Oh, and the Cube is insanely difficult to defeat - probably unbeatable without a maxed out fleet.
Actually, I think that it's impossible to beat (I used a full fleet with all Capitals maxed out and ony the largest of Cruiser class vessels, and I still couldn't get it past the 7/8 hit point mark), since I never did defeat it, but I think they designed it that way on purpose.
Actually, I really like Mooster's idea of posting testing videos. I've been following this mod practically since its inception, and I would love to see what some of the new progress looks like. As long as it doesn't interfere with what you guys are doing, or is against anyone's wishes of course.
I would post videos's of game progress, but I am unsure to whether the mod team is ok with us doing that. Dark Shimmer, Loki, Major Stress, Admiral Cobbs, and any other team member that I might have missed, if you guys are reading this, do you mind if we post video's of the action?
Well, it's been one week since my last major input on the beta so far, so here are what I have observed so far.
I want to say that Dragoon pretty much has it covered for what the ally computers build, (no matter what difficulty it seems to be somewhere around the same build order), and I have to agree that I like the muzzle fx, and as for them being too large, you don't have to reduce them, because even in TNG TV show, the Enterprise-D would fire torpedoes and there would be a large flash.
Now on to the nitty gritty. I am sure you guys are all well aware of most of these, but I am just making sure that you hear them voiced from me:
The Federation character cards, the ones showing faces for the factions (if that makes any sense to you), are showing as the Advents pictures.
Also some loading screens have reverted to the Sins loading screens.
The Defiant's icon (when zoomed out) still shows it as Excelsior. Also the Defiant uses SoaSE missles in planet bombardment, rather than the Photon Torpedoes the other capitals use.
I'm sure you have heard this already about the Defiant, but I am not to sure about keeping it as a Capital class ship, because since you only get so many Capitals to build, and the Defiant is so much weaker than the rest of the Capital's, it seems like such a waste because at the moment I don't even build it (unless I'm testing it).
I was also wondering if there is a way to turn the Quantum Torpedoes to a blue color, rather than the red they are using at the moment. It was common in the movies and TV series that they were blue, I was just wondering if this was noticed and if there was any progress being made towards changing this.
Another thing about the torpedoes I have noticed is that now they chase the ships around (such as torpedoes shot at the Klingon's D-11). Since thay are a little too slow, is there a way to speed them up or possibly slow the ships down so that this isn't constantly happening?
I have also performed the Lakota upgrade research, but I am unable to see what exactly it does (since whenever it would complete nothing would happen). Would you mind explaining what exactly it does so I know what to look for?
This is more of a suggestion rather than an observation, but I prefered when the Miranda had the photon torpedo's as an ability, rather than being incorporated into it's attack pattern. Is there any way that it can keep it's current mine detecting ability, while also having the photon torpedo ability?
Also, I don't know if it's just me, but it seems that the game favors picking Klingon as random computer players (both allies and enemies). I don't know if it's true, but out of 6 games with 18 opponents, I have told the game to choose random opponents, and it has chosen Klingons everytime.
Lastly onto the meat of the paper. I made these observations when I was playing the computer on different difficulty settings for my ally. They are all for Klingon allies. I am pretty sure these observations I am making are more than likely things that have been hard-coded into the actual game, but I wasn't sure what I was to be looking for.
Easy: They take more than 15 minutes to build their first devices, and often send only one ship at a time to do any exploring or concurring (often to their doom).
Normal: The computer waits fifteen minutes saving up it's resources before building any structure, and then proceeds to building ships. It follows a very similar pattern to easy difficulty, except that when it wants to take over areas it will send a small contingent of 3-5 ships.
Hard: We finally see some progress made here, with the computer acting more like a human player and building with nly a small (maybe 30 seconds?) time gap. It does still start by building research structures, but it follows up with scout ship and finally armadas of ships and even builds a good amount of Capitals.
Unfair: Still testing at the moment.
Hopefully I gave you guys some helpful information, and I hope that some of my questions can be answered. Thanks for the great stuff guys and keep up the good work!
