Loyal People of Cardassia, you've been waiting a long time for the latest release of A Call To Arms but here it is! As soon as it's been authorised it'll be here and ready for you to download.
We're proud of the work that our team has put into this release, especially Ambarenya who has thrown himself into the little details that we may have missed in the past. Many of the changes are small ones, sometimes beneath the notice of many but Ambarenya, like the Borg has been striving for perfection with this release.
With hundreds, if not thousands of description changes, many new images and fixes to better represent the Star Trek universe we have also been able to Eliminate the dreaded AI tick that some of you with slower CPU's were experiencing. You will still experience lag in multiplayer as this is unavoidable in sins, but I'm sure you'll find that your single player matches are much improved now.
Max has been pottering away and I'm sure you'll appreciate the new Wolf359 vessels and the Excelsior and Lacota refit variant that are now in the mod. The work won't stop there though. Max has expressed a desire to re-model some of the other ships that don't quite meet his approval, such as the Miranda. We'll keep you updated on this and will probably release this as an add-on in the future once he's completed his work.
As always there will be questions. Why won't the mod work? Why are all the textures bugged? I've made a short install video that might help with this so please give it a look and see if installing the mod and it's attendant LAA helps. If you're still in trouble, let us know and we'll do everything we can to help!
Here's a basin changelog that details the most major changes.
CHANGELOG v1.2---------------------------------------
AI stuttering issue resolved + many optimization improvements.
- Wolf 359 fleet (Third Fleet Reinforcements) updated with new models and textures.
- Updated Excelsior and Excelsior refit models.
- Added additional and varied phaser sound effects for increased immersion in combat.
- Added new "Group Siege Mode" to all bombardment cruisers for user intuitiveness.
- Updated all Federation, Klingon, Romulan, and Cardassian/Dominion factions with new portraits
- there are 16 varied portraits to choose from for each faction.- Reworked the ailing diplomacy system - new diplomacy effects, diplomacy research now requires "treaties" from corresponding factions to be exchanged to unlock.
- Touched up the star textures to make them look better both with and without Bloom enabled.
- Added and revised loading screen quotes for a grand total of 175.
- Revised and edited all Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Borg, and Cardassian-Dominion faction strings.
- Revised and enhanced default capital ship name list, adding 20 new ship names for a total of 50 default ship names per faction.
- Revised and enhanced default faction name list for a total of 12 AI names per faction.
- Maximized the star name list with 50 additional names, for a total of 450 star names (from both real astronomy and Trek lore).
- Maximized the planet name list with 50 additional names, for a total of 450 planet names.
- Reworked the Excalibur's voice files to make them a bit louder and say the phrases that were intended.
- Fixed an issue where player names and icons were not showing up in top left corner of Cardassian UI.
- Added buttons for all nebula and star effects.
- Reworked and edited all planetary bonus strings.
- Reworked and edited all artifact strings.
- Silenced the annoying sound that played when using holofleets.
- Fixed an issue where Cardassian Breen vessels were being spawned at neutral planets.
- Fixed some of the positioning of player symbols in UI.
- Fixed a large number of ship icons and infocard buttons that were either incorrect or missing.- Reworked a number of warp-in abilities to be more realistic: you will always get a fleet, but the fleets will be of somewhat variable size and composition. Fleets also correspond to their in-universe role, for example, Picard will get a fleet of ships that resemble those from Battlegroup Omega/Battle of Sector 001, while the Third Fleet Support will warp in Wolf359 ships.
- Slight buff to the firepower of the Breen Gor Taan Battlecruiser to differentiate it from the Tresh Ghar Destroyer (for some reason, both put out the same amount of damage before this fix).
- Slight buff to Romulan Harpy and Heavy Defender durability.
- Slight buff to Akira's Chain Reaction Pulsar range.
- Slight adjustment to Cardassian Species 8472 call-in ability/ships.
- Slight buff to Cardassian hero durability.- Slight buff to Seven of Nine's hull regen.
- Slightly tweaked the Neutral Faction symbol color to be more immersive.
- Slight nerf to Myotronic beam cooldown time.
- Fixed a small issue with the Hutet's firing arcs.
- The pesky dilithium crystal symbol has thankfully been exterminated from end game summary.
- Some minor Window/HUD fixes.
- Other small fixes.
This is not going to be hugely easy for those updating their addons (I'm sorry guys) as so many files have had changes to them. I'd say about 40% of the files that we have have been changed in some way. Gulp.
Congrats guys! ;)
Thank you for all of your hard work. Best ever star trek mod, really brings the star trek universe to life.
awsome, magnificent, unbeliveble...
i love it!
spent about an hour digging through the files, ok so what are the C_Station_Domfrig and C_Station_Cardfrig? cant figure out a way to spawn or build them. it looks like there are several description strings for them to summon certain ships too. this is of interest, because "This station allows you to call in vessels for the Dominion Alliance that you can't build in the traditional manner."
the cardi archon carrier capital ship is still firing side and aft beams from the center of the model, and not from any of the usual hardpoint locations cardi ships tend to fire from.
Images.akamai.steamusercontent.com
Images.akamai.steamusercontent.com
Images.akamai.steamusercontent.com
cardi faction ships also lose like 50% of their antimatter every time they go to warp, the only faction that has that problem. huge disadvantage, especially for scouts capturing resources.
was the lokota model not included in the release? in the dev mode-ing ive been doing, only the standard excelsior is shown post refit research. not complaining about that, the b type excelsior was the acceptation look, not the rule look. it might be beter used as a hero unit.
It really should be......hmmmm
seems others have gotten the lakota to show up, i blame dev mode weirdness.
freedom class phaser bug
DamagePerBank:FRONT 55.000000
DamagePerBank:BACK 55.000000
DamagePerBank:LEFT 0.000000
DamagePerBank:RIGHT 0.000000
with
TargetCountPerBank:FRONT 1
TargetCountPerBank:BACK 0
TargetCountPerBank:LEFT 1
TargetCountPerBank:RIGHT 1
when fixed it will actually fire from aft hardpoints
will fix that thank you :)
Love this mod, downloading the new version right now - on a side note, Ambarenya you're one of my favorite flaired users on /r/AskHistorians!
Glad to hear it!
Also: I have a fan? :3
Adoring fan spotted!
I was wondering if anyone could help me. I have followed the video that was created by dukat on youtube. however when I play the game there are a lot of ships that dont have proper textures they are just bland team colours. Or the game will crash randomly
Techpowerup.com
Go there that's how I fixed it. Basically Sins doesn't let you use more than 2GB of RAM at once, and many mods (and vanilla sins when you want huge games) kinda need more than 2GB, at least from my (limited) understanding.
Should be self-explanatory on how to use it and such just select the application of sins with it in your folder, check the box, save and voila.
I had done that before, but I stupidll ran it from my steam shortcut when I was playing instead of the desktop shortcut
I discovered String Not Found on one of my planets, sadly it gives no bonuses, lol...
Please make a note of which planet type it was.
There should not be any string not founds, so I would implore you to make sure you have a clean install.
Having an awesome match, me the feds against all the other races, cept the borg. Really like the new excelsior model.
Do you guys have any tips for dealing with culture spamming. The ai in every match just totally culture spams me, i research the full culture tech and build as many as i can but i keep losing planets to it. I invaded an asteroid world and found 16 cardassian culture hubs! How do i counter this cardassian media assualt, while always coming under constant assault from pirates
anti structure ship raids! or outposts, they can project strong culture and prevent lose of ownership.
Thanks for the update.
But have the long awaited AI optimisations been implemented?
Had two test games, one on normal versus Cardies, one on hard against Feds and they both didn't do much and in the case of the normal Cardassians anything at all (built their capital ship and then nothing).
Granted, i tried them on my custom maps but they certainly don't have any fancy layouts, are perfectly symmetric and don't even contain wormholes.
In fact both maps had easily colonisable worlds right beside the homeworld, so that should have helped the AI, not forcing them to cease doing stuff.
Do i need to update them via the CTA map editor for the AI being able to function?
I can't really say what the issue is without knowing more information - the AI has been kicking *** in every game I've both played and seen and should work right out of the box. Did you make sure to delete all previous Armada III - CTA installations from your mods folder before you installed 1.2? If you accidentally merged 1.2 with older files, then certain aspects of the game will not work properly.
Yes, i've completely emptied the Mod folder before i applied the new version.
I'd really like to give you more clues, but i'm afraid i don't know where to look for either.
One thing that crossed my mind, i'm usually playing with the Capital Planet victory active. i'll try a few games without it and report back to you.
Phantasmarella, I have been doing some more AI testing, and noticed that Normal AIs seem to be having some issues that were unseen while testing. Hards are a bit sluggish too, and I'm not sure why. I will be actively investigating this issue. In the meantime, I would stick to playing Hard Strategists or Expert AIs (but Experts are a serious challenge at the moment, so be forewarned) for the time being.
Thanks for your efforts.
In normal Sins i'm usually oscillating between hard and expert, because at higher difficulties, with all the economic bonuses the AI is getting, i'm losing the feeling, that the AI plays the same game as me.
So i wanted to test CTA on normal to get a grip on the changes but i'm not having a problem with ramping up a bit.
But there may be players who would appreciate if normal wasn't completely passive at it appears to be at the moment.
What about Galaxy Forge tolls for 1.2? I've seen quite some errors in the 1.1 version, like misplaced/wrong or double planet bonus items.
I would say wait for the Final Frontier add-on (I will be officially announcing it somewhat soon). This will completely overhaul the existing planetary system with new planet types, star types, planetary bonuses, and more. Unfortunately, we didn't really change the existing planetary system in 1.2 since we wanted to focus on things like the AI, diplomacy, and general text/icon polish.
oh like the sound of that
Okay, thank you! I ask, because for most of the time I build the maps myself including placing all players, planets (including bonuses) and even asteroids. Would be very nice, if I could do that at some point again. :)
Has the Flagship Victory game mode been adjusted yet? I took a brief look at it when I downloaded 1.2 and I didn't notice any differences in ship abilities but the hit points might have changed.
I don't recall anyone saying anything about Flagship mode being adjusted. Care to elaborate on what you were expecting?
In the stock Sins game, the Flagships have more hitpoints than the ship model that they use (I think it's base 15% more Hull and Shields). They also have special abilities which allow them to be more survivable in combat: Prevent all damage for a certain time, Increase Firepower, Remove debuffs and increase Engine speed. It makes it so that they don't get their able to survive in combat until the mid to late game, which is good because when they are destroyed you lose the game.
Right now they just the stock ships with the stock abilities that are flagged as the Flagship. I was hoping they would retain those abilities and get back their base hit point increases. Right now they are fairly close to useless for some factions (Federation) and very good for others (Romulans).
Cardassian ship textures dont seem to be working, just showing as solid colours.
uninstalled the whole game, redownloaded and applied latest mod
Downloaded update again from a different mirror and installed as video above.. Cardassian textures look ok but some of the neutral ship shield textures are just coloured squares. after a short time the game crashes.
Sounds like LAA is not applied correctly. Make sure that your sins.exe is not set to "read only" when you apply it.
nope, read only is off.
side note, cant the Borg UI icons have coloured backgrounds like the others? cant see what im clicking.
If you are having blocky textures and crashing 10-15 minutes into the game, some way or another, LAA is not applied properly.
Also, can you specify what you mean regarding the Borg UI?
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Fixed it! no idea why it would make a difference but i had to run the 'Large Address Aware' in 'Mode' > 'Intermediate' for it to take effect.
Thanks for the trouble shooting guys, a good update to as great mod!
----
The comment was for the Borg UI buttons, as all their stuff is black i find it hard to pick the right structures sometimes but not a big problem. other little bits that bug me are the the Heros are set to autocast by default meaning as soon as they are researched they appear at your homeworld which defeats the object of being able to send them to a particular system.
Works just fine for me, not stopping and starting freeze anymore that was constant in 1.1 and forced me back to the first CTA release.
Does the realisticborg addon by draconis still work in 1.2?
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Thanx a L O T for Your "Star Trek Armada 3: 1.2 - A call to arms" Release.
It's only getting better and better for each new release.
And also a 1 0 0 0 Thanks for Your >>“Star Trek Armada 3 Mod” Project in the first place. What You have done so far looks G R E A T.
A wish to a future Version:
- Please also make it possible to upgrade / update Your big Starbase(s) to The Unity Station after you have researched The Unity Station when you play as either The Federation or as The Klingons.
- Please also make it possible to have the Deep Space Nice station as an Outpost when playing as The Federation. Just in Federation Colours instead of Cardassian Colours when playing as The Federation.
Still (in My opinion): You should also create Your own Game-Engine so You are not limited to the Iron Engine of Sins of the Solar Empire.
About this suggestion / proposal by having "The Heroes" as Dreadnouts / Titans would also be a Great thing to have.
Anyway: Please keep up A L L your good work at Your >>“Star Trek Armada 3 Mod” Project in the future.
The mod crashes on me after about 15 minutes of play... any idea what might be causing this? New to the mod.
Thanks
Hi guys, the mod s awesome! One thing i wonder constantly is weather or not you intend to give the romulans a boarding ability or something to call in support ships as those are amazing features but the romulans lack those cool aspects... even though they are great in terms of strength.
day
you can set somewhere that the destroyed ships stay longer ?
can anyone help me on this god damn mod site!!! Star trek armada and sins of the prophets both crash when loading the mod, they both get stuck on the initial loading, star trek armada sends a minidump and sins of the prophets tells me that i need to enable Large Address Aware... but the thing is.... IVE ALREADY REINSTALLED EVERYTHING TWICE AND LARGE ADDRESS AWARE IS ENABLED ON THE EXE! ok so please can anyone on the internet have the same issue so we can help each other, or if you are a genius please help get both of these to work... thanks.. I paid for this game specificly for star trek and halo mod both of which crash when loading... AHHHH ok thanks if you help.
Windows 10, GTX 770, 8Gb ram,
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Anyone have an issue where they cant find Sins.exe in the steam file while trying to turn on Large Address Aware? Or have ideas of what to do?