A Few Ideas From A Little Newb...

posted on July 22nd, 2006, 3:50 am

I don't know much about ai and how it all works, still new to modding and still learning the basics, but can you try to make the ai different for each race. I am talking about the differences in the races and their strategies we have seen trhough the episodes and seasons. Make the dominion send a lot of their "bug" fighters in first than bring in their heavy hitters to finish you off, about every battle I see from the Dominion wars they first send in square formations of their destroyers to first soften up their enemy than have their heavy cruisers and battleships clean up what the "bug" fighters didn't destroy outright. The Borg, please let their ships depict who they really are, they are a huge powerhouse. The Borg's ships are just pure power; they are able to take a heavy beating and still keep on tickin. The borg don't send in a few ships of each of their different classes and try to swarm someone; they first send a scout, if the scout finds something, they send a sphere or a cube. If the cube assimilates something good then they swarm. Not with different medium class ships, they swarm with their biggest badest units, namely; the Cube. I have a whole idea for the Borgs fleet but that might come another day. The feds fleet is made up of mostly cruisers. They have a few destroyers and battleships here and there but still when they attack en mass they send their light cruisers and destroyers just before their main attacking force than they have their heavy cruisers, battle cruisers, battleships to attack the enemies main fighting force. The Klingons have their fleets made almost just like the Dominions but the Klingons have their smaller destroyers like the B'rel all around the main attacking force to create a type of perimeter. The Romulans almost never fight toe to teo with someone at least when it is on even footing. The Romulans usually attack with their heaviest ships up front and have their smaller ships to dart through the enemy fleet attacking who they can. The Romulan fleet mostly consists of the Warbird. Noxter, well I don't know much about them, so I can't say much. I hope that makes sense, I wonder if the ai is responsible for their fleet formations and how they attack other people.

posted on July 22nd, 2006, 5:49 am

well, i don't know for sure, but perhaps it could be done so that at least each speacies would use different percantages of small, medium and large ships....

posted on July 22nd, 2006, 6:42 am

I agree.

Dominion Fleets:

They were made up of mostly breen cruisers (The model currently in use for the Breen Battleship), Bug Ships, and Galor class vessels, the Galors were often flanked with a wing of Hideki class ships, while every Large Dominion Warship had a contingent of Destroyers around it, the Breen ships basically acted as filler, they were quite small, from on screen analysis but could give out a real beating to a ship much larger.

Federation:

The core starships were Galaxy, Nebula and Sovereign.

Fleets were ogranized and built around those ships, using cruisers like the Steamrunner, Akira, Excelsior (Which I miss, but appreciate the refit greatly), Ambassadors, Norways ect, making up the bulk, with older ships like the Miranda and smaller ships such as the Sabre, and those one offs (Such as the centaur) filling in the small gaps in between, and covering the vulernable arcs of the larger vessels.

The Borg:

You are Right about the cubes, but it would get simply boring if the only borg ships you had to fight were cubes.

Klingons:

I disagree whole heartedly with the Klingons.

Most Klingon Forces are situated around a command group ususally containing:

1 Negh'var (as that was the only canon example known of at the time)

2-4 Vorcha class Battlecruisers

2-3 Bre'l Birds of Prey fighting along side each Vorcha.

2 Ktinga's moving on the permimeter of either side of this force.

And as it brances out, there are interspaced Vorcha and Ktinga class ships where the Vorcha ships ususally act as the core vessel (Considering they had near Galaxy-class firepower) with surrounding wings of Birds of Prey.

I totally agree further more about the Klingon force, based on your example, but I think they do have a good portion of battlecruisers in their modern forces.

Romulans:

Warbirds, Warbirds, Warbirds.

But they RARELY engage in Fleet operations, you're ever so right.

It's more a pair of large, overly sophisticated invisible warbirds stalk a lone ship and pillage it.

But in the fleet combat scence, The Romulans were DECIMATED during the dominion war, due to the lack of manueverability on behalf of the warbird (Which is a very ineffecient platform to deploy firepower from, as it is twice the size of a Galaxy Class ship), so it seems logical to me that they would begin fielding smaller cruisers, destroyers and gunships to fill in the spaces, because the Romulands are not going to be fooled twice.

I wish the Romulan Ai would make more use of the Cloak.

[Prowannabe]

posted on July 23rd, 2006, 6:44 am

Last edited by Prowannabe on July 23rd, 2006, 6:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

Ya, it would be sweet if the Romulan AI cloaked their ships more. But on the Borg aspect I was thinking the Borg we have seen just use cubes/spheres/probes here and there but what if they have different types of cubes and spheres and probes for different tasks. We were starting to see different types of cubes on Voyager like the Type 4 Tactical Cube. What if we create a Type 1, Type 2, Type 3, Type 4 Tactical Cube, Type 5 Command Cube. The first one can be a probe from TNG. Type 2 will be a smaller version of the cube, mostly to support larger Borg invasion fleets. The Type 3 can be the standard Borg cube, this has a good balance of cost and power. The Type 4 is the more advanced version of the Type 3, has around the same crew but better sensors and armor. The Type 5 Command Cube is the variant of the cube that was sent to Earth 2 times. The sphere can also have varients so the Borg aren't so boring but still stay true to who or actually what they are; the Borg don't have designs like everyone else, they like the cube and the sphere. But as we all know the Borg adapt so the Borg don't need to make totally different designs of ships, they just make different varients of each of their basic designs for what they need. I also hope they can add some more weapons to the larger cubes and spheres that are able to multitarget, that would be cool and look more realistic for the Borg. O, and spheres in the movies and series were very varied in size, some were as large as Cubes so maybe you can fight a fleet of Borg with the most powerful vessel being a sphere, lol. I hope this could work.

posted on July 23rd, 2006, 2:02 pm

when exactly did you see a sphere as large as a cube?
and having 5 or 6 different types of cube and sphere will get as boring as having 1 or 2, keep the other designs i say.

@rhaz: how many ambassadors & Norways did you see throughout the ENTIRE dominion war?
as for your "core" ship, well at the time of the dominion war there were a total of 2 sovereigns (the sovereign and the Ent-E) how many times did you see either of those?
there was a total of 6 or 7 galaxys in service (not including the oddyssey).
i assume there was a larger number of Nebulas than galaxys in service, but there wasn't exactly a big look at them in action (in fact the 6 or 7 galaxys got more screen time than them).

as for the breen, plz, once everyone adapted to thier energy drainer, they were nothing short of cannon fodder.

posted on July 23rd, 2006, 6:32 pm

Actually during the episode with the 29 century Borg drone that was created from 7 of 9's implant and doctors technology, the sphere he destroyed had roughly the same drone complement as some cubes we have seen through voyager, O, and also, the sphere that was following Voyager when they went through the transwarp gate was about the size as Cubes we have seen ^_^ . And the cubes and spheres can have different looks and how you play them, so they are in fact different ships. And yes the Nebula would be used more than the Galaxy because it costs less in just about everything including crew. O, and the Feds don't make many Battleships, they mostly make cruisers like I said before, and they have their "core" ships mostly battleships and command ships, it makes sense, I doubt most admirals would like to command a battle in a destroyer . And the Breen were put in the fold for the Dominion because of their weapon technology, their ships were just part of the Dominion fleets to just take up space and in the beginning to slaughter the Feds/Klingons fleets before the main Dominion force stepped in. The Breen ships aren't that good compared to most other races, their only asset was their weapon technology, so yes when they lost that edge they got slaughtered. O, and it wasn't an energy drainer weapon, it was a weapon that was able to cut through shields and hit systems directly.

posted on July 23rd, 2006, 7:02 pm

the sphere's are not the size of the cube , the sphere has a diameter of about 600m. that is consistant with what has been seen thus far.

escaping a cube

there is a pic of another sphere helping voyager attack the Tactical cube, its sizing looks about right

as for the others, well just have a look at how inconsistant the defiant is scaled

when the borg turn up for the 2nd time on TNG, Data says the cube is of identical proportions as the one they saw because of Q. i reckon that the vessels themselves are identical in proportion but perhaps the system loadout etc, etc.. are different.

posted on July 23rd, 2006, 10:56 pm

Breen ships were not cannon fodder, r u kidding me. Their torpedos(regular not draining ones) were still pretty **** strong. And their shielding was not that bad either. They are a race of warriors and I will not stand by and let u bash them like that
The only ship which was cannon fodder (if u want to call it that) was the bug ship, do not make fun of the breen

About Borg, I think Cubes are generally much bigger than spheres tho I think there could be spheres out there which are as big as cubes, we just havent seen one yet

posted on July 23rd, 2006, 11:25 pm

plz, other than the energy dampening weapon, what else did they have? after that was adapted to, those ships were just wreakage i dont rate them at all.

posted on July 24th, 2006, 1:13 pm

Responce to Breen Ships

They pretty much destroyed several Mirandas in a single Salvo In the series finale.
They also, were well shielded, albeit lightly armored, because they were very thin.
They were manueverable and could dart in and out, and hit ships with a few torpedos.
They also have conventional weapons too, if you would note.

I would not ever consider them cannon fodder, for the fact of the matter is, as stated in tons of episodes of Star Trek, and Generations. The Breen also use disruptors, so it seems evident to me, that these Breen warships would not totally ditch the qualities of disruptor type weapons.

Responce to Federation Ships

USS Exeter (NCC-26531)

 &nsbp; &nsbp;* Named for the Constitution Class USS Exeter (NCC-1706) of the 23rd century, the starship Exeter was a former assignment of Lieutenant Tom Paris. The Exeter was assigned to the Ninth Fleet during the Dominion War.

*quoted form wiki Link*

Logically, considering the mass, and superirority of this class over the much more widly deployed Excelsior class cruisers, this ship would obviously command a wing of such ships, or would act as the component of a larger heavy cruiser wing.

And in responce to "How much screen time...Sovereign".

I just listed the Sovereign because it was said to have been deployed during the Dominion war, regardless of if it got screen time or not, the Galaxy was the heavy hitter during most of the battles.

So to all those Akira fan boys, who want 15 torpedo tubes, and a carrier capability

When has that been seen on screen, huh? ^_^

Anyways, that's it. haha.
Bye.

posted on July 24th, 2006, 1:58 pm

Nice argument

posted on July 24th, 2006, 8:58 pm

plz, other than the energy dampening weapon, what else did they have? after that was adapted to, those ships were just wreakage tongue.gif i dont rate them at all.

They have pretty strong torps :-S I wonder which show u were watching?

posted on July 24th, 2006, 10:30 pm

@baron no more or less powerfull than your run-o-the-mill Photon torp.

@rhaz: the stuff on wiki is put together by a load of assuptions, very little actual facts. nuff said.

when did anyone see the exeter?

im probably considered an akira fanboy (it being a close 1st in my fav designs list) but i dont want 15 torps and fighters on it, as i've said. 15 tubes and a carrier ability were first leaked by the bloke who designed the thing, (so i think that can be counted as cannon do you not?).Plus on the OFFICIAL high detail models of the akira 15 tubes are identifiable and there IS what appears to be a through deck shuttle bay (or at least 2 side by side):P

posted on July 25th, 2006, 9:39 am

Just wondering but when I play FO PR3 the dominion "bug" ship has a beam, just wondering if this is correct, its been a while since I have seen most of the Dominion War battles so not sure if they had a beam or a set of disruptor type weapons . O, and it would be sweet if ships had a little more weapons, not for balance but for cannon, most ships like the feds don't have ships with just photons or phasers or artillery like the Steamrunner, most ships, specially the cruisers and up for just about every race have a least 2 main weapons, and some klingon vessels should be decked with offensive based weaponry, at least the ones that are supposed to be . O, and it would also be sweet to see ships sized a little bit, its a little weird seeing a "bug" destroyer around 1/5 the size of a Dominion Battleship, it would just be cool to see your fleets look amazing and very realistic to look at the smaller destroyers and light cruisers dwarfed by huge battleships and command ships ^_^ . But you are probably already changing a lot of aspects of the game in FO3, but I must applaud you, the ui's you made for the races are just beautiful, that by itself makes me want to play the game.

posted on July 25th, 2006, 10:11 am

yes the bug does have a poleron beam, have never seen it use any disruptor type weapons, or torpedoes for that matter.
and i agree on the "2 main weapons" for ships (well most of em anyway )
about the scale: in armada when you make something big it seems to screw up the pathing, meaning (especially with FO) that a lot of ships simply get in the way or some of them just get stuck, quite annoying to find half of your fleet missing when you arrive at your destination .