Fleet Operations: The Final Frontier Official Thread

posted on July 3rd, 2009, 1:11 am

Yes, to the extent of not being able to read Federation transponders etc 

[RCIX]

posted on July 3rd, 2009, 1:26 am

Last edited by RCIX on July 3rd, 2009, 8:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

No, aside from this and garak's hideki i don't think there will be any more multitargeting. In fact, it's been decided that the Tonga will only be for garak so he's the only one that uses it (multitargeting i mean).

posted on July 5th, 2009, 9:39 pm

I think we've finally chosen the unique playstyle of the cardassians! here it is:
* There are no support ships. Instead, when you get vessels to a single gold bar rank, you unlock an ability that is used on multiple ships. For instance: when you rank a Hideki to a single gold bar, you get the Phased Disruptor Pulse ability on several ship types to use.
* There is no conventional progression for unlocking higher class ships. In order to unlock the next higher class of ship, one must get the current ship type to at least double silver (maybe higher not sure on this yet). For instance: to unlock a Legate, one must get a Galor up to the requisite level, then from there on you may build legates. If you lose this ship, then you won't have to rank more in order to maintain production of higher ship classes. Soudns neat huh?
These combined should adequately reflect the cardassian's minimal research (there will still be a research station but it will only be used for misc upgrades and the like) abilities and offer a unique way to play as them.
Please, discuss!

posted on July 5th, 2009, 10:06 pm

Well, against the Borg I guess you never get to get any ships then

I think that it would be better to have a global experience system, so the more ships or certain hull value you destroy, the more vessel types you get to build: that way it stays as true to your original idea as possible, without limiting your tech up too much.

posted on July 5th, 2009, 10:27 pm

I agree with Dominus. The Borg have relatively few ships so they could simply build tons of defense turrets/starbases and play a defensive strategy with only a few ships (for mobility) to prevent to Cardassians from gaining new ships. Once the Borg gain their own high end ships, it'd be game over.

I propose a counter idea. Instead of making it so that you need ships of a certain rank to gain the next powerful ship class how about having persistent experience. So let's say you have a Hideki with a 2 gold bar rank and you want to keep that rank but ditch the relatively low power ship, then you could decomission it and the Officer rank would be stored at that yard.

As soon as a new ship build rolls out, then the previous rank will be applied to the new ship. As an extra twist you could give Cardassian ships "Officer Abilities". So instead of a special ability that is based on the technology of it's parent ship, the Officer Ability is based on the experience of the Captain that has moved to a new ship. The ability gained could be based on the ship s/he commanded just before taking over his/her new ship.


Example: let's say you decommission a Rank 4 Hideki and the next ship built is a Galor, then the Galor would gain the Rank 4 and an Officer Ability based on combating small destroyers like the Hideki as well as all the defaults that come with a standard Galor. The Galor could still rank up but it'd go straight to Rank 5 and so on.

posted on July 5th, 2009, 11:33 pm

Remember guys i can on.ly work with what fleetops gives me! however i'll do my best to figure out a better solution.

posted on July 5th, 2009, 11:58 pm

The against the Borg issue was only the biggest problem I could see: since leveling up is kind of random, this would make it very difficult/unpredictable to play as Cardassians. I look forward to seeing what you can come up with though

posted on July 6th, 2009, 9:48 am

I dunno, i like the idea! I wouldn't change it very much at all!
But with a modification... Do it within ranges... You always get  a weak battleship you can build. But you cant build the top tier battleship till the weak BB hits rank 3. etc, you can always build the basic cruiser, but the top combat cruiser requires rank 3 on the basic one. Etc. This way you can build up a fleet and in the process of conquest unlock better ships.

posted on July 6th, 2009, 1:18 pm

HawkShark, that might work for instant action, but I don't see it ever working for MP ... you'd never be able to tech up when you want to, and thus playing as the Cardassians would be playing on luck...

posted on July 6th, 2009, 2:14 pm

Noctis you're the god of MP so i trust you, but i was under the impression than most MP games under this patch were a lot of rush's early on (for which this cardassian strat wouldn't be any different)... Either way, maybe it would rely a bit on luck or defensive/conservative gameplay. But it would be a departure from existing styles of race development.

posted on July 6th, 2009, 3:42 pm

I'm sure plenty of people are much better than me, but thank you indeed 

Yup, lots of rushes, but once you want to transition upward, it might be difficult to do so if you didn't conserve ships carefully (and choose which ones mount the finishing blows to levelup)... of course, since the required xp to level up is changeable, I suppose if it was much easier to level up Cardassian units, the system could work out well . It would definitely be a unique method (and cool): so maybe some of the units that are gained could be limited to make their gain not such an incredible advantage versus another Cardassian player who gets no luck. I guess of course, if the starting ships are more ubiquitous and useful into mid game, the rank up system could work fine.

Perhaps each of the units required for rank-up-tech-up could have very precisely defined roles, so that if your strategy relies on a particular unit, you are more likely to rank up that unit and get a complementary new vessel class.

Of course, a far simpler method would be lowering the required rank up for various vessel classes. So say, if you want an anti-destroyer, all you need to do is level up that Galor once, but if you want an artillery ship, you need to level up a vessel 2-3 times. Another alternative is to have a global rank up, where every ship of a certain class counts to the rank up to give a specific new class. I like the last idea best... but hopefully RCIX's got something up his sleeve  .

posted on July 6th, 2009, 5:06 pm

i agree with what dominus_noctus is saying here about having a global experience counter in order to build different cardassian ships. however, i think we could make this into a separate structure: we could have a structure called "central command" or something, and at this station, it could be used to train officers, and make it easier to accumulate battle experience. i'm thinking it could vaguely be reminiscent of the Borg's collective connections.

posted on July 6th, 2009, 5:14 pm

See the problem with that is that it mandates an extremely aggressive play style, which isn't unique at all (or how i play, tbh). Switching to a racial xp bar, that has to hit certain marks is something all avatars IMHO should get to unlock a bonus ship, but not as a delimiter for its overall teching. It's a nifty idea but not something i'd want as my main form of advancement.

posted on July 6th, 2009, 5:19 pm

See the problem with that is that it mandates an extremely aggressive play style, which isn't unique at all (or how i play, tbh). Switching to a racial xp bar, that has to hit certain marks is something all avatars IMHO should get to unlock a bonus ship, but not as a delimiter for its overall teching. It's a nifty idea but not something i'd want as my main form of advancement.

yeah, i think you are right. however, i have another idea:

perhaps "officer" qualities could be researched at a cardassian station. since cardassian ships have "lower than normal stats" according to RCIX, these "officer" enhancements could make it possible to build veteran- level ships straight out of the shipyard.

posted on July 6th, 2009, 10:12 pm