A Call to Arms - Developer Diary 1 news

Hi Folks,

My name's Bane and as one of the lead developers for Star Trek Armada 3: A Call to Arms i thought it was about time we gave you an update on some of the areas we have been working on! Were going to start off with our upcoming changes to the culture system and show off some new abilities that are currently being worked on.

In Sins, culture has an impact that some players rarely realise, it chiefly and most importantly affects the allegiance of your planets the further away from your capital world you go which in turn can affect your trade income etc and in addition can be used as a weapon, some call it "propaganda" or "PR" whichever term you prefer to wield!

As a weapon if enemy culture is not being stopped by your own and held in check you can be overwhelmed to the point that it can cause your planet to eventually drop to 0 allegiance and cause a rebellion and we thought that was great but truth be told most players tend to build these facilities around their territory and forget about them, we wanted to make these buildings even more tactically important as well as strategically placed.

Faction Concepts:

To go along with the idea of making the stations more useful to players we invested back in to the identity of the races inside the game and their cultural canon traits and we felt that each comm array should play to the strength where possible of each faction, after all communication is usually what everyone says needs to be better

Federation Concept: Tactical Intelligence - The Feds struck us as honourable and understanding, made up of multi faceted planetary culture systems working together for a better life, in this ideal we felt that the federation would employ early warning systems and have a very organised and controlled communication policy, the federation are able to slow incoming attackers using a special activate-able ability and ships within their culture will receive intelligence from the control rooms at Starfleet Command (Seen in various movies and shows) in real terms this gives the federation a shield recharge rate bonus across their culture.

Klingon Concept: Battle Ready - The Klinks have always been about the need for a glorious death and dieing with honour and because in this time frame they have the chance to engage in most glorious combat we felt that following their unique mindset with the combat of speed and raiding squadrons (see deep space nine) we decided to give their station the activate-able ability that increases their speed in the localised area to the propaganda station essentially meaning they can get out to the combat zone quicker, in addition we added a rate of fire and damage bonus to the Klingon's when they raid territory that is not connected to their culture, this encourages you the player to keep that Klingon fleet moving, this race is not meant for turtleing that's for sure!

Romulan Concept: Spy Networks - The Romulan's employ large spy networks to monitor there enemies it is embedded into romulan culture and to follow the old adage "information is everything" and to quote another famous saying " for want of a nail the horseshoe was lost, for want of a horseshoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse the message was not delivered and for want of a message not delivered the war was lost" We gave the Romulan's an activate-able ability that allows romulan culture stations to spy on planets adjacent to them by phase lane. Finally as we believe the romulans are about stealth, heavy capital ships and science based cruisers we wanted to give their culture antimatter boosts when they are in their culture to ensure you keep pumping out those devastating Romulan abilities (I'm very sorry if I ever thalaron pulsed your fleet)

Borg Concept: Regeneration and Adaptation - The Borg, well another dev diary will reveal how we have overhauled this faction, but for now lets just say we gave a tease in a recent screenshot, First Contacted up with new models (Thanks to Maxloef) we are excited to give the Borg a passive culture boost to their hull regeneration this chimes with their culture in that the collective would work together to organise drones and ships to repair others to get them back out to continue their mission of bringing peace to the galaxy (through assimilation) We have finally added the "We are the Borg" ability to their culture stations because we love that sound effect and I don't know about you guys but it still gives me shivers! this ability has multiple effects to numerous to mention here but it sends a clear message to the collectives enemies over the comms channels, Do you really want to invade us?

This is only the first of many changes to come so watch out for more dev episodes coming soon where we go over the changes to planetary systems, artifact's, the borg, and finally not forgetting the long awaited Cardassian/Dominion factions.

I'd like to take the time to also welcome two new junior dev team members who have recently joined us AceXMachine and Draconis both have already been invaluable in assisting both myself and the other lead developers with the expansion and i hope to have them open up about their love for all things Trek on an interview soon!

For now keep on trekkin! and we will see you out there in the galaxy!