Star Trek Armada 3 (Mod/TC)
Star Trek Armada 3 has been released now on ModDB.
This is a Total Conversion mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion so you will need that first.
As of writing Sins Rebellion is actually 50% in the Steam Sale until the 2nd of January. It is on sale quite often so you may well see it cheaper again in the not too distant future.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-trek-armada-3 for the mod itself.
So is it really Star Trek Armada 3? Yes and no. Of course it uses the name but is still a fan project and I dread to think what Activision will do when someone sees it and brings it to the attention of their copyright holders.
It is about as good a balance between the 2 games as you can probably get. It still uses all the Sins fundamentals but with a nice Trek spin over the top.
As of writing this the Mod is officially 0.75 so is still work in progress but pretty playable none the less. You will see placeholders in parts, such as the refineries just have Temp over each icon. Many ships have either vanilla Sins icons or ones from other models temporarily. Classic case being the Envoy for Feds. Icon in build menu is a Nebula, but you actually get a Galaxy mod that is like half a Cheyenne class. One nacelle above and one below the Saucer.
There will be balance issues and other aspects worked on in time. Only minor quibble I had so far was with the Sovereign seeming weaker than the Galaxy. At least when fighting Borg Assimilation Cubes my Sovereigns die faster. But very minor quibble really.
In the very late game on Vast maps I am getting Mini dump crashes which are very annoying. These sometimes happen whenever a new version of Sins is released or new Graphics drivers. Usually updating the driver resolves the issue. Similar thing will happen with Mods. As Ironclad/Stardock alter bits in Sins itself it can make Mods crash more often. Although any good current modders will have patches and fixes out quite soon after. At least that has been my experience with Sacrifice of Angels 2.
If you already own Sins or the Steam sale tempts you then pick up this and also give a thought to the other big Trek mod. Sacrifice of Angels 2. You will find it on ModDB as well.
How to make it work?
Sins is very Mod friendly really. It will create a game folder within which is a Mods folder. The mods folder will be recreated any time a new version of Sins is released so you will need to move stuff around in the future.
The mod is downloaded as a Rar file and then simply needs extracting into the Sins Mod folder. With Armada 3 I found it works best to Extract it directly into the Mod folder itself. Prior Mods I tended to extract into the download folder and then just copy across. But that does not work quite right for Armada 3 seemingly.
Once installed the next time you load Sins it will begin as Armada 3 with their own little voiced intro. Enjoy.
If you want to change back to vanilla or a different Mod you simply go into the Options menu and under Mods you can enable or disable as you wish.
In case you are new to Sins I will give a brief run down of how it plays and how to get the Mod to work.
Basics:
Sins is a Pseudo 3D RTS cum 4X Lite game (Camera is full 3D but game plays out on a flat 2D plain). You begin in a single planet and must reach outward to gain new planets and with them the resources to create your empire.
But this is not Civilization. You do not spend a huge amount of time on the minutia or tax levels etc. You typically have 3 forms of resource and these are collected in simple ways.
Asteroids in planetary systems will offer up 2 of the resources so as you capture planets you slap extractors/refineries on and there you go. The more you have, the more you get. Simple.
The last resource is financial(or Latinum in Armada 3) and comes from your population, how developed their planets are and how content they are.
Developing a planet is simple as well. If you click on a planet you will see a green button and after clicking on it you will get a selection of ways in which to improve the planet.
The easiest mistake early on is to rush for planets and forget to develop their most basic stats. Then a player wonders why they can not make any money for more. Each new world you add has a cost attached for being new and will actually cost you money until it is developed.
Thankfully this does not take long and it is often wise to slap those developments onto each planet as soon as you have it. That way they add to your resource pool rather than draining it.
Each planet only has a certain amount of space around its Gravity Well which can be upgraded via this menu as well. But you will need to spread your choices over your empire as it grows.
Most planets can have a maximum of 24 slots for Industrial stuff like shipyards or research centres etc.
A similar system also applies for defensive systems such as Turrets and Hangers.
Research:
What RTS/4X does not have a research system? Sins is no exception. Theirs is broken down into Military and Civilian research branches and each of those needs a special research centre.
At the time of writing you will need 8 of each Centre to get the full tech options. When playing on larger maps it is often a good idea to restrict yourself to only 1 research station per system. This leaves room to build other useful stations that allow trade or spread your culture. Culture becomes more and more important as you build outward.
Building Stuff:
Each planet will come with construction ships automatically although their number will increase through development as well.
Building is as simple as going into the menu, select what you want to build and select where to put it.
For those who want to focus more on the Macro side there is also an auto place option so you just click what to build and the game will place it for you.
Building ships is nice and simple as well. You typically have 3 forms of Shipyard.
Frigates/Cruisers.
Capitals.
Titans.
You usually begin with both the Frigate/Cruiser and a Capital shipyard, and Sins will usually give you a Capital completely free at first. This should be one of the first things you build as they will get you through almost all early fights. Which capital you build comes down to personal choice and experimentation.
Personally I always make the ship that has the Colonise option on it. This allows the Capital ship itself to capture new planets for you.
You can also focus on more destructive ships and build colonisers seperately.
You will begin with a bare few basic Frigates but research will open up many, many more options.
Unit Cap is handled via the research menu as well. You can increase the amount of Capitals you can crew and a general cap for all ships.
Each Capital and Titan also acts like a Hero Unit in other RTS. In that they can be leveled up and gain new abilities as they level.
Typically they will have 4 main abilities that you can pick from depending on their fleet role.
Early play:
Just a very basic rundown on how to start your first game of Sins.
When you first appear you will have a single planet, shipyards and a couple of ships. The Construction ships are essentially npc and may as well be ignored. The others will be Scouts and best used to do just that. Clicking on each or drag selcting all. You will see an icon that has a planet and magnifying glass icon on it. Right clicking that will send the Scouts out and they will try to search all unknown systems for you.
Create your first Capital ship. It is the most powerful ship early on and will help no end. Create frigates to help escort the Capital and then see what is nearby.
Different planets will often need special research before they can be colonised and usually the better the planet, the better defended it is.
Each planet will have at least 2 NPC defenders. Usually just a couple of frigates for the most basic. This can scale right up to groups that will decimate you early on. So pick your fights. If you need certain research for the nearest planets then use your home system to make a couple of Civilian Research Stations and get that research done. Otherwise you will usually focus on 1 Military and 1 Civilian research station per system.
You wont really need any defences early on as you should be well spaced out. Although a single turret can help deter would be raiders. (in basic form there will be raider spawns now and then. These can be turned off though if they bother you too much.) Turrets are best used as planetary defence and are usually best kept near the planet itself. I used to try and coat the areas that ship might appear from at the system edge and would fail each time.
Frigates are nice early on but you want to be colonising systems and using them to build outward and research more technology. But do not get carried away with just getting new ships without buffing what you already have.
You can almost treble each ships effectiveness with upgrades to shields, hull, armour and of course weapons.
Capturing enemy planets will be a longer process than the neutral planets you get earlier on. You will need to bombard the planet first and only your capitals and select frigates can do this. Later on if you have a fleet of Capitals they will take over planets quite well by themselves. Otherwise you will want to add a group of the frigates to help out if you encounter the enemy before you have a large fleet.
Quite often you will see the NPC use a very Goonswarm style of attack. They often forego the Capitals but will swarm with a large number of Planetary Assault Frigates. Perfectly valid tactic as well, I personally just like seeing a fleet composed of Capitals and Support.
There is not much more to explain in a simple run down. You can gain victory through military domination, diplomacy, reaching specific achievements like launching a Titan etc.
If you have read this far and not lost interest then happy hunting and I hope you enjoy Sins and Armada 3.
This is a Total Conversion mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion so you will need that first.
As of writing Sins Rebellion is actually 50% in the Steam Sale until the 2nd of January. It is on sale quite often so you may well see it cheaper again in the not too distant future.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-trek-armada-3 for the mod itself.
So is it really Star Trek Armada 3? Yes and no. Of course it uses the name but is still a fan project and I dread to think what Activision will do when someone sees it and brings it to the attention of their copyright holders.
It is about as good a balance between the 2 games as you can probably get. It still uses all the Sins fundamentals but with a nice Trek spin over the top.
As of writing this the Mod is officially 0.75 so is still work in progress but pretty playable none the less. You will see placeholders in parts, such as the refineries just have Temp over each icon. Many ships have either vanilla Sins icons or ones from other models temporarily. Classic case being the Envoy for Feds. Icon in build menu is a Nebula, but you actually get a Galaxy mod that is like half a Cheyenne class. One nacelle above and one below the Saucer.
There will be balance issues and other aspects worked on in time. Only minor quibble I had so far was with the Sovereign seeming weaker than the Galaxy. At least when fighting Borg Assimilation Cubes my Sovereigns die faster. But very minor quibble really.
In the very late game on Vast maps I am getting Mini dump crashes which are very annoying. These sometimes happen whenever a new version of Sins is released or new Graphics drivers. Usually updating the driver resolves the issue. Similar thing will happen with Mods. As Ironclad/Stardock alter bits in Sins itself it can make Mods crash more often. Although any good current modders will have patches and fixes out quite soon after. At least that has been my experience with Sacrifice of Angels 2.
If you already own Sins or the Steam sale tempts you then pick up this and also give a thought to the other big Trek mod. Sacrifice of Angels 2. You will find it on ModDB as well.
How to make it work?
Sins is very Mod friendly really. It will create a game folder within which is a Mods folder. The mods folder will be recreated any time a new version of Sins is released so you will need to move stuff around in the future.
The mod is downloaded as a Rar file and then simply needs extracting into the Sins Mod folder. With Armada 3 I found it works best to Extract it directly into the Mod folder itself. Prior Mods I tended to extract into the download folder and then just copy across. But that does not work quite right for Armada 3 seemingly.
Once installed the next time you load Sins it will begin as Armada 3 with their own little voiced intro. Enjoy.
If you want to change back to vanilla or a different Mod you simply go into the Options menu and under Mods you can enable or disable as you wish.
In case you are new to Sins I will give a brief run down of how it plays and how to get the Mod to work.
Basics:
Sins is a Pseudo 3D RTS cum 4X Lite game (Camera is full 3D but game plays out on a flat 2D plain). You begin in a single planet and must reach outward to gain new planets and with them the resources to create your empire.
But this is not Civilization. You do not spend a huge amount of time on the minutia or tax levels etc. You typically have 3 forms of resource and these are collected in simple ways.
Asteroids in planetary systems will offer up 2 of the resources so as you capture planets you slap extractors/refineries on and there you go. The more you have, the more you get. Simple.
The last resource is financial(or Latinum in Armada 3) and comes from your population, how developed their planets are and how content they are.
Developing a planet is simple as well. If you click on a planet you will see a green button and after clicking on it you will get a selection of ways in which to improve the planet.
The easiest mistake early on is to rush for planets and forget to develop their most basic stats. Then a player wonders why they can not make any money for more. Each new world you add has a cost attached for being new and will actually cost you money until it is developed.
Thankfully this does not take long and it is often wise to slap those developments onto each planet as soon as you have it. That way they add to your resource pool rather than draining it.
Each planet only has a certain amount of space around its Gravity Well which can be upgraded via this menu as well. But you will need to spread your choices over your empire as it grows.
Most planets can have a maximum of 24 slots for Industrial stuff like shipyards or research centres etc.
A similar system also applies for defensive systems such as Turrets and Hangers.
Research:
What RTS/4X does not have a research system? Sins is no exception. Theirs is broken down into Military and Civilian research branches and each of those needs a special research centre.
At the time of writing you will need 8 of each Centre to get the full tech options. When playing on larger maps it is often a good idea to restrict yourself to only 1 research station per system. This leaves room to build other useful stations that allow trade or spread your culture. Culture becomes more and more important as you build outward.
Building Stuff:
Each planet will come with construction ships automatically although their number will increase through development as well.
Building is as simple as going into the menu, select what you want to build and select where to put it.
For those who want to focus more on the Macro side there is also an auto place option so you just click what to build and the game will place it for you.
Building ships is nice and simple as well. You typically have 3 forms of Shipyard.
Frigates/Cruisers.
Capitals.
Titans.
You usually begin with both the Frigate/Cruiser and a Capital shipyard, and Sins will usually give you a Capital completely free at first. This should be one of the first things you build as they will get you through almost all early fights. Which capital you build comes down to personal choice and experimentation.
Personally I always make the ship that has the Colonise option on it. This allows the Capital ship itself to capture new planets for you.
You can also focus on more destructive ships and build colonisers seperately.
You will begin with a bare few basic Frigates but research will open up many, many more options.
Unit Cap is handled via the research menu as well. You can increase the amount of Capitals you can crew and a general cap for all ships.
Each Capital and Titan also acts like a Hero Unit in other RTS. In that they can be leveled up and gain new abilities as they level.
Typically they will have 4 main abilities that you can pick from depending on their fleet role.
Early play:
Just a very basic rundown on how to start your first game of Sins.
When you first appear you will have a single planet, shipyards and a couple of ships. The Construction ships are essentially npc and may as well be ignored. The others will be Scouts and best used to do just that. Clicking on each or drag selcting all. You will see an icon that has a planet and magnifying glass icon on it. Right clicking that will send the Scouts out and they will try to search all unknown systems for you.
Create your first Capital ship. It is the most powerful ship early on and will help no end. Create frigates to help escort the Capital and then see what is nearby.
Different planets will often need special research before they can be colonised and usually the better the planet, the better defended it is.
Each planet will have at least 2 NPC defenders. Usually just a couple of frigates for the most basic. This can scale right up to groups that will decimate you early on. So pick your fights. If you need certain research for the nearest planets then use your home system to make a couple of Civilian Research Stations and get that research done. Otherwise you will usually focus on 1 Military and 1 Civilian research station per system.
You wont really need any defences early on as you should be well spaced out. Although a single turret can help deter would be raiders. (in basic form there will be raider spawns now and then. These can be turned off though if they bother you too much.) Turrets are best used as planetary defence and are usually best kept near the planet itself. I used to try and coat the areas that ship might appear from at the system edge and would fail each time.
Frigates are nice early on but you want to be colonising systems and using them to build outward and research more technology. But do not get carried away with just getting new ships without buffing what you already have.
You can almost treble each ships effectiveness with upgrades to shields, hull, armour and of course weapons.
Capturing enemy planets will be a longer process than the neutral planets you get earlier on. You will need to bombard the planet first and only your capitals and select frigates can do this. Later on if you have a fleet of Capitals they will take over planets quite well by themselves. Otherwise you will want to add a group of the frigates to help out if you encounter the enemy before you have a large fleet.
Quite often you will see the NPC use a very Goonswarm style of attack. They often forego the Capitals but will swarm with a large number of Planetary Assault Frigates. Perfectly valid tactic as well, I personally just like seeing a fleet composed of Capitals and Support.
There is not much more to explain in a simple run down. You can gain victory through military domination, diplomacy, reaching specific achievements like launching a Titan etc.
If you have read this far and not lost interest then happy hunting and I hope you enjoy Sins and Armada 3.
