I just have to say that I'm REALLY looking foward to the next release!  I haven't played since march and when I did it was with the SOA2 mod, I like it much better than the regular sins.  The new fighter movement just works better with the larger trek ships and weapons anyway (did my own conversion to entrenchment).  I'm patiently waiting for the next mod release and some kick ass Star Trek battles again!

That is scary!  Great job in modelling it btw, I can't wait to see it implemented..

I would probably do the same thing that I do with pirate space when I find it.  After losing a scout ship, I would mass up a fleet that had at least 6 Capitols and and lots of Cruiser classes like the Defiant (They are actually better than the Klingon's cruiser slasses at the moment), but nothing smaller than a fleet of 20-30 ships.

If I was using Klingon's, I would almost depend entirely on Capitol Ships (something like the Emperor or maybe Bird of Death), and outlining the rest in Bird of Prey's, but I would have to double the ship count to 40-60 ships (klingons have weaker ships, and no special abilities yet).

I hope that helps Darkshimmer, and I'll try to give you guys more feedback sometime around this week.

Hi afdummy

I have 3c, I love this mod. How difficult was it to convert to entrenchment? I have modding experience with sins, would you be willing to give me some tpis on how you converted it?

Cheers,

bin

Or better yet, how about you upload your conversion?

Well it wouldn't be right for me to up load my "home project" of someone elses work.  I feel that if I did such a thing it would be sort of tacky.  It is easy to convert using the release of the B and C versions of the SoA teams mod.  You basically just need a crap load of time and cut and paste skills.  You need the B versions for its mesh, textures, sounds, etc.. and the C version for its updated ship info.  Just take the base C files and a new entrenchment file and paste where pasting needs to be done.  Trial and error are the words here.  Good luck!

Oh and update the dang enity manifest files for your entrenchment folder!  Everything has to be the same as your gameinfo folder.

Ok and the last post, My experience with making the ships behave properly with the new movement was to cut the orginals mass a lot and stick with something close to the sins movement speeds.  the engine doesn't respond well with heavy ships and if you lighten them too much, well they just fly away forever.....

i did already asked...

can it be possible to make a short video from the beta and put in on you tube?

can a tester or someone else do this?

would be nice thx

in a previous post we are not releasing a movie on the mod until we are close to release. This will be your sign that hey, BATTLESTATIONS!

I want to steer clear of armada, and legacy stuff as much as possible. I dont like 99% of armada, and armada 2's models. I also wont touch legacy, because that is p81's, and moonrakers baby. I dont want to disrespect them by using their latest works in this mod. Most of the 3rd party work for SoA 2 is older stuff from SFC/BC that fits in the poly count range we need for the mod.

1 bug i found is you cant click on the 1st tier hull research for the feds. It just wont register. You cant research tier 4 shields until you get at least 1 point in hull re-enforcement. Which locks out all cruisers, all elites except the ambassador, and the excelsior II upgrade.

Movements for the feds are still a bit glitchy. They get anything directly behind the ships (like another ship, structure, w/e) they won't turn or anything, they'll just keep going straight, lost count of how many times in one game my ships would've kept going forever if I hadn't called them back.

Movement for the klingons looks really good, sometimes has the above mentioned problem but I didn't notice it as much with them.

Oh, the fed ships also stop a lot when in groups, if anything gets in their way it's normally hit the brakes and don't move instead of going around. The feds also won't do passes properly anymore, almost every fight that wasn't of fleet proportions one ship would get behind the other and they'd get stuck like that a certain distance apart flying straight out of the grav well shooting at each other.

The Ambassador also did something wierd on me, had it and a fleet getting ready to warp to the next planet, some ships got in the way so it moved back into the grav well and then reversed to the grav well edge before orienting itself for warp jump.

Also, Major Stress, in an earlier post you asked us to keep an eye out for unfinished textures? If you were just refering to the new structures those look awesome. Two ships that are a little unfinished though were the Fehk'lehr and the Emperor, if you don't care about those right now, fine, if you need screenshots I can post some.

Sorry if any of this goes over the line from thorough to nitpicky, but it seemed like you wanted us to start paying attention to everything.

I didn't have any problem's building with the Federation yet, and I was able to research the 1st tier of hull research just fine.  I would say that it's your copy, but I;m pretty sure that can't be true, so I can't even think of what it might be.

Cheers afdummy for the pointers, might give it a go....depends on how long the official conversation will be.

hull research bug was fixed.

what i do like so far...

The movement. Nicely done. However, i feel the ships zip around a little too fast. I know it was scaled so that big ships move like pigs, but the fast ships move a little too fast IMO.

What i dont like...

The colored shields. makes all of the ships look cartoony. Would like the old clear shields restored.

The new tmp pulse weapons. I would like them reverted back to the old style as well. Right now they look like the nemesis pulse photon torpedoes.

I have to agree with you on the shields alright, they were definitly better when they were more translucent.

The Klingon ships which are the smaller and lighter ones do move a little too fast, but it isn't horribly done or anything, and if it doesn't get changed I'm not going to stop playing.

Other than that, great job so far fella's, terrific output for such a short timeframe.

well lets just say you will need a big fleet to take it on ! (If its fully upgraded)

mm there is only one other bug in the (fed) tech tree atm that i know of and iam not fixing that untill i get feedback on what i did with the excel upgrades since i dont know if you like that yet stress / shimm

and do you want me to change those fed ships around ? or hold fire

That station is BEASTLY.

plz. tell me it will take forever to build.

yes the unicomplex starbase will take a while to be fully upgraded (the picture shown is the fully upgraded version) as you do upgrades on the station it grows becoming ever bigger and more powerful ! so if you do see it destroy it sooner rather than later

Please can all the beta testers check out the federation several changes have been made today for them

check the change log as it will give an indcation as to what to look out for

Here are a few observations on the beta:

1. Battle distance from grav well can get VERY large.  I jumped into a grav well and the Klingons were fighting rebels 4 grav wells distance away.  I thought my own units were bugged because they were flying so far out and i couldn't see the klingons except for the last zoom level that still lets you see the ships.

2. Klingon movement on the Vorgath (sp) is strange when you have a fleet of constitutions fighting it.  It will start heading out of the gravity trying to turn i think and wind up going straight.  The battle finishes way outside of the well. (This only happens when you don't have a Fed Capital in the well)

3. 2 Vorgath vs. 10 Constitutions = Very slow battle.  The Vorgath kill 1 constitution fast and then it drags on and on.  This might be related to the movement issues (#2)  I watched for a while just to confirm that they were doing damage.  It's strange because frigate battles resolve much quicker in terms of frigates dying on either side.  Just to clarify it takes a long time for the 2 Vorgaths to kill 1 frigate AFTER the 1st one. (This only happens when you don't have a Fed Capital in the well)

4. Miranda animation is missing when you create it.  It just appears instead of doing the flight around and into fleet.  When you first start the game the units stack on top of each other so it looks like there is only 1 Miranda there.  The stacking doesn't happen when you create additional ship types in the grav well, but they still just appear out of the blue in their location with only the audio cue.  [This actually affects Klingon scouts and light frigs also.  You won't see all the ships until you have two different types completed before you select them to move]

5. Fed two free Miranda's (Fed Scout) do not appear during Quick Play.  The Klingon scouts correctly show up.

6. Ships wobble a bit in space. This happens when they aren't moving sometimes (not a big deal)

7. Icons over ships are still not showing up on all enemy units in the grav well.  They show up on some of them if you zoom in on them.

8. Federation Capital ships bombard at lower dmg/sec than a single Fed Siege (Constellation), which is still a little low.

9. Exelsior ship drifts backward when firing on stationary units.  It then moves forward again. (not a big deal)

10. Federation AI on normal cannot seem to take a planet/asteroid in the time it takes to build a fleet of 30 constitutions and fly across a medium map.  Klingons are okay, but they just don't build many units (or have any left when you jump in)  This may be due to the strength of the rebels or something else.

11. Possible audio bug with selected units.  Selected unit audio cue repeats after a set amount of time if you haven't selected anything else.  It usually only plays when you select units or give an order. (not a big deal)

12. Pirates still need to be converted to the rebel units. 

how do you get the uppdated versjon?

one last one:

13. Fed Scouts (Miranda) sometimes stop autoexplore and decide to fight the rebels in a grav well instead of escaping or going to the next unexplored well (they commit suicide).  This happens randomly when they're in an asteroid or planet grav well.  The Klingon scouts do not do this.

Thanks for the changelog.  It's really useful for the testing.

I haven't had any minidumps and I play all of my medium maps to completion.  I still haven't used starbases, defense, structures, or the defiant yet.

Thanks and keep up the good work!

Just turn on your live sync to get the latest version.

thank you wery much.

Hi, i absolutely love the star trek universe so i am greatly looking forward to this mod in it's completed version. Does anyone know where i can find a downlaod of the latest version or demo of this mod? If there are none out for Entrenchment yet, any direction to the latest Vanilla UPdate would be greatly appreciated, as all the links i have found have been dead.

Thanks in advance

We need to find a way to fix the icon issues. it is very annoying zooming out, and having to band select the entire grav well to see the ships. I tried to adjust the min/max shadow with no luck. What file controls how far away icons show up when you zoom out?

Another thing i noticed is that we may need to re-convert every mesh using the latest convertxsi. The mods models do not utilize the texture changes that entrenchment brought. Also i think the game sees the models as being much larger than they appear (look how huge the movement arrows are compared to vanilla models).