My 2 cents

posted on May 16th, 2009, 7:33 am

Hi all, I was just thinking about how I could contribute to the community [other than donating $... which I already have ] and so I have come up with some ideas for possible future versions.

1) requiredEnemyRace
(unless it is already in or planned) As an opposite to requiredAlliedRace, I am thinking that there could be some possibilities with this command, such as abilities, ships or stations designed specifically for combating a specified race and pretty much useless against all others.  It would also be a very useful (but not required) command for my next idea

2) Basically, it is one of the main features of canon Borg, adapting, what I suggest is adapting be somehow incorporated into the Borg.

I am thinking that what could be done is set up a lvl 2 of all the Borg ships (allowing them to level up to lvl 2) but without actually improving their stats in any way, all the level up would do would be to unlock some replaceWeapon abilities which are limited by requiredEnemyRace to only allow upgrades depending on which enemy races are in play (which would remove the problem of accidentally clicking to upgrade against a race that is not even in play and thereby wasting resources and adding frustration), and that ship could then be replaced with a version of itself that has "adapted" to the specified race.  It would basically make the ship less vulnerable to all weapons of the specified race, but would have no effect on other races weapons.
I am thinking that this could be made even more complex, by maybe instead of just having a single race adaptation, you would first choose the race, then choose if you want the ship to have more resistance to phasers or disruptors or photon torpedos or quantum torpedos etc etc, possibly allowing multiple level ups so as to allow the ship to eventually adapt to all weapon forms for the specified race, using the replaceWeaponCondition command.  It could also have multiple level ups to allow to choose more than one race to adapt to, and if the ship survives long enough, might be able to be "adapted" to every race/weapon that it is capable of being encountered depending on the enemy races in play.
Obviously the adapting would only make the ship less vulnerable, not invincible, even an adapted ship should still be able to be destroyed by the weapons they've adapted to (not canon exactly but in a game environment making a ship permanently invincible to all weapons isnt very fun for the enemy of the Borg.  Also, I would suggest that the XP needed for a borg ship to level to allow adapting be, well, rather high.

This method would definately take a lot of work (all the different ODFs needed for just a single ship), especially since it will take things out of balance aswell, but I can see it working, and it is only a suggestion to work with for future versions.  I don't know if it is possible, but a method which works in a per hit basis would be more realistic (so the borg vessel gains say 10XP to federation/phasers every time it is hit by a federation phaser, then when it reaches 1000XP it automatically levels, or "adapts" to federation phasers).  But I soooo understand if this is too time consuming or difficult, just putting in my 2 cents and trying to expand what might be concievable or fun.

3) Another idea relating to the Borg, (and also requiring many ODFs), would be to add a replaceWeapon command on every non-Borg ship which cannot be used unless you are Borg, so when you are borg and you assimilate a non-Borg ship, you can use the ability, but if you are not Borg the ability is locked.  This ability would replace the assimilated class with a clone of the original, only using borg enhanced technology.  The ship would have either enhanced weapons or even have the weapons replaced by Borg Energy Beams/Torpedos, with more shield health/faster shield regen rate etc etc.
The ship could also have the Recrew button (just like all borg ships) and obviously it should have Borg textures, or even a modified model to make the ship look more borg.
This would make assimilating an enemy vessel more useful and make the fight to take control of; and keep control of; without destroying the enemy ships a little more rewarding   Since there would be a large number of ODFs needed to make this happen without breaking a ships level, id suggest having the Borg modified version have no levels (just like all the rest of the borg ships) just make it a little more powerful than the standard ship at max lvl, that way it would only need one new ODF per ship (if it works the way I am thinking) and would still be more powerful due to being 'borgified'   I think it would also be a good idea to have a dilithium, tritanium and/or supply cost (increasing with ship size/techlevel/strength or whatever) to perform the borgification.

4) Concerning Mix-Tech: Would it be possible to create yards and ships which take Mix-Tech to another level, combining multiple races?  What I am thinking is if you have 2 allies, instead of having 2 separate Mix-Tech yards, it would unlock just 1 (so if your Fed, and you have a Klingon AND Romulan ally, you could make one yard that builds all 6 ship types that would normally be available separately in the 2 normal Mix-Tech yards...  Or another Idea, have a yard that combines the tech even further.  Eg, you have a Klingon and a Romulan ally, that would still unlock only 3 vessels, but those vessels would recieve tech upgrades from both ally races (best example would be the Defiant class, combine the Klingon variant and the Romulan variant to increase its offense, defense, system values even further than the separate values and combine abilities, so the Kli-Rom variant of the Defiant would have Critical Shot, Cloaking and Antimatter Mines?

Well, that's all from me for now, my idea center is completely out of power and needs to recharge... may take a while
Sorry if any of this was suggested before, but experiance shows it can be quite hard to sift through forum searches, and I am hoping that I atleast added a new element to an old idea if one has come up before.

posted on May 16th, 2009, 8:16 am

nice ideas i really like the 1st and 4th ones. I have been thinking of doing the same thing for some time now.

posted on May 16th, 2009, 8:26 am

Very good ideas. they would be great to see ingame! btw i didnt notice you were a new person till a couple days ago so welcome to the forums!

[Anonymous]

posted on May 16th, 2009, 12:49 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on May 16th, 2009, 1:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Good ideas.  Your 3rd idea is actually simpler than you think.  All you would require would be another tech tree all assimilated ships.  It would be cool if you gave those ships an "invisible weapon" that they cant use until they have been assimilated.  Then they could get a borgified weapon that resembles the one they would have had.  More efficient, but not as powerful.

I also like your mixed tech Idea.  You should be able to choose what races tech is incorporated into yours before you build your station.  Something like the new borg module feature.  I also think you should gain special weapons for your mixed tech ships by capturing ships from that race and sending them to the yard to be analyzed. 

posted on May 16th, 2009, 2:53 pm

Thanks for the warm welcome 

I just thought of something concerning my 3rd idea however... would adding another replaceWeapon command on Warp-In ships confuse the game and either break Warp-In or basically make the "borgification" button unusable... Or shouldn't it matter?  I just remember reading somewhere here recently about the Prometheus not working with Warp-In due to the replaceWeapon for the MVAM? (I haven't tried doing anything relating to the Prometheus as yet, does the MVAM actually work?)

posted on May 16th, 2009, 9:27 pm

love the ideas. 

posted on May 16th, 2009, 10:23 pm

I just remember reading somewhere here recently about the Prometheus not working with Warp-In due to the replaceWeapon for the MVAM? (I haven't tried doing anything relating to the Prometheus as yet, does the MVAM actually work?)

I'll have to look into that about it not working with warp-in, though I don't see why it wouldn't work.

As for whether MVAM works, yes it does. It's in as a proof-of-concept, that the team did as a test to show that it would work. A couple of mods have been done on A2/Patch Project using it now, so it certainly works. As it's not in normal FlOps though, it's not up to the standard of the rest of the mod.

posted on May 16th, 2009, 10:34 pm

I've seen it work in warp-in... sooo.... 

posted on May 17th, 2009, 3:02 am

It works.  I have it, and other ships with a replace weapon in my personal mod.

I'll have to look into that about it not working with warp-in, though I don't see why it wouldn't work.

As for whether MVAM works, yes it does. It's in as a proof-of-concept, that the team did as a test to show that it would work. A couple of mods have been done on A2/Patch Project using it now, so it certainly works. As it's not in normal FlOps though, it's not up to the standard of the rest of the mod.

Actually, the textures aren't that bad on the Prometheus, however the Premonition is a different story.

posted on May 24th, 2009, 1:54 pm

Another idea, how about a Legendary rank?  Have it so any ships that have been promoted to Veteran continue to gain XP and once they have accumulated enough they receive another "promote" replaceWeapon button which will promote them to Legendary, far boosting that ship's stats and maybe adding a new ability or improving many (or all) original abilities.  I am thinking that if it is possible, they could have a passive ability which provides a slight boost to Offensive, Defensive and System Values of any ships within a short to medium range or something of the like (something like the Leadership passive ability in lots of other RTS games).
You would only be permitted to have 1 Legendary ship at a time, no matter what class, so the cap file would have a cap = 1 and all Legendary ships would use 1 slot (obviously Legendary ships would also not be permitted to be traded to not allow exploiting and getting more than one Legendary ship).

posted on May 24th, 2009, 2:01 pm

Legendary rank = Hero ships.

posted on May 24th, 2009, 8:39 pm

Okay...

Idea 1: Awesome. Really really awesome. One of those little ideas that could spawn a whole host of new ideas.

Idea 2: Well, kind of comes from idea 1. So also awesome, even if it gets refined a little. I love the idea of anti-____ ships.

Idea 3: Word has it, this is already on todo!
EDIT: Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations - Assmimlation


Idea 4: Makes complete sense but it's kind of complicated. So probably not worth it at this stage... I thought you were going to suggest something else though (see below)

Legendary ships: Also an awesome idea. BUT it means an extra odf for almost every single ship... It would be awesome if they got a new texture-job as well.
I reckon there could be more variety in the Veteran upgrades at the moment, I was a little disappointed to see that everything got similar things...


(This is what I meant by below): Slightly mixed-tech stations would be awesome, depending on the race(s) you were allied with. To solve any conflict issues, it could be one per race.
If you were allied with the romulans, then (for example) your starfleet engineering station auto-replaces with a romulan/federation hybrid station the instant it finishes building.
But that requires new models or textures :/

posted on May 25th, 2009, 3:38 pm

Idea 3: Word has it, this is already on todo!
EDIT: Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations - Assmimlation

If you take a look at the dates, Ideas 1-4 were posted by me before the thread named Assimilation (my 2 cents = May 16, 2009, 08:33:44 AM / Assimilation = May 24, 2009, 07:13:02 PM) So there's no sneaky stuff with stealing ideas on my side    Unless someone else posted a similar idea previously and I didnt see the post (am new here so could have happened a number of times already i guess), but still glad to see a dev respond saying somthing similar is on todo.
I realize it would take an extra ODF for every rankable ship for the Legendary rank, but I am just throwing suggestions in for anyone who wants to listen, regardless of the difficulty of implementing (unless I know it is just impossible).

(This is what I meant by below): Slightly mixed-tech stations would be awesome, depending on the race(s) you were allied with. To solve any conflict issues, it could be one per race.
If you were allied with the romulans, then (for example) your starfleet engineering station auto-replaces with a romulan/federation hybrid station the instant it finishes building.
But that requires new models or textures :/

That would also be cool, didnt actually think of that 


Idea 6)  I was also thinking that maybe a Starfleet Academy (or similar race specific training center for the other races) could be added which basically allows you to immediately 'rank-up' a low rank ship.  The rankup would basically replace a level 1 ship with a level 2 with a level 3 and so on... but was thinking that a ship would need real experience to reach level 4 or higher (so a ship which is level 3 or higher cannot be ranked-up by the Academy) Basically the Academy would have a Special Energy and ranking up a ship would reset the energy in the same way using Warp-In does with Starfleet Command, and possibly to further help limit spamming, put a resource requirement on the rank-up as well.