Nice Looking Mod

posted on December 10th, 2006, 2:39 pm

Hi Yeah I’m new here…

Nice looking mod the mod teams has defiantly upped the graphics of the game. It looks 100% better. With that in mind after playing the mod I was left thinking there are things that were removed or not fixed.

1. Something that bugged me is a formation of ships simply doesn’t stay in formation they string across the map. Is it possible to make it so a group of ships sent to the same location goes as fast as the slowest ship? It was like this in AII w/o warp and somewhere was turned off in the mod. It makes the coordination off an attack a micromanaging affair.

2. Warp I know I’m going to get hit on this. I understand the reason why it was removed, but I think a better alternative would have been to make it use special weapon energy. Maybe take up 60% so you can warp once to a location, but not be able to warp out for some time. A counter to keep players from warping into a base or area could be to build gravity well generators. So enemies can’t warp into a base or area that these are built in. With this warp becomes more a utility and less an abused game mechanic.

Maybe even make it so shields go down when a ship warps. If they warp into the middle of a stationary group of ship they take direct fire on their systems. I don’t know if the warp adjustments are possible, but looking at the mod it seems you can do most of whatever you want.

posted on December 10th, 2006, 7:16 pm

I think that you'd need to make Warp a special ability if you wanted to make it use energy like that. And it's a pain and often glitchy to put one special ability onto every ship (in my limited experience, at least).
And I think that if you set movement autonomy way down, they might not run around as much. But FO is very Micro-manager friendly.

posted on December 10th, 2006, 7:24 pm

I would allow warp for maps that are bigger than 20000. Even there I'd try to make warp possible on specific areas on the map... there is the ability of gravity fields... use them in general to disallow warp on the "battlegrounds" and allow it on free space between bases ( that would be map specific). In combo with what was mentioned above that would be a great thing to me.

posted on December 10th, 2006, 9:29 pm

I've moded the game myself it's not rocket science when it comes to adding abilities already present in the game. The question is if warp could be made into a special ability not the difficulty of adding a special ability.

(Movement Autonomy)
Yeah I went into the game it’s not very clear what movement autonomy you have your ships on. "At least not to me" Maybe make the selected one bright and the nonselected dark?

Now that I think of it warp is optional in AII you never have to play a game with it and there are planets with gravity fields no warp there. Warping wherever whenever was kind of redundant in the game. If you didn’t like the battle you could just warp back to your base. Making it a special ability and adding gravity field stations would level out warp. They chose to make an optional game mechanic not optional for their own reasons. So I doubt the mod team wants warp in any form.

Nice looking mod though.

posted on December 16th, 2006, 10:19 am

or....it could just stay as it is, without the warp, it really only couses problems, robs people of valuable game experiance, like tracking groups of ships with defiants and blasting them apart, setting ambushes from nebulas to ships on route to attack your base and such....

posted on December 16th, 2006, 11:07 am

Well said, no need to have warp! Anyways look what AI does in Armada 2 with warp enabled... Warps around brainless all over the map like an idiot... do we need that?

posted on December 16th, 2006, 4:29 pm

All I said is it wasn’t implemented right in the retail game and not present at all in the mod. Then I suggested a possible way that it could be done and left it at that. I’m not campaigning for it to be put in again it is just an observation. It’s their mod they can do what they like I have no problem with that. I would never have thought the game could look the way it does in the mod.

When it comes to if what I think on warp is valid it all boils down to opinion on what good game features are. If a person here thinks warp was terrible that is an opinion not everyone thinks it was terrible. So don’t reply like it is a fact. As for me the mod makes the game look 100% better, but it takes away features and aspects of the game I liked not just warp. Basically I think it plays like Armada 1 now, but with really nice graphics.

If the game is better or not is 100% a matter of opinion it is not a matter of fact. If my observation can’t be respected as is without condescending it. Then they should add as a requirement for subscribing to this forum that you must be a fan boy of the mod to post.

posted on December 16th, 2006, 4:53 pm

Excuse me if i've offended you, i didnt wanted to and i respect your opinion, maybe i even like it, warp is a good thing and a major part of star trek, but at this state, with the current technologyes, maps and ships, i think warp would only be a tool to flee or pass trough your defenses with minimal losses, and such... it would nerf the game tactically, if it works like in original armada 2... tho the ideas above were nice, maybe later when they create warp disruption fields and such, it will be well usable. But at this point, i think warp is taken from the game because of (as far as i know( fleet ops wants to be more like armada 1, than armada 2.

posted on December 16th, 2006, 8:28 pm

Warp like most of the other good ideas in AII wasn’t done very well. Having a good idea and making it work are two different things. So I see AII’s game play as a good idea, but not implemented very well. I never intended to convey the idea to add warp arbitrarily just for the sake of having it.

There are many possibilities for strategy with warp and a counter to it as long as it is done right. There are also many possibilities on how to do that, but this isn’t my mod so it’s just an idea nothing more. I’m sure it was thought about and they came to the conclusion we see in game. ^_^