I heard of a race redo....

posted on January 30th, 2012, 9:59 pm

I know that as I heard it would only be the feddies that would be getting a redo. But I am willing to offer a full rebuild of a few races.


Federation:

Overall Focus: Defense & Preservation
Tech Alignment: Defensive

Basic Changes:
Overall Stations would have decent hull strength and relatively strong shields. I believe that Federation ships should be well shielded, and decent hull strength. The Federation economy would be rather costly per ship. The Federation technology would be defensively trained. Shield boosting, damage buffers, and direct counters against certain vessels or stations.

Vessel specific Changes:

Saber Class:
Range: Short
Weapons:
- Phaser
- Photon Torpedo
Descrition:
I am thinking of changing the role into a dogfight frigate. The Saber Class is aimed against Scout ships, Frigates, and Destroyers. To help with this role, the saber would be given strong defensive value and slightly high offensive value. But to counter act the system value would be very low. The Saber will also give up its current toggle ability that can decrease its shield recharge rate and phaser damage to increase the torpedo fire rate and get a slight damage bonus.

Monsoon Class:
Range: Medium
Weapons:
- 2 Phasers
Description:
Instead of a Proximity Torpedo. I am thinking of bringing the Monsoon on a more defensive stance by having a special ability that allows its phasers to attack seperate targets. And it also increases phaser damage by taking some power from the engines (decreasing speed and turn rate). Also I am thinking that once Rank 4 is achieved the Monsoon will be given back its Proximity Torpedo as a regular weapon with strict forward facing firing arc.

Steamrunner Class:
Range: Medium
Weapons:
- 2 Photon Torpedoes
- 1 Phaser (Short Range
Description:
I think that this can be a twin role vessel. In order to do this, its special weapon reconfigures it to fire two tricolbalt torpedoes. As for balance, the Steamrunner cannot fire for 3 seconds after firing its tricolbalts and its shield rate is reduced to half for the same duration. The tricolbalts will only go over long range, not artillery.

Defiant Class:
Range: Short
Weapons:
- 2 Pulse Phasers
Description:
I think that the special weapon will repolarize the armor decreasing torpedo damage the Defiant recieves. This would be better tham a weapon knockout which if used in large quantities could be unbalanced. This ability would be given up for the mixed tech abilities of the mixed tech versions.

---

I plan on posting my ideas for the other races soon. I just want to know what do you think so far.

posted on January 30th, 2012, 10:22 pm

Every race is getting a redo.

I also recommend that you read through the following news posts carefully:

Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations - Twice The Fun
Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations - Technical Support
Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations - The Next Generation
Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations - On The Run

posted on January 31st, 2012, 1:59 am

Before continuing a few things:

@MadHatter: 1337 64M3R is aware of the faction redo.

@1337 64M3R: What is unclear, at least to me it is, is what your proposing.
Are you offering to do the coding for each faction or simply proposing a new setup?
Or are you making a modification with these stats in which case this should go into the modding section.

Either way it is up to the developers to accept/deny any offered assistance, but with the amount of work already done it seems unlikely that it will be done as you proposed.

Since all we (non-staff) know at this time about the faction redo is from the news posts it also seems a bit premature to suggest such changes. Let's wait and see what the new version brings before we go into full gear suggestion mode about how each faction should be.

Some of the ideas you propose look interesting, but as i said it is premature.
Last comment: You should be keelhauled for proposing to put Tricobalts back on the steamrunner.

posted on January 31st, 2012, 3:28 am

Andre: It looked to me that the OP indicated that he wasn't aware of the scope of the project, and his proposals did not seem to take into account what has been posted about the revamp, so I felt that it might be a good idea for him to review them before progressing with his presentation.

posted on February 1st, 2012, 9:13 pm

Thanks for the tips. I have viewed them. And Andre, I am merely suggesting a reconfiguring or reassigning the role of the ships. I am right now making efforts to conjure up a rather interesting proposal for the Klingons and the Dominion that may be scary on the surface but if tested may actually make the game much more interesting.

posted on February 1st, 2012, 10:19 pm

nothing wrong with that, suggestions are always ok, at any point. we are long not done yet with FO

posted on February 2nd, 2012, 1:28 am

Question for the devs: What is the chassis size of the miners?

Reason for asking: I like the idea of torpedoes on the saber, but if the chassis is medium or above those torpedoes would make the saber an exceptional mining killer. The only early game unit with effective torpedoes.

Don't get me wrong i like the idea of the torpedoes, but if this were implemented in this version then miners would need a lot stronger shields. Memory Alpha puts torpedoes on the Saber and therefor i like the idea, but it'd be tricky not to break mining operations in the process.

[Dominus_Noctis]

posted on February 2nd, 2012, 3:14 am

Last edited by Dominus_Noctis on February 2nd, 2012, 5:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

There are no "sizes" anymore for units:

Miners are of the Civil profile and as such are very hard to hit with torpedoes .

Incidentally, in 326 and below, Torpedoes do not deal extra damage to medium-sized vessels - that's just a misunderstanding due to the non-transparent values within the ODFs. Torpedoes miss 25% less against large sized units, and 25% more against small size units: the "base" missrate is 80%, just as the base damage for Pulse weaponry is 80% (Pulses in this case do 25% more to small units, and 25% less to large units)

posted on February 2nd, 2012, 4:32 am

I think you mixed up your torpedo miss chances there.

I think the easiest way to think about it is just that Torpedos have a hit rate of 60% against small, 80% against medium, and 100% against large.

Pulses deal 100% damage against small, 80% against medium, and 60% against large.

Beams deal full damage to all sizes, but their Offense-to-Damage ratio is around 90% of the other weapon types.  So a ship with 30 offense and torps will still do a bit more damage to large target than a ship with 30 offense and beams.  Since speed and range are also factored in, it can be tricky to figure out the exact relationships; generally just looking at the Off/Def values will tell you all you really need to know.

Unfortunately, this system sets some limitations on game balance as low-tier ships tend to be smaller than higher-tier ships.  The new patch will break apart this relationship of pulses being good against early-game ships and torps being good against late-game ships by tying pulse/torp damage to Offensive and Defensive profile ships.  While this will give the devs better flexibility in balancing the game, I'm worried that this system will be hard for players to understand.  Small and Large are easier concepts to understand than Offensive and Defensive.

[Dominus_Noctis]

posted on February 2nd, 2012, 5:19 am

Last edited by Dominus_Noctis on February 2nd, 2012, 5:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

Nope, they are correct . 25% increase from 80% is 100% -> large sized. 25% decrease from 80% is 60% -> medium sized Ah yes, my mistake: too many mores and lesses, and not enough sleep  . Edited

As I said before, Torpedoes and Pulses are normalized to 80% of total damage -> a Beam therefore can be considered to give you 'Offense to Damage wise', 80% of total . It's quite unclear in general, that's why we've made it easier to see for future patches.

It's easiest to think about those values that way of simple reductions, but it gives the wrong impression for what base damage is for each weapon type . Otherwise people end up thinking that something with torpedoes is super bad against a small sized unit and pulses are super good.

A quite simple and easy to memorize (and see on the tooltips!) Profile layout has allowed us to scrap the additional hidden layers related to weapon type (6+types), ship type(8+ types), as well as of course sizes(3 types): a Defiant looks smaller than an S-2, but an S-2 is a small sized destroyer, and a Defiant is a medium sized battleship -> most new (and old) players have no idea what that means or implies, and it has huge effects on gameplay.

Even some of the best players have thought the S-2 and other similar ships were of a different designation than expected. Sizes just exist within the ODFs, as do classes, as do some weapon types, and as such are quite opaque.

They also make it ridiculous for our balancing, as we build needlessly complex systems to meet more and more unclear systems. I.E., Dodecahedron Adapted Photon Torpedoes being counted as Beam damage and having hidden damage components to small ships, battleships, stations -> and a different damage type to Interception Scout Cube Adapted Torpedoes.

posted on February 2nd, 2012, 5:31 am

Ah, I see.  A long time ago I talked about beams dealing 80% damage to all types and was corrected by a Dev, it would seem that was just a misunderstanding due to the weird ODF structure you mentioned.  In fact, they do have 80% of the Damage/Offense ratio that pulses and torps have...

Still, you said that torps miss 25% more against large targets and 25% less against small targets, that's what I was referring to.  And I guess I've just stopped thinking about the discrepancies between ship size and model size, it's a bad habit of playing Mods that you learn to ignore the little oddities.

Definitely looking forward to a new and improved system! 

posted on February 2nd, 2012, 10:19 am

Miners getting a civilian profile.. missed that in the news posts.
Torpedoes sound an interesting addition to the Saber then.

posted on February 2nd, 2012, 10:45 am

what's the torp dodging bonus for civil then? is it the same as for offence?

posted on February 2nd, 2012, 4:41 pm

Yes, the Civil Profile was not yet brought up in the newsposts as I remember

Civil Profile units get a higher torpedo misschance than Offensive Profile, but a higher pulse damage bonus as well

posted on February 2nd, 2012, 5:00 pm

Should mean true raiders like rhienn/shrike don't get ignored for leahval. Sounds good.kY