Who are the federation and what is their back story
The United Federation of Planets, usually referred to as "the Federation", is an interplanetary federal republic made up of a multitude of different societies where respect and non interference is a key policy. The planetary governments agree to exist semi-autonomously under a single central government based on the Utopian principles of universal liberty, rights, and equality, and to share their knowledge and resources in peaceful cooperation and space exploration, however in recent years the federation has been challenged and seen by others as weak and subsequently due to envy and subversion from the other Alpha quadrant races is succumbing to frequent raids on member worlds by piratical forces and finally not to mention increased border wars with those factions.
Relationships with the Romulan's and Klingon's Deteriorate
Romulan forces have been detected with our tachyon scanners entering our ally's space, the Klingon empire and sadly due to the very many political issues that plague the empire a civil war inside the high council itself has broken out, now our once Ally has broken treaties with us and forsaken the Khitomer Accord and we believe this is down to Romulan involvement by the operative known as Sela, Romulan forces led by Commander Tomalak are breaching the neutral zone in direct violation of the treaty of Algeron, if not enough the Klingons under their new Chancellor Gowron have declared that both the Federation and Romulan Star Empire will pay for their interference in the empire.
The Cardassians and Dominion
Its unclear yet with the emergence of the dominion given our many wars with the Cardassians what will happen now that war has broken out with the Klingon Empire due to the belief that Dominion Agents have infiltrated their government, Gowron is hellbent on the destruction of the Cardassian Threat, Starfleet is concerned that this could lead to one of two possible outcomes, a reforming of Cardassian Military Expansion and Weapon development or if rumors are true an Alliance with the recently engaged dominion force from the Gamma Quadrant.
The Dominion themselves represent an oppressive regime that enslaves or forces worlds to join their member state which is dictated and controlled by beings known as changelings that can take any shape they choose whether it be alive or an inanimate object, they are pressing through the Gamma Quadrant wormhole recently discovered nearby to Bajor by Captain Benjamin Sisko for a foothold in the Alpha Quadrant and seem to want to destroy the federation due to its opposing ideals.
The emergence of the Borg
The Borg represent the single greatest threat to the Utopian ideology of the federation they seek only to destroy and assimilate every one and every thing in the alpha quadrant, the difference this time (and where Armada 3 differs) is that they are here now in the Alpha Quadrant and have established a foothold taking advantage of the many wars that the Alpha Quadrant has succumb to with one purpose, Assimilate everyone and everything in the Alpha, Beta and Gamma Quadrants.
Federation Changes from 1.0 to CTA
Below is a video highlighting the many editions to the federation in Armada 3: A Call to Arms
In short these changes for the federation include:
- Updated Culture Bonuses
- New Typhon and Prometheus Class Capital Ships
- New Textures and designs on many federation ship
- Amazing abilities such as MVAM and Saucer Seperation
- Addition of the New Orleans Class Siege Vessel
- Revamped Hero Abilities in line with Combat
Gul Dukut :D
You forgot to mention the new 2nd federation Constitution-class Titan.
400k shields and hull and it's Corbomite Reflector blows up entire sectors.
For some reason it also attracts the females of any race.
You must also attract females of any race ..only not human
will the federation and romulans be getting 2 titans and they just aren't done yet or are they just getting the 1?
The Borg only have one Titan, the Klingons might be getting two, but I think only one would be active at a time (don't quote me) and the Feds and Rommies don't really need a second Titan. The Scimitar is more than adequate, as well as arguably the most powerful planet killer... The Excalibur also fits with the Fed theme quite well. It's not meant to go toe to toe with a peer adversary - it supports a Starfleet. As for the Cardassian/Dominion, I don't think the player can have a Hutet and Dominion Battleship active at the same time...
Hey guys, great dev diary as always!
I'm soooo looking forward to playing CTA.
But I have a question about game mechanics: how do photon torpedoes differ from quantum torpedoes in the game? You have mentioned that people don't understand how weapon damage works, and I am one of those people.
On most (if not all) ships with quantum torpedoes they deal less damage than photon torpedoes. Why? Isn't quantums the upgraded and more powerful versions of photons? Or do they ignore shields? What's their specialty?
I (and I think not only me) would enjoy some clarification about this, and maybe about weapons in general. Like a phaser damage of 50 does 50 damage per shot or per second of firing? Same about pulse weapons.
Perhaps, if you have time, you can make a small dev diary about it? Pretty please :)
Anyway, thanks a LOT for all your hard work. This game is amazing!
Photons on average have a higher DPS down to their Rate of Fire but in Sins like most strategy games once the shell has left the ship even if the ship dies it still heads to that target or flings off into space so you can fire more frequently with photon and achieve greater DPS however Quantums impact with higher damage values so if your aim is to focus fire one target then quantums are ideal as they deal large amounts of damage this is known often as a choice between BURST DAMAGE versus DAMAGE OVER TIME.
Cant wait till its finished. Planing to streaming some games with a few friends on twitch once everything is finished!
Great job guys. Very proud of what you have achieved!
Miss you buddy. If you ever get the chance jump on Skype. would love to catch up.
One of these weekends, I shall.
i always thought the typhon was going to be bigger than it was in this video but either way i cant wait to see her in-game along with those fights and all the sexy new models
The Typhon wasn't supposed to be massive. In the intro video for ST:Invasion, the Typhon was carried by the USS Enterprise-E until it was detached to act as a "mobile outpost". It was certainly smaller than a Sovereign class.
I wouldnt know, ive never played ST:I and didnt know about the ship till i read about it on the forums, if its cannon for the typhon to be that size then thats fine with me i was just thinking that for a carrier and a ship with an ability called fortress mode that it should be at least the size of a sovereign instead of about halfish the size
It's kind of like a Defiant, if it were designed as a carrier. It's compact, well armed and armored, and makes efficient use of its hangar decks.
Is there anyway to change the particle effect of the fleet coordination ability? I've always hated that effect always being there on all my ships.
Yeah I'm always wary of picking an "aura" ability when I plan to take a lot of screenshots. Would be great if there was some text file you could edit to not show those icons over the ships but still gain the benefits.
Also, I love these dev. diaries! Can't wait to play the expansion.
Coooool!!! I like the new take on the Races. But where is the cloaking device of the Defiant? Would make Sisko an Ideal Scout.
And what happens if one piece of the Prometheus is destroyed. Will it not reintegrate anymore?
The cloaking device was on loan from the Romulan Star Empire and you know the relationship is deteriorating.
that dosnt mean star fleet gives it back and if they did why wouldnt they study it a bit and make their own cloak then put the prototype on the defiant, i like anything that gets rid of that useless ability (cant recall the name) especially if it further increases the defiant's power but a cloak would make that ship feel like it does in the series
Starfleet was prevented from duplicating cloak technology during the treaty of algeron and current politics despite the romulans breach of the neutral zone prohibit the development of this tehcnology, on a side note adding a cloak uses an ability slot which means you would lose a damage bonus, in my eyes as an avid player id choose siskos abilities any day over the option of a single cloak that wont benefit you much
But still the Defiant kept the Cloaking device. It only was not allowed to use it in the alpha quadrant. At least that would be cannon.
But they did use it several times in the alpha quadrant anyway and with treaties breaking down i think the feds would use every advantage they can
For storyline viability as to why they don't have cloak let's pretend this: Romulan. Saboteur. (cue mysterious music). We all know that as soon as a treaty goes south, the Romulans would either have some sort of failsafe built in or would send in an agent to irreversibly damage the device...
its simple...its not getting it...period...
How many ships ,on average, in each faction can detect cloaked mines and ships.
Would this make scouts ship less effective if there is more then one which can detect cloaked items? Do scouts have an addition abilities which makes them useful to be used in your main fleet.
there cost makes them viable and the ability to auto explore :) + they have a native mine detection ability as well as some being the only way to capture mines etc not attached to planets
I also would like to ask if it was considered if the last torpedo upgrade for the Federation would change all torpedo to Quantum Torpedoes.
i dont think that would be right for the time as the quantum torpedoes were new and only on a few ships at a time. Plus although quantums were better ships kept using photons as well (for some reason)
well like bane said quantums have higher damage output but a lower rate of fire while photons fire quicker but dont give off as much damage so depending on what the ship is designed to do it might not need the extra power of quantums but could benefit from the faster fire rate of photons
i suppose some highly maneuverable ships may be able to keep enemy ships in firing arc long enough to benefit from better dps but if you play STO everyone picks quantums over photons
thats because a lot of STO math is based on crit mechanics for burst whereas most DOT players use AUX2BATT beam builds not utilising any torpedoes for the most part of course....Romulan plasma beams tend to be preffered these days though again STO politics :D
Just out of curiosity, are you considering making the Borg immune to culture? and don't use culture stations? Just because of the fact, that game mechanic doesn't make sense xD
consider it their signal that connects them.
So again, what happens if one part of a Prometheus gets destroyed during an mvam. Will it not be able to reintegrate anymore? And what if one part is damaged, how will that effect the whole ship after reintegration?
if one part falls to no health the parts (all of them) warp out and reintegrates together.
but the reintegrated ship has all the damage from the three parts right? or something to that effect
you guys still aren't getting the defiant right, and probably not for the reasons you normally hear. it should not be the top end, most expensive, highest supply cost federation cruiser, that is so backwards, it should be a late game frigate of sorts.
in cannon its not going to be a match 1v1 vs an akira or even an intrepid. an old warmed over excelsior was a match for it, and no that does not mean the lakota was super awesome, it was incorrect to think a defiant is the most dangerous ship, in the first place.
its a federation brel, to counter the borg they would throw 100 defiant at a cube, not 1. in game it should pretty much be a saber, +50%, wile the akira is the unquestioned top fed cruiser.
the intrepid should also have beefier stats then the excelsior, and even lakota too. though the intrepid should have a higher supply cost, to discourage mass spamming of it and its detection ability. regardless the lakota with its storm of torpedoes has klingon like alphas, but worse phaser coverage, so its less effective in a big mixed up fleet brawl
Well im sure stat junkies will have far better replies than mine but we felt that the defiant as an over gunned corvette was pretty decent warship wise (watch the episode in the alternate timeline against the neghvar) and with its beating in first contact it did pretty well, dont panic though as i said i prefer defiants for chasing down targets but akiras are definately the answer in fleet combat due to their firepower. On a sidenote the intrepid was an exploration and science ship with a smaller crew it was never intended as a warship and the excelsior itself was still being used quite heavily under its refit types even in the DS9 battle scenes were quite happy with where these sit right now in terms of their war roles aka you may be right but weaponry wise these ships are designed for war for set purposes the defiant for heavy fast assault and the Akira for all out torpedo and fighter domination.
i should add that also the Akira has 6 phaser banks and 2 torp launchers whereas the defiant is armed with 4 pulse phaser canons 3 phaser emitter arrays and 6 torpedo launchers also being able to fire quantum's. Ill let you decide with that loadout which belonged where warship wise.
Overall we love both ships but im going to have to say we feel we got their positions on a war fitting correct
Cheers Bane
the defiant got a lot of scenes that made it look better then it was, that mirror negvar is a good example of that. it never got a kill of a ship bigger then a bop, bug, of breen cruiser. you imply the defiant overpower that super negvar, not even close, all it did was exploited a weakness. it was flying too close for it to even hit them, eventually it just gave up and left under its own power. a hand full of hits would have blown the defiant, it was like 1 shot away from destruction till it got to close to hit.
those weapon load outs you quoted are dead wrong you can just look at the ship models and see that inaccurate. there's no comparison between the defiant and akira, its like comparing a brel to a vorcha. number of arrays is meaningless, they aren't simple gun barrels. the beams the defiant has are tiny 1 emitter banks, and it only has 2 fore torp launchers and 1 aft. the akira actually only has 3 arrays, but thats all it needs, actual arrays have a firing arc of everything they have line of sight with. the longer the array is, the more emitters it can draw power from for each shot, thats that moving glow effect from the show. longer arrays equal more fire power, and the akira's longest is actually longer then the sovereign's longest. the ship also has at least 15 torpedo launchers, most small,each isnt bursting 3 to 10 at a time or anything. 4 of its launchers point out the side, would be cool if that was in the mod too. the akira is a monster tactical cruiser, the defiant is a super brel. late game frigate is the perfect position for it.
the excelsior is not some warship ether, it was cannon fodder. it barely rates as a light cruiser during this time period, and compared to modern ships, like the lean and mean intrepid, is very under gunned for its size, lacks arrays entirly. they were all over the dominion war because they had built a lot of them in 70 years, they were throwing every asset they could scrounge at the dominion. it would be much more accurate if IT was the main surplus ship you summon with abilities, along with the miranda and centar, not those much more modern BoBW classes. there's no way starfleet was constructing new excelsior, miranda or centaur in this time period, like we do in game.
Cheyenne could replace excelsior, Challenger replaces centaur, and if you guys got a freedom model it could replace the miranda.
well since in 2372 they just gave a excelsior, the USS Lakota, a refit for the Dominion War I think they would still be building them.
from alpha memory
"With the impending threat of the Dominion against the Federation, Starfleet began to experiment, in 2372, with performing a refit on the Excelsior-class USS Lakota. Upgrades included improved phaser emplacements, quantum torpedoes, and other improvements to make the ship competitive with such ship designs as the Defiant-class. (DS9: "Paradise Lost")
and the excelsior is Length, 511.25 meters; beam, 195.64 meters; height, 86.76 meters and intrepid is less than halve the size of the galaxy so that puts it about length 341 meters, beam 462, height 97 meters, with the excelsior being larger it could/would survive more hits on the hull than the intrepid.
they haven't built excelsior for decades, especially with so many brand new direct replacements for it now existing. they upgraded everything in the fleet, by the time the war started at least, so nothing else wouldn't end up like the odyssey. the only thing really special about that b type excelsior was its supply of quantum torps.
by volume, the excelsior is only about 1.5 times the size of the intrepid. the excelsior is from a time before structural integrity fields, and its chassis was designed and built to 2290s standard. im guessing the bar has been raised by 2370. in mod, all the armor the excelsior has, and how little the intrepid has, i cant help but laugh.
those armaments your quoting are from the DS9 tech manual. give that ship section a read some time, you will be horrified by what a pathetic, unedited, copy/paste job it is. none of the ship stats in it are accurate, just looking at the filming model proves it.
Modelermagic.com
go ahead and give the actual filming model a look, see how many torp launchers you can find. its 15+, and there's just the 3 arrays
in that episode with the prometheus, 2 defiant class were escorting the 1 akira, not the other way around. the defiant class is cool and powerful, with this very important qualifier, FOR ITS SIZE. it is not more powerful then anything as new, and 10 times larger.
yes the excelsior is a old ship but that alone is not grounds for it to stop being build if its still good which it is. all they have to do is upgrade it with newer tech.
and if I'm not mistake, I could be wrong here but hmm this mod is based on the Dominion War and that happened in DS9 so thanks for making my point cheers
from alpha memory for the defiant
"4 phaser cannons, at least 3 phaser emitters, at least 4 forward torpedo (photon and quantum torpedo) launchers, at least 2 aft torpedo launchers "
also from alpha memory for the akira
" Armament: Six type-10 phaser emitters; Two photon torpedo launchers"
so sorry your wrong, the Defiant was designed to be extremely fast and maneuverable and deal a massive amount of damage not to be a frigate.
we currently fit our ships around memory alpha beta, trekcore and ex astris stats but a modicum of realism has to be undertaken, we do have contact with doug and john to reference against model wise but we take gameplay into account as well if we made every ship appear as it was in the series we would have invincible ships with heros flying around everywhere, i feel our balance is as accurate as to most games out there that have been made for Star Trek but the issue with Star Trek has always been that there are many many contradicting issues i give a recent example that the official star trek ships collection for mail order endorsed by star trek releases inaccurate information all the time about the ships and not once consulted with Doug Drexler or John Eaves about the ship designs this is part of the issue, whether wrong or right we love all three ships and this is where they will be staying for now, i hope you continue to support the mod as passionately as these ship discussions
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Whats the estimated release date for CTA and why are you not releasing an update with every dev diary? It seems you made epic progress since the last update was released many months ago?!
because we chose at the start to not do incremental updates version 1.0 is far from unplayable, sure it doesnt feel as polished as CTA but im sure once weve finished CTA people will still request changes but at some point the team will mark the project as finished and depart for a new challenge it could be Armada 4 or it could be an entirely new concept we are as of yet unsure :)