Cardassians in Fleet Ops

posted on January 17th, 2009, 10:57 pm

I just thought a poll on the topic would be handy. 

posted on January 17th, 2009, 11:11 pm

Wouldn't mind if they were, but the subject has been beaten to death that they are an NPC race.

posted on January 17th, 2009, 11:13 pm

I know it's been discussed to death I just haven't seen a poll on the issue.  Cardassians were my favorite race in A2 and I think they would fit very nicely in FO.

posted on January 18th, 2009, 4:31 am

Maybe we could even have a Gul Dukat avatar

posted on January 18th, 2009, 4:34 am

I'm not sure the Cardassians would fit in, their ships are slow, weak and quite primitive. They don't even have very good sensors.

posted on January 18th, 2009, 5:13 am

I'm not sure the Cardassians would fit in, their ships are slow, weak and quite primitive. They don't even have very good sensors.

But they compensate that with huge amounts of charisma 

[Anonymous]

posted on January 18th, 2009, 5:14 am

Last edited by Anonymous on January 18th, 2009, 5:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm not sure the Cardassians would fit in, their ships are slow, weak and quite primitive. They don't even have very good sensors.

we can squeeze them in. Remember my post in one of the threads to the idea of a 3rd Dom card avatar.
Even if the cardies come back as a separate playable race..
we can have the dukat avatar as an evil one based on his return from the pah wraith hell. He brings with him then new tech and upgrades shared from his imprisonment (can be expanded upon to give it more meat). He brings with him the desire to take over the entire alpha quadrant. waging a war against the detapa council with the support of the cardassian dissident wing (former military adn obsidian loyalists) who feel the current ideals of the detapa are a betrayal of Cardassia's ideals.

The other avatar can be the reinstated Detapa council. The feds helped cardassia, and now they are siding the Feds -coming in to help the feds repel the Borg/Dominion/Noxter threat.
Upgrades to their ships are based on collaboration with kling/fed rebuilding shares and crossovers.

This would allow us to implement a tech tree like we did for the Dom with new and old ships.
Also it would allow for us to bump up the Galor and keldon.
But since the Cardassians have only a few mainstay ships, I would prefer a slight disparity between the Dukat and Detapa tech trees.

The Dukat tree would rely more on the known types - keldons, galors, hideki, and maybe a couple of light cruisers.
However in his case the Galor start out weak more like akiras or excelsiors. only with upgrades and refits are they capable of reaching the strenght of a galaxy (plus or minus a few points based on the mods opinion). Also, by refit i do not mean upgrading the ship itself like a Tavara, instead it is more like an advanced chassis. Meaning the player can still build galors that are cheaper and as weak as excelsiors or the more expensive matches for galaxies at the same time based on strategy.
Keldons - choice of following the same upgrade scheme or built strong at the outset matches for sovs based on new advances drawn of pah wraith inspiration.
So this would rely on the gamer's skill in using the limited builds at hadn and building a robust and versatile fleet. resources will be collected and allocated accordingly.
If dukat captures any fed/kling/rom construction shio he gets the hutet as his motehrship buildable from he mixed tech yard.
Rom mixed would also have a cloaking keld (rom tech adapted by former obsidian loyalists on dukat's side now)
if he captures dom construction ships he gets a new class that can be geared as a true mixed tech of galor and battlecruiser (not dreadnought) ships.
if he captures borg he gets a new class that looks like a cross between a galor and an assimilator (no assimilation beam or borgy stuff, just power and shields with a cool design - can be discussed and proposed later).

The detapa council can have the hutet as its mothership with the keldons and galors as they are. cruisers can be expanded on as part of fed tech exchanges.
Detapa mmixed trees will include more bonues for the hutet -  maybe a new cruiser class like we did fof the miranda or saehlir if it takes kling/fed/rom constructs.
Roms could yeild cloaking kelds
dominion construct will yield new cruisers and new stats for the galor.
Borg construct will yield new mid level cruisers and bonuses for the keldon.

any more ideas we can put forward?

posted on January 18th, 2009, 1:08 pm

I think klingons and cardassians will never work together... cardassians could be a race. dangerous even from far away - cloaked missles etc. Maybe they can shot cloaked missles from their starbases into resarched ares of space or something like this...  I'd like them playable too, with sneaky abillities like sabotage usw... but I've joined fleetops with 3.0 and missed discussions on races in early stages - dont wanna worm that stuff up (as I don't even understand why inventing a whole new race instead of using the high potential 8472...),

posted on January 18th, 2009, 1:15 pm

For example cardies could have the abillity to takeover unmaned staions like sensor and torpedo plattforms... would suit them

posted on January 18th, 2009, 1:15 pm

I think klingons and cardassians will never work together... cardassians could be a race. dangerous even from far away - cloaked missles etc. Maybe they can shot cloaked missles from their starbases into resarched ares of space or something like this...  I'd like them playable too, with sneaky abillities like sabotage usw... but I've joined fleetops with 3.0 and missed discussions on races in early stages - dont wanna worm that stuff up (as I don't even understand why inventing a whole new race instead of using the high potential 8472...),

yeah. would like to see them sneaky too - but not like roms. Your sabotage idea is perfect for cardassian style sneakiness...
not cloaked missiles though. but the missile to the enemy's base along the lines of what has been accepted for Dominion artillery would be nice.

(as regards 8472 that's what ive been saying lol  :lol:. nice to see someone who agrees for a change  :lol:)

posted on January 18th, 2009, 3:12 pm

Very far distancce artillery, which can shoot throughover half of the map qould be cardassian style

posted on January 18th, 2009, 5:24 pm

Maybe we could even have a Gul Dukat avatar

Yes, why not? :-) 

posted on January 18th, 2009, 8:04 pm

Its there mod, I have asked and am quite clear that they have NO interest NO intreat what so ever in having a playable Cardassians. Its bean requested over and over. there are 2 threads this one and another asking for more Cardassians presents in the game the answer is No.

You will bot be able to dominate them in to having them be in the game by opening up thread after thread. If you wont to enroll them in a resign why it would be to there benefit to have them you will have a chase.

[Anonymous]

posted on January 18th, 2009, 8:55 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on January 18th, 2009, 9:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Its there mod, I have asked and am quite clear that they have NO interest NO intreat what so ever in having a playable Cardassians. Its bean requested over and over. there are 2 threads this one and another asking for more Cardassians presents in the game the answer is No.

You will bot be able to dominate them in to having them be in the game by opening up thread after thread. If you wont to enroll them in a resign why it would be to there benefit to have them you will have a chase.

we are aware that you asked in the past and that in the past they were answering no no. that's cos they were working on V3 at that time.

I fail to see why you are killing out the possibility now that V3 is ready and stretches for Noxter (which frankly are even lamer than dukat being liberated or the detapa being rebuilt) are being made to apologetically allow them instead of 8472. Since you've asked them in the past, I think you would be one of us who would really enjoy playing a new revamped Cardie.

It's our confidence in the mod developers of creating a really good Cardie tech tree which is prompting us to want their take on the Cardies, and not want to settle for other mods or addons that don't have the FO finesse.

This thread was initiated to see how may of us want the Cardies. From the poll, there's a huge majority.

It is not our intention to harangue them into acquiescing to the Cardies. As you said it's teir mod.

But any modder knows that the success of the mod is based on the audience that plays it.
We as such an audience are using this forum to inform them, that while their abandonment of 8472 in FO is passable, the absence of the Cardassians leaves a great Vacuum in the overall completeness of the game.

Previous concerns cited by the mods were made when V3 was being developed. And of course it would not have been viable to squeeze the Cardies in at that time.

However, at this time V3 is ready, and the mods are looking to us for feedback.
And as part of the feedback we are clarifying that the Cardies are needed -- and from the poll greatly Wanted.

It is not our intention to dictate to them, rather to collaborate with them. Besides, from the initial threads that you had with them, there were storyline issues cited as the primary concern.

We have started to deal with that here. There is also a thread with the Dom 3rd avatar that also has a rather plausible storyline adaptation - certainly not more implausible than any Noxter-Jem'hadar association, while giving them 8472 similarities.

Plus the ideas being mentioned here are cool. Look over what we have suggested in regards to tech tree, abilities etc and you'll see some pretty interesting gameplay dynamics.
So I dont think it would be fair to the community if their ideas were simply dismissed without good reason. Particularly since the devs themselves have recently been active in going over our contributions, and have found  many suggestions related to the Feds, borg etc, which were previously ruled out, to now be of interest.

posted on January 18th, 2009, 9:41 pm

I also appreciate cardassians to be playable, although I know, that this won't come true at least for a long time. But even a notional discussion can be very interestig. :-)

It's been quite long that I made some thoughts myself, and I see that they are quite similar to those of serpicus:

In my opinion a new race which originates from canonical StarTrek has to be designed very carefully. As Armada II is set after the dominion war, the Cardassian Union mostly lies in ruins. As a result, Cardassians should have a really difficult, sparse startup. I think of a small Outpost, nothing like a heavy Nor-station, with poor armament, and no possibility to bulid a shipyard in the begining. Instead they could have a warpin-like mechanism, to relocate the remaining ships of a sector. In contrast to federation, that mechanism will only bring ships to the haedquarter. Costs: Using stars for incoming ships is not a proper solution, better use something like the Borg's priority: You start with a certain amount, lets say 15, and pay 1 point per incoming ship, until the last ship in the sector was relocated. This will make the player act really carefully, until resources allow bulilding an own shipyad.

As far as I know, the Cardassian ships are quite manuverable but slower than thoase of the federation, weaker in shields, but have a great hull stability (highly robust Duranium alloys) anf less powerful plasma and disruptor weaponary. Before the dominion war the Cardassians tried to compensate their technological weaknesses by confronting  enemies in larger formations, or utilizing the moment of surprise. Now their military tactics might greatly be ruled by their destitution, so sneaking tactics, sabotage (The Obsidian Order is even more fearsome than the Tal Shiar IMO) and retreat in time becomes even more important, whereas spawning is not quite possible any more.

The next point to be considered is, that  there are not many known Cardassian shipclasses. As a consequence a largescaled refit system seems most suitable. Perhaps these refits could refer to the typical characteristics of the Orders (as far as I know, there are 12 orders + obsidian order, which must not have own ships; e.g. the third batallion of the first order was known for its fanatism and often used for suicide missions). Hideki, Gaylor, Keldon might all have a defensive version with low speed and weaponary, but a massive hull, an offensive one with high speed and heavy weapons, an intelligence version with increased sensor range, and probably the romulan cloak (most essential for sneaking and sabotage), and perhaps a scientific version carrying sone funny special weapons (sensor ghosts and holo-projections). Other shipcasses might be provided by avatars, but I havn't thought about that too much by now.