Diverse but limited Federation Armada

posted on January 19th, 2010, 4:54 am

If one watches all the Star Trek shows, one of the principles behind the Federation is the whole "respect for life" part. With the exception of the Dominion war and Wolf 359 (and related situations), where the Feds were fighting for their life, most "fleets" were actually task forces of 10-15 ships.

One of the visions I was hoping to see (and suggest) was a limited armada, but with each ship having truly diverse qualities. The ships are already very versatile, and this fits well with Starfleet's ideal.

However, the ships are also weak, cheap, and expendable. Given that the Federation emphasizes growth and development of the crew (and thereby increased specialization of the vessel) rather than pumping ships out like Klingons, I don't think this fits very well.

For the eventual redesign of the Federation gameplay, I propose that:

- The number of ships of each type are capped, but the initial stats are higher.
- Furthermore, with every engagement, the ships stats increase. Of course, the stats would be capped at some level just so a Saber doesn't end up at 200, 200, 200. However, this would fit well with the idea that a Galaxy that survived the Borg might be able to better stand up to the Romulans
- As ships rank up, they should accumulate passives

Also, I think that given the huge diversity of vessels, it may make sense to have anti-race-specific vessels:

- The Defiant was built to be used against the Borg
- The Intrepid was shown to be effective against the Borg
- The Sovereign and the Galaxy might be better used against the Romulans
- Ambassadors and Excelsiors could be Klingon hunting cruisers (it's stretching it -- going back to the TOS days)

Of course, if we go down this road, we should do it for every race. But i think it may be interesting.

posted on January 19th, 2010, 5:12 am

I have heard from Optec and Dom that the Federation will be getting a pretty significant redo in the very near future.  I'm very excited because this last patch has (I think) made a much better use for EVERY single Fed ship out there.  Now the Norway is useful, the Canaveral is back to being balanced, the Warp-ins all have excellent uses, and the Eraudi Yard vessels are the extra punch you need when the BADASS interceptors in the Intrepid and Monsoons no longer cut it.

 
  I do also hope that more "Scientific" abilities become implemented and I gave Optec a number of suggestions.  Thankfully he seemed to take them into consideration !  I suggested the Nebula have an ability that let's it change it's weapon systems from Pulse Phasers to Torpedoes and back again when it wants.  I suggested an ability for either the Galaxy or the Nebula that let's it grant ranks to smaller vessels once every certain amount of time.  Things like that, you know?


It's had though in a Real Time Strategy game because the abilities that help the most are sadly the ones that do direct damage.

posted on January 19th, 2010, 5:13 am

That could be very cool. The only problem I see is that in an RTS especially if playing online, ships have to be expendable to a certain degree. The problem is in a game like FLOPS (or Armada II) ships NEVER choose their own targets. Single ships are alpha striked by the entire fleet until they melt away. This is a problem in most games and genres, in war for instance for every man killed tons are wounded! But in any FPS or RTS, how often are you wounding enemy soldiers? The reality of trek cannot be portrayed in a game like Armada 2, where for instance you'll be losing several ships every 5-10 minutes, I'm sure that's much higher than the canon attrition rate during the dominion war or even during the Wolf 359 encounter.

However, I think Fleet Operations places an excellent and realistic degree of importance on keeping your ships alive and allowing their experiences to mature. Certain ships will always require additional balance, though.

posted on January 19th, 2010, 5:26 am

One thing I'll say for the FO team, they aren't afraid to try new things out.  They're always breaking the mold on what can be done with an armada II mod.

[RedEyedRaven]

posted on January 19th, 2010, 7:57 am

Last edited by RedEyedRaven on January 19th, 2010, 8:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

Well in other space RTS, like Haegemonia there was a great way of limiting ships.
Every player could have a limited amount of spy ships, battleships, military stationary units and other/civilian ships and stations (space habitat or diplomacy vessel for example). The amount of ships per category was different on each map, so on the one map you could have more spy ships to steal inventions or sabotage the enemy's sensor system and on other maps you could have up to 20 battlesquads (the ship units were squads and no single ships except for battleships and special purpose units, cruisers were pairs, fighters were 7 and up to 11 by formation training maximised and corvettes were operating in groups of 4).

This concept wouldn't fit that bad in FO if converted to the unit types.

Edit: One FO-specific example:

Borg wouldn't need to squad up, so they would do best on every ship operating on its own (except for probes may be).

Battle ships for each race could be single or paired up (the Norexan and the Vor'cha would make outstanding pair squads)

Most Dominion ships from the normal yard could simply be tripled up since that's they're favoured standard.

Klingon B'rels would make groups of 5 or 6 because of the producton capabilities and the klingons use of overpowering numbers of small vessels, K'Vorts can be paired up or tripled.


These were few examples of big possibilities (and no, ships don't leave yards in squads. They're still built one after the other but have to be useless until the squad is completed, and every ship is still payed as one unit and not one price for a full squad because this would take you the option to build squads which haven't the max count of vessels when you're low on resources)

Also, if one ship of a squad is destroyed you have to rebuild it would also makes the other ships of the affected squad "waiting" until it's finished.

posted on January 19th, 2010, 8:05 am

Nice idea however flops was designed to have no firm caps on fleet size however the soft caps that FO has is supply. So maybe instead of a strict limit on how many ships it could be that their supply cost is greatly increased

posted on January 19th, 2010, 11:00 am

It would be great to limit some sort of ships, especially battleships. I hate to see about 30 sovereigns cruising around. Maybe a limit of max 10 battleships, I think.

posted on January 19th, 2010, 1:45 pm

It would be great to limit some sort of ships, especially battleships. I hate to see about 30 sovereigns cruising around. Maybe a limit of max 10 battleships, I think.

I think a battleship limit would ruin the game.

If your opponent has 30 sovvies drifting around you have done something very wrong.

I think a way to fix that would be to up the cost of ships and give them more survivability, not with stats alone but with abilitis and orders, say an order to avoid hostile ships, so if an enemy comes into sensor range you ship will move away.

posted on January 19th, 2010, 1:58 pm

In a 1v1 yes of course but not in a large team game, in fact iv had around 30 sovvies, in fact i posted a screen shot of a 3 player ffa where i had won and with alot of sovereigns.

But no i don't agree with any of this guys suggestions limiting the ships is bad, if you cant stop your opponents from getting 30 battleships then you need more practice.

posted on January 19th, 2010, 2:31 pm

i'm not a fan of hard-caps either

posted on January 19th, 2010, 2:52 pm

I apologize ahead of time, but I don't think I'm really fond of any of the ideas 

Federation cannot pump ships out as fast as the Klingons in FO, and Federation vessels are by no means of the word, weak - Mayson for instance is the strongest faction in the game right now.

The Devs in the past have expressed a dislike of "Warcraft3-like leveling up" where leveled up units become the emphasis of gameplay. Games are supposed to emphasize fleet integration, not leveling up a favored unit to become a renowned killer.

Anti-race specific starships would in my opinion destroy gameplay very quickly, as right now each unit has very specific roles across the board. To make the Defiant most efficient with normal weapons against the Borg means that nobody will build anything else. Must I mention as well, that the Defiant is also particularly well suited to engagements with the Borg as a support vessel? Critical Shot is a must have against the few numbers of Borg units you will have. This same analogy can be extended to each of the units. I think that every single canon vessel and most special weapons in Fleet Ops complements the role set out for those units in the shows/movies remarkably well, and I don't think a change is necessary to be honest.

posted on January 19th, 2010, 8:25 pm

Anti-race specific starships would in my opinion destroy gameplay very quickly, as right now each unit has very specific roles across the board. To make the Defiant most efficient with normal weapons against the Borg means that nobody will build anything else. Must I mention as well, that the Defiant is also particularly well suited to engagements with the Borg as a support vessel? Critical Shot is a must have against the few numbers of Borg units you will have. This same analogy can be extended to each of the units.

  I agree with Dom .

  The Defiant especially is useful now because the critical shot will disable the largest ships the Borg are using while the pulse phasers can now be used effectively as the Borg are far more likely to be fielding Probes and the dreaded Scout Cubes.

posted on January 19th, 2010, 9:09 pm

NO CAPS!!! err sorry.. no caps!

posted on January 20th, 2010, 3:26 pm

This is a problem in most games and genres, in war for instance for every man killed tons are wounded! But in any FPS or RTS, how often are you wounding enemy soldiers?

Sadly, this is because of two factors.  Limitations in how the games were programmed, and many game devs not understanding that many of the world's militarys 'shoot to maim'.  The reason they do this is that when one soldier goes down, it takes 2 other soldiers to get him to the medics, where a medic now has to tend him.  4 enemies out of the fight on a wounding, instead of 1 out of the fight on a kill.

And for something like that to be incorporated would require massive code-work.  As it stands, a horribly damaged ship, so long as her subsystems are intact, is just as deadly as a healthy one until she takes that last hit.