i am on ICO now if you want to play i will be on untill around  11pm UK GMT  / 7pm USA EST time

Just thought I'd share, I bought the game just to play the MOD. And I have to say, great job. Can't wait to see the finished version, keep up the good work.

Love the condition yellow for the patch. Keep it coming .

New Quantum Torp Below

Hey, here's an idea - there keeps being a small problem of people being online, and missing the other players.

Should the forum decide on a specific title for a channel name for people who want to play this mod, so that they can filter out the people playing the vanilla version?  Something inocuous like "SoA2 Mod" or something to that effect?  It just seems like there's a lot of people missing each other.

P.S. - I only play under the name Grand Admiral Prawn (cheap star wars knockoff, just like my icon).

P.P.S - I don't wanna tell those who are actually working on the mod what to do, but perhaps a list of the "preferred channel name" and a list of known players' ICO names could go in the thread header.  It seems like that would help people get into ICO games.

I guess the biggest tweak I'd like to see is levels for capital ships.  There is argument for this, because on several TNG episodes it was mentioned that Geordi LaForge had tinkered to get Enterprise to do things that were above and beyond the original system specs.  Likewise, on Voyager, there were plenty other enhancements that went beyond Voyager's system specs, like the command protocol for the doctor, or a number of other items.  This could be simulated in a more comprehensive setup for levels for capital ships, as well as a more comprehensive set of abilities for various ships.

That said, I've been tinkering around with the Federation files to give everyone an example of what I mean.  (I don't know Klingon ships very well, but I'm sure you guys could figure it out).  I changed some supply issues, and corrected prices for these ships to what I thought they should be. (no offense, but they seemed very low!)

Keep in mind, on any mod I've done, I use the retail release entity files as a baseline - a point of reference.  For the most part, I think the retail is fairly balanced....anywho...here's what I came up with;

 NOTE: YOU HAVE TO SCROLL THIS HORIZONTALLY>>>> SORRY!

 As you can see, I've tweaked pretty much everything down the line.  Since pretty much every ship is research based (not sure I agree with that decision) I emphasized that the Ambassador class (I think that's mispelled - not sure) is the basic cap ship. Tech wasn't that great, so regen rates, mitigation, etc....they are all very "plain"...aka vanilla, but as you research other ships, they become more resilient, and even have different attributes.  For example, the galaxy's shields regenerate faster, has a larger anti-matter pool, and the anti-matter regenerates faster.

Some things I'd like to see for abilities (you could rename them for immersion purposes, but effects would be similar;

- animosity/taunt for sovereign - simulates the fact that most enemiese would "gun for" it, being the premier warship it is - and the biggest threat.

- Shield Regenerate for Sovereign & Galaxy - you could reduce shield restoration and replace that with this ability...same idea (and might put some depth into your cap ships)

- Missile barrage/missile swarm for nebula - this would be feasible...it does seem the nebula loves its missiles!

- Speed boost for defiant - C'mon...it strafes.  Speed is pretty important.

Well...that's about all the ideas I have had thus far, but I think they aren't bad ones....but I'd love to see more depth into the cap ships.

good ideas but i dont know how to set that up yea i agree a lot of people keep missing each other just at the tail end of one hell of a nice 2v2v2 !

All you have to do is when you log in (and you're dumped in the lobby) just go to change/create channel, and type in a name for a new channel, and hit 'accept'.  Your channel is created, and people can log onto it just like any other channel.

As an adendum to my last post...you could add these abilities to all cap ships;

- Power to the engines (speed boost)
- Power to the shields (Shield regenerate)
- Power to the weapon (Energy Weapon Boost)

You could set it so you can't autocast it. As your ships level up, and your officers gain more experience, the quality of your boosts would increase...that would give a lot of character to the cap ships!

make the abilities and send them to the email address above

Wow, I like the new look guys, kinda distinguishes the quantum torp a little better and I think it looks a little more on par with what we have seen in the shows and movies.

Wow, already out to yellow alert for patch, and I just keep coming at you with more small defects.  You guys are just cruising through, aren't you?  I hope the new patch will be released soon, cuz I am just itching for to see what refinements you guys have made.

I think these are some cool ideas beemer, but I think it would be better worded as:

- Full power to the engines (Speed Boost)
- Full power to the shields (Shield Regenerate)
- Full power to weapons (Energy Weapon Boost)

I think that sounds more "Trekkish", like what the captains would say, but it's up to you.  Good thinking up on these abilities !

Thanks to all that tried to help me.I found out that curry file I guess was messing up mu extraction and went in and manually extracted all the files.It almost works but I still cant get it.Now instead of blank the icon spots are just a big block of whatever color I am.All ships spots(where u build them) is white.Since there is a new patch coming I guess I will wait for it and see if it works.

Will do. I've already been playing with them.  I'm not going to mess around with anything else for now...I'm not sure where you guys are going with balancing..

OH..HUGE bug...Defiant is only 14 supply. (oops). might definitely want to at least fix that.

Technically speaking, it would be super easy to give the same abilities to Klingons as well.  Sorta copy and paste.

Quoting beemer127

They already said that they made that mistake beemer, the defiant used to be a cruiser.

I have the Engine/Shields/Weapon boost abilities in for ALL capital ships.  I'm testing them tonight.  If it goes well, I'll email the files in, in the morning.

I also added a few specialized abilities to the fed ships.  If darkshimmer & company like my work, I'll turn my attention towards the klingon ships and figure what specialized abilities best fit them.

Cool, I hope they accept them, cuz if they are like the preivious abilities, that would be sweet !

Actually, things are going quite well tonight.  I have most of the abilities done, and a few hours of testing done, but I've run into a few hiccups.  I might not be able to email them the files until Sunday evening or Monday.

Edited: 3:30 A.M. EST

I think it is time to open the door for community contributions.

What i would like to see from the community contributions are low level abilities (for the frigates and cruisers of all factions) Like a tractor beams, and other things that suite the particular faction. Starfleet/klingon/romulan/jem hadar marines (aka planet mania but with troops fighting effect).

Modelers can contribute as well. If there is a "better" model that we can use we will most certainly use it. Same goes for textures. Dont like our low res stuff, feel free to retexture the ships, and send it in. If we like what we see we will use it.

Anything and everything is open to the community for editing, change it, improve it. If we like it we will use it, and you will get full credit. Darshimmer will have the final say on anything that has to do with balancing, and gameplay, but all artwork must come through me. I will post what restrictions later once i confer with shimmer.

I just finished another portion of a game that has to this point lasted 23 hours.  I have esentially played to a stalemate with two pinch points on the map pretty much garded by starbases with 305000 shield, not to mention what ever they have for hull points.  Can't seem to do much more than about 5 to 7000 points of damage with large fleets before having to retreat.  I also have some starbases which have maxed out at 150000 shield points.  What determines a starbases max shield? why would one have 305000 max after max research, where another only maxes out at 150000? What's the criteria? Thanks...

Attention

Agreed Stress,  I would like to ask the community for some ideas on names for the  Federation AI , Klingon AI and the rest of the planned factions .  There are only ten name slots per race AI. Currently we have some custom , some place holder.  Any ideas or thoughts ??????  Also we are seeking names for the insurgent player and again a total of 22 names .

  Please send to

[email protected]

or  private message me with the details thanks in advance (\B):vulcan:(\B)

"Live Long and Prosper"

I'm noticing an odd problem

I've been playing for some 2 hours now and have just encountered the klingons

But for some reason they weren't attacking my ships, I could attack them, but they didnt' fire back

The pirates are also doing the same, I'm currently bombing their base and destroying their ships and they're just sitting there

I scouted a klingon world, which had a starbase and a couple of frigates and was able to attack them with a consituition class ship and they didn't respond heh.

can you please be more specific?

I emailed the cap ship abilities.  Waiting for some good feedback, and to see if they'll be included in the mod.

I kinda noticed this as well.  It seemed they were running.  I would enter their system, start attacking planetary structures, and the couple of ships they had there RAN.  I did this to 3-4 of their planets...this was on EASY difficulty (wanted to test the waters first), and didn't think anything of it, really. 

Now I'm trying another game on medium to see if that changes anything...

I also noticed that fights between ships, if left unattended, end up far beyond the gravity well of the planet in which it originates.  This is due to the fact that the ships DO NOT turn around (e.g. strafe), but keep running.  Not sure how to fix this, but that isn't very good...I can't pay attention to every battle - especially the insignificant ones.  At the same time, I can't let a battle go for 30 minutes because some idiot captain can't get it into his/her head to turn around to utilize their forward phaser banks & torp tubes, lol.

the problem you list about ships leaveing the gravity well they are aware of, was mentioned many posts back,

barring they have fixed it with this comming patch they are most probably looking into how to fix it either way