Civilian Or Other Military Structures

posted on October 25th, 2004, 3:49 pm

I would hope that Armada would continue to evolve more towards ship to ship battles than ship to station battles.

Having said that, it might be interesting to have more civilian and or other, indirect military buildings.

Part of the goal would be towards having a more living eco-system around the bases. For example, if stations and other buildings constantly took a bit of damage automatically, an AI controlled repair ship could float around fixing things. I think that would just look pretty cool.

A player could build a training facility to increase the effectiveness of troops in battle. Or they could build a facility to improve the productivity of the mining process. Or a place to grow and replicate food to increase population.

There could be a new element, research, as one of the building materials. This could be gathered from scientists researching in a special facility (a little), from scout ships exploring specific phenomena or even any unexplored space, or from orbiting sattellites studying strange planets.

I even wonder if you could eventually have trading ships, not just between your bases, but between your and allies' bases. You should be able to click to set up a trading route with another player or NPC, to both's benefit.

In the meantime, AII's trading ships could be used to create traffic, such as civilian ships and freightors.

posted on October 25th, 2004, 4:19 pm

yep, a star trek rts game has to be different from a normal rts game. we noticed that too, therefore some advanced features from v4 will make starships more important they will get new options and capabilities.
scientists are already planed as a special resource for the ciadan race, cause they assign them to their research projects. but it's not sure if they will make it in
the civilian aspect will be come in as the neutral stuff in v4, where you can find trading posts, dilithium cracking facilities, antimatter generators and stuff, maybe even neutral planets which can be controlled and offer additional construction options like hospitals to increase the resistance of your crew during combat or something

posted on October 25th, 2004, 6:05 pm

I've never experienced much crew loss in beta 2 unless the hull is down to 25 percent or something. In my opinion Armada 2 hemorraged crew at a ridiculous rate, but beta 2 seems to have swung too far in the other direction. Is this going to be addressed in future releases or am I incorrect in my assessment?

posted on October 26th, 2004, 6:43 pm

I know the AI and structure isn't up for it, but I could see a scenario where both sides of a border woud need to agree to put up turrets/mines, such as the result of a peace treaty.

I like the SimCity aspects of RTS, trying to build a successful community. The tricky pary in this situation is that the interesting communities are on the ships. Hmmm.

posted on October 26th, 2004, 9:02 pm

this is a suggestitan adding moral on planets or stations i would like to see ship to ship combat tho

posted on October 26th, 2004, 10:32 pm

it whood be cool if for evry trading station bilt a np ship comes with it and if thare are 2 or more trading stations the ships atimaticly trade. you still can bild your own.

but with an free alein np ship that comes with it will atimadicly trade if its posabul incooding alise.

posted on October 27th, 2004, 2:20 pm

In creating a more organic environment, here are a few other suggestions:

You could have destructable asteroids, either that block a passage between two parts on a map (so that you would need a certain amount of firepower to join the rest of the system, as one example), or that fly around randomly, and that could do damage to your ship unless destroyed first by your ship's weapons.

You could have xenophobic races, that don't expand, but try to kill anyone that comes within their borders. They would not play a role in a victory condition.

posted on October 27th, 2004, 3:31 pm

I like your idea's, especially that when a station is damaged it would be repaired with a AI controlled ship, the trade station....hell i like it all

What i would also like to see is damage models, when a torpedo hits the hull you would se a point of impact or something like that

posted on October 27th, 2004, 6:31 pm

something like that is not possible, but we will upgrade our graphics for future versions (better damage visualisation (dust, steam, bette rhull damage) and effects (torpedo impct explosions))

posted on October 28th, 2004, 11:29 am

you can make shuttles but not ai repair ships? perhaps a function on the repair ship so it goes auto repair? like in warcraft 3

posted on October 29th, 2004, 12:46 am

How about making the damage textures appear when the ship systems take damage not just when they become disabled...too many times you see a ship with weapons at like 60 percent or hull integrity at like 68%...they are still online but the ships shows no damage. A little off topic..but it would also be cool if the formations and ship strategies were reintegrated...like having a sovereign lead a fleet of ships against a borg cube..but have the fleet circle or cloverleaf around the cube...may not make the borg cube miss that much...but would look more "trek-like". Also is there a way to make the AI also use this technique...too many times my fleet goes into battle and while my ships circle the enemy...the ai ships just sit there and rotate without moving...anything we can do about this? thanx fellas

posted on October 29th, 2004, 5:28 am

yeah, i loved how you could have vessels go from the top of the map to the bottom of the map......real effective against pulse weapons and torpedos

posted on October 31st, 2004, 1:14 am

you can make shuttles but not ai repair ships? perhaps a function on the repair ship so it goes auto repair? like in warcraft 3

The shuttles dont do anything... A repair ship would have to, repair. Thats a ship function, not something posible to do with an animation like the shuttles.

posted on October 31st, 2004, 3:57 am

possibly have shuttles make supply routes between starbases/shipyards/miming platforms with a colonized planet?

posted on November 25th, 2004, 1:29 am

I love the idea of shuttle routes.