The Defiant Class was not equipped with cloaking devices.  Only the USS Defiant had one, and it was on loan from the Romulans, and supposed to only be used in the Gamma Quadrant.

One way to balance the Klingons might be to increase their damage to make up for the lack of a 360 degree firing arc.  Their first pass is going to really hurt ships, especially if you focus fire on the heavy hitters.  Though, if I'm not mistaken, I think this is already in play...

As for upping build times on the "Uber Tier" Fed ships, I'm all for it.  It should cost you an arm and a leg to get them deployed, and if you're stupid enough to let them get creamed, you should really pay for it.  Retreat is always an option, unless you're the Klingons, in which case you'll just get fired on as you fly off without a way to defend yourself.

I might also suggest that different abilities be added to the ships to reward players for combining their effects, and thus having a larger variety of them in play instead of spamming a single type.

For example, the Galaxy boosts reload time for energy weapons as a passive skill, which is great, but the Sov and Defiant take damage and fill up their antimatter reserves, which really doesn't do anything.  Perhaps the Sov or Defiant could have an effect that increased the damage of friendly ships within a small area, since its a morale booster to see one flying in.

I'm not sure of some other effects as its been a while since I've played stock Sins or Entrenchment, but you get what I'm driving at.

That's not necissarily true Alpha_Sniper, for as far as I know, the ONLY Defiant class to have cloaking was the U.S.S. Defiant (NX-74205).  As far as I know, and I quote, "The ship was granted special dispensation to carry a Romulan cloaking device. The Romulans loaned and allowed the limited supervised use of the cloaking device in the Gamma Quadrant only. In return, the Federation would provide the Romulans any and all intelligence data collected in the Gamma Quadrant about the Dominion. (DS9: "Defiant", "The Way of the Warrior", "The Search, Part I", "Visionary"."

You can read all about it at:

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/USS_Defiant_(NX-74205)

WOW Darkshimmer, now that is what I am talking about!  That was some smokin' hot speed for a new patch for the game!!  One question, are you going to use the new Elite ship names that I sent (or some that you guys came up with)?  I only ask because every little bit of change from the SoaSE system to a more Trek oriented theme helps immerse me in the game.

Well, whatever you guys DO wind up using I would hope that you add them so the benefits of having a a semi-mixed capital fleet of ships would benefit the main fleet more than simply spamming one cap ship type.  I've always liked a little diversity in my fleets anyway.  =D

Actually, that's a good idea.

More range would mean more damage initially, which would make up for the lack of hits until they came around for another pass at the Feds, who would be firing constantly at them.  Very clever thinking.

Of course, you could theoretically do the exact opposite as well.  Less range, but rediculous power level of weapons when you get up close.  That would give the Feds a range advantage that could change the way they do battle, but still give the Klingons enough of an attack boost to make up for their lesser range on aproach.

This could be further amplified by some sort of ability on their capital ships that increases damage of ships in the area.  All battle-cry oriented and the like.  It makes perfect sense.  Really, it makes more sense than a directed energy blast having more range than a directed beam of energy as well.

i have a plan, my plan is to mod. the plan consists of romulans. romulans which are a cross between the ferocity of the klingons, the intelligence of the vulcans, and the willpower of the federation. you do realize romulans are the most feared race besides the borg, if you don't you soon will..... now begone and leave my plan alone!

and stop talking about balancing its all i've been doing today, and guess what.... Dragoon has the details!

I like the sound of these feared Romulans....

Lol details... everybody loves details. Yes, Shimmer has indeed been working hard especially on the balancing. Torpedoes are getting a bit of a nerf, they will still be deadly but not nearly as OP as they were in the last release once you hit the higher research tiers.

Klingon's forward attack vs the fed's 360, it balances out in several ways. Just a few are things like speed difference, reload times, ship costs, fleet supply, and research. The klingon's for instance get considerably more armor. The fed's on the other hand have considerably more time with the way their ships can attack to wear away at that armor.

Another example is the Akira (my gosh! the power, the power!) I had it one shot several ships with it's torpedo volleys but it only ever got off two volleys due to an extreme reload time.

Due to pc issues and the time I haven't gotten as much time with the klinks as with the feds, but my initial research suggests this is very well balanced and thought out. I may post more results after more extensive testing later.

Darkshimmer, what I meant was that if you have a look at the Klingon Disruptor tech tree, one of the Upgrades makes a direct reference to "first being fitted in the Defiant". I don't know if that's intentionally meant to be a Klink tech, but it just looked as if it belonged somewhere in the Fed tree instead.

the Klingon disruptor was a shared file between the feds and klingons, there was a bit of a mix up when the files were made individual for each race and the wrong one was placed in each race. The fed version was later removed becuase it made the tmp ships shoot like a tommy gun. it will be corrected in the patch.

again i'm not giving away any details on romulan setups at this time, so speculate away! 

last night i tested and tested and balanced and rebalanced, and i definately think i have the torps worked out, it will be up to the rest of you to tell me if its good or not. work on the romulans will not proceed until we have it locked down. 

some recent changes:

-Pirates now are cruiser like ships but are not setup with there own weapons yet (they are setup silimar to borg setups to give you an idea of how the borg will be)

-Akira supply will now cost you 4x the supply it currently has

-cardassian planet defenders have been upgraded to current stats (tougher to defeat now)

-the anti module ships are being looked at and being replaced, but this may or may not make it into the patch.

-klingon trade station is in

-dilithium crystals are now red, still need to update the icons (another patch for another day)

-orbital weapon platforms still need balancing

Re the Weapon Platforms- (Fed ones here from experience) they could certainly use balancing- early game they are ridiculously overpowered, whilst late game they tend to be somewhat useless (at actually DESTROYING ships. They last forever though).

Also, I'll wait for your response on the UI sound files before I try to find the missing ones.

Wow -- just wow!

I have been stalking the progress of this mod for months, and finally checked and found it was released. Worked through the missing curry file with no problem. Thanks a million to everyone who's worked on it!!

Balance seems generally good. Surprisingly good. I played as Fed against both Feds and Klingons -- some of them on Hard, some on Unfair. Repelling huge enemy fleets wasn't too bad -- at one point I scared away the losing half of an enemy assault containing 68x Steamrunner, 37x Excelsior, 3x Galaxy. Only lost like 2x Akira and a Beam Defense Platform.

On the other hand, assaulting enemy sectors after the first few minutes of the game becomes prohibitively hard. The AI will spend the ridiculously high cost to upgrade their starbase defenses, which gave the enemy Fed starbases about 152k shields and 38k hitpoints!

At one point I decided to try and kill one. I researched ALL tech in all three branches, got max supply and max cap ships, then built a fleet of 16x Sovereign and 79x Akira.

My first task in assaulting their sector was to eliminate the standing fleet. For this sector it was surprisingly weak -- they only had about a dozen Akiras, a few non-Sovereign capitals, a dozen Steamrunners and a few beam defense platforms. After about a 15 minute battle I had cleared the sector of everything but the starbase and it only cost me 3 Akiras and an average of 75% shield status across all my ships.

Now the fun starts. I had all of my Akiras and Sovereigns attack the starbase at once. It was insanely hard. After about 30 minutes, I had 36x Akira and all of my Sovereigns remaining -- and that's after I replaced about 10 Akiras with rebuilt ones from my frigate factory in the adjacent sector. So the starbase destroyed about 50 Akiras and the remaining ships were all heavily or moderately damaged.

Is this intended? Is there supposed to be a quicker, less costly way to destroy starbases? The Solanus Adjudicator doesn't seem to be the solution, since they are fairly fragile and go down way quicker than Akiras -- plus it seems the Akira's torps do more damage anyway.

If this is the intended amount of effort it takes to destroy a maxed starbase, I have to say, it's epic -- and I like it. But I could never play SOA2 multiplayer in its current state. It just takes too much mental energy to conquer even a single sector, when I have to fully max out my fleet, then lose over half of it just destroying a starbase. And the amount of time it takes is a bit too slow for my tolerances.

The only way I could play SOA2 in its current state is by loading up the game, playing for 5 - 6 hours to conquer maybe 2 - 3 sectors, then save and come back the next day to chip away at the enemy some more. But I think if I did this for the time it takes to win a Large or Huge map, I would be sick of seeing Star Trek ships entirely.

Basically the only thing interfering with what seems to be a well-balanced game is the durability of starbases. Their damage output is fine, but if they went down quicker, I would have to spend less time watching it slowly pick away at my massive fleet, and less time waiting for my shipyards to slowly replenish said fleet after the fight.

It'd be interesting to have an anti-starbase cap ship, but I'm not sure if any fit into the Trek universe, except maybe Species 8472's ships that destroyed an entire planet in one volley

This is turning into quite the debate isnt it Wish i had time to actually play my own mod lol.

Do you have any hair left shimmer? i finally grew back my receding hairline

The constitution originally was a colonizer/roid capturer, but was moved to the scout role, and the curry/shelly was made the colonizer/roid capturer. If the connie is a colonizer now that is how it was intended. The Miranda is supposed to fill the scout role. I am still debating wether to put the oberth in the connies place, or save it for one of the entrenchment slots (minelayer?), or even possibly use it as the "diplomatic ship" when Diplomacy comes out. The only reason the connie is in the mod is because i wanted it in as a hommage, and they did use her during the wolf 359 battle (you see her wreck in the debris field). It really doesnt have to be there, and it was intended for her to be very weak compared to the mirandas, and excelsiors that are upgraded to TNG standards. The connies are mothballed ships that were hastily upgraded to fill the feds need for support ships. They arent meant for frontline combat. Connie explorers release badly needed mirandas, and excelsiors for combat duty.

The same thing applies to the Contellations. They are mothballed ships brought back to active duty, and hastily upgraded to release ships of the line for combat. When you research an older ship you are not researching the ship itself. You are researching its "upgrade" or refit.