MOD: STA2 Upgrade Project 2014 - A stock A2 mod in FO

posted on January 29th, 2014, 9:09 am

Yes, you would have to add whatever ships you want to start with to the map in the editor and set them to your team. Then when you start the mission you should have access to them right then

i'm not sure that works. when i tried it last, anything set to a team number that is the same as a starting player got deleted when starting a skirmish or MP game.

make the ships derelict (set crew to 0) and put them on a team that isn't in use, but not team 0. team 0 ships can't be boarded. so with 8 players this is impossible, as all 8 slots will be players.

any ships left derelict for a several minutes will self destruct as well.

posted on January 29th, 2014, 11:40 am

How do I add custom ships to the Map editor?

posted on January 29th, 2014, 12:37 pm

How do I add custom ships to the Map editor?

are you asking how to add ships to a map? if so:

at the top left should appear text menus that tell you what the function keys (f1, f2, etc) do. to go up a level you use tab.

you should also see a line that tells you what team is used when creating a unit. i believe it's shift + up arrow or down arrow to change this.

once the ship is placed, double click it to change its properties, such as current crew level.

if you're asking how to add ships to the map editor build menu, i have no idea.

posted on January 29th, 2014, 5:24 pm

Yes, you would have to add whatever ships you want to start with to the map in the editor and set them to your team. Then when you start the mission you should have access to them right then

i'm not sure that works. when i tried it last, anything set to a team number that is the same as a starting player got deleted when starting a skirmish or MP game.

make the ships derelict (set crew to 0) and put them on a team that isn't in use, but not team 0. team 0 ships can't be boarded. so with 8 players this is impossible, as all 8 slots will be players.

any ships left derelict for a several minutes will self destruct as well.

I could just be talking out of my butt as I've never actually done it myself like he's trying however, it can be done. If you download the Improved single player campaign mod for the Feds and look at a2_fed01 map in the editor you'll see that they've added Klingon BOP's to the Fed starting ships among other missions. Here: http://armada2.filefront.com/file/Impro ... tion;91042

Maybe if you double click on one of those ships and check it's settings? I will check after work tonite as well as I'd like to know how they did it too as they are fully crewed and you can control them from the start of the mission.

posted on January 29th, 2014, 5:58 pm

I could just be talking out of my butt as I've never actually done it myself like he's trying however, it can be done. If you download the Improved single player campaign mod for the Feds and look at a2_fed01 map in the editor you'll see that they've added Klingon BOP's to the Fed starting ships among other missions. Here: http://armada2.filefront.com/file/Impro ... tion;91042.

oh, i see. i was talking about stock fleetops skirmish/mp maps. i'm not sure what the behaviour is like in mods or stock a2. i should have realised he was being specific when he said "mission".

posted on January 29th, 2014, 10:17 pm

How do I add custom ships to the Map editor?

are you asking how to add ships to a map? if so:

at the top left should appear text menus that tell you what the function keys (f1, f2, etc) do. to go up a level you use tab.

you should also see a line that tells you what team is used when creating a unit. i believe it's shift + up arrow or down arrow to change this.

once the ship is placed, double click it to change its properties, such as current crew level.

if you're asking how to add ships to the map editor build menu, i have no idea.

This is what I was asking how to add ships to the map editor build menu.

posted on January 29th, 2014, 10:51 pm

Map editor menus (in Stock A2, likely the same in FleetOps) are in ODF/Other. They are hierarchical. Starting with editmenu.odf. The names mentioned reference other odfs in that folder, until you get to say er_comba.odf which is Romulan combat ships.

You'll soon get to grips with it

posted on January 30th, 2014, 3:10 am

Does the map editor only allow 12 ships? Because I can't add any other ships nor can I find the modified map I made in the BZN folder.

Also I have a strange crash with normal fleet ops. It appears to affect all the fleet ops mods I have except for STA2 Classic 2013. When I roll over an object I get an immediate crash-to-desktop. I don't know what the problem is, the only thing the error report gives is a Cursor Interface error.

posted on January 30th, 2014, 3:33 am

The map editor files do work in sets of 12 yes. But you can add extra "pages" to a certain level. I separated most sides into "Screens" (i.e Escorts up to Cruisers) and "Capitals" (Command Cruisers and up).

Also, saved maps are stored in "C:\Users\PROFILENAME\AppData\Roaming\Star Trek Armada II Fleet Operations" and then if its a mod, "mod\MODDNAME\bzn"

so for my KA2 it's "C:\Users\Rob\AppData\Roaming\Star Trek Armada II Fleet Operations\mods\KA2 EAW\bzn"

posted on January 30th, 2014, 4:03 am

Squire James is correct in how to add ships to the map editor menu. I'm sorry that I neglected to mention that step a few posts back. Apologies. The limit of 12 items per menu is to correspond to the F1-F12 keys for when placing them in the map.

Like he said, once you do it a couple of times it'll be second nature. You just have to watch spelling and structure as sometimes it can be a bit quirky. I had a terrible time setting up the omni lighting menu in the map editor as no matter what I did it wouldn't show the options in the editor menus so I had to simplify my structure in the end to get it to work.

posted on January 30th, 2014, 10:16 am

Also, saved maps are stored in "C:\Users\PROFILENAME\AppData\Roaming\Star Trek Armada II Fleet Operations" and then if its a mod, "mod\MODDNAME\bzn"

only on vista/7/8

thankfully "%appdata%\Star Trek Armada II..." will always work

also the environment variable for the current user's user name is surprisingly just %username%. you wouldn't expect microsoft to name something so aptly.

posted on February 8th, 2014, 8:37 pm

If its of interest, I made a very very simple little minimod for STA2 Classic 2013 Edition. It simply replaces all instances of "8472" or "Species 8472" with "Undine" (corrected for grammar also, so "The Undine use" rather than "Species 8472 uses")

Not much but for those that favour the STO name for 8472, thought it might be liked

posted on February 9th, 2014, 5:31 am

That sounds cool Squire James. I'm not familiar with STO, but a neat idea.

Just an update that I'm still working on the mod, but obviously wasn't able to have an updated version out by last month. Cabal is working on redoing the GUI's for each race. I've implemented omni directional lighting so that map objects cast of light. Nebulas have always had their own omni lights, but were never set properly from stock for one to notice. Now dilithium moons and wormholes will cast of light as well once I redo all the maps again with the omni's. I'm also drawing down the ambient lighting on all maps to better see the lighting effects.

I've redone the phong lighting on all models so they will properly reflect the lights of said objects above within certain ranges as well. In addition pulse and torpedo weapons have always had their own omni lighting as well, but you never really saw it in stock since the map lighting was so bright. Now when a ship fires these 2 weapons you'll see the reflection on the hulls and such.

I hope to release the next update in Feb, 2014 so we'll see. Lot's of slow going work. Thanks for everyone who tried the mod so far and reported back.

posted on February 10th, 2014, 11:03 pm

rifraf... can't wait for the updated maps lol are you interested in the odf adjustments ive made for some of the ships?

posted on February 11th, 2014, 12:35 am

I completely forgot about the changes you mentioned Lt.Cmdr Worf. Sorry about that. I did make a bunch of game changes which I felt needed to be changed from stock which I noted in my readme however, don't want to get too far off track at least for the base game. You mentioned you made some weapon modifications for appearance sake? What does that mean for appearances? And then altering ship stats you mentioned as well.

I agree stock game play has ships destroyed way to easily, but I am going to rewrite the build lists again and working on the AI as well. I want it to build the strongest ships as soon as possible or swamp you with swarms of smaller ships so trying to do different build lists to match the amount of resources on maps. That way you can plug in a different build list depending on how many metal and how many dilithium moons are on the map. You could always do a mini mod that uses this one as a parent like Cabal did with his Super Classic and Super Classic Advanced mods. His Advanced mod tries to balance and alter stats better compared to the base Super Classic.

Right now with redoing the phong lighting on all the models and redoing all the maps I'll hold off for now on more work, but once that's done we can see about it.