available mod says 0.45e?

checksum 17458261

am i also still suppose to see 4.2?

Since they don't overwrite, it will remain there until you delete the old mod folder.

Whats the deal with assimilation now?

Heh, it finally came.

Assimilation works like this, you have a ten second debuff, but only a two second interval where the ship will flip if it takes damage.

Nevermind had it explained.

I wasn't prepared for the rebels, got my ass kicked.

Do the Borg actually build cubes and shiz now? I know there was talk about implicating some code to make them abit smarter! Also are the Queens Diamonds spose to be able to capture enemy capital ships???

The Borg assimilation ist to heavy! Any ship or structures will be assimilatet with or with out shields ?!

Agreed with the Rebels, did not expect large groups to start appearing, and with the weakening of Starbase damage output they essentially stopped any plans of expansion, have spent the last couple of hours on pure defence, down to just Earth, Mars and Venus left now. Though I must admit it is good to see that 5 unfair AI actually feels like unfairs now.

One thing I think I have noticed is, the Elite Engineers ability on the Galaxy doesnt actually seem to do anything, that and Defiant/Sovereign with Target Subsystems are now wasting 2 ability points, as that ability doesnt scale up with its level. Very nice touch though with the Nemesis Refit. Another thing is, when you choose the second map with random starting locations, some of the home planets spawn with extra structures, and 8 or so constructors, again not sure if intentional or not.

Havent looked at any of the other races yet, but a small group of us do have a game planned for later so will no doubt hear about things with others. Just a couple of questions then, are the Fed starbase damage output reductions intentional? and, the reduced number of asteroids at home planets being halved, also intentional? Makes for a somewhat slower game, though I am by nature a defensive starter, the Sol system does seem to be a much weaker starting position now, so I would welcome any tips on how to expand quickly and successfully defend 3 fronts, so far Im at a loss, holding Saturn alone under attack from two directions is difficult enough, next to impossible when the Rebels start appearing.

@Monkeymandave - Several hours into a game, have not seen a Borg Cube as yet, although they could be busy with their Dominion neighbours.

Does anyone have the mod enable listed as SOA2.045E?

How did i screw this up?

The explosions do not look as impressive a last version.

I don't see the volumetric explosions, or smoke trails.

That's just the way it's supposed to be.  It lists mods by the containing folder, and some nubblet labeled it wrong when he was zipping stuff up.

Negative, nothing can assimilate structures, and none of the ship based assimilation abilities are sure fire.  If you're losing, the Borg are going to smoke you bad.  If you're not, they'll hardly steal any ships at all.

The Borg are NOT balanced for 1vs1.  Take them on in a group.  If you're really looking for a challenge, try dropping them by yourself on small maps.  You might make it.

I was looking forwards to the screams of anguish over catastrophic losses the first time around.

It doesn't take much of a defense to stop the rebel fleets once you know they're coming, but yeah that first time around is a doozy.

Elite Engineers only go into action when nearby ship has hull damage, their own included.  They do a 10 point hull restore, a 50% increase to shield restore, and a 10% increase to firing rates, and self stack up to three of them on a single ship.  They also provide disable immunity.

All weapon effect abilities have a display oversight.  IC never pulled up the chance of effect, only the damage values.

The ability applies four different weapon effects to phasers at different rates.  Engine disable, weapon disable, regeneration disable and direct hull damage.  The Weapon disable is the hardest to pull off, starting with only a 2.5% chance, and topping out at 5% for level 3.  Engine disable is twice as likely as weapon disable, and the other two are twice as likely as it is.  Not a waste, just a less than informative description.

Will have to find out what the intentions are for home planet resource changes.  Yes, the damage reduction is intentional.  The Fed Starbase can target 16 units simultaneously, four per bank.  The damage in those banks is not split by four, but full damage to each.  So, in the best case scenario where there are targets to all sides, a five hundred damage Starbase is really doing two thousand.

I dropped the damage values down, and the hit points up, because a Starbase came down to knowing it was there and sending a fleet big enough to kill it with the opening volley.  Anything less resulted in catastrophic losses.  So, now you can't kill a fully upgraded Starbase in one volley, and you don't have to.  They can hold out for a rather extended duration against 500 fleet points in ships, long enough for reinforcements to arrive from a nearby well.  If you really want power though, you'll need to support them.

Judging by this map, a three front war is the wrong starting point to work from.  Stopping at Saturn gives you one front.  You can put everything you have into it, and fortify your positions well in advance of the problematic technology aquisitions once you're done.  After you've built up enough that you needn't worry about such things, take Uranus and wage a full scale war on the Romulans.  You'll need one small defensive fleet to support your static defenses, and can send the rest on it's merry way.  The spiral designs in this map lead to a lot of nice choke points that make excellent fallback positions should you run into a problem, like Eden.

Borg AI.  I recommend using Unfair, always.  Sins AI is resource stupid, severely.  It doesn't play nice with "big"  The unicomplex for instance would never be built because after saving up to use the ability, the AI would then spend down those resources and never let them build up.  As a result, the Unicomplex is a really good deal.  It also doesn't trade resources, to it's severe detriment on the typical one resource heavy random map.  The cheating bastard that it is, Unfair will help alleviate this problem.

The original method for slowing down their technology access was to make research stations really expensive.  The AI is research stupid, it will always aquire more research stations in an attempt to reach it's goal whether it can afford to or not.  This led to an utterly crippled side that would, if left alone for hours, eventually climb out of the hole it dug itself, but never be competitive.  So, I cut the costs, jacked the logistic requirement to 12 instead of the standard four, dropped the unlocks down to account for it, and gave them crippled antimatter regeneration with massive upgrades and ability cooldowns that can take advantage of them.  Now they build because they don't have the space to get the research unless they have the empire to fund it.

They do build cubes, and it's time to start sweating when you see one.  If you see one with a thousand antimatter, it's time to surrender because you've lost and there's not a damn thing you can do to kill max tech Borg.

Should you ever be blessed enough to see one, a currently buggered level 10 Assimilator Cube has over 100k hitpoints at max tech right now.

Thanks alot for the responses psychoak. Didnt want to complain about the rebels, habit kicked in and I ignored the rebels causing trouble message popping up. Then I went to Empire tree for something else and HOLY !"!"*($$GHF kicked in 

Saturn usually is my initial goal, though perhaps I should aim for getting there a little quicker next time around! Interesting info for the subsystem targetting, I obviously wasnt aware of the chance increase, thanks for clearing that up.

....

(Mein englisch ist zu schlecht um hierauf zu antworten, vielleicht kann das jemand übersetzen)

Es ist den Borg möglich Strukturen zu assimilieren, siehe "BuffBorgDroneMissile.entity". Zumindestens Sternenbasen und Verteidigungsanlagen. Auch bei vollen Schilden. CapSchiffe werden teilweise ruckzuck übernommen. Ob das so gewollt ist ?!

okay just to make sure I don't get confused... fully teched out Borg would require a large fleet to take down and if you are able to at the time... are fully teched up yourself do you even stand a chance to even take down that lvl 10 cube?

That level 10 Cube, no...

I was a tard, somehow I left the entity file with a 6500 per level increase to hull points, it's supposed to be 0.  The not bugged version of a fully upgraded level 10 Cube will only have 18k hull points.

Just the Cube by itself, you shouldn't have too much trouble killing.  A thousand fleet points should be able to do it without too much trouble.  A Borg fleet with max research, no.  Resistance is Futile.  It takes 96 logistics in research labs to get Borg to max tech, don't let them get close to that.

JackBauer36, Google Translate is pretty good for German.  Intended, not really, I wrote the ability for the hangar structure.  The ship is placeholder, just the sphere mesh with a hangar added on.  It's pretty easy to shoot the guys down, but if they stay in I'll duplicate the system and leave off assimilation to prevent structure theft.

wonderful... I got killer borg on the loose in one of my games... and it's a damn large map, how the heck will I survive seeing how I have some allies but will they actually help me in killing the borg off if they manage to show up on my doorstep

"Resistance is Futile". "YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED".

You can actually get quite a lot out of the ai in terms of fleet support.  Select allied ships and give them a suggested action and they're usually cooperative.  When they're in the mood, wait for them to get their ducks in a row and go in with them.  Defense will typically take a little more effort, you need to be prepared to take the hit on your structures and warp in with your ally after you've been dealt damage.  Of course, with a maxed out Starbase and defenses the right fleet can usually repel a Borg invasion too.

Hey I've been lurking for a long while - well, starting like 3 threads ago I suppose

Just thought I'd chime in and say great work with the latest update, and much love to Stress and all the crew who brought it this far. The amount of polish that existed even in the earlier releases was amazing.

Been playing a random map as the feds, and been dealing with the constant rebel attacks by having a couple of near maxed Defiants zipping around through the planets playing guards (still have a rather smallish empire). Now for my probably stupid question about the rebels. How exactly can I use them against others? The feds can research them but I can't figure out how to actually utilize them.

They'll automatically appear every so often at your enemies' planets.  You don't need to do anything but research that technology to send raiders at your enemies.

Rebellion sends one fleet to a random planet of each enemy faction at irregular intervals, and repeats the process independently for each side with the tech.

It's particularly catastrophic in a large game when you have multiple rebellions going off in the same time frame, you can end up with a couple thousand fleet points in rebel ships camping your lost planets if you aren't quick to kill them off.

what tech is this? I haven't seen it in game yet

Deep Strikes for the Feds and Hide and Seek for the Klingons and Romulans, it's in the civic tree, not Military.

Just to confirm my own babbling..

The damaged ship smoke trails are gone? and the particles that flew off hit ships also?

Explosions are not as dramatic, is this a change or did I install incorrectly?

Did you scale back for the two gig limit?

Thanks to everyone.

Yeah I noticed the explosions aren't a spectacular light show anymore