SoA2Team

     I never play a Romulans so bare with me, since the AI never uses cloak anyway, why don't you guys(psychoak) make the antimatter cost so high that cloaking as a cheat would be very limited?

But for the Romulans, cloaking isn't cheating... it's their only real strong point. Without it they're toast.

I wish the AI would use it correctly... but most often I'm playing the Rommies against the AI, so for me it isn't really an issue.  But I don't like that I can't mass cloak a fleet or squadron...  it just doesn't want to work right.

One thing the Mod team might want to consider... I switched my Rommie cap ships abilities a little and gave the Malak, D'Deridex and D'Verix a tractor beam.  Reason being the TNG episode where Jordie got snatched up and brainwashed... his shuttle was snatched my a big warbirds tractor beam...  So what I did was to take away one ability and replace it with the tractor, which actually limits what a warbird can do even more.  Now these 3 have a cloak & tractorbeam, along with only one regular and one 6th level ability.  That's it... 

Just a thought.

Autocast.  Frigate cloaks trigger just by being on autocast, so when you want to cloak a fleet, select all and switch it to auto.  When they finish, switch it back off and use your fleet decloak to take them out.  You'll have to manually cloak the elites.

Cloaking is primarily a multiplayer function.  There simply isn't any functionality in the AI for combating it.  Our choice is no cloaks, or people only cloaks.  The limited ways in which the AI can functionally use a cloak are greatly inferior to it's actual potential, and prevent ease of use by players.

In the past, it was set up to use the cloak to avoid dying, a functional usage for the AI, except the autocast condition worked for removal as well.  It further had the problem of cloaking and decloaking a fleet requiring that you manually triggered each and every ship.  I'm still improving the AI's ability usage, but a cloaking AI is out of the question for Diplomacy.  A multi-function strategic ability with distinct separate uses just isn't possible to design for within the confines of the ability code.  Perhaps Rebellion will bring us something here, but I doubt it.  The kinds of abilities in play have no functional relation to the problem at hand.

The next release will have much better countering though, the current versions are ill conceived, player minded entities.  They work perfectly, they just aren't AI friendly designs.

The game I was playing they had already assimilated something like 12 of the Ferengi ships....  I don't know exactly how many points they cost, but that's a lot. 

And while those Ferengi ships are no laughing matter, I would much perfer taking on a fleet of them vs. just one cube!!! 

The Fek'Lhr can be researched quicker than the K'vort and has an anti-borg ability.

Cloaking in this mod IS the reason i have grey hair now (along with a thousand other reason all related to this mod as well lol). First we had one hell of a time making a functional cloak (not phase cloak). Then we had to find a way to make it work on all military units in a faction. Then we had to find a way for the AI to use it.. needless to say we failed there. So we stuck with the multiplayer functionality. We need the AI to function for this mod to work. However we don't need AI cloaking that bad to where it totaly breaks the AI. Some things we just have to live with.

aren't the dominion also canonically overpowered, though obviously not to the extent of the borg?

That depends on the size of the fleet.  For example, a respectable mid-level cube can do over 1500 DPS, and a Borg Assimilator can do over 1000.  Even if you have a Devastator with 18,000 SP, you can lose your shielding in less than 30 seconds if they decide to target a cap ship.  Sure, there's plenty of fodder for assimilation, but the Borg cap ships seem to understand that the ability that allows you to assimilate cap ships should be used on cap ships (even though it can also be used on cruisers).  I watched helplessly as my fleet with a Leviathan, Devastator, two Enslavers, plus about 30 cannon-fodder cruisers managed to lose half the cruisers (destroyed or assimilated) and one of the Devastators to Borg assimilation.  That took well under a minuted.  After I watched the shields on my Leviathan go down 20 seconds later, I called game over.

I have a tough time with believing the Fek'Lhr is much better, especially in bulk.  I suppose it's a little more HP+SP or DPS per supply, but it takes longer to build and doesn't get the upgrades available for Bird-of-Prey ships, which are nice.  Although it has anti-Borg abilities, they are modest; I fully endorse having a couple Fek'Lhrs, but a fleet of them doesn't seem to be well-suited.  Since the point is to rush, I prefer the K'Vort over the Fek'Lhr, though I suspect the choice won't make or break most games.

One thing for people to keep in mind - if you set the AI to one of the purple settings (i.e., one of the hardest two settings when the difficulty icon has a purple background), the AI cheats.  I suspect some people don't realize this, but the AI gets a discount on ships/structures/upgrades, and possibly faster build times.  I've confirmed this by saving games then re-loading as the other team; there is no way to actually build that fast.

Here comes my little AI "mod". It is not really a mod as it is basically only two simple research items:

Research A is a Tier 0, no cost, early research giving the AI an income bonus while making research more expensive. This way most of the money is going into ships and the AI can build a decent empire while not overtaking the player on research. There is a certain random factor about when the AI decides to do this research, which actually adds to game play as AIs develop differently.

Research B is an Tier 7 high cost research with multiple levels. Under the assumption that the AI can effort it only having a decent empire, it takes away income bonus step by step while increasing his ship limits (Cap & fleet support) to counter the terrible AI ship management on larger empires. So it has at least a chance to defend itself and maybe challenge human players.

The system works well as on small maps the AI will never reach B, but will put up a decent fight with the bust from A. While on larger maps it expands faster early on and later has the ships to defend and continue expanding while the player still has a chance to win.

As a little addition I'm testing to give the AI cap ships with no fleet support requirement (while reducing the fleet support capacity). This counters to some degree the tendency of the AI to spend all money on small ships.

It works quite well up to hard AI. I currently try to balance it with the higher AI levels, which is difficult as they work completely different.

I use the SOA mod for testing, as it is more fun to me than pure Sins. Maybe someone from the SOA team would like to take a look and tell me if it is worth to continue the effort? If yes, send me a PM with a mail address.

The charging buff is on the caster, not the target. 

This is actually a badly done ability that I need to rewrite one of these days, but it's function is quite proper.

AbilityIonTorpedo

buffInstantActionType "ApplyTargettedBuffToSelf"
instantActionTriggerType "AlwaysPerform"
buffType "BuffIonTorpedoCharging"

This instant action type provides a target filter in the ability file, for purposes of having a targeted(I'm amazed I can still spell this right) ability.  No filter in the ability, no target selection.  The buff, as implied by the wording, applies to self, not the target.

BuffIonTorpedoCharging is simply a delay mechanism for effects and function.

    buffInstantActionType "ApplyTargettedBuffToSelfNoFilterNoRange"
    instantActionTriggerType "OnDelay"
    delayTime 5.000000
    buffType "BuffIonTorpedoActivated"

5 seconds of channeled, interruptable inactivity before BuffIonTorpedoActivated is triggered, once again, on self.  This works off the original filter applied by AbilityIonTorpedo.

BuffIonTorpedoActivated is where the action begins.

    buffInstantActionType "ApplyBuffToTargetWithTravelNoFilterNoRange"
    instantActionTriggerType "AlwaysPerform"
    buffType "BuffIonTorpedoDamage"

BuffIonTorpedoDamage is the only file that is ever applied to the target.  It has no stacking limit.

finishCondition
    finishConditionType "TargetOwnerIsFriendly"

This is completely useless since it's on what amounts to an instant action.  It's residence in the charging buff however is proper design.  What it does is end the buff if your target changes to your side.  For instance, you're the Borg and you convert the target while a charging ability is still charging.

It's terribly inefficient, but it does function properly.  There were a few oddities in behavior that someone hadn't worked out, so there are several of these strangely done abilities in here.  Eventually I'll get around to optimizing them, but it's almost entirely irrelevant beyond minimizing the confusion of those that go poking through the files.  All of them put together don't add as much cpu load to the game as a single trade ship.

Yeah, armor is 5% per point, so for every 20, it doubles over the base.

As I play mostly "role playing" I love the cosmetic stuff