The mod is not dead.  And thinking that it might be because there hasn't been any posts in a couple of days (as in, it hasn't been weeks without any word or sign or anything) strikes me as very foolish.  Be patient.  And chat with others if you'd like.

I was a little put off by the first time I tried this, since my system kept running into issues and I wasn't sure why my Constitution class was getting blown up repeatedly by the Cardassians. I told myself I'd give it another go (mostly because of Stress's name recognition, I was a wannabe modder in the Armada/SFC days) and put a little more time into it since I figured that was probably my fault.

Since it crashed on me, this is very far from complete (I only got to about my third research tier), and since I'm not using the rebuilt version, some of these issues might be fixed.

Impressions..

The good:

- UI looks spectacular, very good work. It could use a semi-opaque "glass" sort of background, though, because the total transparency is a little distracting. Star Trek: Online has this same issue, actually, which is why I noticed it
- Music is in general nice, levels are good, not too quiet or too loud. Some of it sounds like it's been edited or something, though, some of the horns' blaring seems jarring and sounds like somebody ran it through an amplifying filter or something.
- I initially had issues with a lot of CPU utilization, that seems to have fixed themselves for some reason, probably not the mod's fault. Seems to run well in any case.
- Ship viewscreen pictures are nice. Very nice.
- Research tree is relatively intuitive. Nice flow, looks good. "One level" research is best.
- Impact and shield effects look GREAT, though I thought the Federation's shield impacts were light blue?
- Models have great textures, look very crisp, no complaints.

The bad:

- Unit roles seem to be..a little poorly defined. I assume the Centaur is a anti-strike craft thing from the "good against" text, but its description isn't very..descriptive, and it appears to actually be the first combat vessel you can use to clear out other planets (good luck doing that against those huge Galors though). If the Constitution establishes new colonies, why can't it colonize? Why not just say it "explores"? Why is a 100-year old ship that has "escort" as one third of its total usage roles in the text more powerful than the ships I start with and why would I waste my money researching it over the Excelsior, one research tree before? (I did, though, because I like the ship ) Flavor text is nice, but intuitive flavor text is better.
- If I can't get any capital ships from the start, please don't give me a capital ship point and the capability of building huge-ass shipyards. It means I waste my money, build time, and it also gets my hopes up. Just putting the Utopia shipyards behind a research option would fix that.
- Flavor is great, but calling them the Utopia Planetia and San Francisco yards is probably not a great idea since you end up building a ton. Why not make a separate 'special' SF Yards/Utopia shipyard and have it placed in the home planet of the Federation player (through galaxyscenariodef) but not buildable (not in the player def), then make a 'basic' shipyard buildable in the list through the PlayerX file?
- I know you can't make straight pulse phasers that miss (they have to curve somewhat), but up their range a little at least. Ships running into each other during combat is a little weird, and the maps are certainly big enough.
- It takes a really long time to kill stuff. I dunno if this is intended or not, but very looooong combat.
- I like that I have a long time to get out of combat if my shields are down, but I think it should be easier to kill something with its shields down. Warping out is almost instant as well. The inverse is that it takes a very long time for the shields to recharge: out of combat, I shouldn't have to wait a long time for 'em to go up. I'm pretty sure Sins automatically decreases shield regeneration in combat, so simply raising their regen rates should fix this.
- Local militia is pretty hard-ass. I can build a lot of ships to combat them, but giant fleet masses don't seem very Star Trek-y: it should be more about one or two ships kicking ass than twelve Excelsiors.
- I think ships accelerate if not move too quickly, they're doing very fighter-esque sweeping movements. It feels like Star Wars to me, very WWII-esque, and I'm not sure if that's what you wanted to convey.

The ugly:

- Phasers on the Constitution seemingly don't come from the saucer, rather in front of it.
- Ships have no impulse exhaust trails? I mean, the ones in STO are ridiculously long, but that's no excuse for none of them!
- Ships have no self-illumination? The ships' textures are great, but there's no special illumination on the deflector dish or anything.
- The commander icon in the viewscreen has a halo around him. Looks like bad Photoshopping of the guy (I forgot his name but he looks familiar) from the background?
- Constitution Class seems to have bugged lightmaps. I've ran into this bug before, not sure why, but having the thing turn completely black except at a top angle isn't normal.
- Several different voices used for certain ships. I recognized these from A2, but I'm pretty sure in A2 the commander voices were all of homogeneous genders.
- To expand on the UI issue, at a smaller resolution it is difficult to read research text because there's no background to it and it overlaps the tree. Same fix would be good.
- No divider between capital ship crew # and fleet #?
- Why are the Federation using "disruptor"s?! That's gotta be an easy ctrl-f -> replace to Pulse Phaser.
- There ain't no second capitalized S in "Starship". Wouldn't bug me too much if it wasn't the first research tree thing and it's very noticeable. The strings in general need a grammar check, and without consulting memory alpha, I'm not sure why a planet is called the "Zahl homeworld" rather than just Zahl or something, and even if the planet was never named, it's still jarring to see it like that and probably should be replaced with a different name.
- Have you gotten rid of the red background color for unresearched ships? It makes figuring out which ships are available (and which aren't) very difficult at a glance.
- I came across a "borg fleet" made of Cardassians - I read that you were using placeholders for the Borg for pirates, but this map had no pirate base and these appeared to be local militia. Why do local militia have Borg names?
- I had some audio issues like crackling and slight stuttering, but that might be on my end.

In general, some things about it were very obviously WIP, but unlike any other SoaSE TC I've tried (except maybe my own ) it seemed like a new game to me. And that's huge. The things that were unfinished were unfinished but the things that were worked on really felt solid - the ships, most of the research, weapon effects, sounds, etc. I'd say once there's a little more work done on gameplay mechanics and maybe some easy decorations like impulse exhaust, it'll be top-notch. Good work, and if I get the time I'll be sending some contributions and bugfixes your way come the rebuild release.

Someone hit it on the nail. Real life has taken over for a bit. I got commitments, and job interviews, and i need to make money so i can survive, have a roof over my head, and electricity so i can make this mod   Plus we are down to 2 guys working on this, and I havent heard from the 2nd guy. The mod re-build so far has been almost a solo effort, because some on the team think it isnt worth rebuilding. I cant say i blame them since this happens almost with every new sins patch. I am expecting more of the same with Diplomacy (and its related patches). Harpo made a valiant effort with his converter tools, but they didnt work for 0.3e.101. We were getting dynamic vector errors. Which means there are file headers that sins cant read, and of course the dev.exe wont tell us which of the thousands of file's it is. So i nuked the whole dev build of the mod from orbit, and started over. Just because we dont post anything in a while doesnt mean we arent doing anything. Old saying... shit happens

To the good, bad, and ugly post. Understand we are just a couple amatuers. With jobs (at least i hope i get one soon), and familys working on this project. We do this on what little free time we got. We dont know how to code, and we "barely" know what makes sins tick. (which is why 0.3e was scrapped). I joked around with shimmer that with as much as we did to make this mod work we "should" make our own game. I shiver every time someone compares this to armada, or even worse Legacy/ST:Online. I went out of my way recently to play armada/armada II, and remind myself of every reason why i hate it so much.

The weapons are what they are. Thanks to the sins hard codes. I stated that in the readme. The hardpoints like on the constitution are in the correct locations. However the weapon effects themselves fire way off from the hardpoints (still working on finding out why), and some fire through the ships own hull, because of the lack of firing arc control (hardcoded in sins). We knew of this from day one, and there is nothing that can be done about it.

Turn off team colors. and turn off Ship Mesh Highlight filtering (went over this on the readme too).  We fixed the team color issue in the new build, but the ship mesh highlight filter we havent had time to figure out how to make it work with mod ships yet.

The 0.3e series is a disaster as far as i am concerned. Too many problems converting to entrenchment arose on top of the issues the patches caused. Of course the patches came before we had a chance to fix the original problems.

Part of the the 0.3e builds problems are because it uses older regular sins files in an entrenchment mod (fixed in new build).

It loaded vanilla tech, phase, and psi factions on top of the mod factions (fixed in new build)

It had many old, redundant, and unused files leftover from previous builds (removed all that is not used).

This all came to light when we just recently found out about the mesh, and texture hardcode limits. All i was thinking was "no wonder it doesnt work". The new build is now focused on replacing vanilla files instead of adding on to them. Plus the new build uses nothing but 1.041 reference files. Before you needed to have vanilla files in the mod folder for the mod to run. Not the case now. So only modded files are in the mod folder. which reduces download size, and the chance for more stuff to break.

I am at a standstill right now because of the researches, and abilities. Plus i decided that all four original 0.03c factions should be back in the mod. The Feds Klinks, and Romulans are in. They just need thier research, and abilities done. I am not releasing until the Dominion are back in, and working right. The borg can wait, because they arent supposed to jump into the war until later anyway

Ahh man, I understand your possition. Just want to say thanks again for your hard work and not giving up on the mod. You are the man!

Looking forward to playing the new build. Sounds like its going to be great!  

You know I am in!!!  Got some questions hit me up on msn  btw congrads !!!   

HELL NO!  I am logistics. The monkey that moves crap around. Least i wont have to deal with whiny customers lol. Just hope at my old age i can still move crap around lol.

Team meeting tommorow on MSN....errrr tell em Megatron....DOOO AS I COMMANNND!!!

Stress add the dominion so i can get started foundation works!

Yeah, you're right - I thought I remembered it in DS9 or at least in the SFC series, but even then it's probably just cinematic flair and doesn't work as well when it's not a visual indicator of speed (although I imagine a flat glow effect as "exhaust" might work) After cracking open the data map it does appear the deflector and the impulse engines have self-illumination, at least on the Constitution, so I'm not sure why I didn't see them in-game. Perhaps the skybox in that map was too bright or something.

Illuminations are there trust me. I do see what you are saying. Some maps are very bright with the backgrounds, and they wash out the engine glows. I was thinking of making homeworld style engine glows, Like we did with SoA 1, but the way the hardpoints are in sins only a few ships would benefit from it. Most of the impulse engines sit at wierd angles on the ships, and you cant "adjust" angles on hardpoints to compensate. There are only 4 directions a point can face that sins will read without giving you an error. front, left, right, and back with no in between. Belive me if it could be done it would already have been done.

Do you have the detail maps in your options set too low? I know when i set mine at low much of the data textures are non existant. I usually run the mod on default settings (minus team color, and ship highlight filter). Though i can run at max settings. I just like the extra fps.

Will add dominion once i get em all in and working on a separate test build.

I've actually seen the so-called impulse exhaust, it only occurs when a ship is heading into warp, the ship moves faster than light so it looks as if theirs an emission from the nacelles.

That one deserves the ...

Well, any job is better than none.  Sorry I missed the meeting, didn't even know about it until now.  I am still on board to help, just name what you want and I will try to be there.