Comments - SoulbAn3

I love the new ship screenshots you guys have been posting. So how are they all fitting in with the various UNSC admirals and how can we expect to use them? Will we also be seeing more Covenant ships get added in? How will these change the balancing of the current ships in response to the new arrivals?

I have to say my favorite so far is the Hermes. Seeing that ship gives me hope that I might actually enjoy Stanforth and play him for more than the Thanatos class. This is probably just me not playing him right; but the prowler play seems to be clunky, rather micro-heavy, and maybe a little broken in a bad way. Cloaking never seems to work on the Sahara and Point Blank classes when in fleets with Razors and I tend to lose the whole battlegroup regardless of how much I micro them. I've also been seeing the Havok mines just completely miss ships that they should be damaging. The mines will lock on and go past the ships before exploding harmlessly in the void of space. If anyone has advice on how to play Stanforth, I'd appreciate them sharing.

I would also say that Wattinree is also surprisingly hard to play. Again, maybe this is just me. I do find his mobile battle station to be rather fragile for how much you invest into them. I don't expect it to solo entire fleets (I miss those days with Covenant stations.lol) but it just seems to die even when supported by a proper fleet. I know the AI likes to focus fire on specific units and have tried accounting for it, but these things still die at a frightening rate. Combine with a slower pacing and he just doesn't seem to keep up in-game. I tend to play Regret and Vadamee because of this or just use the regular station.

What's up with the AI behavior as well? For some reason a portions of the vanilla game AI behavior seems to have just disappeared. Enabling minor factions can lock AI teams into or out of certain areas because they don't properly address these factions. If neutral, the AI refuses to attack these planets or even deal with them. This creates some hilarious situations where the AI gets locked into their starting area and can't expand past a handful of systems and never becomes a threat. The Splintered Defense map brings this front and center since one of the Covenant teams gets blocked by a minor faction planet and never becomes a threat because it won't push past that planet. Fleets also seem to have a weird priority for targeting. I've had a few occasions where I would jump a fleet into a system and look away for a few seconds to manage my empire only to find my fleet ignoring the enemy fleet right next to them so they can attack a culture building on the other side of the gravity well.

Please don't take this as me hating the mod. I truly do love it! I recently started playing again and have just really noticed these things after a few months of playing. It's a great mod that is mostly well polished, but has a few hiccups.

The mod devs stayed pretty true to the lore of the Halo series when developing the mod.(Read the books) So in a Covie vs UNSC situation you'll generally 3 UNSC ships to be even with one Covie ship of the same class. Also look at how you're using you're ships and defenses. UNSC ships and orbital cannons have a massive alpha strike due to their MACs and nukes that can really do a number on whatever they're shooting. Covenant ships have more staying power in a prolonged fights due to shields and continuous fire from the weapons they have.

Look at doing hit and run tactics with the UNSC and focus fire one the bigger threats to take them down faster for fleets. You might also look at using two fleets in one attack in a pincer. As for defense you don't want to spread you're planet defenses out. Build a an orbital station and build your defenses around it to create a massive cluster. Giving the station the upgrade that requires you opponent kills it to take over the planet and the cluster then has to be attacked with overwhelming force.(For the AI at least) Focus on fighters for lots of air cover and don't bother with bombers unless you have the broadsword variants through Hood. There's the barebones UNSC for you. Hope it helps.

P.S. Build the titan as soon as possible.

I recall this characteristic being part of the vanilla Sins. If the enemy culture was to strong then it wouldn't allow you to colonize a planet. You would have to wait until the culture surrounding the planet was weakened. Generally you could do this by leaving your capital ships in system after the planet falls. Looks like the mod devs left that in for this version or forgot to edit it out.

I know I already answered you a few pages back, but this way everyone can see without hunting for it. ;)

I recall this characteristic being part of the vanilla Sins. If the enemy culture was to strong then it wouldn't allow you to colonize a planet. You would have to wait until the culture surrounding the planet was weakened. Generally you could do this by leaving your capital ships in system after the planet falls. Looks like the mod devs left that in for this version or forgot to edit it out.

So how is everyone else liking the new stealth cruiser and prowlers for Stanforth? I've played a few games with them but can't seem to find them a home. For those that are enjoying them, how are you using them to make them work?

The simplest way is to download something like CFF Explorer and set the exe file to use more than 2GB of memory.
Ntcore.com
Once it's installed follow these instructions:
1. Right click the exe file and select "Open with CFF Explorer"
2. Select the file header section
3. Click on the characteristics section when it appears
4. Click on the box that says "App can handle >2GB address space"
5. Hit ok and agree to whatever it asks in regards to saving.
Again, do this with both the kingdoms.exe and medieval2.exe files.(I recall the game crashing on start up is you only do one) Make a backup of both just to be safe. ;)
Sorry for the late response.

For those having crashed at the end of battles, end of turn, or other things of this nature, make the medieval2.exe and kingdoms.exe files large address aware. Due to the when the game was made, it isn't designed to handle a mod of this size right out of the box. Doing this will allow the game to access more memory and help keep it stable. I've been playing for two days since doing so and haven't had a single crash.

So does this patch anything with the campaign, or if not, is there a mod that does?

Just as I thought I wasn't going to buy Attila, I had to come across this.....

Nice job on the mod. Started playing with it and have been pleasantly surprised. I have noticed that the weapons upgrade for the pirate starbase doesn't seem to do anything, though. Is this in the works or was this intended?

Very nicely done! Keep these overhauls coming!

Yeah, I saw that the day after I posted. Amazing what you miss when you haven't slept in a few days.

Uninstall the mod and verify the cache. Also, make sure you took the actual mod folder out of the zip file.

I don't think it is. The generals are chosen by them being born and coming of age, being a captain unit that did well in battle(I think), and the game randomly giving you the option to bring a general into your service at the start of a turn. The Tribunal is the only faction, of the ones I've played so far, where the units turn into generals after the units are queued in the cities. This is clearly not a mod feature.

It also causes the regular infantry and the generals for the Tribunal to start with 77 men when you being the campaign, though you can retrain the units to fix this.

Looks awesome! If reskins like this is part of what you're doing, then the next version is well worth the wait.

Is anyone else having problems with the Tribunal faction? Whenever I recruit The basic man of war infantry unit the mod gives me a general instead.

Just out of curiosity, did you put the whole downloaded folder into the game's mod folder? There is a second folder that you are supposed to pull out of the downloaded folder. That is the actual mod.

I don't think it's so much the difficulty or the map size. It seems like you aren't adjusting for how the mod is designed to work. The mod takes the books into account where balancing is concerned, which means the UNSC ships only have a fair fight when they are against the Covenant in a 3:1 ratio of the same ship class. And just as Tiger said, the UNSC's biggest combat strength is their massive alpha strike damage. However, the scales tip to the Covenant's favor as the battle drags on.

Part of what you're running into is also a vanilla issue, which is just more apparent due to the mod. The AI for Sins cheats like hell on harder difficulties and tends to show no mercy with it if you don't plan properly and move fast.

Yes, that is my point. They didn't actually build anything.

Constructing them? All I ever saw them do was drop them into place.

This only works with Rebellion.

Diplomats and spies work the same way as in the base game if I remember correctly, something to do with hard coding most likely. Upgrades might be in the works, mod is a WIP after all. (not sure)

Haven't seen the Imperial troops for Skyrim, but I think I know what you're talking about for Morrowind. That can be ruled down to changing armor to reflect the region they're in. I doubt camouflage has anything to do with it, but it probably has more to do with being made from local materials, climate, and terrain....probably the same with Skyrim?

As for Oblivion......They are beatable if you can separate the army pairs and hit them with two of yours. Killing the generals with assassins also helps. I actually had more of a problem getting them to move. They often just sat at their spawn points on the map, like giant, demonic toads. Or you can wimp out and just become friends with them through diplomacy. :p

Otherwise the unit variety for faction rosters and the capability to produce units in certain towns is all that needs a bump.

I take it this mod still isn't compatible with the new DLC?

I got the same thing actually. I thought they just took them out of this version though.(Didn't check the files)

So I've been playing the new version and I like the changes and additions. However, the bug that makes the Covenant AI go "baby eating lead paint" level of stupid seems to be effecting both factions now, but at random. I've had games where the the AI works fine and then I've had games where the AI won't colonize planets. It will still break it's economy building fleets, thanks to the base game hard-coding, but won't do much else. And this is on all difficulties.

I've also seen the fleets completely fly out of the system, onto phase lanes, but they aren't jumping to another system. This is quite annoy, but there's a reason this mod is still in alpha. :) It was also in the last version. Is this another vanilla bug that was just made more apparent or is it specifically with this mod? Again, awesome mod otherwise. :D

P.S. If you want screenshots for any of this please give me time. This all happens at random after all.

Just curious, but why can't you just have the ships spawn with shields after the refit tech is researched? I'm guessing it's a coding issue with the base game?

And will there be any chance of it coming back in a later patch? I see what you're saying about not needing them.(I'm doing just fine without the shields against hard AI) But it's kinda nice to have.....keeps my capital ship losses down a bit.

I realize that. As I said, it's a small matter.

THIS! IS! MASS EFFECT!

Overall I like where the mod is going. I wish the ship descriptions were actually for the ships from this mod and not the vanilla game in many cases, but that's a small matter. Models look great, the gameplay is pretty balanced, and it isn't a confusing mess unlike some of the other mods I've seen for Rebellion. Looking forward to the next update.

Really awesome mod. Bit of a learning curb at first, but this really is a gem. Very well balanced and absolutely stunning. Can't wait for you guys to finish the Covenant stuff. That's my only real complaint as I like to turtle for matches. I'm finding it nearly impossible to do this with them as they are. Anyone have suggestions on how to do that?

Otherwise thanks for making this.