Ship and Station Refits

posted on August 17th, 2007, 8:18 pm

In Armada2 it is possible to have a refit system where you can make it so that your ships can be upgraded to better ships. The two methods of doing this are either heavily adapting the 8472 evolution, or by using the fusion weapon. There are problems with both of course, the fusion involving the ship moving in a weird manner, and the evolution adjustments ruining the 8472 evolution system as well. Another problem is the name of the ship changes when it is refitted

I would like to see, a way of refitting vessels, so that the ship has to return to a shipyard for the process to occur. So you would press the button, pay a small amount of resources, the ship would return to the shipyard and refit there, taking an amount of time (in the same way build time works).

The next thing that I'd like to see, is the same process possible with stations, although the stations won't move while this is happening. The thing is, say I want to upgrade a starbase into a more advanced version (lets say the mod was era based). So the spacedock upgrades to a early 24th century equivilant, the problem is, everything that was dependant on the spacedock in the techtree can now no longer be built.

The solution is a techtree which allows you to build something if you have either this or that

for example:

base.odf changes into newbase.odf
ship.odf requires base.odf and research.odf to build

idea for techtree entry

ship.odf 2 "base.odf, newbase.odf" "research.odf"

If this is possible, I would very much like to see it, or something along these lines possible.

posted on August 17th, 2007, 9:24 pm

we discussed the same problem recently as in fleet operations we are using the current commands for avatar stations, to have a better way to upgrade stations, so that is already on todo, but i fear also one of the more complex modifications to do, so i had this in mind for after the release of fleet operation v3

i really like the upgrade idea for the vessels. but also even more complex than the first one. if i find a way to do that, then i will see what i can do

posted on August 18th, 2007, 10:11 am

this could be easier to do with a specifically built drydock, rather than one that already builds/repairs ships?

posted on September 2nd, 2007, 9:41 pm

I doubt it would be any simpler.  It might be different gameplay-wise, but the scripting would likely be the same.

posted on September 3rd, 2007, 9:33 am

I think the way to do it would be as a "command" like the repair command as the source for the scripting, I suppose the evolve command would also be relevent.

posted on September 3rd, 2007, 10:03 am

btw. i have a better "vessel replacement" special weapon working in the dev version in v3. works with stations and even allows a random replacement vessel from a list you define in the odf file

posted on September 3rd, 2007, 1:38 pm

Awesome!

posted on September 3rd, 2007, 1:41 pm

ah yes, and keeps the name of a vessel too if replacementKeepName = 1 is set

posted on September 3rd, 2007, 9:13 pm

Didn't know this was possible. Cool! Now only if the name would appear on the ship itself....

posted on September 4th, 2007, 2:08 am

That could be done, I do believe, but it would be a pain as far as skinning goes...

posted on September 4th, 2007, 9:50 am

actually that is listed on our todo list in the ideas section for a few years now but i don't think i will ever invest any time to find a solution to do that. armada was not designed to have lot of different textures on a vessel. and of course for the feature being any useful the textures would need to be auto generated

posted on September 4th, 2007, 7:17 pm

It sounds really complicated, but hopefully, when sentient computers enter the foray, we will get a really hyper-advanced version of Flops running armada engine x at ludicrous speed

By the way, will it ever be possible to get the rights to change the armada engine itself to do "new things" ?

posted on September 4th, 2007, 8:49 pm

Not officially.  Of course, nothing but ethics will prevent you from doing anything to it in your spare time.

I mean, it's not like anyone will know. 

posted on September 4th, 2007, 9:50 pm

DOCa cola you should put this upgrade feature in the armada patch project that would be sweet

posted on September 4th, 2007, 10:31 pm

The problem is that the patch has to be fully compatible with previous versions.  That means no new gameplay elements.