Comments - dukeW

Indeed, but it creates imbalance. E.g. Klingon AIs will still keep capturing them rapidly because the Klingon AI knows it should do it and HOW. Federation AI will try too, but will fail and just waste effort (fleet capacity, resources to build colony ships, etc.) in an futile attempt.

That means that e.g. in multiplayer game with 2 players and more NPCs, the player who has Federation AI as his neighbor will be at advantage as he will have easier time keeping control over neutral extractors.

Is it really impossible to teach the Federation AI about the need to use different ship for this task?

Putting the "away team" feature to special ships was an interesting idea, but you forgot to tell the Federation AI (and possibly other AIs too) about it. I just played a game, where Federation AI parked couple of colony ships in the well with 4 neutral resource asteroids (of which 1 was already captured by them, probably because their Curry ship randomly passed by earlier).

So I suggest either teaching the AI about this, or if that is not possible putting "away team" feature also on colony ships to not cripple the AI.

I've noticed those special event ships (probe, doomsday, unimatrix-0-cube) share the faction so they are not aggressive to each other. Shouldn't that be changed too? At least it could solve the problem with sun gravity wells being overcrowded by these later... (if they kill each other eventually).

I was playing for Federation, but the uprising happened on my Romulan ally's world while he was under attack by the Borg. So if it's faction specific, it's probably related to Romulans.

My game crashes during the partisan uprising when the allegiance of one planet (belonging to my Romulan ally) goes to 0%. I have a savefile 1 minute before the crash if you are interested.

This is probably situational, because in at least one of my games, the Klingon AI got quite dominant in the early game (played against all factions as Cardassian Union). Basically his fleet steam-rolled mine (which wasn't maxed at the time), and I had to rebuild to eventually conquer him. They even built outposts (not sure if the stronger ones though). On the other hand, the 2 Federation factions in the same game didn't build a single starbase and became thus easy target for the nearby Borg and one of them nearly got wiped out before I could show the Borgs their place (eventually my Romulan AI ally finished them off anyway though). I've seen one Excalibur class dreadnaught built by this defending Fed AI though, so at least they are capable of using dreadnaughts. Still the inability of Fed AI to build starbases must be one of the biggest issues of current version.

That's good news. Any plans to apply the fix also to STA3?
Btw, is it just fix of the provided maps or is it something more?

Just a small bugreport:

The large type L marginal planet's 3rd industrial upgrade gives no bonus at all (only tiny reduction of max population).

Isn't that tiny bonus there just for the AI to make the upgrade attractive enough for it?

Let me give you some feedback after playing several single player games.

Most serious issues I've encountered:
- Federation AI still doesn't build starbases.
- Borg AI unicomplex builders often fail to find suitable spot for unicomplex and head far beyond the limits of the gravity well. This has unfortunate consequences if another AI decides to target those distant builders as it causes often massive fleets to remain out of game for great amount of time.
- Diplomacy logic seems to be quite inconsistent for different factions. Not sure if it's by design, but it's weird. (some factions require reciprocal pacts, some not, etc.)

Just had issue in a game playing the Anvil System map. For some reason a borg unicomplex constructor headed beyond the limits of its gravity well and that later caused half a fleet of my Klingon ally to pursue it and effectively remain out for the rest of the game. :-)

Sometimes similar problem happens when ships with strikecraft-like movements pursue other ships with same speed, but in this case the cause was apparently different (as the unicomplex constructor wasn't pursuing anyone and no ships were near it when it decided to go on its journey to middle of nowhere).

@Gul-Dukat Did you manage to reproduce that excelsior bug?

Cardassian envoy's effect on a planet has undefined string.
It gives temporary invulnerability and some other effect that appears as:
String not found: 100%

Icon and text for Ferengi tradeport is incorrect (shows stock icon with Phoenix's warp core text).

Thanks for the new stuff!

However I feel obliged to remind you that the bug of excelsiors introduced in 1.2 (year ago) and reported on may 2015 is still present in 1.5.6 despite my repeated attempts to draw your attention to it.

I.e. currently the excelsiors mess with defensive trait of their target while they were meant to mess with offensive trait of their target.

Don't get me wrong. Overhaul of planetary system is great thing and I am happy you are working on it, but I'd be even happier if I was able to play your mod even with the old planetary sytstem while you do all the great work. Unfortunately, broken AI makes it kinda unplayable for me as I only play against AI.

AI will probably get a look? Probably?? I actually stopped playing your mod since the AI got broken and am eagerly waiting for a fix. Would be shame to waste all that work you already invested to this great mod by leaving the AI so bugged.

Any progress with fixing of the AI issues (esp for Federation)?

Is there any chance, the excelsior bug (electronic warfare) will be fixed in 1.4 (I've bug-reported it when you released 1.2)?
Also diplomacy requirements while no longer inaccessible still seem inconsistent (requirements logic differs for various factions substantially). It would be nice to make it consistent (if it is possible).

[Note: I am able to fix the first bug myself, but the naming conventions in pact related entities are so confusing, I do not even dare to try fixing those...]

Update:
I was later able to unlock the remaining techs by receiving the correct pact with Romulans and Cardassians respectively (for Romulans it was even correctly named "The Treaty of Iconia", but for Cardassians there is mismatch in strings with "The Winged Serpent" shown in requirements vs "The Treaty of M'Char" which is actually required).

I still don't understand few things though.

1. Why is the system different for Federation and Klingons? Federation can reach all the research when allying with just a single ally (tested on Cardassians), but Klingons can unlock only the first bonus of each branch by allying with anyone, but need concrete ally and concrete pact to unlock the remaining techs. (I assume similar discrepancies are there even for other factions, but didn't get to test these yet.)

2. Why does the mod ever provide possibilities to make pacts that unlock research other than that of the relevant faction? Why do e.g. Feds making pacts with Romulans unlock Cardassian and Klingon research (this applies even to Klingons, but only for the first tech of the 3 of each branch)?

3. Why do Klingons have option to make pacts that bring them nothing but loss in diplomacy rating with most of the opponents? (player will simply avoid making such pacts, but computer will automatically go for it and only hurt itself strategically like that).

And btw, I also have to report a crash (other than LAA related), but I wasn't able to reproduce it, so have no idea what it is related to.

Some feedback regarding diplomacy:

As Federation I was able to get all diplomacy related research simply by making all pacts with single Cardassian ally.

As Klingon I was able to get all Federation and Klingon diplomacy research by making all pacts with single Federation ally, but only first techs from the Cardassian and Romulan diplomacy research got unlocked (requirements "The Winged Serpent" and "The Treaty of Iconia" for further techs remained unobtainable).

I guess your homeworld was very close to the system's star as that's where these always appear. Systems close to the star tend to be visited quite often by these threats.

What I see as somewhat problematic is that all these random threats cooperate with each other. Just played a game where the
borg cube, bioships and doomsday machine met at the same gravity well and didn't attack each other. I think they should be aggressive to each other.

Thanks for clarification, that rationale indeed makes sense. But unfortunately you didn't achieve what you wanted, because what it currently does is that excelsiors reduce their target's ability to reduce damage by 25% (make targets more vulnerable) and therefore get obliterated just as fast as without this bonus (only taunted enemy is easier to get obliterated at the same time). I've already pointed this out earlier on forum (https://www.moddb.com/mods/star-trek-armada-3/forum/thread/excelsiors-in-12), but it seems it got forgotten.

Can someone explain the rationale behind 25% damage reduction of excelsiors' electronic warfare ability please?

Technically it is possible to send an envoy even as Borg if they assimilate an enemy envoy ship first. Question is if that should be possible.

When can we expect the CTA 1.2.2 with fixed bugs in diplomacy? Thank you.

Is it just me, or are first two abilities of Gul Madred completely useless (first doesn't do anything and 2nd makes enemy invulnerable)?

Ok, you have actually made me to dig into the entity files a bit, and I've managed to find this in Vanilla Sins entity file for Cielo's TEC command cruiser ability (designate target), which has this entity modifier definition on target:

entityModifier
buffEntityModifierType "DamageAsDamageTarget"
value
Level:0 0.400000
Level:1 0.000000
Level:2 0.000000
Level:3 0.000000

As you see, it's technically the same effect as the one you applied to excelsiors.

Citing from Sins wiki for this ability: "Paints a target's weak points with targeting lasers, allowing friendly units to deal increased damage against it."

If I understand you (and others) right though, I am under impression that it was the target's offense that was supposed to be crippled, and not their defense, as it is now.

Are you sure about that? Because property that determines ships' targetting is not called "damage reduction", but "chance to hit". In Vanilla Sins, it's used by Akkan cap (via ability "targeting uplink"), although in a bit different way. "Damage reduction" is however used by Ankylon titan (via ability "group shield") where it is used to beef up the Ankylon itself and surrounding vessels by *reducing* all the damage they suffer from.

As I understand it, "damage reduction" actually means "absorbtion" in Sins. So when excelsiors cast -25% of it on enemy ships, it probably lowers their damage absorbtion rather than their offensive power.

If the design was to reduce target's offensive power by 25% then it would indeed make sense. But if that is the case and I am right, it needs be changed from "damage reduction" (on target) to "chance to hit" (on target).

Bane, I think you are trying to explain why excelsiors should draw attention of enemies on themselves. You don't need to do that as I understand that part of the design. What I don't understand is the -25% damage reduction as an offensive ability of excelsior (they can currently affect e.g. borg queen's cap with this -25%) effectively making it die 25% faster. Sadly you didn't provide any arguments, why excelsiors should have such a powerful offensive ability. I also explained that those 2 effects of this ability kind of go against each other (make little sense), to which you didn't react as well.

So who is right? Bane or Ambarenya?

-25% damage reduction on target for that long is freaking powerful effect for non-capital ship (very effective e.g. vs Borg)

And also from point of view of "realism". If you managed to develop a vessel with this powerful ability, you would definitely want to keep it alive for as long as possible in battles, hence the last thing you would want to do would be adding the ability that forces enemies to target these vessels. It would just be utterly stupid, don't you think? On the other hand it would make perfect sense in case Ambarenya is right (to boost excelsiors defense along with luring those attackers on it).