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Greetings all,

Just a quick update today, but first we'd like to say how happy we are with how Ages of the Federation 1.0 has been received. We've received enough kind words to sink a ship. Thank you, all of you!

But now, on to the mod!

Due to the international outbreak of COVID-19 and the huge changes to how most of us go about our daily lives for the time being, we decided to release Ages of the Federation 1.0 early. This meant that we had to forego most of the beta testing period of development. As a result we ofcourse expected bugs and oversights on our part to be revealed. Thankfully, your feedback has been instrumental in bringing some of these issues to light.

As such, we've been hard at working stamping out bugs and filling gaps, and we're happy to announce that version 1.01 is now ready for download!

Changes include:
- Romulan Shield Bypass Resist in Culture tech now correctly resists instead of the opposite (Yikes!).
- Fix to Medium Large map instant win bug.
- Added construction ships to Minor Factions to allow them to rebuild destroyed structures.
- Rebalanced titan stats.
- Reworked the Xindi Probe Minor Faction abilities to be a single ability with multiple levels.
- Reordered Game Options screen in game setup to match stock button layout.
- Added icons to build extractors when directly clicking on owned asteroids.

Developer SovereignEcho, who many of you may know from our livestreams and from the excellent Dawn of the Reapers mod, has this to say about the changes he's made to the titans. Take it away, Echo:

Constitution-class:

Match Frequencies:

• Antimatter cost changed from 100 to 150.
• Cooldown no longer scales with level, and is now 60s at all levels.
• Duration now longer scales with level, and has been lowered to 20s.
• Shield Bypass scaling changed from 15% / 17.5% / 20% / 25% to 20% / 30% / 40% / 50%.

Rotate Shields:

• Cooldown no longer scales with level, and is now 60s at all levels.
• Duration now longer scales with level, and has been set to 40s.
• Damage Reduction removed. This has been replaced with a Shield Bypass Resist buff that scales at the following rate 50% / 60% / 70% / 80%.

Rapid Fire Phasers:

• Cooldown no longer scales with level, and is now 60s at all levels.
• Duration now longer scales with level, and has been set to 40s.
• Range penalty no longer scales with level, remaining at 15% at all levels.
• Rate of Fire buff scaling changed from 15% / 17.5% / 20% / 25% to 15% / 25% / 35% / 45%.

Inspiring Presence:

• Range scaling fixed, now scales at the following rate: 4000 / 5000 / 6000 / 7000.
• Antimatter Cost Reduction of abilities effect scaling changed from 10% / 25% / 27% / 30% to 10% / 15% / 20% / 25%.
• Ability Cooldown rate scaling changed from 50% / 60% / 70% / 80% to 20% / 30% / 40% / 50%.

Commentary:

The Constitution has been considered the weakest and most boring of the Titans in the past, and while it was always reasonably strong, it is fair to say that its abilities scaled poorly and that it never had the same feeling of impact on a battle that the D-7 has.

To rectify this, I have adjusted its abilities to self synergize better. With fixed durations and cooldowns, as well as a more sane scaling rate on Inspiring Presence, the Connie now properly benefits from its own ability cooldown speed improvements, allowing it to achieve 100% uptime on its powerful buffs.

Further, there is more competition between its generic antimatter upgrade and weapon upgrade, as it needs the antimatter to keep using its abilities, but its weapons upgrade gives a lot more punch to those abilities, as they buff its innate weapons instead of doing their own damage.

Rotate Shields was also not performing as well as intended, granting the ship near invulnerability against regular attack, but leaving it very vulnerable to shield bypass. It now doesn’t shrug off regular attacks quite so easily, but shuts down enemy shield bypass attacks very effectively, ensuring that the Connie’s defenses are more evenly distributed.

Overall, these changes should allow the Connie to deal a lot more damage and generally dominate the battlefield on its own, instead of being a one dimensional fleet buffer. Though still not the flashiest Titan, it might very well be the most versatile and powerful in terms of raw stats now.

D-7 Akif:

Magnetic Pulse:

• Upfront Damage scaling changed from 500 / 750 / 1000 / 1250 to 500 / 625 / 750 / 875.
• Shield Bypass Resistance debuff scaling changed from 15% / 20% / 25% / 30% to 5% / 15% / 25% / 35%.
• Duration lowered from 30s to 15s.

Torpedo Salvo:

• Antimatter cost changed from 100 to 150.
• Cooldown no longer scales with level, and is now 90s at all levels.
• Damage per salvo reduced from 250 to 200. This amounts to a total of 150 less damage dealt, as the D7 fires 3 salvoes, each doing the full damage amount, every time this ability is cast.

Elite Commanders:

• Range scaling fixed, now scales at the following rate: 4000 / 5000 / 6000 / 7000.

Commentary:

The D-7 is a damage dealing monster, and rightly so. However, it has been overperforming a bit at higher levels, thanks to its extremely strong scaling. To bring it back down to the appropriate level, I have adjusted Magnetic Pulse to require more levels before it allows a fleet to significantly bypass the shield of a priority target.

The real offender, however, was Torpedo Salvo. This ability dealt huge amounts of damage to multiple ships, and did so for not a lot of antimatter on a very fast cooldown. When combined with the generic Advanced Reactor upgrade its cooldown got even faster. Accordingly, the cooldown and antimatter costs have been heavily nerfed.

I am hoping that these two abilities being nerfed will reduce the D-7’s ability to single handedly demolish enemy fleets, and encourage more use of the Projected Stasis Field.

V-8: Vas Hatham

Enveloping Torpedo:

• Antimatter cost changed from 100 to 150.
• Uncloaked upfront damage changed from 250 to 400.
• Cloaked upfront damage changed from 125 to 200.
• Damage over time changed to scale in damage instead of time. All damage is now dealt over the course of 20 seconds, but higher levels means more damage per second.

Nuclear Diversion:

• Cooldown was previously 180s at all levels. It now scales at the following rate: 120s / 110s / 100s / 90s.
• Duration of effect improved from 15s to 20s.

Commentary:

The V8: Vas Hatham is the newest of the Titans, and the least in need of tweaking. Its abilities are all designed to interact with its cloak, gaining more powerful and different effects when used while under cloak, but I was perhaps a little too afraid of this thing becoming OP when I first put it together, so it has received some buffs.

First, Enveloping Torpedo was changed to do somewhat more damage, but more importantly, it now does its damage faster. This will help it feel more powerful and have a more prompt impact on a battle at higher levels. It’s antimatter cost was raised to be in line with other Titan main DPS abilities, and make it a little harder to manage the V8s antimatter economy.

The Nuclear Diversion was originally designed as an escape tool for the V8, but I now think it prudent to allow this tool to impact a battle more freely. Thus, a cooldown reduction and a duration increase. Though it may not seem all that impactful in its standard form, if used while the V8 is cloaked it can disable an entire fleets weapons for 20s, which is immensely impactful, and well worth dropping the V8 itself into cloak for a short time.

Thanks, Echo.

That's all for now. Go ahead and download the update, and keep enjoying the mod. We'll be back again soon.

Til next time, stay classy. Or don't.
- OrionSlaver