Can anyone remember when we used to be explorers? - Jean Luc Picard
Good to hear Loki.
I'll be checking in periodically. Lemme know if you need any help debugging or testing this weekend. I'll try to keep up-to-date.
cant wait to kick some borg ass
I can't wait to pit the Dominion against the Borg!
Not sure if this has been suggested but for the dominion's jem hadar fighter why not give them the ability to suicide
Yeah. That would be pretty cool. They could just modify the magnetize ability, so that it targets friendly fighters instead of hostile ones
Yeah I already suggested that to them about the Bug Fighters but as an Anti-Cap ship power (you know like they did against the Oddyssy in that DS9 ep).
Suicidal fighters can be done, but you also must think about how it will effect the overal balance, and how much people will spam the ability. I say do it, but dont make it an instant kill ability. Especially since the jemmy bug is a main frigate for the dominion faction (despite it being in the long range slot), and there will be lots of them on the map. If it had an instant kill suicide ability then it would be game over for anyone who played against them. It would be as simple as transfering the marterdom ability over to the jemmy bug (the B'rel can use that ability as well).
Just checking up on things. I wanted to post the other day, but the forums were being tempermental as always.
I still have unfinished work i need to upload. Ill get to that, but not today. These are hard times for me right now. Wont get into detail, because they are my problems, and mine alone. Once i deal with them i can come back to the project.
Nice Sabre, and Kron models. In fact that Kron is OUTSTANDING! I do hope you plan on replacing the Suq'Jagh with it, because that pile of dung needs to go badly. That is the kind of imagination, and thoughtfulness in artwork is what i wanted to be the standard for the mod. Nice to see others jumping on the bandwagon to help finally. We needed it for a long time. Welcome to the new members. Ill get to know the ones i do not know right now later when i get more free time.
To respond to the one who said why cant you research the sov, or defiant... You can it is tied in with the weapon, and armor research (for the OS version). I made it so you need 5 labs to unlock the sov, and defiant. Click on the ship it should show you what research you need by flashing blue over the pre-req.
Thanks major, that means alot. Being that Jtaylorpcs is helping out with SGI, I am lending a hand with models for SoA2. Here is another I have done, its a rebuild of the Terok Nor model in the model files that I recieved. Just some 'minor' updates to it. Tell me what you all think.
Awesomeness
Will that be for the Cardassians/Dominion, or for the Federation?
Guessing for the Dominion, as it's always been a Cardie space station.
But looks brill, really like the screenshots of all your work for SGI which you've released over the past year or so, and glad to see the skill coming over to SoA2 . On behalf of all us who love to play, thanks!
That station will be for the Dominion.
Cool. Righto
Looks good. Whats the poly count? One thing you need to know is i tried to match, or better the poly counts, and texture resolutions of existing vanilla ships. Stations can go up to 7000 tri's, but i think the texture res's are 1024 (ill need to double check). Cap ships can be 4000 tri's (give or take a few hundred), and have 2048 res textures. Frigates and Cruisers are in the 2000 range with 1024 textures. We made some exceptions with a couple ships, but most meet, or are less than that standard in both poly, and res. The Vanilla Starbases are the only models that are over 10000 tri's, and have a ridiculous 4096 texture res. Which IMO is too much for a game like this. The current fed starbase belive it, or not is in the 4000 range (including its interior section), and has a 2048 sheet. The Klingon base is 7k, but when i inspected the model i see many wasted tri's. It can easily be broght down to the 4k range with no loss in detail at all.
Nor station is a Cardassian station. It is slotted as the trade port for the Dominion. Which means it will be unarmed. I forgot the name of the Cardassian shipyard station. I was going to use that as the starbase, but i think the Dominion Starbase should be Dominion. Not Cardassian. In the mod the Cardassians are slaves, and battle thralls. So the Dominion more than likely would have destroyed any heavily armed Cardassian starbase. The Cardassian military was no match for the Dominion even at its peak.The orbital shipyard bases should be exactly that.. Shipyards.
They will use those nasty orbital weapon platforms (without the central asteroid base). Since those were made with Dominion help.
Another thing is the Cardassians need a "mutiny" ability to switch sides depending on certain situations (like being heavily outnumbered). They dont want to fight for the dominion. So they seek any opertunity to escape.
I dunno, that would be pretty hard to code and may be less than useful for the guy who gets the ships.
The only appropriate link I can think of is whatever in the AI makes it turn tail when it's outnumbered, but alas, I have no idea where the AI actually resides (I've tried and failed before - I think it's burried in the actual program and thus inaccessible). Any other info would be welcome, if anyone knows. I already knw about the gameplay constants file, but it only specifies the AI's priorities.
The other problem is, who wants the Cardassians? I can only imagine the fury if you're about to build a new Sovereign Class and all of a sudden you pick up a dozen Cardassian ships, which blows your supply through the roof. Scuttling would be little comfort if your planets are getting bombed.
Now a mutiny spell that may be useful is if you could do something to trigger Cardassian "uprisings" on select worlds, perhaps similar to the TEC uprising ability. However, I would prefer it if the spell simply halved the planet's population and gave it to the opposing team vice just damaging the blasted planet. Make it such that it can happen if your culture touches, say, a Dominion Players planets of a specific type (only volcanic, say) and it may be fun. Sounds like a lot of work just thinking about it though.
Yeah, that kind of mutiny is a no go outside of a hack for the game. At best you could have an ability that was set to autocast and made them switch sides based on damage condition, but that would just be turned off autocast by anyone with a brain. If the Dominion are set up as psi, then it should be possible to have something that only hit them, you could use the IsPsi constraint. It would mean whatever ability you called was worthless when they weren't available though.
You could manipulate a rebellion style ability to great effect though. If the Cardassians were significantly tougher than the other sides counterparts comprising the type being called, Dominion rebellions could be significantly more dangerous, and all Cardassian. Both Romulans and Klingons also have a history of rebellious problems, so it might look pretty good as a Fed ability. You could even justify the Borg based on captured drones being individualized and sent back.
Deleted, bloody forum hates me.
please test out the borg frigates, vs other ships they have temporary stats but hopfully you can see what i am aiming for + read the borg to do list it tells you what i am aiming for with the amount of ships + costs etc
The poly count is just over 9,000 right now. I was going off the fact that in the model files it says Card_Starbase, so I was going off information provided by JTaylorpcs. He said that Starbases could be up to 10,000 so that being the case, I set that as my limit.
IMO, and I dont mean to step on any toes here, but when the Dominion were allied with Cardassia, they didnt have access to their stations or technology from the Gamma Quadrant, so they were using the Cardassian Stations that were already constructed. Please feel free to contradict me, I am just giving an opinion.
Ok to clear a few things up about the stations . Yes Terok Nor Will be a trade station eventually. It may serve as a starbase until the model for the dominion starbase is completed. " cant stand the stock psi" Also yes , Stress got the ref pics and remember our conversations about were the dominion is headed starbase wise. Think you are gonna love the way the finished dominion starbase will look and the hutet aswell . Sorry about not being clear Eomega , probably one of those nights i was up all night modding.
Yea you may want to lower the poly count to around 5k give or take (if possible). You dont need to mesh in every tiny detail. Bump maps will take care of that. Consider what a performance hit 100 9000+ tri stations will do. On top all of all the other meshes on the map. You will see why i say less is more there. Equal to, or less than the ship/structure that it is replacing. The only exceptions are if we know there are not going to be many of that particular mesh on the map. Then we can go higher in tri's.
If this were a game like Eve online, or a ST online where the focus is in the 3rd person, and on the individual ships themselves, and there were not hundreds of meshes on the map then i would say use it, because that is a damn good looking mesh. Pity sins doesnt use lod meshes.
Dominion may have taken over some stations. However if the Cardassians are fast becoming the minority species (soon to be extinct). Do you think the Jem Hadar will perform better in a cardie station or a Dominion designed battle station? Its not a question of preference, because the jemmys, and vorta do what the founders command. Its a question of pure efficiency. Right now they mix cardie, and jemmy tech because that is what is most efficient right now.
Actually, the largest drain on memory is the textures. One station at 9,000 polygons isn't going to make much of a difference, especially once the mesh file is converted back to .bin format. If someone does have trouble on an older machine, they can simply turn down the detailing from the UI screen.
Speaking of, I'd say the detailing on the nor station is pretty economical as it is, and the overall impact is immeasurably better than the one that was in the folder. This is just my personal preference, of course, but I'm not just interested in huge space battles. I like to zoom in and take in all of the amazing work that these modelers put into their ships/structures. Seeing a bunch of straight edges on something that's supposed to be circular just kills it for me. As I said, just my own opinion.
I've gotta agree with Stress on the issue of Cadie vs Dominion stations. Keep in mind, this is not the Dominion War. To me, it's seems much more like a galactic war (Feds, Klinks, Rommies are against each other too)
In this story, the Dominion has complete and stable control of the wormhole. In the Dominion War, they did not, and the Cardassian industry was vital to the war effort. Being cut off from their own industrial base, they had to rely on Cardassion manufacturing (and loyalty, look how that turned out!).
Now, they have unfettered access to the Dominion home sectors and their preestablished industrial juggernaut. They simply have no need for Cardassian technology. The only reason they even have Cardassian ships on the fronts is as a punishment. For their betrayal, they've been enslaved, and they're used as cannon fodder. No purpose aside from taking punishment and dying (hopefully giving out some hits too)
Besides, the Nor type stations were ore refineries and troop garrisons. They weren't meant to be defensive structures. DS9 was only modified for that role out of necessity. I suppose, if you wanted to be super super canon, the case could be made that it would be more accurate for Nors to fill the Ore Processor (or whatever) slot. Although it would kind of be a shame to see such a well known, well designed station have such a relatively unimportant role
Just my .02. Sorry if I rambled. First day of the semester is tomorrow (back to Russian!). It's late and I should be asleep, but I'm watching DS9 season 6
I had forgot how much they delved into that aspect of the station in the mirror universe for DS9 (been more than a decade since I have seen a good DS9 episode anyways), so I think you are on to something there cperceful.
Is it wrong that I shed a single tear at hearing that the are going to be out by the end of Jan?
It'll be the perfect end to a horrible stretch of A level exams.
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