some ideas i have

posted on February 7th, 2010, 12:04 pm

hey all

i thought of a few things that i think can make fleetops better.

1. salvage. every time a ship is destroyed, it leaves behind a wreckage which can be harvested by a mining vessel to get back some of the resources that it took to make. ie 20% of the resources back.

2. infinite research. ie let every side have research that can never end, ie ship hull, ship shields, ship weapons, ship regeneration, damage reduction etc. say i research 'ship hull' it gives a bonus of 5% to all ships hull and costs 500 dilithium and 1000 trititaium, next time i can research it again and get another 5% bonus to ship hull but this time it will cost me 750 dilithium and 1500 trititaium, and the next time another 5% bonus but costs me 1000 dilithium 2000 trititaium and so on and so on till infinity.

3. Trading. i really miss the trade stations and trading with other players or yourself, like it was in vanilla armada 2. please bring it back

4. ship automation. it would be so great if one can build say 2 borg tac cubes and put them under AI control and then the AI will use them to go attack this or defend that without u having to issue the orders urself. because i find that being human, i cant keep track of so many things at once in the game, like "oh i need to baby sit my big fleet thats attacking here" and then "oh crap, im being attacked at my main base" and then "oh no my one mining base it under attack" then i have to neglect my main fleet while i sort the other problems out. so would be nice if i could have some ships under ai control that will go sort out stuff like this for me, and then i can do the main jobs. have i made any sense??? 

can all this be done? and whats the chances of all this being put in the mod?

i will build a shine to fleet ops and worship it everyday if all this gets put in the mod 

posted on February 7th, 2010, 12:10 pm

I like the idea of number 1. Maybe an armed harvester for harvesting during high combat areas.

Number 2 wouldn't work because of balancing issues.

Hopefully 3 will be re-implemented and the Defiant can do its proper job of convoy patrol!

Unfortunately I think the engine couldn't cope with 4.

posted on February 7th, 2010, 12:22 pm

im sure number 2 can be made balanced. just adjust the costs and bonus according to each faction. for instance borg typically never have enough dilithium but plenty of tritatium and their vessels are quite tough already so instead of a 5% hull bonus make it 2% and adjust the costs to be weighted to cost more dilitium than tritatium.

Im sure it can be made balanced, n yea its gona take alot of testing to get it balanced, but when it is just think how awesome it will be.

coz what i really dont want this mod to become is a "tank fest" where "he who has the most ships wins"

posted on February 7th, 2010, 12:30 pm

'Tank Fest' is always going to be a problem. And you're going to have hardened tanks if you have unlimited upgrades 

Shooting yourself in the foot here 

posted on February 7th, 2010, 12:31 pm

yes, 1 is really a great idea!
perhaps with a, say 50% chance that a ship leaves a wreckage.
of course one would need a tractor beam to get the ship back to a salvage facility (or shipyard).
the wreckage of a bigger ship would mean a considerable resource bonus if it can be brought home.

i also would like to see 3.. and, while you are at it, could you bring back the particle effects from stock a2 (leaking warp plasma, life support and freighter payload)? i'd join deathincarn at his shrine!

posted on February 7th, 2010, 12:51 pm

@ Captain Proton.

if da infinite research feature is put in the mod, what ill bet ull see is some ppl focusing on beter ships(ie the players that are really using the infinite research) and some ppl almost ignoring it and just spamming ships.

and yes agree that it might not get rid of "tank fest" but i can sure as hell tell u that it really is gona reduce the amount ship spamming. and im sure ull find alot of the ppl who's main tactic it is to spam ships are gona get their asses kicked coz they decided to ignore the research.

but most importantly it is going make the game far more dynamic and challenging to play

posted on February 7th, 2010, 12:53 pm

1) I dislike the idea of too much wrackage, as it is totally unbelievable. If a ship is dead, the antimatter-containments will fail, the resulting explosion blast the ship to dust and the ahrapnel dicerted over the wole universe. Iven if the AM-tanks were totally empty, a small photon torpedo carries destructive energy equal to a todays nuclear bomb. It's not likly that anything will stay in place within 500m range.

2) I loved that idea from the beginning, and i believe its not too much efford to realise more steps that can be reached in a usual game. I'd recommend an exponential growth for the costs and smaller steps than now. If this is possible the players would invest more in teching than in spamming, which I greatly appreciate. Evolving tanks will not happen, as the enemy will increase weapons technology as well. Such a change would most likly not change the verall balancing, as the relation of offense and defense can be conserved, it's just to keep the sciencs-stations busy. Upgrades for special weapons would be cool too.

3) Trading: Often discussed ... i want it back too.

4) Ship-automatation seems technically impossible to me. You would need to have an AI for each team, and the number of Players is limited to 8.

posted on February 7th, 2010, 1:15 pm

I like Idea 1. I put forward a few suggestions towards the idea of a salvage yard with a ship that specialises in finding and harvesting wreckage.

I think it's believable to have wreckage. We all know how oddly they dealt with wrecks in ST but the fact remains that fleet wreck are seen in abundance on screen. On the one hand, a single ship would blow up and the resulting antimatter/matter containment breech would be enough to throw a saucer section into a planet but if there were a fleet of ships then the same explosion would go off like a party popper.

If those ships blew up like they did in Generations they the first explosion would probably cause a chain reaction with nearby ships and take out practically every ship in both fleets!

posted on February 7th, 2010, 2:31 pm

Personally I like all  ideas.  I think the resource harvest should be more like 10% and fade ofver time


I think its entirely possible if you put a replaceweapon in the explosion file, so you could classify how much stuff is left behind, based on how big the explosion.

posted on February 7th, 2010, 2:47 pm

I like Idea 1 and 3, and greatly dislike Idea 2. I simply see no way how the game should benefit from the option to grade your ships up to monsters...

And about Idea 4:
First of all, i fear it's impossible to implement with the A2 Engine. Second, giving the AI complete control over some of your ships seems to much to me. I'd like a feature which gives you the possibility to set a specific route for your fleet, which the ships would follow automatically, so you could easier attack from multiple directions etc. 

posted on February 7th, 2010, 2:53 pm

Actually I think it is possible.  we have Allies don't we?  what if there was a weapon that would overturn your ship to an Ally even if you had none, and you were able to take control of it again, when ever you wanted.

posted on February 7th, 2010, 3:09 pm

Regardless of the bad and good sides of idea two, it currently cannot be done engine wise. Only the current global researches can be modified, and more can't be added in 

Salvage and trading are planned to return/be introduced far down the road 

Idea 4 I don't particularly like - I think all units should always be up to the control of the player, as otherwise you could just simply play an Armada style game with your buddy controlling everything but a few units. Having the AI be given control over much of your fleet is akin to ... well... watching the AI play  . On top of that, like Picard88 said, I don't know if it is possible - the Ally system without a proper "from the start ally" is really screwed up - it stops building or fighting after it runs out of its original ships. 

posted on February 7th, 2010, 4:32 pm

Well, I kind of liked an idea I saw in another game (might have been Empires at War), where two human teams are pooled into one overall fleet, so units that are produced by one human player can be controlled by his/her allied human players.

That way, two human players could directly share aspects of their allied team quickly and efficiently. I played this at a LAN and it worked pretty well, particularly if you get on well with your ally. However, it does seem a bit much to be implemented into FO

posted on February 7th, 2010, 4:46 pm

you can actually already do that in a2.  that's what dom meant by Armada.

if both teams select the same armada, they will control the same units.

posted on February 7th, 2010, 5:44 pm

#1 This is an idea from supreme commander. And... no. When you are on defending your base, crushed an entire fleet you have to clean up 10 minutes... when you are done, the next wave is coming. Everywhere in the map would be wreckage and this would after half an hour destroy the whole game.

If I may: Maybe, you can add something like a critical hit if the ship would be destroyed. So the ship itself gets lost with all its crew, but left with a single hull point, so you can capture it.

#2 Infinite research... well, in one ingame-day your technology status would grew up over the last 300 years... Well... no. It would destroy the game, because you just sit there, do your research faster than others and then you simply crush an entire fleet with a scout ship. Thats pathetic.

#3: Well, yes. Nice thing. Maybe you can "trade" out of this an additional bonus for your fleets like "buy" technology for 2000 dil /4000 tri for lets say a last boost for your ships in order to give them more hull-hitpoints or something like that. Trade stations itself may imbalance the game, because it doesnt matter how much moons you have, you simply need room. That is not intendet by the maps that are created.

#4: When humans play against humans, they have both the same problem - so it is outbalanced. If your play against the AI, you can simply crush entire fleets if you build your base in an intelligent way. Look to the weapon range of your turrets, build them in an anti-circle around a spot an then when the enemy comes, all turrets fire at the same time --> every shot is a lost ship for the enemy. You have also repair ships, artillery ships, ships for reinforce your shields and so on. Use them! You dont need an AI by simply place everything in a tactical advantage.