Fleet-wide and specific upgrades

posted on December 23rd, 2011, 10:22 pm

What I really would like to see is a new upgrade system which would make the techtree and research far more interesting. What I have in mind is the possibility of increase certain stats of the ships/weapons by a simple ODF code.
For example, if you research a technology, it will increase the base damage of your beam weapons by 1%, or their fire rate, or range, or starship's hitpoints, or only cruisers hitpoints, or the hitpoints of a subsystem on every ship, or shields resistance to disruptors etc.
In short: something that can multiply an amount fixed in an ODF file and you could tell which ODFs should be affected. If I want, I could upgrade every ships or weapons, but you could define that only certain shipclasses or classifications (cruisers) would be affected.

Please-please! It would make research far more interesting!

posted on December 23rd, 2011, 11:01 pm

I really like this idea. If upgrades could be made this way then there would be the possibility of going for early upgrades.  Right now they fill a late game role only.  Upgrades could increase damage, rate of fire, or torpedoes per volley. This could make getting an upgrade early to support one type of unit viable.

Example - A Romulan going for Rheinn and Shrike getting the upgrade for pulses.

Balancing and coding could cause problems. I don't know how hard this would be to implement.

posted on December 24th, 2011, 5:47 am

There are some much more basic plans on todo for extraWeapons, but nothing I know about for such extensive modifiable systems. You can already do the increased fire rate or damage of all weapons for targets using extraWeapons by the way (just have your research grant an extra weapon to all your valid targets using a deathchant ordnance etc).

posted on December 24th, 2011, 12:29 pm

i think this could cause some balancing isues as the one with the biggest fleet (the one in the winning position) gets the most bennefeit from fleet wide upgrades, so to much bennefit from upgrades might cause some problems.

however it might be interesting when it cause you to choose in the beginning to either get many small ships (with more benefit from upgrades) or less big ships(more cost efective for big batles but gets less benefit from upghrades)

posted on December 24th, 2011, 2:23 pm

I like this idea alot, We all have our favorite ships, (mine is the k'beajq) it would allow me to optimize early on without wasting money on fleet wide upgrades early game. That sounds pretty attractive to me.

On the downside, I see it adding a TON of odfs, which isn't so attractive. It would make everything look like the current borg layout, with many, many odfs for each ship.

Still, if you could bypass that problem, I would really enjoy that addition to gameplay. 

P.S How is your mod coming along k_merse? You haven't given us a news update in quite awhile. 

posted on December 25th, 2011, 10:09 am

I'm imagining this that during a game all the defined values would be added to a database with an ODF name. So if you build an Akira class, all of its values (shields, engines, HP etc.) and its weapon ODF's values (fire rate, firepower etc.) get into that database. Once you researched an upgrade, it would multiply these data in the database. Once you quit the game, the contents of the database would be deleted.
With this, we could spare those tons of ODFs


P.s.: I'm not giving too much updates because I barely have time for modding. But I'm developing. Slowly but surely.

posted on January 20th, 2012, 4:42 pm

Honestly they should do it like they did in Generals, have some minor upgrades for the ships purchasable on the starbase (makes more sense too, i mean they're the one making the modifications to the ships anyway) which makes upgrading your fleet in a minor way early game not such an enormous investment.

[Melody]

posted on January 20th, 2012, 5:20 pm

Last edited by Melody on January 20th, 2012, 5:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You mean like a system that grants YOU (as Admiral/Avatar) points with the destruction of enemy units depending on their value and that, when enough points are accumulated YOU level up and can choose for example 1 out of 3 options? (eg: add an extra phaser to so and so, increase rate of fire of all so and so ships, increase speed of these and those ships)

So for example... you have 5 levels and on each level you can choose 1 out of a number of abilities. And each ability can only be chosen if you gained the respective level for it to choose from.

So for example with 5 levels and 3 options each, you would have 15 options in total. For each race. Yes, I think it would be too complicated to do that for each avatar. And I think 15 options would be enough to customize your race to even the most whacky preferances anyways...
You could take 5 or 8 (depending whether you get bonus points upon reaching certain levels (3 or 5 for example)) out of those 15 options for example but never all fifteen.

So first, you would pick your general direction with your avatar and then (with such a system) you could, during the game, further customize your race to YOUR special playing style.

So, if for example you're an Akira admiral you could use your options and choices to make your Akira's awesome but you'd sacrifice the option to for example make your Monsoon's all wonderful.

Of course, you don't need to gear such a system to single ships. There are hundreds of options you could include in those 15. Ones that affect 1 ship or a whole group or even a whole class (offensive, defensive, support), or certain weapon systems but not others. Or it could affect stations, or subsystems (sensors for example), and so ooooon.....

Pros
GREAT customization options for lovers and fans of certain ships / playing styles without causing them to inevitably be at a disadvantage.

Cons
Very, very hard to balance fairly and may cause more problems and imbalances than leaving it as it is.

It would probably be an absolutely awesome addition but honestly, I don't think anyone sane could be bothered with the HUGE amount of work implementing (and balancing!) such a system would create. But then, the development team of FleetOps has turned a ten year old game into an absolutely lovely and fabolous work of art which is nothing short of a small miracle by itself.

edit: typos...

posted on January 22nd, 2012, 5:04 am

Idk that acutally sounds kinda fun you could make your own custom admiral that way.