Converting Fleet Ops Mods to a Personal Mod

posted on August 16th, 2010, 10:57 pm

This is regarding your mod titled below:

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Fleet Operations Version 3.1.0 - Armada II Total Conversion
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I have included the above material for you so that you might know what mod that I am talking about. I was hoping to ask for some permissions to use certain Dominion Ships, Stations, Weapons and Special Weapons from your mods. I have been unhappy with how some of the ships and stations look in the Dominion Ultimate Mods and have really enjoyed how some of them looked and operated in Fleet Operations. I have been trying to mod my version of the game into a personal mod that still uses the campaigns, adds a fourth campaign. I have used the ODF files from Dominion Ultimate to edit the ships and stations from your mod and the only things being used directly from your mod is the SODs and the Textures into my personal install of Star Trek Armada II. I haven't put these ships, stations, Special Weapons and Weapons into my mod just yet, but since I really want to use them, I was hoping that I can use them in my personal mod. If I can, please let me know and I will let you know and ask for permission again if I ever decide to release my personal mod to the Armada II Community, I will ask for your permission to do just that. For now I was only wondering if I can use these in my own personal mod (I am posting their original names here, as what they were called in your mod, not what I have renamed them to to fit the ships and stations that came with Dominion Ultimate):

dom_battle_cruiser
dom_cloning_fac
dom_defender
dom_escort_cruiser
dom_heavy_cruiser
dom_hyper_artillery
dom_ketracel_fac
dom_perimeter
dom_siege_cruiser
dom_space_refinery
dom_supersensor
dom_warfrigate
dom_worker_ship
dom_worker_ship_m


Those are all the ships and stations that I would like to use in my personal mod. The weapons and special weapons that go with them are also what I want to use too.
Please let me know if I can use them in my own personal mod. I will get back to you on using them if I ever decide to release my personal mod to the Armada II Community.

Converting Fleet Operation Ships to A Personal Mod 
(These type additions are not ever going to be released if the mod is/was to be released)

The Following Fleet Operations Mods have been transferred to my personal mod that I have been working on for a college project, this is the challenging part I would have to add since the files and names are set up differently. The files are being replaced with ones from the Dominion Ultimate Mods and are edited to match those files by only changing the information from the Dominion Ultimate ODF’s to match the information from Fleet Ops. Weapons are omitted and changed to that of the Dominion Ultimate Mods. Only the relevant information was kept in the Dominion Ultimate ODF files, Hit points were changed to match that of the SOD files from Fleet Operations. The only files from Fleet Operations in use in this part of the project are the SODs and the Textures, everything else except for a few weapons are from Dominion Ultimate. Now my question is how do you fully convert one mod like Fleet Ops to be part of another mod when only using a few ships and stations? Some of these stations and ships are replacing others but mostly they are just additions to the Dominion Fleet. After adding in the ships and stations to test the textures of the renamed ships and stations, the game crashes on loading saying “Out of Memory Increase Swap File Size.” I have checked the corresponding edited files and I don’t see any extra – “ – located anywhere and also can’t find where any are missing.

Here are a list of what was taken out of Fleet Ops and what they became in my personal mod after their information was copied over to corresponding ODF files from the Dominion Ultimate Mod.
dom_battle_cruiser = dbattle3
dom_cloning_fac  = dbase
dom_defender = dbattle4
dom_escort_cruiser  = dcruise6
dom_heavy_cruiser = dcruise7
dom_hyper_artillery = dassualt2
dom_ketracel_fac = dresearch
dom_perimeter  = dsensor
dom_siege_cruiser = dcruise8
dom_space_refinery = dmining
dom_supersensor = dsensor2
dom_warfrigate =  dfrigate2
dom_worker_ship = dconst & dconst2
dom_worker_ship_m = dfreight

Has anyone ever attempted this kind of modding before? To be honest, the concept of what to do seems easy and the idea of using existing ODF files from Dominion Ultimate seemed to be the logical choice instead of using the ones from Fleet Ops itself. Does anyone have any ideas on what I still need to do to get rid of the error message “Out of memory Increase Swap File Size”?

posted on August 16th, 2010, 11:05 pm

Modding Guidelines - The Hitchhiker's Guide to Fleet Operations

As you can see, for personal usage you require no permissions - however for a release to the general public you will absolutely need to contact the developers to discuss the material in question . Happy modding! 

posted on August 18th, 2010, 2:23 am

I will remeber to ask permissions before releasing my mod to the public if I decide to. I'm sure many people would like it.

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This crashing problem is fixed, all along it was the dbase.odf file that was edited, it had something to do with the weapons from one Dominion Ultimate Ship, the weapon’s were replaced with the ones on Weyoun’s Hero Ship along with a set of hp’s that were also for weapons but causing the crash (this I found out through testing them) and then the game doesn’t crash any more with the “Increase Swap File Size” error.  The only thing now involving Fleet Operations is that I need to figure out how to get the Build buttons to actually show up in game, they are only white squares with no image, this might have something to do with the fact that the build button names don’t correspond with the names that I found in the GUI_global file. Along with that, I still need to get the weapons (namely the Special Weapons to show up in the game through their buttons and also the regular weapons are going to need tweaking to either fit the Dominion Ultimate ships and stations or the information for them will have to be located in the Weapons.spr file.

There is still an error though, that isn’t related to Fleet Ops, the Trading Station for the Dominion is crashing the game for some unknown reason, I replaced it with the Cardassians one to fix this problem but it still crashes the game, it crashes only when I try to use the station, not after its built. This happen before well using Dominion Ultimate but it affected all Trading Stations then, now that doesn’t seem to be the case.

The other non related Fleet Ops problem that involves the Dominion also involves the Borg, I have increased the shield/health rates for these ships and also the stations but now instead of the ships being destroyed, they become derelicts and then the game crashes either when the AI tries to transport over to them or at the moment they should have been destroyed. All I have been trying to do with these increased shield/health is to make the Dominion and the Borg to be as strong as they really were on the TV series and movies so they act more like who they’re supposed to represent.  I happen to not be able to find the original Hit Points for the Borg, Dominion and Breen ships, I have backups for the stock files but I’m not sure if they were edited in Vanilla Ultimate so I’m having trouble figuring out what to do. I think all the Hit Points should equal that of the Tactical Fusion Cube for the Borg and about the same for the Breen and the Dominion.

I’m actually starting to feel pretty confident in some of my modding skills especially since I was able to figure out two separate crashes on my own (see my Mining Station Thread and “Random Crashings Log”). Of course there are still many crashes that I can’t figure out and that’s why I’m here asking for help a lot but I have learned one key about modding, sometimes you have to search for the reasons why the game is crashing on your own.

In closing though for this, I am hoping that someone can possible tell me how to convert (or use) the build buttons for the Ships, Stations and Special Weapons that I am using from Fleet Ops and maybe how to edit them so that the weapons won’t also cause any crashes yet (these new additions other than the replacements haven’t been built yet). If you’re willing to help, the files that might be needed are in the full download link that reads “All Fleet Ops Files Being Used”. Now that I have the new Dominion Starbase working in the game, the next step for Fleet Ops is to fix the weapons and build buttons and then this part of the mod that I’m creating for myself will be done until I get to the point on making my new campaign, a fourth campaign. I’ll keep you all posted on the progress of everything and thanks for all of your continued help, next I might just be posting about some mods that I would like to know if they exist or would like to possibly make some requests, can someone please point me to a thread for doing that or let me know if creating my own would be best.

posted on August 26th, 2010, 12:27 am

You know someone mentioned this earlier, but if you'd like help with all the specific things you've mentioned in these posts you REALLY need to clean them up so they're not just a wall of text.  It all makes it bleed together to the eye .

posted on August 26th, 2010, 4:43 am

You know someone mentioned this earlier, but if you'd like help with all the specific things you've mentioned in these posts you REALLY need to clean them up so they're not just a wall of text.  It all makes it bleed together to the eye .

I know, that's why I have the document "Random Crashings Log" attached. but I also have no choice at times because I have no internet connection and have to use the wireless signal outside the library with my laptop on battery power so I write everything mostly in Microsoft Word and paste it here to explain the problems. When it just happens I find I have lots t oexplain and combine all the problems at once.

The document and a few others appear in many other threads that I have started. I just hope people will get back on topic.