New Fed Avatar (personal project) - ideas and suggestions

posted on August 25th, 2010, 12:06 pm

I've been toying with modding Fleet Ops and a big fan of the Federation and had some ideas to create a new avatar.  Its mainly a personal project and will be unlikely to see the light of day, but just in case I could finish it and make it available (assuming model permissions etc) then which would you be most interested in seeing.

Just as a heads-up i'm leaning personally to one of the first 3 listed.  If you select the "other" option try not to suggest things that the FO devs are considering themselves as personally i'm not interesting in making something that the FO devs themselves may implement one day, eg: Starfleet Intelligence is probably on the cards for the future.

You can select 2 options.  If you like an avatar but don't like how I think they could be implemented then feel free to suggest changes.

Option 1
Avatar: Vulcan Admiral
Style: Defensive/Science
Comments: Who said admirals had to be human?  Vulcans were one of the founding members of the Federation and Starfleet so why not give them credit.
Avatar changes:

• Longer research times (Been around longer than humans and still thought ring nacelles were a good idea, more cautious with new ideas etc).
• Some science (TBD) research is more effective/powerful
• Vulcan ships as their additional ships.  Probably science oriented with special abilities, strong crew, maybe even a separate shipyard for this or replace standard Warp-in with vulcan warp-in.  High systems values on vulcan ships.
• Other ships have no bonuses (unlike Mayson/Risner) except perhaps science ships
• Stronger defensive values for defensive objects (stations/turrets)

Option 2
Avatar: Starfleet Supply
Style: Economy focused/Expansionistic
Comments: Its no good starting a war if you cannot supply the fleet.  Excels at resource gathering and cheaper supplies.
Avatar changes:

• Slightly Faster mining and capacity on mining ships.  Possibly better available via upgrades
• Cheaper resource purchase at startbase or additional station that can generate supply (like Borg have), or perhaps trading station as per stock A2.
• Additional ships in shipyards probably not, but could get better mining and construction ships at starbase such as lightly armed, better armoured, and/or faster mining/construction ships
• Slightly faster build times on some/all stations.
• Possibly additional non-combat ships.  If the Newton is changed (as has been suggested by the devs) this avatar could perhaps keep it

Option 3
Avatar: Starfleet Museum
Style: Generic
Comments: In times of war even those ships retired can be brought back into service.
Avatar changes:

• No additional ships available from standard shipyards
• No bonuses to shipyard ships
• Availability of refitted old style ships from TOS/TNG or other eras.  Either like a replacement/additional warp-in or a buildable meuseum.  If warp-in it would work as click and wait (as opposed to the relatively quick arrival of standard warp-in.  If warp-in then ship types could be random.  If buildable then only 1 ship of each type could be "buildable" aka "refitted" (unusual to find more than 1 ship of a type in a museum), not sure if could limit this to only 1 per game. Ships would generally be weaker than equivalent ship types but the "refit" will make them capable for play

Option 4
Avatar: Starfleet Medical
Style: Defensive/Support
Comments: Keeping the crew alive and functioning
Avatar changes:

• Buildable Olympic class
• Shipyard ships could get better life support values reflecting improved quality of doctors
• Buildable hospital.  Offers quick recrew to ships in range (therefore no need to send ships for repair after being hit by assimilators or klingon boarding teams)
• Stronger shields on turrets/starbases

Option 5
Avatar: Starfleet R&D
Style: Generic/Offensive
Comments: Get to try out some advanced technologies and ship designs.
Avatar changes:

• Special R&D shipyard and/or research center... ever wanted the Premonition back in game?
• Shipyard ships could possibly get some advanced weapons or special weapons or improvements
• New special weapons likely to have some issues such as high energy drain, cause subsystem failure, randomness, chance of missing targets higher etc.
• R&D ships while powerful in some aspects would likely have some serious issues with certain parts of their design for example low life support or low crew as these were put in as an afterthought by the designers who were too focused on the new things.
• Possible cloaked Defiant could be a standard ship or some sort of non-detection feature such as the multi-adaptive shielding used by seven of nines parents to cloak instead

Option 6
Avatar: Stellar Imaging/Exploration
Style: Generic/Scouting/Knowlege
Comments: Know what your enemies are doing
Avatar changes:

• No bonuses to standard ships
• sensor turret gets longer range and stronger defense
• Buidable argus array or similar gives you very wide field of view, possibly whole map
• Buildable ships with good cloack detection ability.  Possibly slow moving or could be more like scouts.  A better scout ship would make sense for at least one of the 2 additional ships
• If possible, show whole map at start of game (of course FOW remains enabled).  Possibly a weapon type event upon choosing avatar that makes a massive sensor sweep large enough to cover even the largest maps.

Option 6
Avatar: Other
Style: Whatever - however, i'm missing strongly offensive avatars from my list.  However, offensive does not really fit the Federation
Comments: Use your imagination.

posted on August 25th, 2010, 1:09 pm

about starfleet r&d, that is risner's idea, get out higher tech ships, she is the only one who can build phalanx and avalon, and has bonuses in higher tech.

posted on August 25th, 2010, 2:03 pm

Avatar: Fleet Admiral Jaine Hallia (Gender: Female)
Species: Betazed
Avatar Type: Intelligence/Defense
Granted Units:
- Argus Array (will be explained further)
- Arrowhead Class (will be explained further)
Granted Bonuses:
- Saber, Akira, Excel II, and Remoore Classes get a defensive bonus of 4 and an Offensive bonus of 1
- Defiant Class gets a defensive Bonus of 7 and a system bonus of 3
- Phaser Turret has range extended to Artillery and receives a defensive bonus of 6
- Pulse Turret and Torpedo turret can now burst fire their weapons, both get a defensive bonus of 4

---

Argus Array:

I believe the Argus array would be a great addon. However I tend to like things a bit complicated. The argus array would be built in a pod system. Basically all the parts would be multiple stages of pods built onto one another. This would eliminate range problems to where ships wouldn't shoot at it because they can't reach the center. It would be like destroying it piece by piece. However if one was to destroy a piece not on the outer edge, it would destroy all the pieces branching off of it.

All the sensor nodes when added on would have a passive effect that boosts the sensor range of the center piece (it is the main piece that does all the work sort of). These boosts would stack on one another eventually making you able to view the entire map if fully constructed.

---

Arrowhead Class:

The Arrowhead class would be a Defensive Heavy Cruiser. With a max cap of 4 in construction due to its experimental design. It would be armed with Multi-Targeting Phasers that would be able to attack up to 5 targets. And it would have a special ability called Deflector Sync.

The Deflector Sync ability tells other nearby ships to syncronize their deflector fields to for one large deflector shield around all nearby ships. This would greatly boost shield strength and also reduce incoming damage by 40%. The effect will remain for 12 seconds.

posted on August 25th, 2010, 2:19 pm

Erm... Saber would be stronger than monsoon this way. Akira is bestm Excel 2 between Mayson and Risner, Remoore better than Mayson, defiant, OP, Arrowhead OP, Turrets OP, Special is OP... no thanks.

Either the small vessels are better, or the later ones. Either you invest your bonus in ships, or in turrets/specials.

Mayson is strong in defense systems and early game + its Excel II, Risner is very good in early game raiding and got a good punch later in game. Your Fleet Admiral is good in early, mid and later game, gets in every aspect a bonus and will be dreadful, if it really makes out the argus array.

Whats the point of that? Maybe a klingon avatar with a warpin-dreadnought to counter that? Or an instant assimilation for borg in order to repel the attacks? Sorry for the sarcasm, but its way too imba.

posted on August 25th, 2010, 2:21 pm

Argus Array:

I believe the Argus array would be a great addon. However I tend to like things a bit complicated. The argus array would be built in a pod system. Basically all the parts would be multiple stages of pods built onto one another. This would eliminate range problems to where ships wouldn't shoot at it because they can't reach the center. It would be like destroying it piece by piece. However if one was to destroy a piece not on the outer edge, it would destroy all the pieces branching off of it.

All the sensor nodes when added on would have a passive effect that boosts the sensor range of the center piece (it is the main piece that does all the work sort of). These boosts would stack on one another eventually making you able to view the entire map if fully constructed.

The Array is already in...

posted on August 25th, 2010, 2:32 pm

My suggestion:
Admiral Y:
- No warpins because he is an outsider and no one would listen to his distress calls
- You get mixed tech ships to normal build time and resource costs
- no mixed tech (is already integrated into your yards)

Alternate mixed tech: There arte some double-classes, like the Excel II, the defiant and so on.

You get access to a mixed tech variant of every ship class, but have to do a long research for every class. In early game, you might lack firepower because you dont have enough ships, in later game, you will get better ships for the same costs. In order to defend you early expansions, you have adaptive turrets. You get a phaser-platform that is able to send out tachyon pings. All other platforms, like torpedo-platform, pulse-phaser etc. are a little better designed to reflect mixed tech.
- a pulse platform may be able to distort enemy destroyer and cruiser systems, so they get a decreased firepower when in range.
- the phaser platform got a tachyon ping
- the torp platform is able to fire a marking drone on a ship, that will hold 30 seconds, so your fleet might follow cloaked vessels and will hit better this ship

--> Those abilities are good against early raiding, so you should put up a phaser platform and save the sensor station.

It may be a little op in later game, but you may not survive early game.

posted on August 25th, 2010, 3:08 pm

I like the Vulcan avatar, getting a non-human Fed avatar is a great idea that would help show that the Federation does have diversity (even if the shows tended to show a rather ridiculous percentage of humans all the time.) I chose to vote for the medical avatar tho since the "bonuses" that the Vulcan avatar has would basically be a mix of Risner and suck, while Medical has bonuses that make sense for the Federation (sure there still were Vulcan science ships in DS9, but they weren't ships you send in to attack the Romulans; longer research makes no sense for a research avatar, especially since Starfleet engineers were always said and shown to be the fastest at designing things.)

posted on August 25th, 2010, 3:41 pm

Well, theoretically the Vulcan admiral could actually be from any section of starfleet and simply be a cosmetic thing, so could have a Vulcan medical admiral, perhaps a mix of the two so his warp-in is also vulcan ships.

Anyway, thanks so far to all for comments... keep them coming.

posted on August 25th, 2010, 5:54 pm

Thats what I was thinking.  Make it so you can also warpin an extra vulcain ship.  not very powerful, but it is 4 instead of 3 now.

posted on August 30th, 2010, 5:24 am

I'd love to see a fully themed time travel captain from the future whos ships dont use conventional weapons their ships attacks slowly erasing the ship from time

Their starfleet command doesnt warp ships in, they come from a distortion in the space-time continuum.

posted on August 30th, 2010, 5:53 am

I'd love to see a fully themed time travel captain from the future whos ships dont use conventional weapons their ships attacks slowly erasing the ship from time

Their starfleet command doesnt warp ships in, they come from a distortion in the space-time continuum.

No, that doesn't work for me at all.  I want to keep the same basic Feds just like the difference between Mayson and Risner.  A massively different approach to the Feds is not what I'm considering.

Would also be a balancing nightmare.

posted on August 30th, 2010, 9:42 am

why not terran make there weapons  stronger but remove some special abilities due to the lack of alien culture

posted on September 1st, 2010, 2:03 pm

Why was this moved?  It is still just a poll about his personal mod?

posted on September 1st, 2010, 2:33 pm

Avatar: General Vamel N'tow - Andorian Imperial Guard
Species: Andorian
Avatar Type: Offensive
Granted Units: None
Granted Bonuses:
- 10% faster build time on all combat ships.
- All Antares Yard Ships gain +3 offense, -1 defense, and +10% torpedo evasion
- Engine Upgrades available
- All Eraudi Yard ships gain increased manuverability (tighter turning radius, shorter acceleration time)
- All Eraudi Yard ships gain +3 offense, +2 defense, increased supply cost.
- Turrets have increased costs.
- Increased life support strength and boarding strength.
Granted Penalty:
- No Warp-ins - Andorian codes of conduct actively discourage calling for help until after the battle, if at all.


A decorated General of the Andorian Imperial Guard, loaned to Starfleet in order to ensure the survival of the organization that the Andorian people have invested so much into.  He brings a military mindset that is unusual amongst Starfleet's commanders, and many of his Imperial Guard soldiers.  The presence of so many Andorian troops, with their highly resilient physiologies, combat skills, and weapons that lack a stun setting in the first place makes attempts to board them much more difficult, and makes their boarding actions far more effective.

Incorporating modification philosophies from the Andorian military, the light and medium vessels sacrifice shield power for increased evasion and weapons output.  Many systems on the larger vessels that a human crew considers essential are reduced in power, if not disabled outright, and that power redirected to combat systems and manuvering thrusters.  (A non-Andorian crew would likely freeze to death in most sections, or die of heat stroke in others, as climate control is reduced to the minimum required for Andorian function.)

[Andre27]

posted on September 1st, 2010, 2:44 pm

Last edited by Andre27 on September 1st, 2010, 2:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Avatar: Fleet Admiral Jaine Hallia (Gender: Female)
Species: Betazed
Avatar Type: Intelligence/Defense
Granted Units:
- Argus Array (will be explained further)
- Arrowhead Class (will be explained further)
Granted Bonuses:
- Saber, Akira, Excel II, and Remoore Classes get a defensive bonus of 4 and an Offensive bonus of 1
- Defiant Class gets a defensive Bonus of 7 and a system bonus of 3
- Phaser Turret has range extended to Artillery and receives a defensive bonus of 6
- Pulse Turret and Torpedo turret can now burst fire their weapons, both get a defensive bonus of 4

OMG a defensive bonus of 7 on Defiant and Akira?
Along with the other adds it may be a bit overpowered (just a bit.. )

Personally i don't like the design of the arrowhead.

Edit:

From Admiral Y:

- the torp platform is able to fire a marking drone on a ship, that will hold 30 seconds, so your fleet might follow cloaked vessels and will hit better this ship

Nice idea.