One thing we need to get rid of is "Insurgency" . The Klingons get it. why i dont know, and when they research it the feds get random relentless dominion/cardassian attacks. I know it is very late game that it happens, but still the thought of dominion rebels for the klingons. I much rather would see the combined dominion as pirate raiders.

Sorry for the team color problems. What had happened was in previous releases of the mod we used older entitys. and when the specular and team color maps were swapped for sins our code still used the original setups so when we swapped out it did exactly what it is doing now. Team colors bleeding through. We couldnt figure out why it did that. So we left our textures the "old" standard. Now the mod is using up to date entitys so guess what. You see the result. I tried to fix it before the release, but i have no reliable net to send my progress. I get booted every 5 minutes. So i cant upload anything. My build of the mod is fixed.

You guys might want to disable "ship highlight filtering". Along with all team colors until we get this fixed. Ship highlight filtering makes ships brighter the further you zoom away, but the mod doesnt have that feature incorporated. So needless to say you get strange ship lighting problems. Disable it.

Now that Shimmer and crew have the gameplay aspect down i can now start working on fixing the art in the mod for the 0.4 0.5 updates.

you better work fast there stress

add it as an enchancement request, i'm not going to remember down the road

this has been fixed in the patch

we tried this already and couldn't quite get it to work properly, simply becuase abilities loose the directional aspect when firing. Example, points that only fire fwd will also fire aft (bad for weapons, great for AOE)

We have not ruled it out yet, but have not decided to continue down this path either, so offically its in limbo

researches will be redone and finalized down the road, we just need to work a few more things out on formatting

not really sure i understand your comment. if anything the feds have defiant pulse tech from romulans. plus the klingons were in place before the defiant was added. for the use of simplicity we kept the same format

Am I the only person who is really looking forward to the Romulans?

The Borg will be fun, but I'm really interested to see how the team will incorporate both beam and pulse weapons for them, as the D'deridex is seen using both.  Not only that, I'm wondering what their high stat(s) will be.  I don't expect cloaking since they never really got that working, but the Romulans have always been my favorite supporting race.

Anyone got an answer for me?

the only thing i can think of is either redownload the mod (pain i know yea)

or re extract what you downloaded as far as i am aware you are the only person to have this icon issue i have checked the version that gets downloaded and the icons are all deffo there

other than that i am not sure what to suggest

Well i have dl it 2x.Could it be the programs I am extracting with.I cant hardly play cause the only way to see what ships are what is to either put my mouse over it or zoom all the way in they are all just black as well as all the flags.

that could be a graphical issue  caused by a driver,  try updateing your drivers for starters

stupid possibility, are you moveing folders out of the main SOA2 folder.. seen people do that in my home town

Make sure you are disabling any other addons you run as the graphics are incompatible with other mods .. especialy graphic enhance mods.. they will cause issues if you use them.

Lastly.. try lowering grahpic settings if all else fails.

1 last idea..  make sure your not playing in windowed mode

For extraction  id suggested Winzip,   

Okay, having played both the Fed and the Klingons with AI on the hardest setting, I have to say: awesome job on the AI -  they do a much better job managing resources and strategy than on other mods I've seen, where they tend to get lost in research and build bad ships.  On the other hand, the Feds still have an unmitigated advantage.  I hate to nit-pick, but it's pretty clear that the Feds are overpowered compared to the Klingons in the existing release.

I've tried every pro-Klingon strategy discussed on here, and it just doesn't cut the mustard.  B'Rels combined with some high-HP ships like the Vor'Cha still don't stand up against a ballanced Fed fleet of similar size (either in number or supply).  The B'Rels get creamed by the Fed starship's 360 degree firing arc pretty fast (especially if Akiras are involved), and then it's just a slow wait for the incredibly low-damage Vor'Chas to have their SP/HP drained to zero.  If you doubt this, just wait until you see the B'Rels targeting something, then have it run away.  The B'Rels follow, and everybody following beside them get pot shots until there are no more B'Rels.  I've tried mixing up the fleet composition with other cruisiers, and it just doesn't work when the Fed starships are a dime a dozen with a better ability to mix it up.

The whole notion of long B'Rel bombing runs works great on structures, but not so well on ships.  Again, if you've got a comparable number/supply of Fed ships, the B'Rels get ceamed. 

The only advantage I've seen with the Klingons is that their entrenchment Torpedo Cruiser does 200 DPS, while the Fed got stuck with the sissy Advent version that does 1/10 that.  That Torpedo Cruiser can seriously screw up a space station, but only when there are no starships around to knock the tar out of it in the two seconds it takes to kill it.

Further, the Feds get an unfair advantage in Defiant spamming.  The blasted things are dirt cheap and only take 14 supply (about the same as an Akira).  The AI doesn't do this, but every savvy player will.  The Defiants don't have much higher HP/SP than an Akira, but they do more damage than any other ship in the game besides the top Klingon Cap Ship.  This is completely unfair, as you just top out your # of cap ship crews, waltz into somebody's system with a cheap Defiant fleet, and blow them away.  10-15 defiants can kill about a hundred Klingon cruisers without more than a couple losses, and they're much faster to replenish.

I hate to sound too critical - I'm honestly impressed with this mod; it's better than any I've seen.  I just hope the Klingons get brought up to par in the patch (or the Feds get down to their level).

Quoting Ryugi:

God I hope not.  Ever since the first time the world got a look at the Romulan Warbird on TNG, I think everyone's wanted to command that.  Simply put: it's way the hell more powerful and cooler looking than Fed ships, and that's saying a lot.

I just had a thought.

Would it be possible to switch wich faction had Insurgency, and possibly have the rebel ships be hidden (ie, no buildable) maquis ships.

i have to agree on the front of the defiant spamming being an easy win strat..  once starbases are fixed they will be an easy win.  To fix this  there are 2 possible easy fix's.. and more that im sure i havn't seen. 

One is build time, add a significant build time to the defiant.. the ship was complex, needed heavy shakedown and modifications just to avoid destroying itself in flight..  Perhaps account for this in the building time.. when you factor the amount of custom work the defiants had to run..  they took more effort to build then a sov or even a galaxy. I would almost think makeing the 4 larger and more advanced capitals take significantly longer to actualy build. 3-4 mins for a sov or galaxy.. or a defiant.  Would definatly solve the spamming issue..  would also make you want to defend them a little more.. as they would be harder to replace.

A second idea would be simply to put a restriction on the number of each type of advanced capital you  can have.. Defiants and Soverigns were not exactly common ships in cannon..  could limit it to 3 of each..   Galaxys were more common..   this would lead to more fleet diversification..  again not a bad idea  since it would make combat far more.. dynamic.   Heck both ideas combined would probably be a good idea.

I did have 1 issue with the defiant.. altho im sure its done for balance reasons. It is far to easy to destroy.. the ship was designed to take one hell of a pounding.. yet the sov has far more armor..    I figure this is a balance  issue to prevent a ship with that much firepower from being gamebreaking.

the 360 fire of fed ships  is part of why the kiteing strat works for them so well..  other races can do it as well but to a lesser effect so far.

thats really a good idea to limit ships... also negvars vorchas intrepids and akiras...

Hehe, forget both Borg and Romulans, the most coolest side is going to be the Dominion! I´m looking forward to building gazillions of bugships alongside Galors and those cool Jem´Hadar battlecruisers, probably my favourite ST ship alongside Galaxy class. BTW is there still limit 16 capships per game? I hope not, because i´m planning to build lot of these things (i assume they are going to be capships) exactly like in the show.

Praise be to the founders, long live the Dominion!

It was our intention, or at least mine from the beginning to limit the amount of "Elite" units (cap ship slot items) that can be on the map at any given time. The balancing has changed and yes we can build alot more elites than what i originally planned. If i had my way there would be only 2 defiants on the map max. 3 galaxy's and only 1 soveriegn. the rest of the fleet would be made up of the "fodder" ships.

The sov is supposed to be more advanced than the defiant. Hence far more shield, weapons, and armor. Its supposed to be one of the feds "borg killers" The defiant was supposed to be a prototype escort class warship, but also a pure borg killer (it didnt fair too well vs the one cube it did encounter) 5 defiants would be overkill. They are like the sov supposed to be very expensive to build hence the rarity. We put them both at the end of the tech trees to emphesis this. We can also up the fleet supply to limit thier numbers as well. Regardless the balancing of the mod is what shimmer is in charge of. I am just building the models

hm but galaxys could be really on maximum cause in the war there were whole wings of galaxys and nebulas. they re the counter agains the devastors from dominion

Say "Romulan" in the empire and expect half a dozen blades at your throat two seconds later.

They prefer Rihannsu.

Another possible fix for the Defiant spamming problem is to just increase the supply number to be on a par with a starship of comparable strength.

This may sound like a cop-out, but it's really not.  In modern navies today, heavily automated ships take just as many people (supply points) to keep repaired and operating as ships without such automation: it's just a question of whether the repair and support work is done by the crew or by the shipyard supporting the ship.  For instance, the Russians have nuclear subs that are crewed by 30-40 people due to heavy automation, but the things spend ungodly amounts of time in the shipyard being repaired compared to American subs, which have crews of 110-140 (depending on class).  Those extra people do all the work that you would otherwise have to be tied up to the pier to do.

Since the "supply" count for a ship would notionally include the support workers (in addition to the crew), there's no reason the Defiant class couldn't have a large number of supply points.

Also, can someone explain why Nebula Class ships have more weapons than Galaxy class?  I thought the pod on the top of it was mostly sensor arrays, etc., and that they had similar weapons.  Apparently, it's a weapons pod here (though it's not completely implausible that it could be switched out - for instance, the aircraft carrier USS ENTERPRISE (CVN 65) had its entire flight tower swapped out once).

Oh, and why is the Miranda more powerful than the Constitution class?  Is it just because we're assuming they pull Constitutions out of mothballs, while we actually got to see Miranda class ships in TNG from time to time (suggesting they were somewhat modernized)?

the nebula's upper pod was  modular,  during the dominion war it was modified  to support more weapons..  altho the galaxy should still support more firepower over the full 360 spread.. a nebula would have more forward firepower..  overall they should be nearly compairable in a slug fest..  at least at war time..

During peace..  the Nebs are a science vessel

ok lets put the Defiant issue to rest it was a transfer mistake from cruiser to elite, it will now be 34 supply on par with other ships of its class. thanks for pointing that out.

Nebula's pod is actually Modular like Namoge said. It can be retro fitted with weapons or sensors, etc. Current layout is weapons. Mainly fwd firing torpedo bays. In a one on one the galaxy will outshoot her with phasers, but the nebula should out do her with torps. they should be fairly close. 

Miranda's actually outgun Constitution class ships, why they are in the slot they are. 

Romulans well i'm not saying anything about them yet, but if you played 3c you already have an idea what you can expect. 

forget the inblance for the moment i have basically solved that issue. and forget about brels getting creamed that too was part of the movement issue. Tonight its time to dismantle the torp system and fix that issue for once, hopefully i want to have everything done with this patch by tomorrow night, when you see yellow alert, you know we are finally close. 

While the defiant is still fresh in mind, didn't they also come equipped with cloaking devices?

Or did you decide not to include that because of the issues you were having with cloaking?

Or just for balance reasons?