A couple small suggestions

posted on March 19th, 2012, 10:20 pm

Hello, first I have to say this is a top notch effort mod, I simply love it. I know lots of hard work has been put into this mod (I'd call it a game, activision/maddoc had no idea what they were doing with theirs). I would like to offer comments from my experience thus far.

a) In Starmada I/II, the shield animations that went from green down to red (sometimes white if you hit something hard enough ) are far superior to the ones I see in game. They seem to be lacking on most units/structures. I have noticed it on larger buildings but they're off color or hard to see in general. They don't really give a clear indication of the strength of the shields.

Now, the interface does more than enough to make sure this isn't a problem whatsoever. I just think the already amazing visuals this mod has would be complemented nicely by my suggestion.

b) A little more simple - most if not all ships/stations (I noticed it only on the romulan staryard thus far) do not have team color I know, we can just use the minimap, but if I can see it on screen that's just one less thing I have to be paying attention to.

c) Before I even say anything, I want to throw out there that I am aware this problem existed in both the two original games. The interface for all of the star trek armada games is SO incredibly clunky, mainly the mouse/keyboard input. I feel that anyone who has played this game vs. any other RTS knows exactly what I am talking about.

Is there anything that can be done to improve this? It's very annoying, especially as you get better at the game and start to play faster. I often feel like I am fighting the interface and not my opponent to win a game.

d) This is the only balance suggestion I have, because I don't usually complain about it and just try to find alternatives to weaknesses or strengths I find in races. One thing in particular that I do not understand though, is the need for a power station for Romulan defense turrets.

For one, they aren't that good anyway, and Federation have three different awesome static defenses that are better AND don't require power. Why do Romulan turrets run out of energy while firing at all? I would have expected a power station for Perimeters (Dominion), but I don't think a single turret could kill any vessel in the game by itself without running out of power. Not to mention the power station makes the cloaking fields redundant - there's only one reason you would plant down a power station, so your opponent knows exactly where they are anyway. Finally - in my opinion, the cloaking field should be the only energy drain on them, since that could potentially be very dangerous/awesome/both.

Thanks for reading - and again, loving this game so far. I'm going to try and bring a couple people on board for LAN and whatnot, because this is some good stuff.

Shyster

posted on March 19th, 2012, 11:33 pm

Hi mate, welcome to the forums

Every faction in Fleet Ops has different colored shields, in order to preserve the Star Trek feel. You can get a quick look at how much damage is incurred via the rapid pop ups, and the fact that your own ships display their hull/shield values when damaged unlike in A2 .

Team colors are being discarded entirely, but a new system is planned to replace the ugly A2 style for a future patch .

The next patch will include a redone hotkey system for all units and abilities, which should make navigation on the whole more friendly. We have some other long term todos for better management, but that's nothing for the immediate future. Cheers and hope to see you on Tunngle for online gaming!

posted on March 19th, 2012, 11:35 pm

welcome to the forum.

d) is a hot topic. if you get into playing the game online more then you'll realise why the romulan turrets need to be less effective than feds. feds have no cloak or cloaked scouts, their fleet is constantly visible to a romulan player. romulans are raiding masters, lots of cloak, plenty of pulses for shredding miners, the leahval (awesome at quickly dealing with miners). their lack of static defences is to prevent them having their cake and eating it too. you can either be good at defending (like feds) or good at raiding (like roms) but not both.

also that recharging station is useful for your ships too, a bunch of rhienns supported by a transmitter can keep phase plates going for ages, and leahvals near one can repeatedly use their significant specials.

also consider that the singularity generix can recharge turrets with its special. so if you want cloaky turrets you can have them without giving away their position. beware that cloaked turrets cause massive lag when some people look at several of them, so they might be useless or annoying until that bug is fixed.

ninjad by dom

posted on March 20th, 2012, 12:07 am

Thanks for the replies you two, and I appreciate the input on the romulan related subject as well. Cool stuff