Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations

As of 2007, not a single Naval force in this planet has a single Battleship class in commission. The last Battleship class, the Iowa class, was decommissioned by the US Navy just last year, and there are no plans to design and construct newer battleships. The Navy works much more efficiently with smaller ships with specialized roles.

This bit of reality also seems to seep into FO. Battleships, (Sovereigns, D'Deridexes, Negh'Vars) are really not worth the cost and the time and the research. A fleet comprised of a well-balanced force of destroyers and cruisers outmatches 4~6 large, bulky, slow battleships.

My suggestion is to make Battleships really worth the trouble. I'm not talking about reducing research costs and shipbuild times, (For my suggestions to work, cost and time should be increased drastically) I'm talking about the actual specs of the battleships themselves.

1) Multi-targetting weapons: I cannot imagine how a heavily armed battleship with dozens of phaser banks would only fire at one target at a time. Even Voyager, and Intepid Class ship, was seen firing up to 3 phaser blasts at 3 different targets (VOY: Dragon's Teeth). A Sovereign, for example, should be able to target and fire at least 4 ships at once.

2) Support Crafts: Larger ships should be able to launch a variety of support ships, such as Peregrine class fighters, or at least several shuttles for scouting.
3) Battleships could also provide benefits to ships in a specific radius, such as increased fire rate, shield recharge rate, etc

4) Since Battleships are supposed to be expensive, let's make it expensive. There are only 2 Sovereign class ships in the entire Federation. A player shouldn't be economically able to build more than 1~2.

Sorry if this whole thing sounds a bit noncoherent. I'm really tired right now .. lol

The Doctor agrees, make 'em rare, make 'em big, make 'em bad ass.

Just... like... in... the... show!!!  :woot:

No seriously, I see your point. The sov in FO is great, but the excelsior II is comparable in terms of how long it survives, mainly due to the quantums. And it feels like I can build 3 excelsiors for every sov, so it's a no brainer. Build 40 excelsiors and send in the cavalry!

Or... make a battleship a true battleship, so that just like the Negh'var at the end of DS9, one ship really makes a difference.

1)

Less than possible with Armada's current Engine. All ships should be able to multi target by this rule, since ALL ships in this game have dramatically reduced weapons arrays because of how the games engine is designed. Even the saber class ships have more than one phaser array, thus they should be able to multi-target.

2)

Also possible, and we have some ships which do this. Sovereign class carries no fighters, Scoutships maybe but by this regard all ships have shuttles for the most part.

3)

This is interesting, the presence of a battleship could be a moral boost to you and a drain on the enemy, since your soldiers value their own lives over the end of the battle. But, support ships generally perform this same function.

4)

No.

There are more than 2 Sovereign class ships in the Federation. OR there are less.

(And there are other designs such as the Prometheus which are arguably just as strong.)

If you do not consider games canon, then there is one. If you do, then there are many, likely half a dozen. Simply because the Galaxy class is now a common ship in the Federation so it is more likely for them to be commissioning a few Sovereign class ships.

I've played mods with ships that can fire a dozen or so weapons at once, and at multiple targets.

Yeah, its definitely possible, with a little bit of ODF editing. The Dominion Battleship's Excessive Strike special weapon has multiple targetting, if I'm not mistaken..

A good point! However I'd like to see it in a separated mode just to find out how it works and if people like it. It makes no sense if there are 10 blokes that would like to play a game with such a balance. I count myself into that group and would really like to see smaller ships be worth a rush on the mining stations and low armed stations but fail horribly versus a starbases and bigger ships, even if you throw entire fleets of bugs into the base. 10 Sabers shouldn't be able to destroy a Klingon Negvar nor should 1 fleet of bugs be able to destroy a heavy armed starbase.

General Multiple Tasking should not destroy micromanaging aspects even if it looks nice. If a starbase would be able to target 10 ships this would be ok. But a Sovereign should at max be able to target 2 or 3 ships. Otherwise battles would turn into a bad mess. You always have to consider the feeling when playing. Games are always not canon and you will never get it to a 100% canonity.



First problem is...we should first change the balance to a degree which fits most to our imaginations...who is going to redo the balance for that and offer the team this to inlcude as a separate game mode (if they even want so)? Maybe they have a open ear for such a project but not the time to do it as odf work is a very long lasting one.

i'll take up the challenege, in terms fo adding multi targeting that is quite easy an is one small piece of odf code, beefing up starbases won't be to hard either or giving them the ability to fire on multiple targets at once... the question is, who wants to beta test...

Wow, this sounds so amazing I could barely keep my mouth shut!
This brings my dream of having more realistic ship battles so much closer (I had thought it would be impossible before). Could this be the solution to "gang bang" ship battles?

In some random mod I played like 4 years ago, multi targeting was a partial solution to gang banging, but all of my ships still targetted one "common" ship to gangbang..lol

well yhea thats because of the classlabel used to get the ships to target more than one, its a reuse of a borg weapon label but you can tell it the max amount of targets though, so hit 3 or 4 or just 1 extra ship, you just cant control what ships it hits... lol...

Its Ultrian Burst isn't it, that has the ODF modifier?

We do currently have no plans to add multi targeting to the existing units. We had a major re-balancing to even out the usability of early- and endgame units. You should find both worth building now.

I would Beta Test it if you want. How long do you think the first odf work is ready? I recommend to take all the time you need...cos I'm on a trial journey during the next 2 or 3  weeks and I don't know if I'm gonna have internet. pm me your email address plz and we can sort it out.

to add multitargetting shouldnt take more than a day, but getting it balanced is another issue...

I long to see the results of this! (of both I mean :woot:)

Optec: At what point in the development do you plain to add"multi targeting"?

regular weapons wont have multi targeting in fleet operations. only some special weapons (like the mutli-targeting disruptor for example) will feature area damage.
larger borg units however might have the ability to strike at more then one target, too, but that's it

ok i have equipted certian federation ships and stations with the ability to hit more than one targert.. only a few ships... for instance the sovie and the starbases and a couple of heavy cruisers... trying to keep it balanced...

the main problem being you can't really control the phasers.. well you can control one but not the other and i had to implement this in a special way but it does work...

same goes for torpedo's you can hit two targets at once with a torp each... though i gave this ability to only two ships... one being the sovie

a good mutli targeting mode is no technical problem, but a game-mechanic and balancing question. thats not the kind of game we want to create

im not saying that it is any problem for you, hell we all know it isn't and i understand your point rom the balancing point of view... but it doesnt mean that with out good balancing you can't make it work... the way i have it set up right now for the feds seems to work. the sovie isn't over powered at all, it cna only fire on one extra ship and fire a torpedo at one extra ship...

stations are the longest to balance as i dont want a starbase too pwerful or too weak...

the akira also has multi targeting on the phaser... and just multi torp on the excel...

obviously the galaxy and has multi on both to... the weapons themselves are just replicates of yours with additional code added...

actually i left your original weapon in tact as the main weapon so you can control it and the extra weapon is an areacannon that cna only hit a max of one target...

What I don't like it how ships all seem to pick on one ship at a time. I wish their was a way to make the ships pick different targets unless ordered to target a signal ship.

Yup, I completely agree. It's not only irritating 'artistically", but the system does not reward the micromanager as much as it could.

Or, if you're going into an enemy base, and all your ships decide to attack the scouts, or the science stations....when there's still starbases, turrets, and command flagships left...doesn't quite help.

True... however you can remedy this part by watching over the ships (although it is irritating that they only attack one type of ship/station at a time). This is micromanaging, and as much as it does stink to not just let your ships attack what you want them to attack (without telling them), it makes the game better (in my humble opinion). Wow, that sentence was confusing :blush:

Is it possible to get each ship class attack its preferred ship or station when no direct order is given? Say if you don't directly order a Steamrunner class to attack a ship can you get it to attack the next station around for example?

You could include that in the "easy" and "normal2 play mode and let "hard" be without it so you have to micromanage your fleet. I like that idea....

Actually, that idea sounds fantastic! :D You'll have to excuse the pun, I'm sure/afraid. :shifty:

First Beta Test today. Good work so far there's a significant change for big ships. Several bugs have no chance against one Sovie which is very good. Just want to let you know things are in the works.

well i played the AI fed agaisnt normal roms, well my normal shrike spam failed,lol

problems with multi-targetting:
1) you only control the weapon to hit 1 of the intended targets, the others are completely out of your control.

2) this can lead to big problems (especially if your borg) eg: you have a borg cube who has holding beamed an enemy ship more targets arrive,before they are even in weapons range the multi target weapons are already going through their firing cycle, and the only target they are hitting is the ship currently being holding beamed.

3)the weapon will hit neutral ships as well (ie. ferengi scavengers & cargo)

4) when presented with a targettable enemy the firing cycle starts and ANY enemy ships in range will be hit, even cloaked ships who you didn't know were there. (seriously unballanced as there will be less need for cloak detecting units)



@jan do you mean official beta testing or just private testing of this little idea.

Hi Cpt Ryan, his beta testing my changes, im happt to have more beta testers because at the moment i only have one and im really looking for someone to play a game agaisnt to test my changes as the ai is just too basic to...

as for your points...

1) yes it tru you can only control one, but ships dont have more than an additonal phaser or torp and 9 times out of ten it will either fire on the same target you want it to or on another big enemy ship (which is the idea) and to be honest when you got a fleet of 16 odd shrikes firing at your groups of sovies you usually want them trying to kill as many as quicka s you cna so it qorks quite well...

2)personally its restricted by the same principles of a normal phaser so if the cube has a ship in a holding beam it should attack that ship like a normal phaser wouldnt but with no borg i can't test obviously so its not an issue at moment but will keep an eye on...

3) need to go in and test this because usually i tell my ships to kill ferengi for the hell of it so i will see if it does it on its own...

4)i haven't had the cloak issue once? i have left cloaked ships in the fed base ready to attack the starbase and the AI has been none the wiser.... nor has it tried to fire at them???

p.s. the AI in armada by default can actually see all cloaked vessel without cloak research anyway, you can test this with normal flops, build a few shrikes put them near the outsid eof the enemy base and watch ships gather around it but not attack it till it decloaks... and thats a crappy armada engine thing that i think doca with his amazing programming ability can fix...

yep, area weapons do always hit cloaked vessels even if not detected by the owner of the firing starbship.

thats not true at all because i have tested it and the feds didnt not shoot on my cloaked vessels with the special weapon i created so that really is not true at all... dnt believe me test it out, i will happily send the files
Posted on: November 11, 2007, 05:36:20 pm

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so is that a yes or a no optec to seeing my files?

i can tell you straight that it doesnt hit cloaked ships, i have tried over and over and i cant get my weapons to fire on a cloaked ship without passive cloak research... in which case then yes your right it does.

i'd like to see how you were able to get multitargeting weapons not to fire on cloaked vessels...cuz it happens all the time with my multitargeting weapons...could I see some code for that?

im more than happy to send you my files over?

i have only tested on the computer and not any other player as its in beta so only have limited people testing it, though not many offered to be honest...

but when the federation (the first race i have given multi targetting to) is the computer and i stick a few cloaked shrikes in, its multi targetting weapon wont fire on my ship till i decloak or they have passive tachyon???

as for firing on my ship once the research is done, thats the same for a ship with normal wepaons unles set to yellow aleart in which case my weapon wont fire either.

have you tried to be the federation and see if any of your ships will fire at cloaked vessels?

the AI doesnt cloak and i have no one to test it with as Jan is away for 2 weeks, if your willing to test it with me than im more than happy to try?

The AI cloaks in vanilla... shouldn't it in Fleet ops?

it doesnt in fleet ops at all, i did redesign the AI to be more efficient in FO in terms of building ships and better when choosing targets and sending large fleets but you would have to be a good player to handle my AI but the AI defo dont cloak.

redman, read what i said, "when presented with a targetable enemy" i.e test this by putting your cloaked shrikes next to the enemy base, then bring a seperate uncloaked ship towards the base, then see what happens.

BTW, area effect weapons cannot miss because the hitchance value has to be 1

well ill give it ago tonight and see what happens...

but my multi target phasers aren't true multi target as i set the max targets to 1, and this was so 3 phasers could either all hit one ship or a ship each... seeing as only one ship can hit 3 ships (the descent, it doesnt matter too much) and then the rest can target a a max of two, with you being able to choose onr ship.

i have set the hit chance to 0.5 and maybe thats what some phasers fire funky, i will check and set them to 1.

Well dont worry ill test it with mark at somepoint this weekend

That could be really interesting for the Dominion; it would set them apart even further from the other races.  :D I like it  :thumbsup:

i think battleships should be limited to the relative size of your fleet. say you have 50 ships, you should be able to build 5 battleships. 100 ships / 10 battleships.... and so on. Whats the point of having 100 battleships, wheres the fun in that ?

Well... I could understand your logic if those things were not balanced (i.e. battleships being insanely powerful). As it stands right now, very few people build battleships because the smaller vessels build quicker and do more DPS and are cheaper in the long haul. However, because of the new balancing for V3 final we should finally see a much more even mix of ships  :woot: . Personally I hate caps and think they wreck/severely limit strategy (take DoW for example). I don't think anybody will ever build 100 battleships and nothing else, because in the time and resources it took them to construct those 100 ships, the oponent would have already decimated them entirely with mixed fleets.