STA3 A Call To Arms 1.3 (was 1.2.2) Part 2 news

But first let’s dive right in to our federation cruiser and defence station update…

Understanding Federation Cruisers,

While federation cruisers may seem underwhelming due to the way sins shows infocards when you look at the dynamics of 1 versus 1 battles where they lack in soloable firepower they make up for in fleet cohesion, in STA3 CTA our federation cruisers are purposefully engineered to be less able to go toe to toe (notable exception with the defiant class) and more so designed to work in large numbers backed up by a powerful economy.

The Excelsior!

The excelsior sees a change to its taunting buff as well as receiving a native +1 armour increase, the taunt debuff will now also grant a temporary boost to the armour value of the excelsior making it able to withstand more firepower as it tanks with its taunt debuff, this should make early/mid game engagements more durable for the federation if your being hard pressed both in SP and MP matches.

The Akira!

The Akira receives a +1 armour buff to bring it back in line with the defiant but still made up for a defensive style engagement fleet with its chain reaction pulsars, some tweak as well to its damage output make this heavy cruiser capable of going toe to toe with other high level cruisers, while the defiant still reigns supreme in terms of overall DPS output, speed and the ability to deploy mines, the Akira is the more defensive ship of the line cruiser there for those that want a more defensive option. Bane suggests you think about running Akiras with the Excalibur Class Dreadnought for a tough nut to crack in your fleet.

The Rest!

I did not feel strongly that overall frigates and cruisers other than the two above needed major game changing buffs in their performance however that’s not to say we won’t take feedback in the future on these items.

Understanding Defensive Stations

I’ve never really been very happy with how federation stations are performing overall and that some of the abilities just didn’t feel well useful! So we have overhauled the stations to give the federation a scientific defensive edge we don’t want the federation to be to similar so the abilities are less taunt and AoE DoT focused and more slow and disable debuffs.

The Federation Spacedock

Gone is tractor beam in favour of a new ability “Gravity Well” which utilises a new gravity well generator installed and powered by the starbases reactor core, so powerful is the effect all vessels including federation vessels are slowed by a significant percentage when the device is activated in its gravity well.

• Design choices – I really felt in conjunction with Draconis that this ability gave the federation a defensive edge in combat, with their culture benefitting a more defensive posture with its shield enhancements we have given the federation a weapon that when used correctly and tactically will cause more aggressive racial ships (Romulan, Klingon, Dominion) to be slowed giving them less chance of turning and bringing their high powered frontal weaponry to bear, it in effect also allows you as a player to trap enemy fleets in turret fire along with you fleet and starbase or prevent enemies from fleeing your territory as quickly. For added skill don’t leave this on Autocast but instead try manual casting to make the most of timing the ability.

The Hanger Defence Station

When I reviewed the federation at the start of this patch process I wasn’t intending on doing a full release of the mod, so dire were some of our errors on the federation as faction and so forthcoming the ideas we as a team quickly agreed that a full version 1.3 should be born, the hanger defence station as it stands had no shields of any kind and was amazingly easy to destroy. We have buffed the station to have competent shielding, while also giving it some new abilities and taking some alarming ones away moving from 0 Shields to 7500 shields was a nice start to the new patch.

Buffing the stations abilities

Firstly we added a new ability for defensive purposes to keep the hanger defence alive, it can now perform a self-heal from “Defence Boost” which instantly restores some shield points and also adds a HoT as well for the shields.

Our Second Hanger Defence ability is called “Gravitic Anchors” similar to its bigger brother the main star base the Hanger Defence can emit a small AoE gravitic phenomenon that slows multiple ships down giving them a large speed debuff in a 6km radius so placing a hanger defence at a warp in point could be beneficial as well, that’s a tough choice to make but I could prove effective

• Design Choices, I rarely see people use the culture station abilities we added but don’t forget that federation culture stations allow you to slow the warp significantly of incoming fleets giving you time to prepare your systems, this combos well when you add in both stations slowing debuffs.

For every buff, something gets nerfed.

I’m sad to report that due to significant losses received by the third fleet of late they are no longer able to send as many vessels to aid would be federation players, so dire was the losses of the third they have now only allowed a request directly from federation command centres. AKA the spam players were choosing to do from the stations was a tad to much, so we’ve removed this from the hanger defence and instead placed it on your fleet command station sorry!

Turrets!

Maxloef has been busy and I don’t want to spoil to much but hes currently investigating in whether we replace our original turret models with our own changing the look and aesthetic, federation turrets are pretty deadly already but expect to see some tweaks here as well.

Further News on Buffs

Further to my last news post weve tweaked the nebula and phoenix buffs with both Developer OrionSlaver and Developer Zurme working on these, the phoenix in addition to what it already did will now drain antimatter from 4 other ships close to the targeted ship. The nebula with its shield disruptor will know out the shields effectiveness and block as before but will now affect upto 4 other vessels to a lesser extent as well.

Other things away from the federation!

So we’ve now completed our overhaul of all factions carriers and they all now have unique elite versions of their fighters giving every carrier in the game an edge, order yours today!.

We’ve taken a look at those pesky bugs and I’m glad to report we may have finally fixed the diplomacy bugs that have plagued us! There’s many more bug fixes but I’m sure developer Amabarenya will do one of his famous change logs near to release time permitting!

Dominion Changes!

Ive got to be honest I listened hard to feedback and myself and Developer Draconis have made some changes to the dominion vessels you will now see the manticore flip to be a high tier cruiser replacing the gor’taan as the defacto cruiser, don’t worry the gor’taan remains the same but the manticore has had significant buffs to health, armour and weaponry to bring it in to line, Big bug ships are coming for you feddies! At some point we will get a little bit more information up about the domi changes!

New Borg Event

Developer Cailean has been busy working on many many new maps for you but in addition hes added a new event which will see a delta quadrant Borg Cube appear but beware this is no standard Borg cube it can assimilate capital class vessels and will have extreme regeneration and durability on account of its advanced delta quadrant technology unlike its alpha quadrant brethren!

Ive run out of steam for this update but don’t worry we will get a dev diary video up soon, as always keep on “trekking” captains. This is Bane Out!