Cardassians in Fleet Ops

[ewm90]

posted on January 19th, 2009, 12:44 am

Last edited by ewm90 on January 19th, 2009, 12:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

If you reread what I posted I am not I am asserting that doing what dose not work over and over agin dose not = working. I did say that is you enrolled them in a possibility for the game that they like you may be opened to it. any thing sort of enrolling them in to a potability, is domination witch will not work.

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 19th, 2009, 12:54 am

A side note on the ships of the Cardassian fleet...Their forward arcs are not extremely weak and I think if they could keep those forward beams on the Enemy they could do well.

posted on January 19th, 2009, 2:55 am

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.

sounds cool. just one more thing. if we were to have the cards start off with a minimal base, we should be able to upgrade it to the level of empok/terok nor. more refits needed but cheaper and then more expensive as they progress.

posted on January 19th, 2009, 2:59 am

One point I would just like to mention.

If the Cardies are indeed beaten down and unfit for being playable, where o where do they get the ships to become NPCs??

it then brings us back to the starting point mim and I suggested for Cardassian bases.
So even if we include them as NPCs, we are ultimately giving them ships - and most npcs are pretty strong.

Kinda makes the objections to prevent them from being playable redundant and by the very nature of NPC contradicted. 

posted on January 19th, 2009, 4:19 am

As stated many times before... they are NPC for at least two reasons: according to FO canon the Cardassian empire is demolished (a minor race) and two, they, as NPC will have a rather simple tech tree.

As I see it, the FO team would prefer to flesh out the already started Ciadan, Noxter, and Iconians before starting a completely new race (the Cardassians).

posted on January 19th, 2009, 1:49 pm

I agree that Cardassians in FlOps would be good, and I'm sure some special features would work really well for them.

However, the team have stated a number of times "No Cardassians". I don't know why, but they have made this decision and (unless they're holding out and doing something in secret) are sticking to it. I'm not sure how much we can really gain from yet another topic on it, or a poll. Unfortunately, this is not a democracy, what DOCa and Optec say is the law. =)

On my own copy, however, I have started on a Cardassian race, and a few other things. So why not make it yourself, if you want it... People making their own mods and features for FlOps means the team have to be even more ingenious when making newer versions of the mod. So I say we should be working on things like this ourselves, raise the bar so the game gets even better...

posted on January 19th, 2009, 10:39 pm

*Sigh*
As stated many times before... they are NPC for at least two reasons: according to FO canon the Cardassian empire is demolished (a minor race) and two, they, as NPC will have a rather simple tech tree.

As I see it, the FO team would prefer to flesh out the already started Ciadan, Noxter, and Iconians before starting a completely new race (the Cardassians).

posted on January 19th, 2009, 11:22 pm

I wouldn't mind having the Cardassians around as an NPC race where you could have random encounters against a Wing of Cardassian Galors.

[Anonymous]

posted on January 19th, 2009, 11:33 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on January 19th, 2009, 11:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

*Sigh*
As stated many times before... they are NPC for at least two reasons: according to FO canon the Cardassian empire is demolished (a minor race) and two, they, as NPC will have a rather simple tech tree.

As I see it, the FO team would prefer to flesh out the already started Ciadan, Noxter, and Iconians before starting a completely new race (the Cardassians).

if demolished what are they doing as NPC?
Where did those npc ships come from when the Union was "demolished"?

In the end. if we have them as NPC by this assumption of cardassians obliterated and not rebuilt with anyone';s help for 20 years- we imply by default a very blaring contradiction.
If the Cardassian union was "demolished" where do the NPC ships come from.
In effect we are implying by NPC the very level of cardassian strenght that has been suggested by mime and me.

SO potayto potaato . NPC is ultimately tooted in the playable storyline and assumption be default.

The remaining argument then to keep them NPc and not playable is moot.

In short - when NPc might as well make them playable. The arguments to keep them out of gameplay are negated and contradicted by the action/conduct of making them NPC and there on the maps to challenge the players as part of interesting gameplay.

Think of it ** all you who speak of NPC and are voting nay just on the grounds of npc vs playable... .

posted on January 20th, 2009, 12:01 am

The only explanation to your hypothesis would be that whatever Cardassian ships were left floating around were salvaged by the Fergs, so any Card ship you see on the map is under Ferengi control.

posted on January 20th, 2009, 1:19 am

Well, the Cardassian empire still has at least a handful of ships left (At the end of DS9). I would speculate they have two hundred (military) ships left. Yes, these would be mostly filled out with Hideki and Galor class ships which equate roughly to a Venture or Excelsior (perhaps more with war-refits and those of most recent manufacture/refit). But it is not unlikely that with tons of Federation aid they wouldn't begin to field a fleet of other vessels. I mean, depending on the situation it could go either way, but there is still no way the Cardassians would try to make war on anyone anytime soon, I see their Military more as a Defense force now because they no longer have the trained personnel or ships to take on a major empire. They are my favorite race by the way, so even though I'd love to see them in...we have to be realistic.

posted on January 20th, 2009, 1:36 am

Yes, it is a similar situation with Remans, or Vulcans, or Andoreans (even though the latter two are part of the Federation... the Klingons are also allied with them) or any other enumerably "small" race in the FO storyline.

posted on January 20th, 2009, 1:48 am

Well, the Cardassian empire still has at least a handful of ships left (At the end of DS9). I would speculate they have two hundred (military) ships left. Yes, these would be mostly filled out with Hideki and Galor class ships which equate roughly to a Venture or Excelsior (perhaps more with war-refits and those of most recent manufacture/refit). But it is not unlikely that with tons of Federation aid they wouldn't begin to field a fleet of other vessels. I mean, depending on the situation it could go either way, but there is still no way the Cardassians would try to make war on anyone anytime soon, I see their Military more as a Defense force now because they no longer have the trained personnel or ships to take on a major empire. They are my favorite race by the way, so even though I'd love to see them in...we have to be realistic.

realistic is rather subjective when having noxter insectoid giant ships being in some way related to the jem'hadar.
But if we want to be realistic, it is not unrealistic to consider that the FO timeline is a few years after Ds9. Hell we are today 15 years in the future from the series already .
Th Cardassians were pretty much devastated after the first war with the feds in the early 23rd century wars as was the backstory for their introduction in TNG. if u remember O'Brien served in that war and haf prejudices against them.
Yet all alone we saw the cardies emerge as a power that once again challenged the feds.

After the dom war, we are all focusing on the fact that cardassia was devastated by the jem'hadar. several million cardies lost their lives in the dominion retaliation.
Yet we do not see such losses represented in their fleets.
They were battered yes.
They were beaten down yes.

But the fleet was a mix of Dominion, cardassian, and breen. When the cardies engaged the last fed fleet there was no mention in any canon source that the cardassian fleet was so decimated that they were absolutely shipless or powerless.
And when they turned against the Dominion allies, they were enough to represent a shift in balance of power on the battlefield.
So let us not over emphasize the obliteration of the Cardassian fleet.

To be realistic as you say, the decimated opening and rebuild with refit tech tree as has been suggested on page 1 of this thread fits in perfectly with the cardassians as left at he end of Ds9.

And since a certain amount of time has passed, we certainly have playing room to include the Cardies into the V3 storyline.
In fact if we want to say they are so weak that they cannot be a stand-alone race, we also have an adapted storyline that in fact takes off from where Optec himself leaves off for the Domiion, and allows the realistic (as real as fo and STU allow) inclusion of a card rebel+Dominion avatar.

So in any circumstance the cardassian inclusion is certainly realistic, and frankly a welcome addition to FO.
it's interesting - cos the excuses levied to keep the cardies out are more dogma than anything realistic

posted on January 20th, 2009, 1:51 am

It's best we accept the Cardassians are not going to be playable and are strictly going to be an NPC. They were an NPC race in A1 (play the second Romulan mission if you don't remember) and they worked out rather well with the bare bones tech tree there. Honestly I would rather have more NPC races then playable races; too many playable races disrupts balance.

posted on January 20th, 2009, 1:56 am

I agree with The Undying Nephalim, the limited techtree suits them. They are fighters like the Klingons, but are less tech more muscle.

You could have looked for a better example though; A1 was set right in the wake of the War when Cardassia was in ruins, this game is after several years of Federation-funded rebuilding (that's a lot of funds).