My friends ... the time has come to boldly push back against the relentless advance of the Dominion and all others who would wish to extinguish the light of the Federation. We know that such foes fervently desire to destroy your way of life, to lay waste to the entirety of the Alpha Quadrant! Will you stand idly by as freedom dies? Or ... will you join me once again, in the desperate fight to preserve the peace that we have worked so hard to achieve?

Posted by Bane(Dev) on Dec 17th, 2015

Introducing the 1.3 Patch

Every developer whether here from the beginning or who has joined in the time of CTA is a passionate member of the team who loves Star Trek of the 80's and 90's and wishes to portray in a game the detail of fleet battles seen in episodes such as DS9 "Sacrifice of Angels".

We have had many kind compliments over the years from many and have even been graced with a ModDB award but we would not have the energy to do so without you all and your support and so in closing on this section it gives us great pleasure to announce CTA 1.3 Defiance will hopefully be available for download from Midnight GMT tonight! Slightly earlier than predicted!

Before I run down a bullet pointed change list, let me just mention MOTY again this year. If you think we are deserving once again then please do spread the word and vote for us as we continue our development map towards the future!

So 1.3 is here and a lot has changed, thousands of small tweaks have added, but I'll try to cover most of the big stuff as best I can :)

The Almighty Big Change List!

> Diplomacy Issues that prevented players from moving along their research trees have now been fixed

> The Romulan Starbase has had its shield stats and mitigation lowered to bring it in line with other race star bases, we felt it was too strong at late game with its upgrades.

> Various ship models have been replaced in the game including the Buzzard and Norway-class, many have had re-textures.

> Random Events have been rebalanced, this means you will face deadly threats much more often, some so deadly they may even end your game prematurely if you are ill prepared, if you don't like this kind of challenge you may want to turn these off.

> Several maps have been tweaked and we see addition of new maps for those players want STA3 team designed maps those with Cailean in the title can be extremely challenging so expect a harder time progressing on these.

> New Borg Cube Random Event - Prepare for destruction with our all new Borg Cube random event; better keep those capital vessels hiding or they may be coming back to bite you!

> Federation vessels have been overhauled with the Prometheus, Akira and Excelsior benefiting from armour buffs, while the Prometheus itself sees a speed increase making it the perfect deep range raiding vessel and interceptor, the Excelsior meanwhile gets an improved taunt ability giving it an edge in survivability.

> Not only does the Norway look better it even performs well as a capable combat frigate, don't leave home without one or two or three...especially for knocking enemy planet installations out quickly.

> The Federation excel at scientific research thanks to their alliance with the Vulcan Science Academy, see improved abilities from the Phoenix and Nebula and prepare to even disable an enemy Dreadnought class vessel!

> Look to improvements on the Federation Dreadnoughts will you take the Excalibur with its excellent and updated defensive abilities or perhaps the Polaris with its time freeze allowing you to run away and retreat at a moments notice?

> Federation Phaser and Torpedo arrays have been upgunned and switched out, we will make them pay for attacking Federation colonies.

> Need to slow enemy vessels then look to the new abilities available on the Federation Sol-type defense stations and Spacedocks to slow enemy vessels in your gravity well.

> Sadly due to significant losses in the Dominion War the Third Fleet Reinforcements option has been limited to Starfleet Command HQ only!

> Elite Carriers have now arrived for all factions, take the best of the best, the "Top Guns", into battle with advanced fighter and bomber squadrons with better stats than regular fighters!

> All Command and Hero Stations now start out with culture spread getting you off the ground running!

> Upgrade the crews of your ships even more but prepare to pay the cost as you can now upgrade above level 4! come back swinging in late game with more powerful capital vessels to take revenge on your opponents!

> Fear the power of the Dominion with the all upgrade Manticore now taking its place as the new heavy cruiser of the Dominion, up-gunned and moved in the research tree. Remember, Victory is Life!

> Prepare for "THE BORG", as we have completely reworked the ship research tree and some of the cruiser costs to make early to mid game more exciting for Borg players in multiplayer combat.

> Lowered cost to deploy a Unimatrix for the Borg Player.

> Reworked every Borg Research, early game Borg research will now be cost and time appropriate as we felt that the research was taking too long to complete in multiplayer games, leaving Borg players at a disadvantage.

> Update various strings to bring them more in line to both canon and gameplay purpose.

> Small tweaks across all factions to improve gameplay balance.

Thank you for your continued support and friendship and Merry Xmas from the Armada 3 Team