Star Trek: Armada III begins with the first stirrings of the Dominion War and allows players to take command of five unique factions, the United Federation of Planets, the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Star Empire, the Cardassian Union/Dominion Alliance, and the Borg Collective. Explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly go where no one has gone before.
Launched soon after the K'tinga, the Val'kon light cruiser was designed as a smaller, more economical attack cruiser, which unfortunately never enjoyed the fame and reverence heaped upon its larger cousin. The overlooking of the Val'kon is one of the most unfortunate injustices in the history of the Klingon fleet, as the Val'kon, like the K'tinga, has had long, storied and successful career in service to the Klingon cause, and continues to serve to this day after nearly a century.
The Val'kon began its career as a lighter compliment to the K'tinga, but was quickly discovered to have the speed, manoeuvrability and firepower necessary to support the resurgence of the Klingon Bird of Prey, which by the 2280s finally began to return to prominence after decades of absence. The Val'kon was often seen accompanying the new B'rel in daring raids against Federation outposts, providing heavy fire support and reeking havoc along the border when tensions between the two powers were at their highest.
After the destruction of Praxis and the ensuing treaty between the Empire and the Federation, the Val'kon took on a patrol and semi-exploratory role, defending the Empire's borders and acting as a vanguard as the Empire moved into new territories. When the ceasefire between the Klingons and the Romulans was dissolved in the 2340s when the Romulans began striking Klingon colonies, the Val'kon was at the forefront of the Klingon response, defending the Empire and launching counter-raids into Romulan territory.
As time has gone by the Val'kon has been largely eclipsed by newer designs, and today has been relegated to the role of a frigate. Given the emergence of small strike craft as a credible threat, the Val'kon has been repurposed with a number of fast-tracking rapid fire disruptor turrets, effectively transforming it into the Empire's primary 'flak frigate'. Few ships can match the Val'kon when it comes to anti-fighter support, and enemy pilots who get too close seldom return.
Have you fixed shard planets starbase bug? Can't build it there.
That's not a bug. It's quite deliberate.
What is the logic of that?
Why not to prohibit building starbases in badlands or metreon nebulas? Shattered planets no different from asteroid fields, so technically it should be possible. You see, there are trading stations, turrets and research labs, but no starbases to protect them. Starbase is a key element of any planetary defense.
I'd wanted there was a perfect balance decision to avoid starbase planting, but there is none. Unless you play a gentlemen party.
The logic is that the debris surrounding shattered moons is dense and moving erratically. Also it's something that sets these planets apart and makes players have to think about their defensive tactics.
Absence of starbase obliges players to watch such systems, not to think about defensive tactics.
It's casual!
You don't need a starbase to engage in defensive tactics.
Yeah, and I don't need a gun to rob you, if I have a decent banana in my jacket. But it's a rare battle, when we actually can afford to divide fleets. Prohibiting starbases is like: "Let we just close our eyes on situations, when map is big, borders are vast and multiple AIs desperately seeking your attention".
In fact, the only thing you achieve by this is forcing experienced players to take different planets, either ignoring shattered planetoids or leaving them behind. Fleets on local engagement range, standing near defensive platforms is not a viable defensive tactics, by the way.
Less experienced player could could find joy in flying from system to system like drunken butterfly for hours, until something changes by their actions or divine intervention. Such a waste of resources.
But, despite all of your sarcasm, you still haven't addressed the fact that this is a highly dense asteroid and planetary remnant field with chaotic debris flying around. The whole point of this type of well is that it presents challenges when trying to establish a large base. That is literally the definition of this type of planet. Good for mining ops, bad for large scale military development.
So, let me ask you this, Battlemage: under your version of STA3, would all of your planets be the same? Because that seems like what you are arguing for. Planets have differences because it makes tactical and strategic gameplay interesting, and also makes for a more believable and diverse game universe. Having a totally predictable game is not fun, kills immersion, and defeats the purpose of playing. You play because you want a challenge to overcome. You're supposed to be presented with said challenge and deal with it. That's how life works, and often, how games work too. STA3 should make you THINK, not fly on autopilot.
Under my version badlands, metreon nebulas and stars won't be able to harbor a starbase. But all other types of gravity wells certainly will, as there is plenty of free space even in shattered planetoid gravity well.
And please, don't mix planetary traits and differences here. It's not even about that needless deliberate inconvenience we're discussing. Rapid multi-system assault or dire defense, combined with struggling for resources and fending off rogue cubes and pirates is what I call challennge. Running from planetoid to planetoid is not a challenge, because I rather send to waste my entire fleet just to take a better place for implementing my defensive tactics, with Akira/Stargazer/Defiant task force, repair yards, hangars, torpedo platforms and starbase to absorb ridiculous amounts of damage from eternally overbuffed romulans.
I know your mod better than you thing and win more often than you guess, so I believe I have a good ground to say: good challenge comes from a good map and adequate balance. Not from idea of colonizable, but practically unprotectable systems.
To save you some time and rid myself from dispute in foreign language, let me just say that Sins and STA3 in particular is not about thinking. It's about fleet compositions and micro-management. Player must and will THINK about that, not about "defensive tactics" for one misbegotten asteroid.
I'm more than willing to give you a tutorial on file editing should you like to make a sub-mod to address the issues you believe need changing. We'll even host it happily for you as an addon. You can start with this:
Thank you for your proposal and advice.
First I'll look into TFF. Then we'll see about this small addon.
This is an excellent tutorial although I'm sad to see you haven't made any more, I'm quite ignorant when it comes to modifying games so this was quite an enlightening video.
Casual? Wouldn't plopping a Starbase be casual because you don't need to think about it much?