Fleet Operations Light

posted on February 2nd, 2011, 8:40 pm

This version of Fleet Operations isn't "official," but for those who have slow computers and/or want a simpler version of Fleet Operations, this mod will be for you.

Fleet Operations Light will merge the avatars and Borg vessel modules.  This will greatly reduce space on the hard drive.  Passives will be removed (with the exception of pulse and torpedo rules) as well as the ranks.  This will clear up even more hard drive space.  Overall, I'm expecting Fleet Operations Light to take up about 1/4 of the hard drive space that the standard Fleet Operations will take up.

To compensate for the loss of the ranking system, any special "weapon" (not passive) that a vessel gains through the ranks will be usable when the vessel is built.

For the Borg, refits will be made available for vessels that have multi-targeting scanners.  The scout cube, sphere, cube, and tactical cube (am I missing any?) will be able to be refitted with multi-targeting scanners.

For the Federation, because of the rank removal, it will be impossible for warp-in ships to eventually take up fewer slots.  This can be compensated for by building a Nova class vessel, however, I'm thinking about making some of the warp-in ships buildable at the shipyards.  If I do make the warp-in ships buildable at the shipyards, then the ones that are built will not take up warp-in slots while the ones that are not built will take-up warp-in slots.  The buildable Nebula Class can be refitted.

For the remaining factions, they will mostly be left alone except for what's stated above.  There doesn't seem to be a need to make major modifications to them other than merging the avatars and removing the ranks.

As I stated earlier, all veteran-ranked special abilities will be available when the ship is built.  Passives will be removed with the exception of torpedo and pulse rules.  If a weapon is toggled that changes the damage received or dealt, or changes the hit chance will not be removed.

Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome.

posted on February 2nd, 2011, 8:54 pm

Just curious, how can the "light version" take only 1/4  of the hard disk space when a 3.1.5's ODF directory takes around 8% of the space which FO install uses?

posted on February 2nd, 2011, 9:00 pm

you wont save much hard drive space im afraid, what you are talking about is mostly deleting odfs and deleting lines from odfs etc.

most of fleetops' space is in textures at about 1GB, sounds and odfs are about 100MB each. taking away all of the odfs will leave you with a saving of less than 10%

so this mod wont have any benefits for hard drive space. fleetops only takes around 1.2GB anyway, which isnt much for most people.

it will almost certainly be faster to do the version checking for MP.

about performance, i doubt it will get better because the graphics wont be downgraded, just the number of possible ships. so people with slow computers wont benefit from this mod.

the only people who will benefit are those who prefer a simpler game

lol ninjad by zebh.

posted on February 2nd, 2011, 9:26 pm

Actually, people with very little RAM would see a performance boost, and possibly people with very weak CPUs, but over all there won't be that much of a performance boost.

posted on February 2nd, 2011, 9:26 pm

I agree with what has been stated. Fleet Ops is already light when compared to most other titles especially recently. Plus people have 2 terabyte hard drives now so 1 or 2 gigs is really nothing...

posted on February 2nd, 2011, 9:28 pm

I suppose you could remove the avatar textures and some buildbuttons. That would free some space...

I'm afraid I can't see your logic behind this though. FleetOps Light seems to lack all of the special features that make FO distinct.

posted on February 2nd, 2011, 9:49 pm

Actually, people with very little RAM would see a performance boost, and possibly people with very weak CPUs, but over all there won't be that much of a performance boost.

i thought that most of the ram usage would be textures and graphics stuff, not simple text files.

for CPUs too, reading text files isnt that difficult, its rendering the 3d graphics i would expect to be the hard work.

posted on February 2nd, 2011, 10:52 pm

i thought that most of the ram usage would be textures and graphics stuff, not simple text files.

for CPUs too, reading text files isnt that difficult, its rendering the 3d graphics i would expect to be the hard work.

The majority of that is placed in the video card's memory and processed with the video card's processors. The video card is almost a self contained computer in and of itself. It doesn't generally affect system memory or processing power unless you are using onboard video.

posted on February 2nd, 2011, 11:14 pm

well most people with a video card should have no trouble running fleetops, budget computers dont usually come with video cards and VRAM is just normal RAM ring fenced.

posted on February 3rd, 2011, 12:15 am

I can reduce the texture resolution easily to save hard drive space.  The number of polygons on the ships and stations is what's going to be the big problem.  Especially with Borg.  I'm afraid I can't do anything about the number polygons in the game.  I'll reduce the texture size last before I make the first release.

Most of the rendering is done by the video card.  The more stream processors the card has, the better it is.  Of course, it won't do you much good if it doesn't at least meed minimum specifications.  System ram can be used as video ram, but it's not nearly as fast as a video card.

posted on February 3rd, 2011, 9:16 am

The majority of that is placed in the video card's memory and processed with the video card's processors. The video card is almost a self contained computer in and of itself. It doesn't generally affect system memory or processing power unless you are using onboard video.

I agree, most of that is handled by the GPU. 

posted on February 3rd, 2011, 12:30 pm

of course system ram isnt as good as a dedicated card with vram, that fits on budget computers.


will reducing texture sizes make it look worse?

posted on February 3rd, 2011, 2:14 pm

Probably not unless you're looking at it from point blank range.

[Atlantisbase]

posted on February 3rd, 2011, 2:44 pm

Last edited by Atlantisbase on February 3rd, 2011, 2:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I would also assume it might also mess with the UV mapping for the models, but I could be wrong.

i thought that most of the ram usage would be textures and graphics stuff, not simple text files.

for CPUs too, reading text files isnt that difficult, its rendering the 3d graphics i would expect to be the hard work.

The odfs get read into RAM and stay there so that they don't have to be re-read every time it's needed. So with all the files FO uses, reducing the number of files could potentially have an impact on RAM usage.  The CPU also has to handle all of the game logic including building various data structres, so if you reduce the number of files that's less stuff to make and keep track of.

If you have a GPU though most of the 3d stuff gets handled on that including texture storage, model building, etc.

posted on February 3rd, 2011, 5:42 pm

I would also assume it might also mess with the UV mapping for the models, but I could be wrong.

Nope, changing texture sizes does nothing but change the res. of the ship/station.