like games where there is no "thinking" involved. I am trying to avoid the typical research the most powerful unit, and spam it untill doomsday. In the mods present state unfortunetly thats is what its turning out to be. At least until we get all of the researches and abilitys in. Then we can tweak things some more.

Status of the rebuild..

Klingon foundation is finished. Ill re-upload both feds and klinks on sync tonight since i had to fix a few things i forgot to add to the feds (like armor types, and formation settings). Will FINALLY start on the Romulans, and get them back into the game.

Go Stress, go!

Nice to see things progressing, thanks for sticking with it!

I was wondering if there will be a patch coming before the next update for the klink/fed build with the newest changes or if you guys will not worry about that hassle and have the next release be the rom update?  Just curious since the initial plan was to not do the patch, then it got changed to patching the current build, then shimmer(iirc) needed a break(quit?) from the mod.  Either way, keep up the excellent work guys.

ohh no stress you just jinxed it lol

The AI needs the hangar defense to build. So we are leaving them in. Most ships you can get away with changing their behavior in the roletype lines. For example an antimodule frigate can be made into a long range frigate. but it must be flagged as an antimodule frigate in its statcounttype line, or the AI starts having siezures. Every faction must have every roletype. I am basically duplicating sins in that respect. Just as the question "what would ironclad do?"

Romulan faction 1/3rd done. Should be finished re-importing all the ships by tonight barring any more setbacks. Then we can focus on re-incorporating the researches.

Forgot to mention the feds and klinks already have strike craft for thier hangar defenses, and starbases... they are nasty little buggers too

I figured that there were still a lot of changes being incorporated, I'm just glad to see so much effort being put into a proper mod.

I've been playign as klinks for a few days now. I find them more enjoyable overall, not really sure why yet. Fed starbases are a lot easier to kill, maybe thats why.

Keep up the awesome work. I can't wait for the FRK version...

nice work

stardock should give you a job stress

Hey guys, just wanted to say that I'm very glad that you guys are still working on this great mod that I just can't wait to play the finished version of, and that you are not letting the setbacks stop this work of art. Keep up the good work!!!

0.3e in its present state has proven to be unstable since the 1.041 update. Hence the total rebuild of the mod. Enjoy what you can of it before the dumps. We are on a fresh build. No ETA  for release. It depends on how much free time we get to work on it.