The "Elite Units" (units that take up the cap ship slots) are the "Hero" units of the mod. Not all of them are "true" capital ships. The Defiant we consider a hero unit. Just like we consider the Sovereign despite her size. The Elite Units stand way above the standard rank, and file cannon fodder units like the Intrepid. Voyager was a standard light exploration cruiser stuck in a very bad situation, and miraculously pulled through it (through the help of some very inept writing that we wont go into). In other words.. Voyager was an exception. Not the rule.

The reason why ships became Elite Units, and we made the Elite Units this way is mainly for Balancing purposes. So that very powerful ships are limited in their numbers, and are very expensive to research/build. On top of that there are not enough Cap ship slots to represent all of the ships that should be "elite". So we made some tough choices that not everyone would like.

The Defiant packs damn near the fire power, and shield/hull strength of a Galaxy class crammed into a small highly maneuverable hull. It was in the Heavy Cruiser slot before the Intrepid was, but that proved to be disastrous when the AI would build hundreds of them. Hence game over for the Borg, and any other faction! The Intrepid class was honored by it being in the "Heavy Cruiser" slot (where both the Defiant, and the Akira were once before), and she is one of the most powerful of the non-elite units, because of her "Anti-Borg" ability's. We dont hate on the Intrepid itself (as its position in the mod proves). We just hate the show it came from.

You will see other "cruiser sized, and under" ships in the elite slots of the other factions. The Dominion has the Keldon which is just a modified Galor class. However it packs much more firepower, and has abilities that keeps the Cardassian units "in line" (prevents their mutiny from the Dominion). The Harbinger is a cruiser sized ship as well.

The Romulans have the Z-1 Nova, the Melak Warbird, and the D'Verix Warbird which are all below "capital ship" size (at least from the romulans point of view).

The Klingons have the K'Vek, and the Vod'Leigh, and now the Kron. All well below capital ship size.

The Borg have the Queens Diamond. Definitely a tiny ship compared to a cube.

There is madness to our method... err.. i mean a method to our madness

Thanks for the answers on the insurgent ships guys, I will adapt my strategy appropriately.  

 I wasnt aware that the TEC had the same ability, because truth be told, I quit playing the original SoaSE along time ago. The only reason its even on my hard drive now is because of this mod and is the ONLY way I will even play the game. That being said, I play the hell out of it.  In a word, your mod is EPIC. So far, the Klingons are my favorite by far. The music, the voice clips, the ships, I love it all.

 I cannot express my gratitude enough to you guys for all the time this must have taken. Consider me a fanboi. SALUTE!

Hopefully Ironclad lets us mod the AI in Rebellion.  One can always hope, can't he?

Any chance we might see a Vesta-class Elite ship on the Federation side? Vesta-class ships have slipstream drives, which could be an interesting Level 6 ability. The Ambassador-class could be weakened slightly and made into a Cruiser to accommodate something like a Vesta Elite.

Ew.  Just the name...

The Federation lineup is finished, and set in stone. It is the only faction that has an all canon lineup with more canon ships to spare that didn't make it in the mod. No more ships need to be added. We are not going to replace any canon ships with non-canon fan art. We save non-canon for the factions that don't have enough canon units to fill all of the empty slots. Then we turn to FASA, and Starfleet Command to fill in those empty slots. We also do not allow "Uberships" with the exception of the Borg (The Scimitar, Prometheus, Wells are considered Uberships), or the absurd in here (fire while cloaked ships, Stupid Fan Designs, 1 torpedo hit kills, ridiculous technobabble, Janeway, Saffi, or Wesley).

Happy new year from the SoA 2 Team

did you think about using the open slots for AI ships (without fleet support cost) as I wrote before? It makes a big difference when the game runs a little longer.

I have added this research for the AI to build this ships:

entityType "ResearchSubject"
hudIcon ""
smallHudIcon ""
infoCardIcon ""
NameStringID ""
DescriptionStringID ""
researchWindowLocation
    block 0
    pos [ 8 , 0 ]
ResearchField "Diplomacy"
Prerequisites
    NumResearchPrerequisites 0
MinimumArtifactLevel -1
BaseUpgradeTime 0.000000
PerLevelUpgradeTime 0.000000
BaseCost
    credits 0.000000
    metal 0.000000
    crystal 0.000000
PerLevelCostIncrease
    credits 0.000000
    metal 0.000000
    crystal 0.000000
Tier 0
onlyWorksIfTierLabsExist FALSE
MaxNumResearchLevels 1
priority 10.00000
researchBoolModifiers 0
researchFloatModifiers 1
researchModifier
    modifierType "PlanetSlotsShipsAdjustment"
    baseValue 0.000000
    perLevelValue -0.200000
artifactPicture ""

Rebellion wont be released for a while. We do plan on porting the mod over to Rebellion eventually. However. we are going to Stick With Diplomacy until SoA 2 is ether finished to 1.0, or we feel the time is right to port the mod over to Rebellion. Which ever comes first.

Porting to Rebellion will take an extremely long time to do. The mod will have to be completely re-built from scratch AGAIN. Just like it did when we ported it to Diplomacy. Just like it did when we ported it to Entrenchment. It will probably take even longer due to all of the content we have in here now. Plus we expect a bunch of mod breaking patches to follow Rebellions release. That will also force us to rebuild the mod over, and over again just like it happened before with all 3 previous versions of Sins. Not this time! To be brutally honest.. Rebellion can wait. We will focus on Diplomacy for now.

We dont consider STO canon. Despite the game improving over time. It was horrible when it was first released. IMO it still has a long way to go.

"IF" there is to be a Rebellion version then we will be looking at adding new frigates and bumping existing ships up one, or 2 slots. Which means some might get their wish of the Intrepid becoming an Elite Unit, and the Sovereign taking up the Titan slot. The Galaxy taking the battleship slot The Nebula moves to the carrier slot, Defiant becomes siege, and the Intrepid becomes the support Elite. Just need a cruiser to fill the transport Elite role which i think the Akira will do just fine, but we will have to find another ship to fill the anti structure slot. Not worried. Plenty of canon ships left for the Feds. Its the other factions i worry about.

We need to duplicate the existing vanilla roletypes so the AI wont spazz out. One thing we found is that the AI is very sensitive to changes. You add another ship of the same primary (not secondary) roletype then the AI will get confused over which ship to build. It is not so much the roletype itself. Its the "StatCountType" that the AI looks at, and determines how many of a certain type of ship to build. We resolved to just duplicate the sins roletype/statcountypes just to make sure that the AI works right.

Adding no cost units will just open pandora's box. Balancing will be tossed out the window. Not to mention the AI will just constantly spam the free units until doomsday... your computers doomsday that is. The AI is ok when it works correctly, but when it gets stupid it doesnt quit being stupid lol.

I was just wondering. But STO is still a pretty cool game. If you want to go talking about cannon, go to the Star Wars thread, the Clone Wars, nough said.

Well, STO tries its best to be as close to canon as it can get. I just started to play it, so I don't know how it was back when it started. And true, Voyager, did not end as well as it should or could have, and in my mind, shouldn't ever be an Elite. To be fair, when I actually thought of it in a mod for SoaSE, I thought it would be a scout ship. But what is an Excalibur?

Is there a page or readme file that explains how the abilities work? Most are explained in game but others aren't. For example, I haven't figured out yet what the Klingon starbase ability "Overload" does exactly. It seems to increase weapon damage but the damage numbers on the UI don't change so I have no idea whats actually happening.

Thanks!

1.  I'll be redesigning all of these at some point, probably before the next release.  They'll be less code efficient, but more functional AI wise, and canon in their effect.

The AI is just too damned stupid to use those targeted abilities wisely, it only acts at one level of depth, all files below the first are ignored in the decision making process.

2.  No.

Edit:

    buffEntityModifierType "DamageAsDamageDealer"
    value
        Level:0 1.000000
        Level:1 1.500000
        Level:2 2.000000

The damage display is wonky.  It shows firing rate changes in the damage per second, but this particular modifier is ignored.

1. Cool, good to hear.

2. Fair enough.