as long as they have a "chance" it's ok it's really important for the start of the game (end game is different because then you are fighting with tactics because you have the tech/resources to spend) ATM it's like minbari are 2X as fast as EA, if you could make it so that EA are 75% as fast then the problem wouldnt be as noticable and the minbari would still have a really huge advantage

 Thats the thing the Star Trek mod for this game done it they all start in the right place, i will look into it tho.

Never mind i turned off randomizePositions in Galaxy Forge and it worked, I dont know why i didnt see that lol

Fixed the HyperSpace Problem thats what i get for copy and pasting the name and not watching what i'm doing and for the Nochfal if you look at the pirate base there its spelt right lol my bad again. I did use that map btw if your talking about the minbari Homworld i put it in that place so thay wouldnt meet earth too fast.

Yep. And I had the imagination that the narn where to far left, but my memory might betray me here.

Yes, but what I'm searching for is that when I decide to use a specific race for me to automatically start on the right homeworld. How does one do this?

The Narns are in the right place just the races on the map to the left of narn would have been too much i had to miss out a lot to cut it down a little. And i placed the narns first then seen the map would have took me ages to move all the stars

for EA antimatter...it's really slow regeneration i just noticed at end game (13 hours play time so far haha)

im having to scuttle and re-build antimater refuiling stations all the time just to keep the fleet in around 25-50% of there antimatter is this intended?

seems so far that EA have A LOT of drawbacks when it comes to the beginning of the game and the end of the game.

only seem competitive during the middle when everyone is starting to get some tech.

Honestly, no. We sometimes just guessed values. I am in the unfortunate position not to be able to playtest at all (except 10 minutes or so)

Well, we need to make them competetive at the late game. Question - have you used Poseidon carriers with lvl 10 and 24 squads? How do they work out? I always was afraid they might be too strong in the end.

Ammasing Myrmidons or Tethys should be quite devestating. (but now overwhelmingly so)

Balancing is really needed. But I always wanted that to be priority come 0.5 (alpha phase)

i can play test any items, just tell me what you need and ill report back.

the Poseidon is ok, not over powerd becasue of the antimatter issue they get stuck with 2-3 flights of fighters and then 0 antimatter so they loose there effect after a few battles

i will test the myrmidons and tethys in bulk right now.

TobiWahn,

The EA starbase refueling station works well but the EA AM refueling stations do need tweaking. The Hermes also needs some tweaking, it is a priority target for the AI, quickly bleeds down its AM reserve and takes forever to refill. Additionally it is prone to blindly charge targets if not closely managed. It seems to have a special affinity for enemy star bases so I'm wondering if there is something in the entity file responsible for this behavior?

I've found the EA can not survive without several near maxed star bases, from these fleet strength can be marshaled. The EA early to mid game can not survive Minbari (and presumably Old Ones) fleet engagements without numbers and numbers are hard to get to and keep given ship resource costs and tech limitations. I know balancing is later but it will be an incremental process.

Darvroth

The problem with EA ships isn't that they are slower, its just that they get stuck on the spot turning slowly and that means they simply cannot negotiate obstacles

when they thrust forward and turn at the same time, its much better, but they don't seem to like doing that

EA ships should definately be slower and less manouvrable until they get gravity enabled ships, but only to the point it doesn't make them stop all the time

Overall I'd like to see starfighters that are harder to kill and more potent, either with HP or some kind of chance to hit system, but aren't as numerable, towards the later parts of the game there are ALOT of fighters.

I still say it would be completely and utterly epic if refinery and trade ships automatically restored Antimatter of ships OR STATIONs near them, would make placing your buildings really tactical, and you could stop by trade lanes with your fleets to get resupplied I think thats awesome

also, I don't recall EA plasma weapons ever being purple? always seemed to be blue.

I'm just having too much fun with the alpha stage atm I'm sooo glad I haven't got exams soon

^This is an interesting idea, not sure if it would work with the Canon of the B5 universe but cool none the less.

Goal is to maximize B5 Canon...and make a fun game. Mod is just now barely getting to the point where canon adjustments must be made for balance and preserving the fun factor.

Darvroth

Well said. But I do not want to sacrifice canon for fun, just for balance

The Idea should be that Minbari have a hard time getting fleet numbers up as they take longer to build and are more expensive while EA is cheaper and faster. The others are in between the two. The Vorlons and Shadows need their own limitation

P.S.: Thanks for filling the origo issues section, I will take a look at them as soon as my day to day work permits (perhaps today evening)

Will look into that, but overall it's just that EA has quite a few ships that have the "lumbering" trait and as such SHOULD not manouver fast, not even normal, but dead slow.

No. Starfighters in the B5 Universe are small, agile, easily destroyed and only useful in numbers.

We will make Frigate/Capship factories repair the respective ships and perhaps Trade stadions and refineries refuel them in the future.

Trade ships an refinery ships should not do that

We have noone doing the particle effects at the moment. If you want to participate you are welcome to do them

Thanks. And it's PreAlpha still. Alpha will it be when 90 percent of the content are in there.

Well, in the serie, vorlon have plenty of ship, a huge fleet... a sleeping fleet since they have not enough crew for all of them...

Don't know if it is possible to have lower crew/capitalship point for one race only... and/or make the crew/amount of capitalship research very expensive...

Well, it is the problem with any old races... they are few and don't reproduce like the "rabbit"... i mean the "human"

We have noone doing the particle effects at the moment. If you want to participate you are welcome to do them

 I just switched the colour of the nova's plasma to that of the hyperion

Yes it is. But with the high supply costs of Vorlon capitalships they won't be able to have a hugh capship fleet anyways.

Thats where I want to go too, let the old ones have a hard time expanding.

Proposal for shadows: frigates and capitalships can colonise

frigate: 10 percent chance of colonise succeeding, ship destroyed upon use of the ability

Battlecrab: 50 / 75 / 99 percent chance of succeeding, ships destroyed upon use of ability. No autocast

For Vorlon I propose that they will always succeed with calonise but take very very long time to colonise a planet. Can be interrupted and ship can do nothing else while colonising.

Screenshot?

On big map who ask a long time playing.. cost become not really a problem... and i was not speaking only about capship but all ship... Not yet modeled and included but look at the power of the Vorlon destroyer... you know, the brown one ;

A single of these ship have kill a shadow battleship ( crabs ) with a long volley in the series...

Well, if you plan to play on the money/resource thing for balance vorlon, simply make the planet upgrade take a lot of time and being expensive... new colonized planet cost money until it is upgraded to some level... this will make fast expansion virtually impossible...

Real work on balance will only be possible when almost everything is included in the mod... i think that it is a little early for speak/work on balance now...

Here we go tobi, I literally just changed the colour. I've got a week off before I have shifts at teh hospital again, so I'll see if I can have a mess around. I just finished a load of modding I was doing for the project reality BF2 mod, so I'll have a peek and see if I can learn Sins a bit for simple modding (don't expect much, I've been modding BF2 for years, but never really got into the Sins system, but if I can do anything I'll have a go.)

Looks good!

TobiWahn,

Still scrubbing EA and Narn, now looking at Centari...busy refining earlier observations to be more useful. I acknowledge the techs and entity files where a bit rushed (with months of effort) to get the wonderful 0.43 out when you did and it represents a major improvement. I further acknowledge the B5 history and naming convention challenges binning ships properly within the SoASE construct. The mod is a pre-Alpha, many elements are not present and balancing is a distant dream. I also acknowledge you as mod leader have the final decision on many elements as they are developed and inserted. That said and based on previous conversations with you and Rod I've made several observations and seek clarification. Please don't take offense.

The tech trees assembled thus far are a wonderful work in progress and the chronological binning done by you and Rod are staggeringly brilliant. I also note there are linkages and dummy techs to force the AI to research that will be refined over time. Some of the linkages are convoluted, difficult to follow and challenge the early game for some races. I've already noted some of the more egregious early game ones. That said, I hope to foster dialog on several related topics.

1) The binning of ships into frigate, cruiser and captital ship assigned the various mission roles from SoASE to me aside from a basic chronological progression have no discernable rhyme or reason. With some obvious exceptions please assist me to understand and inform the players what are the basic attributes of each ship class. This could include any of the following: hull and defense grid (shield) health, speed, number and type of weapon mounts, acceleration/deceleration and turning speeds, armor, fighter squadrons, rates of weapon fire, weapon arcs and range, amount of antimatter, etc. Basically what makes a frigate a frigate and a cruiser a cruiser, basic left and right bounds?

2) The ship weapons are somewhat race specific and also somewhat chronological. Early game weapons are: autocannon, pulse cannon, missiles, lasers (of various flavors) and plasma cannon. Mid-game weapon progression mostly consists of improvements and refinements but also includes some new, (Centari ion cannon) and cross race tech transfers. Late game gets a bit more exotic and harder to bin, and the Minbari, Vorlon and Shadow start off with what are late game weapons for the other races. All that said how is weapon damage using the basic elements of damage/shot, rate of fire and range used to determine what is appropriate for a given class of ship. Each characteristic will improve over time so strict damage, weapon type and number of mounts as shown on the ship card does not provide a good measure of offensive power, or does it? A buyers guide would be helpful as it is very different from SoASE base game and will help inform balance decisions.

3) I was under the impression the shield mechanic from SoASE for lack of a better option would be a stand in for defensive technologies. The shield strength and recharge rate are a good substitute for example the EA defense grids and the shield mitigation was an acceptable substitute for the evolving ECM/ECCM effects. This is especially true as SoASE does not have a chance to hit function. Many ships now included still have robust shields which runs counter to the armor/hull centric approach discussed earlier. Realizing the "shield" ship characteristic will improve over time and is race and ship function dependent. What is a good guide for good defense, adequate defense and crappy defense?

I know there is some sensitivity to the above and can take your response in PM or e-mail if it is not yet time for public disclosure. Only trying to help.

Darvroth

Chronology, basically the distinction between cruiser and frigate does not exist in the iron engine. It just a organisatory measure. Internaly they are not different at all, just that the dewvs needed two screens with max 9 ships each. The ordering can and probably will be changed down the road but in the end it does not matter. Sins only knows Capitalships, frigates and fighters.

In the end the statistics on the ships are a good indication of what to buy. We just haven't got all abilities in yet (and much more) so thats not possibl at the moment. It would be nice to make a Textbook using iBooks2 as a mod manual though. But thats something for v1.0

The defense statistics (shield recharge, shield amount, shield mitigation) are a basic roguh draft for now.

EA has the least
Then Narn
Then Centauri
Then Minbari
Then Vorlons
Then Shadwos

Shield mitigation is the key differentiator here with EA having 10/25 (frigate/Capship) as basics but the Victory having a very advanced hull and interceptor tech has much more (80)

Narn have 10/30

Centauri have 15/30 (Adira 45)

Minbari have 20/45 (Neroon 50)

Shadow and Vorlon will need many a balancing so no need to tell them here.

Minbari use the mitigation as a substitute for their stealth technology (If we were true to the series they would not be able to be hit at all by any of the younger races, so here we needed to change the canon for the sake of playability)

Mitigation raises much slower than in vanilla sins. So it gives only a little effect for EA and most for Minbari.

Not entirely true on the part of the Minbari. They can't be targeted by the computer, but you can still aim the weapons manually. Obviously with the distances those fights occur in and the speeds at which Minbari ships can travel, it makes it very hard to hit them manually, but not impossible.

Also we only know for sure that the sensors the EA used before it was upgraded in GROPOS can't penetrate the Minbari stealth technology. It was never mentioned how well the other races, or even the upgraded sensors work against the stealth.

I'm also not sure wether the Victory should even be available to the EA. It was after all build by and for the ISA and the Excalibur was only borrowed to the EA to find a cure for the Drakh plague, but it was still ISA property.

I'm just messing around with how the weapons are set up on various ships, one thing I definately recommend is setting the duration of beam weapons to only 3 seconds, this is long enough for a nice effect but doesn't have the problems of the 6 seconds - where the beam is still firing on destroyed ships that are no longer there, or ships that are warping away. I know in the series you saw alot of longer lived beams sawing through ships, but it does look better with shorter times, also helps when engaging a fast moving ship, since more often with 6 seconds the beam will go through teh ship that is firing it, which doesn't look right.

Also alot of ships with say, plasma weapons are using PointStaggerDelays of 0, I've increased it to 0.7 on my setup and it looks alot more natural than the 'broadside' kind of setup that was there before, produces a more constant barrage.