The Antimatter will defiantely vary ship to ship, larger ships will be able to produce more atnimatter but they will take up more antimatter on abilities they get so a cloak combined with other abilites will make it drain a bit faster, and they do not replenish as often. You man even have to manually control the cloak at times.

I lack the time to do it myself right now, but i don't imagine it being too hard, you just have to smash together the existing abilities which stop a ship in space and prevent it from jumping out.

Actually pulling the target towards ye might be ... slightly more complicated, to use a british-magnitude understatement.

Hi guys i have almost got my model of the uss Enterpise from the origanal series completed if you want to check it out follow this linkhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/26168844@N07/ I think it looks quite good.

Good Job, Looks Real Good.

Wouldn't think it would have to do that bit, you would presumably be in weapons range when you fire up the tractor beam (unless you wanted to have that be one of its purposes.) on the other hand, it would be important to make sure that the target vessel can't turn as to ensure that using it on an undamaged target isn't just making it stand still for a fight but also hindering its ability to fight.

The trick will be if it is possible for the ability to do that or not. Again like with the cloak we might have to settle for a "basic" ability that just halts the ship, and has an effect to it. Creating new ability's we are beginning to find out is not possible, but altering existing ones is possible.

I think its possible to have an effect that disables the target ships engines including turning, and disabling its warp engines, but dragging it toward you will be most likely impossible. Ideally you could make it so that it only affects frigates, but I'm not sure if that will be possible.

What should be possible however is making the effect a channeled one, which for example slowly (or quickly) drains the antimatter of the ship that uses the tractor beam over time.

I might try to tackle the tractor beam next weekend. Alternatively I believe the SW mod has tractorbeams, so you could ask them for it.

Yes it is actually. a few mods i have seen have "disruption missles", the best of which is in Danman's 7 Deadly Sins mod. it disables both the sublight and phase movement. add to it a disable weapon buff and a cool beam-like effect and it would be perfect

Showing tht the engines disable wud b not exactly correct coz tractor beams r used as a grappling hook and rope... yeh the draging thing might b difficult unless u hav the ship turn and move towards u under the effect of the tractor beam(it wont b acurate but effective)... but it shudnt b a Autocast power or ull hav the beam pulling ships tht ur happy to see leave, towards u....

I know that you've already put a lot of work on this mod, but the following http://www.trek-rpg.net/ has a plethora of info and stats on Star Trek Vessels (Starfleet (TOS and TNG), Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, and the Dominion War (With Three Breen Classes)).  I dont know how the stats would convert, but they have been playtested and are supposed to be balanced.  Anyhow, just thought I'd let you know about the site.

Ok stuff like controlling a ship while in tractor beam may be stretching it with all the hardcode limitations. Just basic stuff like holding the ship and keeping it from jumping is all i am looking for.

I have started adapting the mod to the 1.1 patch. It is going faster than expected but i ran into a snag with how the updated engine renders shaders. Im sure its a simple fix just too tired to do more right now. Ill post more news as it comes.

  Major Stress, I dont know if i have ever told you that your Trek mod is fantastic!!  It is sooooo cool to sit in the gravity well with a Federation Starship and remember all the great shows. I myself have owned a few of the star trek titles, and as you say the turret firing of the phasers in the arc around the saucer was an awesome sight, and may not be reproduceable in sins, but as you also said, it is the "flavor" and the "feel" of the Trek mod that is so very nice to have here. Thank you for working so hard on it, and for all the cool effects you already have been able to produce.

Its great!!

Thank you,

Sincerely,

-Teal

Major Stress, I am a newbie, as you may know, so this suggestion may be amatuerish, if so i apologize, but can you use jump inhibitors, or the ability in the inhibitor module to create the effect you are after for the tractor beam? I haven't looked at the inhibitor module's file setup yet. But many of the modules and craft as you know use abilities to perform their functions, not all certainly, as i found out when i tried to duplicate the frigate factory into a craft, which i haven't yet been able to do, but several people in the forum pointed me towards using an alternate fighter/bomber squad setup to create craft, so i have to try that and see if it will give me the craft building ability i want to put into another ship. But we will see.

As for the tractor beam, the inhibitor, or perhaps another ability, such as the disable abilities, weapons, engines found in the advent shipcripple, or the blackout ability may do the trick. Perhaps if the animation were removed from copies of those abilities you could have a functional tractor beam without the accompanying animation used for the other abilities?  Just a thought. You certainly have more experience than i and probably already thought of this, but just wanted to see if i could help. If not, then i will apologize for taking up too much of your time and wish you well. Also, there are other modders in the forum as you know who are quite accomplished. Certainly they may offer better advice on how to do what you are trying to do. Good luck and i enjoy your Star Trek mod very much.

Sincerely,

_Teal

ok no need to get rude. I wrote "if it is possible". I haven't read every single subject on the matter so I could not know that it is not possible. But what I have experienced in other mods is that Romulans get some kind of cloaking that is usually marginally useful and then their ships become weaker just because they have cloaking, like it is some kind of super ability.

In the show it is a super ability but in most games they are not, including this mod, so I am just highlighting this so that when you play Romulan in multiplayer you dont suffer the same syndrome as in other games with inferior ships just because they have cloaking ability and other races does not.

What I mean is if it is just a cosometic thing then for balancing reason it should be considered just that and not much more. Would not be fun to go up against a fleet of Federation ships that has unique abilities that makes their ships more powerful but all you got is a mostly cosmetic cloak. This is not meant to belittle the work the person did who created the cloak but rather to highlight this potential balancing issue.

He's not being rude, he's annoyed at having to repeat himself a couple times a page.   Read the first post and you can skip making tard suggestions.

OK, Yamota, First it is what Psycloak said. I would have worded it differently, but that is how Psycloak is, and i can relate.

I wind up repeating things many MANY times both here, and on PM's for people that do not bother to read the Main Topic, or past pages. It can be very frustraiting when people ask the same questions over, and over, and over again. When the information is right there.  If it seems like i am being snippy it is out of pure frustration. Plus a i have somewhat of a twisted sense of humor. Do not take anything personally, because i am just venting out in general. Not directly at you, or anyone else. If you were in my shoes right now you would probably feel the same way,.. or worse. I make no secret of how i feel sometimes. That is me. That is who i am. If you know you arent the one who doesnt read then you shouldnt be taking things personally at all, and just move on to the next post.

To answer you question.. We are doing the best we can. Believe me i want a good cloak, and/or tractor beam as much as everyone else here. Shimmer, and I have some good ideas. If they will work, or not is the real question. We wont know until we can try them out. One we know if it works, or not. You guys will know. This is why 0.03 is taking so long besides waiting on the 1.1 update.

Keep up the good work Major.

We apprieciate you continuing with the mod so far

well 1.1 is out as well as the tools. SHOULDNT BE LONG NOW!!!

Naaaaaah, No pressure at all...

We still have new ships to import. A minor issue to deal with the way 1.1 renders the team color. It renders team color throughout the whole ship despite what is on the alpha channel. We may have to disable team colors for the SoA 2 0.03 update. Not that we use team color anyway. Plus shimmer is still working on balancing. Give it a few weeks to a month depending on RL prioritys.

I wish they'd get rid of the team coloured engine trails. Or at least make them adjustable. Nasty Xin ships don't look too good with pink exhaust flames... at least you don't have those problems, as Star Trek wisely dispenses with all that rocket flames nonsense...

Hey Major Stress, I'm sure you have been asked this before, but is there any chance you can incorporate some of the graphics mods into your mod, like Bailknights, Manshooter's explosions, and WLD?

Ok got it

My frustration probably comes from the fact that it has been soooo long since we got a decent Star Trek game and all we can play are these mods that are made by dedicated people like yourself that spend all this time for no profit making it possible for us to atleast experience some Star Trek magic.

So, to not sound ungrateful, you (and whoever has helped you) are doing a great job with this mod with all the limitations that Ironclad has put on the game with all the hardcoded stuff.

We had a decent Star Trek game? *snicker*

Ok, yeah, a couple of them haven't been terrible.

Klingon Academy was good, and given a bad rap. Not exactly canon, but it had the feel, and the gameplay. Starfleet Command was good as well, and that game veered far from canon. After that IMO all the rest of the trek games were pure S**T. Including Legacy. They just got dumber, and dumber. till we wound up with the arcade shooter... Everyone say Oooooh... Ahhhh.... Yea, that will be sure test my intelligence :/

In a perfect world i would have prefered to have total modding control of sins, and not have the hardcode limitations at all. However Ironclad needs to keep at least some of it under wraps i suppose. It is no different now than it was with Homeworld. Sooner or later we will find the workarounds we need. We just need time, patience, and a little ingenuity.

Im not going to worry about final "flash" like enhanced explosions or FX until the full mod, and i wont use others fx unless they offer it to me.