.com.unity Forums - The Star Trek Mod

I have attached the test game saved at turn 125 ...

________________________ TECH TREE ISSUES _______________________________

Remark: Some racial techs are 'hidden' somewhere in the research tree and
not readily appearent for the player. Would be great to get some hints
in the race descriptions about these techs.
Sometimes it looks to me like the AI doesn't know about some of those techs
too.

100) Typos
= "Assault" is spelled "Assualt" all over
= ECM Weapons - "Technology that allows for the creation of EMC weapons.
Expected Results: EM Cannon I" - is it "ECM", "EMC" or "EM" ??

101) racial/special weapon tech should not require "Beam Weapon V"
To have ships more diverse from the beginning, have them branch right a level 1.
That would take away the need to
- have beam weapons tech at a discount price to enable the
- rush to level 5 to open up the racial/special techs
(which is even programmed into the AI research file, see [402].)
This pre-set tech rush makes not only for useless low-level beam tech, but
also for poor, uniform ship design and the necessarity for the old land-speeder-rush
tactics .. (fast unit with big gun to rush the neighbour which cannot be defended
against because at that tech level all defenses are much weaker or non-existant)

102) Mine Sweepers
Take mine sweepers out of the mine branch and put them with sensors/beam weapon.
Would make race possible which do not use mines at all (Klingons?!)
(see [407] as well)

103) 8472 armor missing ?
I wonder if I just didn't find it, or if there is really no bio-armor for the 8472s ??

________________________ COMPONENTS / FACILITIES ISSUES _________________

200) Typos
= "Assault" is spelled "assualt" all over
= ECM Weapons - "Technology that allows for the creation of EMC weapons.
Expected Results: EM Cannon I"

201) Basic armor
.. is pretty useless. Acutally, it doesn't look like high-resistance components are hit first (reliably) any more. Or the armors are simply too week. I would suggest making them size 5kt and resis 25kt+ ...

202) Large Reactor Mount
"Large Reactor Mount" on space stations work on "Lasers", but not "Phased Energy Cannons".

203) Shield Mount Scaling
"Light Shields" are no-brainers:
e.g. Bio-Electric Field II
"light" version is 50% size, but 75% dam res, 80% shielding, same
leakiness and regen, 80% costs.
Should be 80% size as well (20kt => 15kt instead of 10kt), otherwise
I would always prefer 2 light to 1 normal shield
(same space, 150% dam res, 160% shield)

204)Satellite Mounts
.. claim the range advantage does not apply to seeker, yet CapMiss 1 show +1 in the info screen ?!
> "Small Satelite Mount.
> The range modifier doesn't work with seeker
> weapons. That is hard coded into SE 4 and we have asked Aaron to change
> that but he has not as of yet. If the mount is effecting CSM I then that
> might be a bug with SE 4. I will look into this. Good catch."
Looks like it simply works now .. is that a bug if it works?? ;-)
Alas, shouldn't the damage resistance scale as well ... ??? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

205) Capital Ship Missiles
- DON'T DO DAMAGE TO PLANETS (1% to hit, 1 point of damage)
- fit into small hulls by the dozend .. that's not 'capital'; this makes early Small Satellites
very powerful
- suck => Torps are equal, with "Large Reactor Mount" way better
- have same size as beam weapons (20kt), but 3 times the damage
resistance (30 instead of 10)
They shouln't fit into Scouts, Small Sats, etc.
Damage and range should be considerably higher, especially considering the high research cost.
(maybe +50/+75%)

206) Anti-Matter Torpedoes fire rate 1
All torpedoes and even small Anti-Matter Torpedos have fire rate 2 !!

207) Small Rocket Pods I are in every way inferior to Small Torpedos I

208) Small (fighter) weapons should be able to target seekers

209) "Cargo Niche" cost = "Cargo Cargo Bay I"

210) "Bio-reclamation Resource Storage I" stores 20k instead of 10k

211) Repair Yard
Onboard a ship, a Repair Yard is as big a Space Yard.
Yet, it does only repair equal or marginally more components per turn
than a Damage Control ...
"Repair Yard I" : 1 component/turn .. 400kt size in Space Station
"Repair Dome I" : 3 components/turn .. facility
"Construction Dome I" : 1 component/turn .. facility
vs
"Damage Control Center I" : 1 comp./turn .. 5kt size in FF or Space
Station
=> 10+ components/turn for "Repair Yard", or the "Damage Control Center"
shouldn't work on other vehicles (description says it does, and it really
does)

212) Small Mine Size
.. shouldn't be able to hold 2 small warheads.
Where's the point in putting only 1 in?

213) "Slipstream Drive" (Artifact Tech)
Is only a "Warp Overdrive IV", but it's very expensive to research and to use.

214) AI remote miners
> "The AI will not remote mine, that is an SE IV bug. The AI remote mining ships have
> the ability to generate resources via solar power.)
I _haven't_ seen them produce anything when I switched off the AI for some player.

215) 8472 weapon tech
There seems to be some mixup with the allowed targets for beam and pulse beam weapons: The pulsed weapons hit much worse, yet the beams are only allowed to target ships/planets, while the pulsed ones can target sats etc.
Compared with the standard beam weapons, this should be reversed.

216) fuel usage numbers / drive components
AI uses high tech Bussard Collectors, which produce more fuel - up to the point where the ships should have unlimited range.
This does not work out, though: the resupply minister turns them around as soon as they reach the point where they can barely reach the next resupply station which the fuel they have atm, not taking in account any fuel generation.
This especially effects scouts and mine/sat layers which have to run long distances from their starting points.
Supply usage from weapons is too high, too. After every minor battle
ships run for port...

________________________ RACIAL ISSUES ________________________________

301) Space /Borg Monsters are broken
.. no facilities, no research, no ships .. and no space-monster-tech ..
Guess its because the recent changes :
"5. Changed Monster Racial Trait cost to 5000
6. Changed Borg Monster Racial Trait cost to 5000"

302) wrong environmental settings
Some secondary and neutral races have wrong environmental settings (e.g. "Ullians" => Oxygen Gas Giants).
> Atroc.:"I don't see a problem with this but will look into it just to be safe."
Besides the fact that there are no Oxygen Gas Giants in reality, the Ullians are rock dwellers like the Terranians, Andorians and all others... .
While I can understand that this was made to balance/spread out race over the available planet(s) (types) better, most of those race are actually oxgen-breathing rock (or maybe ice) dwellers. There are next to none gas giant dwellers, which is a distinct feature of the Trek Universe.

________________________ AI ISSUES __________________________________

401) AI does not produce any intel
Test game 1:
turn 250, Federation 1 intel center, all others none
Test game 2:
turn 125, no intel centers anywhere (e.g. Ferengi named 1 of 78 colonies "intel compound", but did not build any intel structures because of not having researched "Applied Intellingence" at all)

402) AI uses wrong research priorities (see [102] too)
It researches "Ressource Extraction II" before going for shields/armor.
It speeds for "Beam Weapon V", neglecting missiles, PD and everything else.
Sometimes racial techs (e.g. "Tolian Armor") get neglected too.

403) ship hull usage
Gorn do not design DDs despite having the tech
Tamarians use DD hulls for minelayers/-sweepers, but not for combat ships

404) tech usage
Klingons do not use armor on ships despite having "Armor-III"

405) "Crew Quarters" missing on AI ships
Some "major" AI build follow-up designs without crew compartment.
If you go in and 'copy' that design, it says 'Must have at least 1 Crew Quarter' ... .
Interestingly, it seems those missing "Crew Quarters" let shields fail to work on those AI vessels !!

406) AI has difficulities using Artifact Tech
E.g. Klingons have "Slipstream Drive" found and researched on turn 125 (!!!).
Yet, they aren't able to use it because its a 'emergency movement device' which the AI doesn't know how to use at all (AFAIK). (see [213])

407) Mine Sweeper (Fleets)
> "This I believe is an SE IV bug in general. The AI loves to send one ship at a time through known mined warp points. There really isn't much any one can do about this bug."
Actually, the AI does send out a Sweeper Fleet with several ships. But as it does not include any combat ship, a lonely satellite is enough to keep them from sweeping the field.
Better to include 1-2 sweeping devices in every design from Destroyer upward.

408) Small/Neutral Empire
.. do build masses of colony ships, but no mine/satellite layers?
Makes their system easy prey .. . They DO research mine tech - know
that from the Nausicaans trying to sweep the fields I put on the warp
point leading to my space.
.. seem all to eager to build Space Stations at their homeworld.
On turn 198, they had 26 of about 5 different designs. But only 2
offensive ships, though those might have been killed by the Feds ;-)

409) AI expansion speed
.. contrary to the readme, the AI seem to be very eager to send out single
colony ships and seed small colonies whereever it can (isn't that much
because it has range issues very much like the player)

410) AI anger
Maybe gets angry too much over contested systems, or single scout ships
in claimed systems, or satellites dropped on warp points, maybe: Jumps
from "mood: moderate" to "mood: Murderous" in 1 turn, then slowly climbs
up again .. without every clearing the "war" status, though?!