Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations

This has always been a bit of a sore point with me... but it may not be possible (or wanted) due to game engine limitations. When a ship explodes, it always does so in the same plane. Verrrrry boring. Would it be possible to have ships generate their shock waves and effects in random directions (or at least planned "random" directions)? This would be especially cool for the cinematic view  :whistling:

is it also possible to make ship explosions to do some damage to near by ships/stations

Yeah, that would be cool too: I think the way to implement that is to use the same thing that the self destruct utilizes.

umm I think this is almost exactly like what you want
http://armada2.filefront.com/file/Armada_II_NanoFX;43621 (http://armada2.filefront.com/file/Armada_II_NanoFX;43621)

I use this in all my mod variations

Hmmm, I do like the damaged ship effects (as in venting), as it makes the ships look in much worse condition. I don't want to download the file, however, so did you mean that it has random explosion directions?

I'm not shure I can check thou brb.

ok so I have just looked and the explosion dose not change how ever you look at it. but it dose look allot better then in the normal game. it gives it the fealing that it is exploding in all directions which is way more realistic. try dloading it I looks so much better

I'd much rather prefer a bunch of ship derelicts that floated around for a minute, then exploded, by the simple fact that few ships seem to blow up in Star Trek. Normally when they take enough damage, they lose life support, and so much of the ship is open to space and so many of the systems are offline that it simply ceases to function. Would make battles look neater, see a bunch of the vanquished enemy floating around, so you can mock them.

i like that idea preator

gamespeed and visibility>canon/realism; at least in this case

Aside from all the times when the ship takes a couple of critical hits and "Warp Core containment is failing! Core Breach!"... which is much more often, from what I've seen.

Well, why can't they just float around for a bit before exploding?  There's really no downside I can see.

That mostly seems to happen to the smallest ships that literally get cluster-fucked by fire, or to the main character ship due to plot device.

As far as game speed goes, thats why they blow up or break up after a period of time.

You might want to censor your language there.

In the battle in First Contact we see Akiras explode. Hardly "smallest ships".

In fact, I can't remember any examples of when ships do just "switch off". Could you mention a few so I can have a look?

I do like the idea, very much so, it's what I'm going for for my B5 stuff (because it happens a lot in B5). I just can't remember it happening so much in Star Trek.

[EDIT: I've just remembered the USS Sitak and the USS Majestic from the DS9 battles... and there was an Excelsior that did it once in the Chin'toka battles. So perhaps there should be the chance for either thing happening?]

To get back on topic though, I think a more varied choice of explosions would be a very good idea, with random chances of each one...

For Christ's sake Atlantis, I'm just saying they BOTH happen. If you would bother reading my posts instead of thinking I said ONLY small ships blow up, and ONLY large ships become derelict, then it would help me out a lot. A Sovereign might explode with the rest of them, and a shuttle might just lose integrity, giving the crew a first class look at outer space, stop putting a spin on my posts, as well as telling me what language I should use.

Yes, ships of all sizes can explode, and ships of all sizes can simply become derelict, I want varied explosions.

lol, whatever :thumbsup:
i've made my point, may's well tidy up the post now :-P

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On the topic though, I've had a thought. If there is a chance of either thing happening, perhaps something can be done with the "critical hit" part of ship odfs. I don't know what the criticalhardpoints do, but maybe it could be possible for critical hits to actually happen, so maybe the entire engine could just go to 0 status (in one lucky critical hit), and need to be repaired. Also chances of each other system going out, or exen just exploding?

That would be cool Atlantis, but perhaps only doable when shields are low or even down, and only with certain weapons (remember that there are special weapons that already make use of this, so perhaps to limit redundancy the effect of a critical hit would need to be looked at). This might also validate the use of tractor beams on certain ship classes... as otherwise those ships would have to be protected until their engines were up and running again...

Only bothering to read the on topic part of your post Atlantis, as the rest of it is spam I assume, that critical hit suggestion is interesting.

lol, whatever :thumbsup:

@Dominus: Yeah that would be a good idea too. In the show there's plenty of examples where a ship goes out of control and has to be tractored to keep it out of harms way. It also gives another reason for escort ships when you're moving something valuable.

Perhaps giving these critical hits minor explosions could be an interesting effect too... In the shows/films we see smaller explosions when ships get hit, so perhaps that could be shown with critical hits (if they're implemented... it's just an idea)

That sounds interesting. added to the todos!  ^-^

Not for this release of V3, I hope.... I hate the wait!