Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations

So, you may have guessed it from the title already, the upcoming version 3.0 of Fleet Operations will feature a completely working experience and level-up system.

So lets take a look into what that means and see how it will work.
Every time one of your vessels destroys an opponent it will gain a certain amount of experience. The amount gained differs from situation to situation. A Sovereign gets much less experience by killing a Romulan Shrike then a Shrike would get from finishing off a Sovereign. Once a vessel gained enough experience it will reach the next of in total four ranks. Each rank increases the vessels Offensive, Defensive and System values. The precise bonuses per rank are different from vessel to vessel.

(http://www.fleetops.net/images/newspost_images/rank2.png) Rank 1

(http://www.fleetops.net/images/newspost_images/rank3.png) Rank 2

(http://www.fleetops.net/images/newspost_images/rank4.png) Officer-Rank 1

(http://www.fleetops.net/images/newspost_images/rank5.png) Officer-Rank 2

Once a vessel has reached the Officer-Rank it will also gain a new special upgrade unique to them. This might be a new weapon, a passive ability or a change in the behavior of its native special weapons. Of course these bonuses will be more powerful once the vessel has reached the second officer rank.

The rank will be visible for you next to friendly vessels on the game view and on the interface in the selection overview. On a side note: visibility and behavior of the health bars has changed in v3 too.

(http://www.fleetops.net/images/Gallery/FleetOps3Federation/thumbs/FOScreenShot_080720_223922.png) (http://www.fleetops.net/images/Gallery/FleetOps3Federation/FOScreenShot_080720_223922.png)

(http://www.fleetops.net/images/Gallery/FleetOps3Romulan/thumbs/FOScreenShot_080720_225057.png) (http://www.fleetops.net/images/Gallery/FleetOps3Romulan/FOScreenShot_080720_225057.png)

And to round this newspost up, here are some Federation Officer abilities as a small preview.

Defiant Class

• Officer-Rank 1: 
  Adds two additional Quantum Torpedo Launchers
• Officer-Rank 2: 
  The Quantum Torpedoes deal additional damage

Excelsior-II Class

• Officer-Rank 1:  Strategical Offense
  Weaponrange increased to Artillery
• Officer-Rank 2:  Strategical Offense
  Weaponrange increased to Artillery and Offensive Value increased by 2

Sovereign Class

• Officer-Rank 1:  Flagship
  Damage reduced from vessels which did not yet reach an officer rank by 16 percent
• Officer-Rank 2:  Flagship
  Damage reduced from vessels which did not yet reach an officer rank by 32 percent

Nice. Now we can finally have veteran ships.

Well impressed is hardly the word, astounded is more like it :)

I'm not sure which impresses me more, what you've achieved for the mod or the fact that I have no idea how you did it  :lol:

With features like this the mod is going to be truly spectacular.

In one word:

YEEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!  :woot: :woot: :woot: :woot:

Very awesome idea, didn't know it was possible.

will there be a way to get an advantage (the system is reminding me alot of the Command and Conquer Red Alert 2 ranks systems and it got me thinking would there be a way of getting like a spy unit into an enemy base which makes all new ships as a rank 1 etc?)

What Eufnoc says... and.... AWESOME!!!!
I've been waiting for this... forever. YAHOOOOOOO  :thumbsup:

When I clicked on this thread I let out a whoop that startled my girlfriend,  :lol:

WOW. I am........i don't even know what to say. This is incredible. You guys...how did u do this with A2's engine? This really reminds me of Hegemonia, I don't know if anyone really played or has played Hegemonia, but this whole thing seems really neat. I am so......excited, I'm having a hard time containing it. w000000000000t!!!!!!!!!!

Sweet cant wate till it come out :D

OUnds good but can you keep your ships alive long enough to use these? hehehe

Sweeet!  You guys are magicians with this code.  I know I havent been around for awhile.  My account was giving me problems logging in, but I have been checking the site every few days for quite some time now.  Cant wait for it to come out! 

I know you guys dont normally give out dates for this thing, and it is well worth the wait.  But would it be safe to assume I could be playing this by Christmas 09?

If so, and it lives up to your hype, I may be forced to donate again.

Congrats on the great work.

Thats some great news right there :)
As most people I did not know this was possible, I hope it'll work like it has too :)

I don't suppose you can increase the system any further? Or perhaps give the option in the odf files upon release. Well Fleet Operations continues to exceed expectations and further.  :thumbsup:
You go FleetOps Team, your are awesome.

wow guys that is really impressive!!! that is such a great "star trek" level up to have! well done!  :thumbsup: :D

awesome indeed

Awesome!

This is going to be the best Star Trek game ever made!

Very Awesome, this mod is going to rock. And i think the players are going to use repair alot more with this experience system becouse how longer you can keep your ship healthy the stronger it gets.

will this be released in the patch project also can more than 4 ranks be added

EDIT
this may be a dumb question but where does the special energy bar go and does the rank appear in the single ship selection

fantastic work fellas, I am in awe yet again.

and yes I pray for it to be included in the next PP.

The methods used to implement the rank system supports a infinite number of ranks. Weather or not the rank system will be added to the patch project is not decided yet.

The energy bar is no longer displayed at your units in the battlefield. The Rank Icon will show up in single ship selection of course. ^-^

I like this. Now the "lowtech" ships won't be as useless late in the game as they were in vanilla A2. I imagine the Defiant especially will bring the pain to any hostile fleet. :whistling:

BTW, in the first screenshot, what class is the rightmost ship? It looks awesome, like some sort of heavily armored battleship.

One word: WOW!!!

Really cool, if this is done right than this will give a whole new level of strategies into the game.

I'm really amazed by this.

Ausgezeichnet!

Muss aber fragen - diese Funktionalität wurde von Earth 2160 "inspiriert" oder?

I wonder how will behave borg ship in this new reality? Since this ships will be in few numbers, but very powerfull they will very fast become veteran ships. What I mean is that when You play with others races You have many ships and each of them gaines just a portion of veteran points, with the Borg it's different-all the point from all destroyed ships will go to only few ships, They will quickly become very powerful. What do You say guys?  :detective:

To me, the ship antagonist mentioned looks like a remodeled Phalanx Class.

Öhm...englisches Forum? Warum schreibst du nicht so, dass es auch jeder hier lesen kann? Nicht bös gemeint, BTW.


Translation:


Excellent!

I'll have to ask though, this range of functions was "inspired" by Earth 2160, right?

we have played a lot strategy games in the past including hegemonia, c&c series, homeworld series, the earth series and a lot more. i am a big fan of earth 2150 and preordered 2160 back then, however i was very disappointed with the gameplay and haven't played it much even with the latest patches...so no, it wasn't inspired from earth 2160. i'd guess the inspiration came from c&c red alert 2.

it's actually the descent class. for those who haven't heard of her yet, i'd recommend To boldly go... (http://www.fleetops.net/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,3/topic,3248.0/) ;)

now a question. HOW?? is it a odf only mod? or what? and another question. if you have a fleet that kills say a borg cube will the whole fleet get Exp or the one that gave the final blow? so in other words do you get anything for assists?
for a mod for another game what they did was make a unit gain exp for doing damage and once the unit did x4 the amout of health that he has to a unit he levles up.

will level up just increase the stats or will it make the ship full health like some games

A levelup will only increase the vessels attributes, it won't be repaired back to full strength :)

Good, that means it has realism.

You know, I knew there was a very ugly kitbash in the preview version that was to be replaced, I just could for the life of me not remember its class. Nice model, even if I'm repeating myself there.

glad to hear that it only increases attributes will te experience be due to damage given or enemies killd

That thing was the Descent? I didn't recognize it. It looks similatr in shape to the Phalanx.

Experience is awarded for kills, not damage

and how is the scale ?
like how many ships would a given ship kill can we have an example?

all ships have to kill a certain amount of equivalent ships to level up (so an akira has to shot a hostile akira, or a ship of the same strength). We are currently fine-tuning the exact value :)

Hmmm... a possible problem though may be that already leveled up ships will get more kills as they fire more rapidly etc... and thus prevent other ships from leveling up.

I don't know if thats a problem, maybe that just means that some players will strategically try to award certain ships with kills.

Do you ever see an army with 400 General's and 1 private?

Except that in yur analogy, the generals aren't exactly field soldiers, while in FO, it doesn't matter whether the ship is a level 4 ship, or a lvl 1 ship, they're still used in the field.

Exactly Auxilio  :D

If you notice, usually in other games where this is implemented, the units that are levelled up already prevent other units from acquiring "level up" as fast. Of course, all that is needed to circumvent this is to multitask... so I guess there isn't really that big of a problem at all  :lol:

quick tech question.

I know the game automatically keeps records of the kill each ships make so I assume you used that somehow but are your level ups aut triggered replacement weapons or some sort of constand amendment to the original odf stats? Iif it's the former th en you guys just made so much possible  :lol:

The thing that's great about these guys, is they've made SOO much possible. I bet if u asked it, they could probably do it by now.

That doesn't necessarily mean they will do it, though... :sweatdrop:

cool a A2 RPG :woot:

it is similar, however it is not the replaceweapon. it may have been possible with an modified replaceweapon to create something similar as an levelup system, however that would have been just to complicated to implement to have to put a replaceweapon on every vessel. it's a lot more intuitive to use than that..but i don't want to go to deep into details in this thread here. :)

Do the Borg level up? I don't think the concept fits well with the Collective, somehow.

thats what we thought - the borg do not have an experience system

i dont know if any one has asked but can there also be Demotions? maby the romulans should have something that can cause Demotion . like a demoation spical abillity.

am i to assume that you based the ranking system somewhere in the files that keep track of the kills in the captians log?

Hmmmm... but along the same line of thought with Borg levelling up... they do learn and adapt as a collective. Perhaps, after a certain number of kills, all their units of one class could level up (or be produced levelled up)... reflecting the nature of collective, rather than individual learning.  :D

how about you revers that...   after enough Borg ships are destroyed by the same type of ships that ship type becomes less effective agents Borg ships.

That would be pretty neat actually  :thumbsup:

500 cubes V 1 scout  :woot:

I think this announcment does deserve the word "Squee". Truly...just...damn there are no words to describe it! Commando missions anyone.

I do agree with the Borg not getting it. They're already getting that adaptation system which makes them stronger, and the only "Borgy" ranking system would be one that goes fleet wide, and that would be too unbalancing.

can you bild ships at a certain rank so if the starbase achieves rank three it builds rank 1 vessels and at rank four it builds rank four vessels (for an example)

You just announced Armada 2 history... and made the long wait worth it indeed.

ugggh, been out of the loop for a while. nice to see progress being made.

but nay to stations having this experience thing too, IF it means they build higher rank ships. afterall you cant build experience, only er well experience it lol.

wot bout make build/research requirements need exp level so for a carrier to build one type of fighterr it needs to b a certain levle but for a better fighter it needs to be a higher rank (also heroes or borg) could research new addons to there vessels like the enterprise could 'retrofit' at a certain rank to be a constitution refit. and borg could add mass to there vessels the higher rank they get

@ Ryan; sure you can. Advanced training facilities perhaps  :shifty:

I'm curious, for later modding purposes, are the ranks easily expandable, and are the effects of said rank improvement easy to add, or are they hard coded into something that modders won't be able to get at? I ask because I'm curious if this will be going into the patch project, if so... well that pretty much just is Armada 3

omg i feel lyk iv been waitin 4 this 4eva!  :crybaby:
Will it b out this year?

well reading the other posts sounds like the ranks are customisable  because there are unlimited possible rank achievements and it will be included in the patch project

yep the mechanics used for the ranksystem are relatively easy to mod (its a bit more to do then usual armada2 odf moding, but its not the most complex mechanic in Fleet Operations v3) and you can use an unlimited number of ranks. For further questions about the mechanics behind it, please open a post in the patch project forums.

have you thought about using admiral's ranks where the effects are transmitted to nearby ships or ships in the same group?

yep thats an idea for a future version, but not v3 :)

cool


--- :ph34r: edit

would the effects from that be cumulative? ie: 4 admirals in the same group, effect is 4 times as powerful or something?

would make sense, means you treasure your fleet more!

yay!  :woot: treasure