STA2 Classic: No Officers/Rebalance Mod

posted on November 1st, 2012, 6:01 pm

I changed my mind about passive mining

Your choice. I have them if you want them.

posted on November 2nd, 2012, 1:32 am

Thanks for the offer.

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Resource Management Concepts:

For this mod, each miner (excluding the Borg) will be configured to handle either Dilithium or Latinum, but not both. This is so that when a resource object (eg: Latinum Nebula or Dilithium Moon) runs out of said resource, the freighter will go to the nearest resource object of the same type that it was just mining. That way, you do not waste 150 Dilithium when the Dilithium Moon runs out by the freighter heading to mine the Latinum, dumping all of the Dilithium onboard. Miners can be reconfigured every few seconds, but it's recommended that you wait until it's cargo bay is empty before reconfiguring it. Borg probes are reconfigured to handle resources and have different sub configurations. Borg resource probes can either mine resources (configurations are Dilithium and Metal) or process mined resources.

Currently, it takes 4 miners to optimize a resource moon (using the stock A2 miners and moons).

The infinite dilithium moon will appear as infinite in the ODF filename, but that's for compatibility with the random map generator. It will instead be a "rich" Dilithium moon with limited resources. To get truly infinite resources, you should check the infinite resources box. Factions will be balanced based on limited, but abundant resources.

Latinum can be used as a weapon. It's always a good idea to be mining Latinum, because a player that lets their guard down get get their entire fleet knocked out of commission by a single freighter (probably cargo ship as well). But crew and resources are limited, and many factions use Latinum as a currency for which you can buy Dilithium, Metal, and Supplies in order to rebuild your fleet quickly. Crew is also a factor, something that is very limited and hard to come by. Using an attacking force of Latinum-filled freighters will drain all of your resources, especially crew, very quickly, especially if you're up against the Borg, who don't damage your freighters, but will instead beam crew off of your freighter and assimilate them, and the freighter, in that order! And the freighter is left undamaged!

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It's number crunching time! Fleet Operations vs STA2 Classic Rebalanced!

Venture Class:

Fleet Operations: 3, 10, 3
STA2 Rebalanced: 3, 5, 3

What does this mean? Looks like the Fleet Ops scout is going to win this battle by a long shot! Not so fast! The displayed offensive value has been reduced by a factor of 100 for STA2 Rebalanced. Defensive value has been reduced by a factor of 10. And system value has been reduced by a factor of 5/4.

All of a sudden, it doesn't look too good for the Fleet Ops Venture as the STA2 Rebalanced Venture will pulverize the FO venture! Dealing 145 hitpoints in damage per shot, it's enough to destroy one of it's own in one shot (provided that it hits and the target's shields are down, if shields are up, 9 shots). With a total of 223 hitpoints, the FO scout is only going to be able to take 2 hits, while the STA2R scout (with it's 1,180 hitpoints), will be able to take 513 hits. The FO scout will be 100% accurate while the STA2R scout might achieve 75% accuracy if both the FO scout and itself are in motion. If only the FO scout is in motion, then the STA2R scout will only achieve a 50% accuracy.

These numbers are far from final, but this should give you an idea on just what you will be dealing with in STA2R. The defensive value is not going to come from the hull, but rather, the shields. Just imagine what is going to happen when the destroyers come along with low-value, double-digit offensive and defensive values. Best case scenario, scout retreats or cloaks before it's detected. There is a limit as to how strong the hull can get before the resource costs start to become impractical, so unless you want a super-strong hull that can take multiple hits, you better focus on getting those shields strong enough to take the hits.