Request Colonize Planets/Orbital Stations

posted on September 29th, 2010, 3:00 pm

I don't know about others, but the two things i miss most from Armada II is having the ability to colonize planets. I also miss having the orbital stations. Short of these two things, you've done a great job with the mod, Star Trek should have gone to you all rather than activision, you made a far better game.

Other additions i'd love to get back:

-Saucer seperation
-Cardassian race

posted on September 29th, 2010, 3:02 pm

  Welcome to the forums man!  It turns out that you have requested some of the most requested things on the forum.  I"m not sure about colonization, but there will be Cardassian NPC's and the devs said there will be saucer-seperation in some way in the future.

posted on September 29th, 2010, 3:03 pm

I to like the or orbital stations and colonization tho colonization Had not point really

Cardassians may make it in as an npc

As to the other thing, hahahahaha (manic lauging) just do a forum search usin that term

posted on September 29th, 2010, 3:04 pm

Welcome

Colonize planets: Unlikely, it's hated by many (simpletons!) here.
Orbital Stations: Unlikely, since planets are a background thing.
Saucer Seperation: Supposedly planned, but not controlable and last resort AI controlled feature.
Cardassian race: Already planned as a non-player faction.

Cardassians may make it in as an npc

Not may, will. That's been well known for quite a while.

posted on September 29th, 2010, 3:12 pm

Thank you for the warm welcomes. I've been playing fleet ops for a year now, like i said, FleetOps is much better than Armada II. You know you have what it takes to start your own company when your mod surpasses the original game that now sells for over 100 dollars.

Why do so many dislike the colonizing feature? I realize it served no point. But it would add realism if you could add artillery to planets and make them more of a goal. Realistically in a space war....the goal is to capture and hold the enemy's opposing worlds. By making capturing their planet the goal, that would be pretty awesome. Call it an alternate skirmish mode....Invasion.

posted on September 29th, 2010, 3:18 pm

From what I gathered, at least some were bothered by the idea of a civilian colony set up during a battle. The fact that they may actually be military outposts (with the crew being security) never seemed to come up.

[Anonymous]

posted on September 29th, 2010, 3:42 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on September 29th, 2010, 3:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

well i'm not against building stuff on planets in general for a rts, but the idea of colonising planets for crew i never liked.

how quickly were these people born that u were using planets as your primary source of crew.

no i prefer crew as not being a resource and being unlimited. as these empires can conscript more than enough soldiers from other planets.

but maybe building a base on a planet with a different purpose would be better.

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oh and welcome, now play online where the real fun is.


EDIT: i recommend reading the guide first, it answers some of your questions.

posted on September 29th, 2010, 5:00 pm

Yeah you've gotta play online .  That's where the beef is!!!


  Also you are requesting a lot of the "fun" features for sure, but most of those just don't fit the playstyle of Fleetops.  I guarantee that if you were to play online you'd never want to bother colonizing a planet .

  I'm sure that in the future there will be other kinds of things on the map to "draw" us to them.  Whether they are resources, NPC's, map goals or whatever.  Optec is a clever guy

posted on September 29th, 2010, 5:17 pm

I always thought colonizing planets was cool. what I thought was stupid is the fact that you could not deploy orbital weapons platforms or some sort of defense mechanism so that they are not tactically useless... except for the crew count... but luckily the dev's removed that ridiculous mechanic. Thank You Devs!

posted on September 29th, 2010, 5:44 pm

I wouldn't mind planets providing some kind of boost or strategic importance.  I think it gets the bad wrap because Armada 2 implemented so many things poorly, and we don't want a return to that.  Here is an actual conversation I had with one of the developers of Armada 2:

Mal:  "So what cool new features will be in the game? "

A2 Dev:  "For starters, all ships will be able to warp. "

Mal:  "Huh.  What's your rationale for that one? "

A2 Dev:  "Well...ships in Star Trek can warp, and this is a game with Star Trek ships in it.... "

Mal:  "Interesting.  What kind of game balance will you implement to make that work out? "

A2 Dev:  "What's 'game balancing'? "


Fortunately, we have Optec and Doca.  I bet they could come up with a way to make planets (with or without colonization) really cool and strategic.

posted on September 29th, 2010, 5:45 pm

Oh no, somebody mentioned saucer separation ?  That's the thread gone for sure.  :D

Personally very happy about the crew count thing with planets.  Not sure what they could do with colonizing planets if not for crew though.... but saying that the devs have lots of cool ideas, i'm sure they could come up with something if they wanted to.

posted on September 29th, 2010, 5:49 pm

i would like warp to be decided by the map.

like have "warp lanes" where u can only warp where the map has this lane.

its better than impulse, and not as instant as a wormhole.

expansions far from the lanes would be harder to get to by the enemy, but you would have to take time getting there too.

expansions close to the lanes would be easy for the enemy to reach, but you could get back in time to seek revenge.

posted on September 29th, 2010, 7:16 pm

I don't know how many of you play Halo, but planets could make FleetOps have a new game mode, basically King Of The Hill. One player or AI holds the planet, the other has to take it from them.

Saucer Sep and Cardassians are fine, but it isn't something i think is important. Plus i've added them on my own.

I think planets could really be utilized though. Not even as a crew source. It could offer extensive mining bonuses and maybe allow a build time bonus as your resources are abundant and located "on the battlefield." The idea of planetary artillery also really appeals to me.

posted on September 29th, 2010, 7:58 pm

ROFL Mal, bal-an-cing?

I think Fleet Ops is better without the planets and orbitals, it just doesn't seem to be the right scale for multiple interplanetary war.

I like saucer separation being AI controlled, could be used on Galaxy destruction to salvage a low number of supplies(say, equivalent to a Saber).  The saucer itself is definitely no big hitter, with a limited power supply and no torps.

For those who do like galactic-scale Star Trek RTS might I suggest the Sacrifice of Angels 2 mod for Sins of a Solar Empire.  Take one Borg Cube, give it 100,000 hitpoints, 95hp/sec regen and the ability to ramp that up to just under 1000hp/sec every 5 mins.  Took my 48 ships and 82 strike craft squads three hours to destroy that SoaB.  The SoA2 team certainly like a challenge.  :sweatdrop:

Still, not as good as the work of our gracious Fleet Ops overlords.  :thumbsup:

To USN's Halo mode, do you mean like Dawn of War's critical locations?  You could link that into the supply resource, first to reach X limit wins and disable all other methods of gaining supply.  Introduce tactics around the crux of spending supply for ships or hoarding supplies to win.

posted on September 29th, 2010, 8:12 pm

I would like the Cardasians as a full race.

I want planets to be colonizable.  I'm not much for this "infinite" crew.  Which I could defeat the purpose of if I built enough units.  It's not really infinite.  It's just set ridiculously high.

If the planets don't provide a resource, having the orbital facility provide defence would make the facility a good tactical target.  Since the Metal resource was removed, I don't see the point in mining from it.  But it should provide crew.

As long as the saucer separation gives me an obvious tactical advantage, I'm all for it.  Otherwise, forget it!

For the warp lanes.  I don't remember specific warp lanes mentioned in Star-Trek, but I do remember subspace anomalies that prohibited warp.  I would like those to be place-able in some areas of the map.

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You cannot have the time compression at 1x in a game like STA2.  It would take years just to increase the planets population by just 5 percent.  And only 30% would actually join as crew (unless you have the draft).  A crew rate of maybe 300 crew members per year is about the complement of some star ships.  Plus, ships can take years to build.  You don't want to wait years on a game that's only supposed to take hours from start to end.  A bit of exaggeration in the time it takes to gain crew and to build ships is required unless you want to spend an entire lifetime to complete one game.