Finally, someone who has played the game.

Hey what terrain did you do best in. I liked ateroid belts and Nebulae.

Soooo i dont have to check the forums every hour for a update....   OK COOL

Rings, Gas Giants, Nebula. You name it. I used it. I liked the rings just to watch the AI fly a big ass cruiser in to smack it into the rocks

OK Phase 3 balancing is now in the works, this will balance out the mod even further. Current working for torps in not working correctly, so it has to be redone. New balanceing scale needs to be done, Stress we also need to move a few ships around, when i show you the spreadsheet you'll understand why.

thanks to many inconsistances with Trek, i'm creating a new scale, but i'd like some feed back on the following without too much DETAILED DEBATE PLEASE.   lets just keep it simple:

Which race you think has the stronger shields? Weaker shields?

Which race you think has the Stronger Disruptor? Klingons or Romulans?

Which race has the fastest ships?

there is a reason for these 3 questions, so i'm asking for input please, but keep it to the races that we are working on!

thanks vp, that was along the same lines i was thinking, Unfortunately at this point, i have to break the canon specs, or we'll have so many over classed ships for there roles it would not be enjoyable. Ships like the defiant always do that to a game, and the vorcha which is more a battle ship than heavy cruiser. Either way i came up with a new system based off of what ships Stress put in play already and just baselined a few scales, now its really meshing together. Only bad part now is having to go back and update all the ships we have in so far... uh!

i'm still testing out the new torp system, reduced the number of torps (it was getting really silly there for awhile) and increased the total damage. Also created a new system for ships not stacking so close together in formations, and new engines for performance. You'll be able to see them bank now, which is nice. Ships are scalled by class so expect the cruisers your best all around ships. good damage, speed, defense. Frigates are fast but lack power and defense. Elites will lack speed but excellent power and defense.

I believe the cardassians should be near the top in shield strength as they incorporate imbedded warp nacelles in their ship designs.  The imbedded nacelles are supposed to be stronger as the shield 'bubble' does not have to be as large.  I believe the defiant and BoP use imbedded warp nacelles as well.

I mostly agree with what the previous poster said about the other questions.  Shimmer, you might want to check out netbooks at http://www.trek-rpg.net/ to see how they have balanced the ships out.

Cardassians: Weak shields, medium hull and armour,ok beam weapons, but weak torpedos. They don't field very large or powerful vessels, are faster then most, but they should have cheap ships that build quick for larger numbers and require low supply.

Klingons: Very weak shields, but the strongest hull, and very strong armor, strongest disruptors, per shot very strong torpedos, but overall lower torpedo damage per second. The vessels are very good in combat, but are not well rounded. The ships are slow and require large amounts of metal, but little crystal.

Romulans: Very high hull, but low armour, and medium shields, medium disruptors, and very powerful, but slow torpedo fire. These ships are powerful head on, but are weak against vessels to their flanks or rear. The larger ships are very large and very slow, these ships take a long time to build.

Federation: Very high shields, medium hull, but low armour, powerful beam weapons, lower power per torpedo, but higher rate of fire means they have very high damage per second values. Generally very powerfull and more well rounded than the other alpha quadrant races. The ships are very fast and highly manoeuvrable and require more crystal for their construction.

Dominion: High Shields, medium hull, and the highest armour, they have powerful beam and disruptor weapons, but only medium torpedo power. The ships are generally more powerful than the other races. The larger ships are very slow, but the smaller ships are very fast, they require more resources to build, and are slower to build and require more supply.

Based on the most common vessels fielded by each side.

thanks for the input Hobo, thats definately along the same lines as VP. The phase 3 tests are done, i've already rewritten 90% of the balancing. Torps are working alot better now, and yet i have problems with the Defiant, still!....lol

will it ever end?                        mental overload!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All we can do is the best we can. The defiant seems to break the game no matter what stats you put on her.

Important question. So answer this seriously without any kind of debate.

What is more important to you? Adhering strictly to Canon, and having an overpowered faction? or good balance, and gameplay? IMO if it takes nerfing the defiant, or any other canon OP ship to fix the balance ill do it.

Balanced across the board (as best as possible)

I don't no, I would love to see the defiant and many of the other ships but not at the expense of the game itself so

please do what you have too to keep the game balanced and running smoothly as possible.

Definently balance, but within reason. Even in the show, none of the races had an advantage over another that wasn't depreciated by some weakness. Thats basically what this game needs. But as far as ships are conserned, balance definetly, hell, maybee it would be funny watching the supposed 'god' ship that is the defiant get killed by a posse of BoPs

Hm, I guess I see things a little differently.

Klingons: high speed, low shields, high weapons

The BoP and Vor'Cha always seemed to be built for speed. They're got almost all forward-facing weaponry, so they have to be manuverable to make use of it. And they never seem to take that much abuse.

Feds: moderate speed (at sublight), high shields, low weapons

With the exception of "hero" ships like Voyager and the Defiant, most Federation ships seem to be unable to outrun anybody at sublight speeds. At warp is a different story, as the feds seem to have top-tier warp tech. They're also very defensively oriented, so their shields can take a beating, Their weapons are nothing to sneaze at, but (excluding the Defiant) their ships aren't built primarily as warships.

Romulans: low speed, moderate shields, high weapons

Warbirds are big, lumbering beasts, bristling with weaponry. But they don't have the strongest shields because they prefer using their cloaks for surprise attacks to extended battles.

Dominion: high speed, low shields, high weapons

The Feds were never able to outrun Dominion ships, and their priimary ships - the attack fighters - always appeared to be fast-moving but fragile. Their weapons, of course, are devestating.

Cardassians: moderate speed, moderate shields, moderate weapons

The Cardassians do sseem well-rounded, but not particularly good at anything.

Major Stress said:

I'm really trying to get these in for Entrenchment. Caps/frigates may be exposed to the fighter movement code and our old mine code might be usable for cloaking (though they don't cloak anymore for gameplay reasons).

A few things I would like to point out, in way of the warrior that vor'cha was riding the Defiants ass, and I'm sure we can all agree that the Defiant is a FAST little ship. My order would be: Strongest to weakest

Impulse speed: Klingons, Dom, Feds, Cards, Roms

Weapons: Dom, Rom, Fed-Klingon*, Cards

Shields: Fed, Dom, Cards, Kling, Rom

Armor and hulls: Cards, Kling, Fed, Rom, Dom

Of course it really depends on what class of ships we're talking about too though. For example, the little Dom fighters are just cannon fodder, while I belive they do have strong weapons, I doubt they could outgun a Galaxy class ( one on one with no ramming allowed). I'd have to say the Klingons and Feds are probably pretty even weapons wise, the disruptors on the BOP seem to be close to the pulse phasers of the Defiant. No doubt they've shared extensive weapons knowledge together since becoming allies.

Although I know its alot of work, I would hope individual ships would be balanced out to what they should be, not just what race they are. For example, we all know a Defiant at max speed would pull out ahead of some of the other Fed ships, like a Galaxy or Nebula. Just like the Dom Fighters would run circles around their huge battleships. The Card would probably be middle of the road, like Dan said.

I would much rather see a balanced with good gameplay mod then strict canon. Actually, I'm all for adding in all kinds of non-canon ships and just making it fun and balanced. Canon IMO would just get in the way of a really fun mod.

here is a pic a took during phase2 balancing i hope you guys enjoy i'll post more if you do!

Maybe change Antimatter to Plasma

This is the framework I used to balance your first release:

Cardassians:

- Fast build bonus

- Average/high speed

- Strong hull

- Average armour

- Weak shields

- Weak weapons, emphasis on burst damage (high single blast long cooldown main beam)

Romulans:

- Low speed

- Strong hull

- Strong armor

- Weak shields

- Very strong plasma torpedo's, strong disruptors

Federation:

- Shield regeneration bonus

- High speed

- Average hull

- Average armor

- Strong shield

- Average weapons

Klingons:

- Hull repair bonus

- Average / High speed

- Average hull

- Strong armour

- Average shields

- Strong disruptors, average torpedo's

Dominion

- High speed

- Average hull

- Weak armour

- Strong shields

- Strong weapons, chance to negate shields

If anything, in Trek they used Deuterium and Antimatter to power most, if not all of their systems. Antimatter primarily used for their warp drives, as well as payload in torpedoes, with Deuterium powering most of their basic systems, including lifesupport.

I'm gonna go with Lord Tareq for ship balancing. If you can add in the respective bonuses, it also gives each faction their own edge over another faction, while not making either more overpowered than the other. I don't mind if you have to nerf certain canon ships in order to balance the overall gameplay. We've seen so many inconsistencies throughout Trek anyways, so i'd just chalk it up to it being yet another inconsistenc.

Considering that the two main developers of this project is Darkshimmer (whom I've nicknamed the "balancing guru"), and Major Stress (involved in the great SOA/FTB mods), I have full confidence in this project and expect them to provide a great mod when it's completed.

It's also nice to see that we're having a friendly discussion in this thread, rather than a flame war which happens oh so often in public forums.

To Blair Fraser: Please do

Anything that can be modded without breaking gameplay, would be great if it can be modded. Thou, usually any modded files tend to block users from playing with others in multiplayer unless both sides have identical files. So it shouldn't be too much of a problem allowing files to be modded.

all of these are great guys, thanks for your contributive thoughts. I plan to push these out there on phase 4 but i have already made sure to included specific triggers in my spreadsheets to help me plan the next stage. There will be other things to help modify the cost of the ships based on abilities. Currently i am mainly focusing on the triple baseline i created and merged for just overall balance, the torp system, and the manuvering system i used. All 3 are very major rewrites i did yesterday.

I would like to reach out to the public for another type of help. I'm looking for a very clear version of the klingon war song for one of the negh'var's abilities. The one i have sounds like people are talking through a tube. If you got one please email it to me in any audio format. Best one i get will get credit in the readme  

Incredible work so far.  I'm not doing much but looking at the images until the end of the Semester when I'll have more time.  It's looks really awesome in so many ways.

A-S

Blair,

any way we could get some kind of mini dump analysis tool? i'm now stuck and i don't know what is wrong. i even back tracked to my update from this morning and i still can't run the game

Assert @ c:\gs\gamma\09\CodeSource\Engine/DataStructures/FixedVector.h(155)

m_CurrentSize < MAX_SIZE

Assert @ c:\gs\gamma\09\CodeSource\GS/Entity/Interfaces/IAbility.cpp(139)

false

Assert @ c:\gs\gamma\09\CodeSource\Engine/DataStructures/DynamicVector.h(172)

i >= 0

Code money errors suck when you don't know what it means, just tell me what file is messed up.....lol 

Edit: after carefully backing up and restoring some files, i inserted all the ships i not worked on, and the one that flagged was the one that i just updated eariler on and didn't generate an issue, so anyone know exactly how many SoundID's you can have in an entity file? 5 groups is it just 3 each?

Im gonna go with lord tereq as well. Sounds like a good line up. Also Your attention to this mod Blair Fraiser is much appreciated . PLease keep the screen shots comin shimmer.