STA3 CTA DEV DIARY 9 news - Star Trek: Armada 3 mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

THE ROMULAN FACTION REVEAL

The Romulan's are one of my favorite races from Star Trek Lore and unlike the Klingons are the first real threat to the growth of the Federation, they are at best described as "suspicious and introverted" but at worst "Deceitful and Racist"

Ideas and concepts

In Star Trek Armada 3 we wanted the Romulan faction to be identifiable with the above traits in a combat orientated game this was difficult so we focused on what we interpreted from the series, we believe their capital ships equal that of the federation and may even contain possibly superior technology due to their singularity cores and cloaking technology. Since we didnt see anything really other than the Romulan scout vessels and the d'deridex all the way up until the release of the Valdore and Scimitar in nemesis we had to assume that Romulans focused on their capital vessels and this helped us because we know you the fans wanted to see these magestic ships in action in a more prominent role.

Mistakes and lessons learned from 0.95 and 1.0

We're not afraid in our dev team from admitting our mistakes and we take all feedback even when we don't necessarily understand or agree with it but with the Romulans we know and i myself as a coding dev identify with the fact that we just did not make the D'Deridex prominent enough and in that sense we performed a grave injustice to the Romulan fleet. In this regard we've focused our efforts on how the Warbird survived the major series it was seen in and utilized upgrades in the form of the refit system. Some may ask why a refit and the simple answer is , it is quite common for ships of the line to be refitted years into their service to keep them running for longer rather than having to replace what essentially is a good shell but needing a new engine.

We achieved the above refit idea buy adding extra weapon banks upon upgrade to encourage players to keep their warbird numbers high and to really ensure that the Romulan faction maintained its uniqueness we also added additional capital vessel slots so the Romulans at endgame can field 22 capital vessels.

Culture identifies the Romulans true nature

The Culture is something often overlooked by players and to their detriment, culture not only increases your income as your allegiance of planets goes upwards it also grants bonuses to your vessels in your culture in the case of the Romulans this focuses around antimatter and this is important because as Romulan players you rely on your abilities on your large capital fleets to progress. More importantly with full upgrades Romulan culture if it reaches an enemy world can allow Romulan players to see exactly what is in the gravity well it reaches through. If that isnt encouragement enough to look at culture then don't forget the station itself as well as Sela as a hero have the ability to spy on enemy planets and setting up multiple arrays although costing logistic slots allows you as a player to sweep arcs or arms of systems ahead of you and with this intelligence data plan attacks or defence which other factions just cant do until its too late.

The downsides

Unfortunately not every race can be the best at everything and the Romulans do have some weaknesses, firstly their cruiser vessels are inferior the other alpha and gamma quadrant factions meaning that they cant last in a fight and are really designed as support vessels for the large capital fleets. Secondly while they do have reasonable fighter and bomber craft they cant match the federation on this front but they do have unique abilities which limit what enemy fighters and bombers can do to you such as jamming weapons using the smaller cruisers.

Playing Romulan Advice

Playing Romulans isn't about brute force like the Klingons and you should not rely on strength of combined arms like the federation, with Romulans as a player its all about planning your attacks wisely using spy's and culture as well as building up a stable and defensible economy with the secret research centres being a must have. Buying ability levels on your capital ships while costly can provide you an edge in combat over other opponents quickly allowing you to gain the upper hand, you must not forget that many large capital vessels can cloak as well and the d'deridex itself can cloak an entire fleet, awfully useful for sneaking past a defensive star base and attacking core worlds of a player who has their own fleet on the other side of their systems however watch out for vessels with active de-cloaking ships especially pulse beacons which can saturate entire gravity wells with Tachyon particles. One final tip if your facing off against the federation be especially afraid of the Nebula class which is capable of deploying advanced Tachyon grids which can even disrupt the scimitars so called "perfect cloak"

Once again, this has been Bane bringing you another STA3 CTA dev diary, hoping to show you even more factions as the mod progresses.