Cadets

posted on August 9th, 2010, 2:22 am

Ok, I don't actually like this idea for FO, but maybe it'll trigger another, better, idea. The idea's probably not completely new either

So, basically the Fed/Kling/Rom would get an academy structure that would build cadets. You would be, on a random timer, presented with a choice to 'build' a cadet (lore: every so often, a cadet show exceptional skills that gets recognized by the higher ups), up to a maximum of four. When you 'build' (press a button with the cadet's portrait), you are presented with the transporter icon (as your mouse pointer), so you then assign it to a vessel or station.

Each cadet would have an attribute that they add to the ship (a small one: i.e. +1% torpedo damage).

The cadet can rank up, just like a ship. As the cadet ranks up, s/he's attribute bonus also increases (by small amounts: +1.3%, +1.6%, +2% torpedo damage).

The bonus options are: torpedo, phaser, pulse damage bonus. Shield bonus. Repair rate bonus.

You can assign the cadet to any of your ships by transporter-ing him/her (from one ship to another).

The cadet's ranks are: cadet, lieutenant, first officer,  captain, admiral. (other?) An admiral could optionally affect up to 3 other nearby ships with 50% of his bonus.


If the borg assimilate a ship with a cadet, the borg get to keep him/her and their bonus is applied to the borg ship he or she is on. (aka: Locutus).

posted on August 9th, 2010, 2:38 am

That reminds me somewhat of the Warcraft 3 hero system, with the exception of your opponent being able to steal him/her. I like this idea, and I believe that it could add extra depth to the multiplayer game as well as any future single player campaign.

posted on August 9th, 2010, 6:34 am

If your cadet can have a repair bonus, I want the ability to assign him to my starbase.  That way, if I barely beat back an attack, they can't finish the job with a 1 intrepid bumrush.

posted on August 9th, 2010, 7:04 pm

...sometimes I get the feeling that the entire crews of some of my ships are cadets...

Mercenary hero system!  In fact, I remember playing Master of Orion II back in the day, where you could hire leaders, and even put them aboard ships in your fleet, giving that ship, or the entire task force a set of bonuses.  Sometimes though, they came with handicaps too.  I'm not completely sold on the idea for fleet-ops, but if anyone's tacking a mod together, it could be an interesting concept, if you could get it to work.

Examples:

Scotty: 
Master Engineer:  +10% Repair Rate
Tinkerer:  +5%  Impulse Speed
Drunkard:  -5% Sensor Range

7 of 9:
Adaptation:  +5% Off/Def
Sexy:  -10%  Enemy Torpedo Acc.
Distracting:  -5% Friendly Torpedo Acc.

(note: All heroes possess the 'Escape Pod' special ability, granting a 50% chance to eject from dying vessel and board a nearby friendly vessel.)

[Anonymous]

posted on August 10th, 2010, 1:25 am

Last edited by Anonymous on August 10th, 2010, 1:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

Ha, thats funny,though I wouldn;t subtract 10% for 7 of 9 because you already have -5% for being distracting.  I would add 5% to crew moral

Edit: I understand now what you meant, though I would still add to crew moral

posted on August 10th, 2010, 2:59 am

I don't know about specific heroes, the existing veteran system is pretty good.  Still, you could try this for command ships: a command ship receives a percentage of the experience that nearby friendly ships get, and all ships nearby act as if they were the same level as the commander.

See the Warzone 2100 project for more on this.  Recycling a veteran unit and then applying its crew to a commander is another mechanic in that game, although each commander has a limited number of units it can lead and your control over them becomes limited.

I love how veteran units in that game get a reduction of enemy accuracy against them.  Of course, FO already has other mechanics that deal with accuracy so it isn't useful here.

You could introduce an ability that lets you pay resources in order to give your ships experience.  That would provide a nice hero mechanic.  It would have to be very limited though, and might require a rebalancing of veteran units.

posted on August 10th, 2010, 3:17 am

i love 7 of 9 sexy bonus.. i loled hard... xD

posted on August 13th, 2010, 9:53 pm

You know command & conquer generals? When there were many chinese tanks together, they got a "mass bonus".

So, while we play fleet-ops, why not giving a ship a "flagship" sign, if it is a veteran ship? The stats would be the same, BUT all other ships around it will get a boost in some attributes.

Lets say, the federation can combine the sensors of every ship in the group, that will lead to a long range sensor force, that will reveal a great part of the map.

Or better repair/shield recharge.

Or better weapon focus.

Or higher offensive values.

There are many aspects and you can take advantage of a new gameplay feature, that reflects both tactic and strategy.

So, at first, you build up a ship, level it up to two gold bars, make it veteran, buy with some ressources the flagship-flag. And then, you can get your bonus.

I see everywhere fleets flowing around. Theye should be an advantage, if you are able to amass such a thing.

BUT, there should also be something to counter it:

If you destroy the flagship, your fleet will be in a state of confusion, lowering the advantage to a point, where it comes to a disadvantage. Like: Losing control of the fleet for 15 seconds/ decreased off-def values and so on.


So, it could be something like that:

Rommies

#1 Secret Ops tactic:

If you can put at least 8 ships together +1 flagship, you may get a special energy regeneration, even while cloaked. Also, some of your abilities may be active while cloaked, for example the sensor scrampler or laying mines. You can do actions while cloaked that are not avaible without the flagship and the regeneration rate might come in handy, if you try for example to do quadcobalt-silent resolve. You dont have to decloak. Just wait for the special energy regeneration and fire again. So, if you have enough arty ships, you may destroy a station without even decloaking.

#2 Supressive Counter
Link the ecm systems of all your ships together and create a subspace distortion. Like the Big D is able to cover your ships with its special ability, this ability will stay online for your whole fleet. Enemies have problems to target your ships, leading to higher miss rates. Also the weapon-impact,force will spread more around instead of doing its point-damage, leading to a decreased damage of. The amount of the effect is dependend on the mass of ships you have. The more, the better.

Federation:

#1 Active Sensor Combination
Link the sensor systems of all your ships together to vastly increase your sensor range. The sensor combination will work in three ranges:
Short range active scans: This short range scan is able to detect cloaked ships, even those with the new superior one. Your ships will send out graviton pings from time to time, detecting cloaked ships nearby the fleet.
Long: This ability will increase the overall sensor range of your fleet, that enables you to look far ahead the frontier.
Also the scanner combination is able to link the weapon guidance systems together, increasing the accuracy of your weapons.

#2 Fleet Operations (Hehe)
In this mode, you will gain a combined interlink-connection from ship to ship. For example: If one ship is attacked by a weapon, another ship will scan the weapon parameters, link it with the sensor systems of the ship that is attacked, send over the data and will automaticly adapt the shields to this data. The defensive capabilities will adapt in a short period of time, enabling ships to read the patterns of an enemy weapons, even while constantly modulated. This will help your ships to take much more damage against conventional weapons. This wont work for special weapons, like hyperspace arty, the bad-red-nebular or field of fire.

Also, your targetting abilities are increased, dealing more subsystem damage to enemy ships through better subsystem targetting. Enemy system failure chance due to weapon fire is increased.

Klingons:

#1 Sword of Khaless Maneuver
This is one of the finest but also hardest maneuvers in war-history. A fleet of ships will cover themselves and fire on the weakness of the enemy. All your ships, that deal highest damage against a certain ship in sensor/weapon range will engage this ship and will fire on it, dealing the highest grade of damage available. So your ships will target and fire on the ships, that are best suited for. But this maneuver wont be called maneuver, if it wont be one. Your weakness ships, that are vulnerable against certain passive abilities, will be covered by ships, that are not weak or even better: strong against it.

In order to have an effective fleet and to make this maneuver effective, you need a wide range of abilities for your fleet, with a good amount of ships, that have all different weapon ranges/passives. Ships will auto-take damage for the ships, they want to cover.

(In fact, this maneuver is just an auto-ultra-micro that would occur, if you play the game in rounds and not in realtime, leaving you all the time to search for the best ship vs. ship ration and engage, while you cover your butt with ships, that laugh from the attack.)

#2 Wings of death
Two or more ships will try to overrun enemy ships with speed, while both or more adapt its weapon timer together. You will fire isochronic bursts, that will let the shields of an enemy ship or ships break down for a short amount of time at this certain impact point, so that all other weapons can pass it through. Depending on your offensive value and the def-Value, of the enemy ship, you can pass trough or not.

Example: Against weaker ships, like destroyers, cruisers and similar ships, with a def value around 35, two K'Vorts are able to to break trough, dealing half of the damage as direct hull damage. (So one K'Vort delivers the hole, while the other breaks through) If you do it with three ships, one K'Vort will break through and the two others will deal direkt hull damage. You need at least two ships for this maneuver, and one must deliver the hole. (will deal no shield/hull damage)

If there are stronger ships, you need maybe more than one "hole" ship. So this maneuver will get quite risky, if you engage superior shielded vessels or... borg. It may be the fact, that you dont have enough ships to engage the enemy fleet better, than with conventional weapons. A maximum of 4 ships can do such a manouver) All other ships will take the next victim. It is always beginning with the weakest enemy and the weakest attack ships, with the smallest amount of ships needed to break through, then scaling up to four, while then the stronger ships will engage.

This maneuver is very effective with ships that already have shield breaking abilities. Those ships will get a massive damage boost. (shield breaking torps, HE-shells, polaron torp)

This maneuver is very effective, if you have many smaller ships or direct hull dealer.

Dominion:

#1 Founders order
The order will lead all vessels to to excessive violent strikes while giving up most of their condition afterwars. It is like the special ability ketracel white of the S-2, but for all ships in range. Instead of the S-2 special, this ability will do some more wonders: You will not only increase the firerate of your ships, but also the defense value. Your ships wont get any system drops or system failures during the ability is active. If a ship gets shot down, it will continue to fire, even while standed in space until it explodes (So the wreck will fire, even if it got 0 hull points, until it makes boom)
After the order was set, you HAVE to be victorious, or most of your crew members will make suicide. (Crew will drop to red - destroy at least x/3 ships. X is the amount of ships you have. So 10 bugs must kill 3,3 enemies... 4 enemies. Try it ;oD )

#2 Founders sacrifice
Beam over a founder to an enemy ship, replace the captain with the founder, gain control of the enemy ship. Only avaible, if you can beam (shields are down)
This ability will take a while to be used again, (Like the Covert Ops team)

Wont work on ships with a crew larger than 600 (no dreadnoughts or borg ships of a certain mass)

Borg:

# 1 Resistance is... no, not again. Lets say: Total Annihilation?  Or... Buh! Borg here!
Link the hivemind of the borg ships together. If you do so, you may be able to gain experience for your ships. Based on the chassis, you will get a fixed amount of stat-bonus per ship and rank-up.

For example: sphere
0 - 0
1 - all att. +3
2 - all att. +3
3 - all att. +5
4 - all att. +5
5 - all att. +30

#2 I'm you mother, Luke. Lucy Luke.

Fire faster than his shadow: Analyse a ship per deep scan, find out its weakness and try to hit the warpcore. If two borg ships like together, one ship will engage an anti-phase beam that will drain special energy, but also cut a hole into the enemy ships shields and the second ship will fire a warpcore-seeking graviton torpedo.

Then the enemy ship makes boom. If the def-value of the enemy ship is too high, you cant cut a hole into its shields. Depends on chassis size. You need at least researched the devestating attack and the other one... the one for the shield and the one for the hull. Is only available , if you have at least your command cube or one of your ships is on veteran.

/ end of brainstorming

posted on August 14th, 2010, 10:59 am

I like the heroes idea very much, however as a modder I can see it'd be a bit tricky to pull off.

As it is, FlOps uses about 12 times as many ODF files per ship as Stock A2. One per each rank, plus one per each rank for the special being active. The only way to implement this Heroes thing would be to have an ODF for EVERY COMBINATION of ship, rank, special, hero, and hero rank. If you have 6 ranks, 1 special, 4 heroes, and 4 hero ranks per ship, then that's 192 ODF files per unit... Ouch. Modding FlOps is time-consuming enough with the current amount of ODF files.

If a better way of implementing it is found though, it would be a great feature.

posted on August 14th, 2010, 5:32 pm

Interesting idea, but I think it should only apply to your avatar. Lets say that as soon as you get a ship to veteran status you have the option to make it your flagship that avatars such as Risner can command. I think this would make things a lot simpler for the devs to code It would be like promoting a ship to a veteran except it would only apply to one ship in your fleet.

posted on August 14th, 2010, 7:31 pm

I have always wanted a "flagship" type unit however it is usally shot down but i would still like to see it.

posted on August 15th, 2010, 3:59 am

Flagship sounds very cool, but also adds another dynamic to the game that could quite possibly destroy balance.  Really, the avatar bonuses function basically like a flagship bonus already.

posted on August 15th, 2010, 4:02 am

If you want a flagship, just pick 1 unit to command personally in-game in a fleet of its own. I do that with a Galaxy.

Avatar bonuses aren't flagship stand-ins, veterans are.

posted on August 15th, 2010, 10:05 am

# 1 Resistance is... no, not again. Lets say: Total Annihilation?  Or... Buh! Borg here!

First off: Cool ideas 

Second: Do you play Total annihiliation or the spin-offs http://springrts.com/ ?