Shipbuilding limitations
posted on September 1st, 2007, 9:15 pm
Well.. I went crazy.. if I haven't been crazy before.. so.. whatever, however the weird idea emerged in my head of trying to mod FO to exactly work by having ships sent into battle and not having ships built in the battlefield.
It might take me years to finish that but I'm curious about how it would "feel" to have FO work like that. If someday there would be something to show I'll ask the staff for permission to publish it among the FO-Community. As already said this could only be some kind of fun-mod since Armada works in a different way and this would actually not be Armada anymore... however.
Now... this could get interesting, I guess...
"FleetOps Junkie".. How right they are 
For the protocol: We went pretty off-topic by now.
It might take me years to finish that but I'm curious about how it would "feel" to have FO work like that. If someday there would be something to show I'll ask the staff for permission to publish it among the FO-Community. As already said this could only be some kind of fun-mod since Armada works in a different way and this would actually not be Armada anymore... however.
Now... this could get interesting, I guess...
"FleetOps Junkie".. How right they are For the protocol: We went pretty off-topic by now.
posted on September 6th, 2007, 10:36 am
i'm looking forward to your ideas and how they will come along 
posted on September 6th, 2007, 8:15 pm
posted on September 6th, 2007, 9:12 pm
posted on September 12th, 2007, 2:27 pm
posted on September 12th, 2007, 3:08 pm
So much for my vacation, I'm back - bad luck
Since I could enjoy rain and fog for more than three days I had some time to do some changes to FO and I am as far as I'll tell you now:
The basic idea was to change the game from a build-up RTS into a RTS which doesn't base on base- and ship-building in the first instance.
By now I have completed the Feds by about 80%. The remaining 20% are balancing-issues which were to expect.
I changed the starting units which means you don't get the Outpost as a starting-unit anymore. I took a smaller version - here it gets messy due to my missing modeling-skills - of the satellite and called it "Navigation Beacon". Every race gets this one and it's unique. You can't build a new one. Protect it
The beacon allows you to relocate basic ships to your sector - it works like a combination of the Outpost and SF Command.
I reduced the build-time as the ships are not built but relocated. You get them faster and until now you don't have to spend Dilithium or Tritanium for them, only supplies relatively to the crew the requested ship has.
You start with a limited number of supplies which allows you to call in only a few ships in the beginning. Your decision is whether you decide to have a bunch of destroyers or some stronger cruisers or support-vessels.
You still can build the Outpost which allows you to get supplies by buying them via gathering resources from the moons. So - good guess! - the Storage Dock is also still availabe.
SF Engineering does the upgrade-research and SF Science the research concerning the special-abilities.
There's no Antares Yard because you don't need it to build ships. The Eraudi Yard is still available and is supposed to allow ship-repair only. If we already had multiple-classlables I would have added the upgrade-research to the yard but my tries to get reserach working caused FO to crash. So.. only repairs.
SF Command allows you to relocate the battleships and some other ships which are not available from the Beacon.
Besides one or two credit-ships available from the Beacon all other credit-ships are available at SF Command.
And here we go: You might have noticed by now that you might run out of supplies very soon since the ships are more expensive than in FO and you have to spend a lot of Dilithium and Tritanium if you had to buy more supplies from your Outpost.
If you call in a credit-ship you get a certain amount of supplies with it. So eg if you call in a Galaxy you get enough supplies to call in some smaller ships.
Since the credit-ships don't cost supplies but give supplies to you they cost credits. The maximum of credits you can spend is still 20. The more credits a ships costs the more supplies are available when it arrives.
Yep, by the way: No chassis-research anymore, all ships are available right from the start and the only limitation are supplies.
I've also already made up a tech-tree for the Romulans and the Dominion.
Well, 20% are remaining for the Feds and I don't know how the AI works with these changes. An earlier version of this modification seemed to be challenging and spam-free as the AI pumped out a good mix of destroyers and cruisers and very soon after that first waves of Sovies. Indeed the AI attacked in waves of about four to five ships. I don't know how this worked but it keeps you working on your defence instead of allowing you fast teching.
As I said before, my vacation is over and I don't know how fast I can go on with this modification.
At least these things are possible - of course. If there's something you could need, Doca, Optec, or something you regard interesting enough for FO, just take it.
Uhm.. yep. That's it for now.
More on topic:
I like the control-points idea.
Since I could enjoy rain and fog for more than three days I had some time to do some changes to FO and I am as far as I'll tell you now:
The basic idea was to change the game from a build-up RTS into a RTS which doesn't base on base- and ship-building in the first instance.
By now I have completed the Feds by about 80%. The remaining 20% are balancing-issues which were to expect.
I changed the starting units which means you don't get the Outpost as a starting-unit anymore. I took a smaller version - here it gets messy due to my missing modeling-skills - of the satellite and called it "Navigation Beacon". Every race gets this one and it's unique. You can't build a new one. Protect it
The beacon allows you to relocate basic ships to your sector - it works like a combination of the Outpost and SF Command.
I reduced the build-time as the ships are not built but relocated. You get them faster and until now you don't have to spend Dilithium or Tritanium for them, only supplies relatively to the crew the requested ship has.
You start with a limited number of supplies which allows you to call in only a few ships in the beginning. Your decision is whether you decide to have a bunch of destroyers or some stronger cruisers or support-vessels.
You still can build the Outpost which allows you to get supplies by buying them via gathering resources from the moons. So - good guess! - the Storage Dock is also still availabe.
SF Engineering does the upgrade-research and SF Science the research concerning the special-abilities.
There's no Antares Yard because you don't need it to build ships. The Eraudi Yard is still available and is supposed to allow ship-repair only. If we already had multiple-classlables I would have added the upgrade-research to the yard but my tries to get reserach working caused FO to crash. So.. only repairs.
SF Command allows you to relocate the battleships and some other ships which are not available from the Beacon.
Besides one or two credit-ships available from the Beacon all other credit-ships are available at SF Command.
And here we go: You might have noticed by now that you might run out of supplies very soon since the ships are more expensive than in FO and you have to spend a lot of Dilithium and Tritanium if you had to buy more supplies from your Outpost.
If you call in a credit-ship you get a certain amount of supplies with it. So eg if you call in a Galaxy you get enough supplies to call in some smaller ships.
Since the credit-ships don't cost supplies but give supplies to you they cost credits. The maximum of credits you can spend is still 20. The more credits a ships costs the more supplies are available when it arrives.
Yep, by the way: No chassis-research anymore, all ships are available right from the start and the only limitation are supplies.
I've also already made up a tech-tree for the Romulans and the Dominion.
Well, 20% are remaining for the Feds and I don't know how the AI works with these changes. An earlier version of this modification seemed to be challenging and spam-free as the AI pumped out a good mix of destroyers and cruisers and very soon after that first waves of Sovies. Indeed the AI attacked in waves of about four to five ships. I don't know how this worked but it keeps you working on your defence instead of allowing you fast teching.
As I said before, my vacation is over and I don't know how fast I can go on with this modification.
At least these things are possible - of course. If there's something you could need, Doca, Optec, or something you regard interesting enough for FO, just take it.
Uhm.. yep. That's it for now.
More on topic:
I like the control-points idea.
posted on September 24th, 2007, 10:58 pm
I can't help but feel an opposition to this, other then what already exist (I already wish I could make more Galaxys 
). The game is wonderful, don't get me wrong, the designers of this (For lack of a better word) mod have done a wonderful job, and this certainly shows what the potential for the original Armada II could have been, Back on topic though, I feel that a further limitation on the other ships would ruin things. Any game I have played of this time, the limitations as such, usually is a turn off to me in some form or another (Depending on what the limitation is). Usually, my first course of action is to find my way around said limitations. With that said, if it was an option, I'd be fine with it, best of both worlds then, IMO as those that want that sort of thing, can use it, and those that don't want that sort of thing, don't have to use it. I feel this way, simply as limitations usually somehow, get in the way of my enjoyment of the game, Myself, I like to build up a fleet that will at first defend the base, but eventually (After constructing turrets, thus limitation hatred, usually turrets are effected), they all go on the offensive. I rather like massive battles, and this is why I find FO so likable, no real limits on the "normal" ships. I'd also oppose the increasing cost, as that'd just be crazy, in the trek universe, if that happened, we wouldn't see multiple ships of the same class (Particularity that larger cruisers). Again, these sort of things on options would be fine.
). The game is wonderful, don't get me wrong, the designers of this (For lack of a better word) mod have done a wonderful job, and this certainly shows what the potential for the original Armada II could have been, Back on topic though, I feel that a further limitation on the other ships would ruin things. Any game I have played of this time, the limitations as such, usually is a turn off to me in some form or another (Depending on what the limitation is). Usually, my first course of action is to find my way around said limitations. With that said, if it was an option, I'd be fine with it, best of both worlds then, IMO as those that want that sort of thing, can use it, and those that don't want that sort of thing, don't have to use it. I feel this way, simply as limitations usually somehow, get in the way of my enjoyment of the game, Myself, I like to build up a fleet that will at first defend the base, but eventually (After constructing turrets, thus limitation hatred, usually turrets are effected), they all go on the offensive. I rather like massive battles, and this is why I find FO so likable, no real limits on the "normal" ships. I'd also oppose the increasing cost, as that'd just be crazy, in the trek universe, if that happened, we wouldn't see multiple ships of the same class (Particularity that larger cruisers). Again, these sort of things on options would be fine.Who is online
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