Fleet Operations: Roots is a total conversion of the Fleet Operations project,
itself a mod of the popular space-based RTS game Star Trek Armada II.
--
To celebrate the re-release of Star Trek Armada II on GOG.com, version 3.0 of
this mod brings many fixes and improvements, most notably 3 fully original
single player campaigns with a total of 19 missions. You get to play as, and
against, every one of the 6 factions in the game. For several missions you
get to choose the faction you want to play as.
--
Roots aims to keep most of what made Fleet Operations and Star Trek Armada II
great while also returning a bit of the atmosphere of Star Trek Armada.
A rock-paper-scissors system, combined with a smaller number of ship classes and
build limits on capital ships make each ship useful, even during the late game. This mod also puts the Cardassians back into the game as a fully playable faction where Fleet Ops left them out.
Fleet Operations: Roots v3.0
Standalone Total Conversion mod of Fleet Operations and Star Trek Armada II (credits for both can be found in the "Credits" folder)
Created by JanB (2023)
Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Installation Instructions
3. Global Features
4. Detailed Features
5. Credits
1. Introduction
Fleet Operations: Roots is a total conversion of the Fleet Operations project, itself a mod of the popular space-based RTS game Star Trek Armada II, which in turn was the successor to Star Trek Armada.
To celebrate the re-release of Star Trek Armada II on GOG.com, version 3.0 of this mod brings many fixes and improvements. The mod includes 3 fully original single player campaigns with a total of 19 missions. You get to play as, and against, every one of the 6 factions in the game. For several missions you get to choose the faction you play as. Roots aims to keep most of what made Fleet Operations and Star Trek Armada II great while also returning a bit of the atmosphere of Star Trek Armada. A rock-paper-scissors system, combined with a smaller number of ship classes and build limits on capital ships make each ship useful, even during the late game. This mod also puts the Cardassians back into the game as a fully playable faction where Fleet Ops left them out. This mod does not require a previous installation of Fleet Ops, however it does require a valid Star Trek Armada II executable file (armada2.exe) from either GOG.com, or the old disc version.
Enjoy,
JanB
2. Installation Instructions
- Run the install exe.
- If you receive an error message similar to "ShellExecuteEx error 299" just
click on "Ok", this happens with some antivirus programs running in the
background, but the installation will run just fine.
- You do not need to install this mod on top of an existing Fleet Ops or
Star Trek Armada II installation, but you will need a valid Armada II
executable (armada2.exe) file. You can either use one from the old disc version,
setting it up the same way as you would any Fleet Ops installation, or use the
Armada2.exe from a copy bought on GOG.com. For the GOG.com version navigate to
the folder where the GOG launncher installed Armada II, typically this will be:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Star Trek Armada II"
then copy the file "Armada2.exe" to another location, for example your desktop,
and rename it to "Armada2.ldl". You will get a warning that you're about to
change the file extension, click "Yes" to continue. Then paste the file into
the Roots installation folder, typically this will be:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Fleet Ops Roots\Data"
make sure not to paste directly into the "Fleet Ops Roots" folder, but into the
underlying "\Data" folder.
(Alternatively, if you have an old Armada 2 CD then mounting that should also work)
- Run the game from the desktop icon and set graphical, sound and gameplay
settings under the Options menu.
- Play the game and enjoy!
3. Global Features
- New rock-paper-scissors balance system between ship types and armed
stations, based on types rather than weapon range.
- Fully original single player campaigns, complete with cutscenes.
- A combat system where even small, early-game, ships stay relevant.
- Cuts the number of ship and station classes per faction down to improve
oversight and eliminates units that served no real purpose.
- Much improved AI opponents that you'll struggle to survive against on
the highest difficulty setting.
- Most combat ships and stations have secondary weapon systems that
target additional enemies so battles look less like entire fleets ganging up
on individual ships.
- A fully functional Cardassian faction.
- A special ability cycle system to allow more control over support ships with
multiple special abilities.
- Fewer ships classes and stations per faction for increased battlefield
control and oversight.
- Graphical updates to many ships, stations, effects, and background objects.
- Interface improvements to allow more (efficient) control.
- Polished to the end: no mountain of missing buttons/wireframes/
voice commands/tooltips, textures, etc...
- Windows 10/11 support, and HD-gameplay (menus that are not in-game are
limited to 800x600, this is a hard limitation of the original game engine).
- Avatars and ship ranks have been removed to improve oversight, because the
AI could not handle them properly anyway (such as with build limits) and
because they had little impact on gameplay in any case. However there is a
limited avatar system in some single player missions where you get to choose
the race you play the mission with.
- A blueish visual ring effect surrounds sensor platforms (but not scouts)
so players with cloaked ships can see the edge of the detection effect
(replacing the effect_progscan.tga texture with the effect_progscan_2.tga
texture adds this same visual effect to scouts and this replacement has no
effect on multiplayer compatibility, so it's purely a personal choice).
4. Detailed Features
- Each faction has 8 combat ship classes (except for the Dominion who lack a
Destroyer), namely a Scout, Destroyer, Cruiser, Artillery ship, Berserker,
Support ship, Battleship and Dreadnought.
- Scouts are extra fast, have cloak detection and a large sensor range, but they
are quite vulnerable, even to Destroyers.
- Destroyers are cheap, light warships that are especially useful against Scouts,
Artillery ships, and Berserkers, but weak against Battleships and Dreadnoughts.
- Cruisers are balanced medium warships, neither weak nor strong aganst any
particular targets, but cheaper than Support ships and Berserkers (also harder
to capture than Berserkers), buildable by basic shipyards, and with numbers still
a serious threat.
- Artillery ships excel against base defenses, but are generally quite powerful
against any non-moving target, even Dreadnoughts, but they are glass cannons
that are even vulnerable to Destroyers, and they need a Scout's sensor range to
fire from outside the firing range of base defenses.
- Berserkers are derived from Cruisers. They are specialized big-target hunters
that are cost-effective against Battleships, Dreadnoughts, Support ships and
base defenses. Compared to Cruisers they are more expensive, have smaller crews,
and require an advanced shipyard. They are not cost-effective against
Destroyers.
- Support ships are also derived from Cruisers. They are more expensive but
come with special weapons, including the Fleet ECM Optimizer that does not have
to be researched and partially protects an entire surrounding fleet (or base
defenses) from enemy weapons fire. They are vulnerable to Berserkers.
- Battleships are heavy, expensive warships. Only 10 can be fielded at any one
time. They are especially useful against base defenses and Destroyers, however
they are somewhat vulnerable to Berserkers.
- Dreadnoughts are the most powerful, most expensive warships. Depending on the
faction 1, 2, or 3 can be fielded at any one time. They are essentially
beefed-up Battleships but also have a special weapon that boosts the damage
output of all nearby allied ships and stations by 20%. They are somewhat
vulnerable to Berserkers.
- Starbases and a single type of defense platform are the only armed stations
(base defenses) in the game. However Starbases are incredibly powerful, they
can easily take on a Dreadnought 1-on-1 (except the Borg Cube) and both they
and defense platforms have slightly longer firing ranges than any ships,
except Artillery ships.
- Scouts and sensor platforms can continously detect nearby cloaked ships,
althouth scouts (except the Romulan scout) require a technology to be
researched first, and for scouts the detection range is smaller.
- All conventional weapons have a 100% hitchance unless affected by defensive
special weapons.
- The maximum zoom out level has been increased by 25%.
- Large stations now have smaller footprints (but shipbuilding stations still
have enough room to function) so they can be placed closer together.
- An example of the rock-paper-scissors system is the following: the Defiant
class is the Federation's Berserker type ship, which does 50% more damage to,
and take 50% less damage from, large targets such as Battleship type ships and
Stations, but do 50% less damage to, and take 50% more damage from, Destroyer
type ships, which in turn are weak against Battleships and Stations.
- The shields of all ships and stations have 3 times as many hitpoints as their
hulls. For example, a Starbase has 11200 hitpoints of which 8400 are shield
hitpoints and 2800 are hull hitpoints.
- All ships and stations need 360 seconds to fully repair their hulls and 240
seconds to fully recharge their shields. Going back to the Starbase example:
it recharges 30 shield hipoints per second. For comparison, a typical Scout
only does 11 damage per second (combined DPS of all its weapons) so it can
never deplete a Starbase's shields on its own, but a typical Battleship, with
a DPS of 58, could.
- Reworks the original factions while preserving some of the core ideas:
the Federation is a generalist faction, though slightly prone to defense, they
can warp in reserve starships but otherwise rely on numbers for offensive power,
but any kind of research is cheaper for them and they can warp in additional
ships for free, including Cruisers and Support ships, they can build
3 Dreadnoughts,
the Klingons are an offensive faction that is also good at raiding, their
Scouts can slow down enemy ships trying to escape and their Support ships can
generate a devastating ion storm that doesn't hurt friendlies, their ships are
10% faster and feature 10% more firepower but also 10% fewer hitpoints and
their cloaking devices are not as good as those of the Romulans, they can build
3 Dreadnoughts,
the Romulans rely on surprise, positioning and special weaponry, they have more
special weapons, efficient cloaking devices, their Artillery ships can even fire
while cloaked, and their weapons begin every engagement firing more rapidly
before slowing down (cycle of 30 seconds), but their ships are 10% slower,
they can build 2 Dreadnoughts,
The Cardassians are survivalists and a flexible faction that can quickly switch
between offense and defense and use several classes of unmanned ships which are
immune to capture or assimilation, their Berserkers use drones to distract enemy
ships and their defense platforms can morph into their Battleship and vice verse,
they can build 3 Dreadnoughts,
the Dominion dominates the early game with Attackships that can
ram larger targets and can be mass-produced very quickly, even at their
advanced shipyard, and can also be warped in, they can build 2 Dreadnoughts,
the Borg are a defensive faction that can turtle its way towards late game
domination with their Spheres, universal shipyards and, of course, the feared
Cube: their Dreadnought that they can build only 1 of, but that is the most
powerful ship in the game which can even destroy a Starbase.
5. Credits
Credits for Fleet Operations and Star Trek Armada II can be found in the Credits
folder.
YOU WILL NOT ATTEMPT TO SELL ANY PART OF THIS MOD. You have my (JanB) permission
to use this mod for your own mods as you see fit, all I ask for is to be
included in the credits, but other modders mentioned in the credits may want you
to contact them before using their work.
Anything that is not credited either below or in the Credits folder may be
assumed to have been made by me (JanB) and can be reused in mods without asking
for my permission, so long as I am credited.
Credits for the direct creation of this mod are below:
Special thanks to rifraf who helped me with the AI modding.
Special thanks Megadroid for (re-)writing the mission scripting API, without which
I could not have made any of the single player missions
The Federation and Dominion campaign images are from Picard456's excellent
"Dominion War" mod
The voiceovers for the single player missions were created using Azure's
Text-to-Speech functionality
Credits for the models I added that were not already in Fleet Operations or
Star Trek Armada 2:
Saber Class: Aad Moerman
Norway Class: Included model and textures originally designed by Rick "P81" Knox.
Reduced Mesh by Major A Payne for BI:VR. Partial rework (futher mesh reduction),
and edit of textures by Aerilon - formerly known as SupaStarAsh, Tycoon,
Transmission etc...
Steamrunner Class: Aad Moerman
Cheyenne Class: Aad Moerman
Akira Class: Pneumonic81 (P81/Rick Knox), k_merse, Scotchy
Ambassador Class: Pneumonic81 (P81/Rick Knox), K7A
Nebula Class: Pneumonic81 (P81/Rick Knox), Erazoren, K7A,
Scotchy for SNS Galaxy textures
Defiant Class: Nine of Nine
Intrepid Class: Dan1025
New Orleans Class: Aad Moerman, LC Amaral
Galaxy Class: Pneumonic81 (P81/Rick Knox), edits by C2X and Captain Elgy on BC
Textures, Scotchy for SNS Galaxy textures
Sovereign Class: Howedar, Redragon, Pepperman
Excelsior Class: Aerilon
Topmey Class: Aad Moerman
Vor'cha Class: Aad Moerman
Negh'var Class: Aad Moerman
Kahless Station (retexture): Wrath of Achilles
Breen Warship: Howedar, Shadowbuilder, Chrisluskey, Redragon
D'deridex Class: Aad Moerman
Scimitar Class: Bryan, original Starfleet Command 3 model
Spacedock: Aad Moerman
Deep Space Nine: Totally Games, Major A Payne
Zirandam Class: Aad Moerman
Irinares Class: Aad Moerman
Hideki Class: Aad Moerman
Galor Class: Nine of Nine, Tycoon
Keldon Class: Nine of Nine, Tycoon
Vasad Class: Aad Moerman
Sartan Class: Aad Moerman
Kulinor Class: Aad Moerman, Yacuzza
Hutet Class: Aad Moerman
Pinpoint Missile: Dan1025, full Credit for the original model used
(Dreadnought Missile), and textures goes to Zorg, rebuild
by MaP from BI:VR
Cardassian Mining Center: Aad Moerman
Cardassian Operations Center: Aad Moerman
Cardassian Science Center (retexture): Aad Moerman
Cardassian Construction Center (retexture): Aad Moerman
Cardassian Assembly Center: Aad Moerman
Cardassian Engineering Center (retexture): Aad Moerman
Cardassian (Mobile) Defense Platform: Michael Raab
Cardassian Surveillance Platform: Michael Raab
Cardassian Missile Beacon (retexture): Aad Moerman
Cardassian Advanced Shipyard: Aad Moerman
Wormhole: DrayzonWormhole, Mining and Tractor beams, several weapon effects: Drayzon
EDIT: as of 15 May 2023 this file has been deprecated. Version 3.1 is now out: Moddb.com
Version 3.0 brings 3 new missions (one for each campaign), plus tutorial missions and a long list of fixes and improvements.
Some frequently asked questions have been answered in the comments of the previous version, which can be found here: Moddb.com.
If you like this mod please leave a review.
Here is the changelog (from version 2.1 to 3.0):
- Change Installation Instructions so the game can use more memory and will have fewer texture glitches
- Fix an issue where the reinforcements didn't show up at the end of the timer in the mission "End of the Line"
- Add the new mission "Threading the Needle" to the Federation campaign
- Add the new mission "Shoulders of Giants" to the Dominion campaign
- Add the new mission "Resistance" to the Free Borg campaign
- Add the option to play the mission "Overcome" from the Federation perspective
- Add three new tutorial missions to the tutorial menu
- Enhance planets, suns, and resource asteroids
- Cardassian Fighter Drones no longer spawn on top of enemy ships
- Improve lighting for poorly lit maps
- Make Borg ships and stations more visible against the background
- Fix an issue where "Improved Shields" upgrades had no effect
- Fix an issue where "Advanced Weapons" upgrades had no effect
- Re-record the Cardassian cutscene voiceovers with a better voice
- Slightly increase the volume of all cutscene voiceovers
- The Romulan sensor jammer (Rhienn Class) now disables sensors within a radius of 800 instead of only a single target, but this only affects scouts and sensor platforms
- Scouts (except Romulan scouts) now need the "Shipborne Tachyon Detction Grid" technology to be researched at an engineering research station to detect cloaked ships
- Scouts can now only detect cloaked vessels within a range of 800, however their normal sensors still work up to a range of 1300
- Fix the Romulan super weapon: Targeting Sensor Disruption was broken and has now been changed to Targeting Sensor Alignment
- The Borg Cube can now cycle between the holding beam version and the Fleet Coordination version, just like support ships can cycle through their special weapons loadouts
- Support ships (and the Borg Cube) can now cycle through ALL loadouts, even when the tech requirements (yards, research stations) to build their base class have not been met
- Fleet Optimizer/Enhancer now also makes enemy defense platforms and starbases sometimes miss their target, making it a valauble ability when assaulting a base, defensive missions have been rebalanced with this in mind
- Fleet Optimizer/Enhancer now also helps with defending defense platforms and starbases against enemy ships
- Fix an issue where Breen Dampening weapon, Jem'Hadar Attackship ramming, and Borg or Cardassian weapons could be used against friendly units (or enemy units for the Cardassian repair drones)
- Fix an issue where the Borg Tactical Node had much less DPS than other defense platforms
- Improve pathing around nebulas
- Rework Dominion soundtrack to make it more varied and equalized
- Add the Cheyenne Class cruiser to the Federation Warp-In ability
- Fix minor annoyances and balance issues for some missions
- The AI will send far fewer mining freighters uselessly across the map and will instead use
more of them to mine resources closer to home
- Numerous other small improvements, such as fixed tooltips.
EDIT: since most people won't have access to the paper manual from Armada 2 and only some come up in the tooltips, here are some of the important hotkeys:
- Pausing the game: "Pause"
- In-game menu: "Escape"
- Saving the game: "Ctrl+S"
- Skip cutscene: "Spacebar"
- Cinematic view: "Caps Lock"
- Map Editor Mode: "Ctrl+E"
- Attack Location/Attack-Move: "A"
- Stop Action: "S"
- Repair/Recrew: "R"
- Create Group: "Ctrl+number" (number can be 0-9)
- Assign to existing group: "Ctrl+Shift+number"
- Select all ships of the same class: "double left-click"
- Transport: "T"
- Explore: "E"
- Search & Destroy: "K"
- Cloak: "C"
- Building Something/Using Special Weapons: F1 through F12
Unfortunately this one keeps crashing after launching a game (any game, campaign and instant action). Like the version i tried before. bug report: Access violation at address 00621625 in module 'Armada2.exe'. Read of address 00000000.
Looks like it still has something to to with that mystirious patch i read of. I did everything: Installed A2, FO, Roots Mod, Patch and changed the Armada2.exe. Still not running. FO works fine.
This mod was built on Fleet Ops 4.0, the standard FO package is 3.2.7, that might explain why one works and the other doesn't.
How did you install though? Did you follow the instructions from the ReadMe? You shouldn't have to install FO, for example, the Roots Mod is completely standalone. Basically the easiest way is to buy Armada 2 from GOG, install that (which should automatically take care of any patching). Then install the Roots Mod, in a completely separate folder, so NOT on top of Armada 2, then copy the armada2.exe from the Armada 2 installation folder to the \Data folder within the installation folder you chose for the Roots Mod, typically this would be "C:\Program Files (x86)\Fleet Ops Roots\Data".
Then the game should work, barring any issues that require modifying the FO engine, which I, unfortunately cannot do, because I don't have the source code. I assume you did try compatibility settings just in case?
I did find one old thread on the FO forums that had the exact same error you got, though it's probably not very useful: Fleetops.net Also I know there was an issue with FO if you have more than 1 monitor plugged in. And you are on Windows 10 or 11, right? I know funky things, including the exact error you got, can happen with graphics wrappers and things like Wine on Linux or Mac OS.
So, now I made an account to respond here..
Thanks for the big answer. Given your name Jan, I assume you are german as I am, but I try to respond in english anyways.
I had installed original FO327 and I use a deamon tool image "CD" to get it running. it works fine, without any problems. I also installed that FO4, which crashes with the exact same bug report as your Roots mod crashes. I did download that patch of original A2 and I copied the armada2.exe where you told to do (data folder). In total, I believe i followed all install instructions (incl. readme) but it doesnt work anyway. To be perfectly honest, I have a feeling that I did something specific wrong at some point but i cant find the mistake...
" I assume you did try compatibility settings just in case?" - what do you mean by that?
this is very sad to me because i always hoped for a mod that reduces the ship classes to make the game more enjoyable... I hope i get it to run, some day...
Check your private messages.
If that doesn't work you could try to see if you can replace the directx files in the \Data folder, like d3d8.dll and so on with the ones from FO 3.2.7 and see if the game runs then, because the error has something to do with graphics.
EDIT: I'm glad it works now and turns out it was just a matter of changing compatibility settings (for anyone running into the same problem).
Borg are too weak in this mod
How do you mean? All factions are equally strong overall, otherwise the game wouldn't be balanced and multiplayer wouldn't be possible
The factions do have slightly different strengths and weaknesses. For example the Dominion are the strongest faction during early game, while the Borg are actually the most powerful faction during late game. A Borg fleet of a Cube, Spheres, Diamonds, and Dodecahedrons, with a well-timed Regeneration Wave, is nearly unstoppable, and since the Borg only use one shipyard, once you're at the top of the techtree, you can (re)build such a fleet more quickly than your opponents. Borg ships also can't practically be captured.
What you can't do with the Borg is just trash 30 enemy ships with only a Cube, that would either make the game very unbalanced or would necessitate the Cube to be so expensive that it could never be used in practice.
TLDR: the Borg dominate late in the game, and the Cube still is the most powerful thing in the game that absolutely melts enemy ships that aren't dreadnoughts, but you need to spend time building up and defending with stationary defenses and smaller weaker ships because otherwise the game wouldn't be balanced. I felt that was the best compromise between gameplay and canon.
i followd the install but the game isnt loading for me at all
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Do you get some kind of error message, or just a black screen?
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For people having trouble running this mod, some solutions are listed in the comments here: Moddb.com , and sometimes it's just a matter of compatibility settings. Unfortunately sometimes it's an issue with the base game for some systems and I cannot fix those, see here: Gog.com
Hello.
The download link is not working.
Hmmm, It's not working for me either. I don't know what's wrong. Hopefully it will start working again soon. I thought it might be because of me uploading the latest version through Google Drive, but apparently uploading it straight from disk didn't fix the problem, and that always used to work just fine.
EDIT, a day later it works again. I guess moddb just had some temporary server issues.
Currently the download link appears to be broken.
The link appears to be working now.
Download link is working again.
Thanks
The installer is being blocked on mine.
Trojan:Win32/Wacatac.B!ml
Fleet_Ops_Roots_V3_Mod\Fleet Ops Roots Mod 3.0 Installer.exe
It's a Windows Defender false positive that's been happening a lot lately with random programs since a recent update. I got it on my own system as well as soon as I zipped the mod into a .rar file, it didn't even flag the unzipped installer exe itself, just the rar file that contains the installer. I had to disable Windows Defender and hopefully Microsoft will fix this with an update soon. I can assure you there is no malware in this download. i've uploaded the latest version of the mod to Microsoft for analysis and hopefully they'll whitelist it on Windows Defender.
But don't take my word for it, just scan it with any antivirus/malware software you like, to confirm it's not malware.
Thanks - I tried another antivirus scanner and it didn't detect the virus.
I uploaded the file to virustotal, came back clean.
The mod works well. Thanks for the new mission. The game is displaying at 2560x1440 but the font sizes are much larger than in fleet operations vanilla: 1drv.ms
Thanks! Yes I increased the font size because in vanilla Fleet Ops the font was tiny at 2560x1440, and I figured in the future more and more people will have 1440p or 4k monitors. It's an old game engine that doesn't scale the font with the resolution, so at some point even this larger font will seem tiny again. But the game looks noticeably more crispy (ships and the space backgrounds) at 1440p vs 1080p so I thought that should at least be fully supported in this mod.
Ah I see! The issue I find is that when you highlight a button its descriptor text now takes up a lot of room. Is this configurable in any of the game files?
Unfortunately I don't think there is a way. The files in the "misc" folder handle some related aspects of the GUI, but they don't seem to do anything for the tooltips.
I uploaded a new version on 27 March 2023. With that version all you have to do to get the vanilla Fleet Ops font size back is to go into the \Data\Sprites folder, and change the line "@include FontFinal4_17.spr" to "@include FontFinal4_16.spr", in the "FontFinal4_18.spr" file.
Thanks amazing, thank you!
I was wondering, if you could implement the stack research option which fleetops admirals edition has, on the fleetops discord.
I experimented with something like that, basically it just requires a classlabel change from "research" to "starbase" or "shipyard" (though when you change a classlabel every map that contains the object will crash on load, including savegames and singleplayer missions). But it would only make sense with the engineering stations (support stations only research 2 upgrades each) in my mod and those have upgrades that depend on each other (you need a level 1 upgrade to research the level 2 upgrade) so you couldn't stack them in a build queue anyway.
Well it is a decent mod, And its very nice to be able to play ST Armada II widescreen.
But I feel the Ai needs some balancing in its production abilities in Instant Action. Also the lack of ships to use detracts from going back and playing over and over. I understand the combat triangle but without ships in-between it just turns into a who can get the right ships into a fleet and to the battle first, Instead of the beauty of mixing ships together to support one another.
Overall a good mod but the replay ability is kind of low due to the lack of units to choose from. (At least from my point of view).
Is tried this game now. Objectively I see what you are tying to do, fleetops meets armada 1. But for some reason it is really bland, balance is really questionable.
When you build most ships they have the exact same HP and DPS. Now in any basic RTS game, there will be at least some differences. I mean even just canon wise it's impossible the borg to have same strength ships as all the other factions. You should at least diversify the status of the units. I see you tried to do some thing like that for the Klingons. I was thinking you should at least do that for all the factions.
Another thing is how in the world do all the science vessels have fleet ECM optimizers? This should at least be unique to some factions. The flagships also have Fleet Cordination? The Klingons lacks basic any ability.
The way you made the mod was very barebones, there are some abilities here and there for certain units but hardly that it will really impact balance.
If you at least diversity the status it would be better I guess, but until that the mods balance is very x, y and z. Hardly anything that is actually unique to each factions even though you state there is unique aspects. The factions follow a single blue print, nothing worth following.
Now I am not crapping on you or mocking you at all, I am just giving my point of view of how the mod plays out when I played with my friends. They loved the campaign, that was really done well, but multi-player was very straight forward with no real faction characteristics.
I think this mod has unbelievable potential, it shows in your code. All that it needs is more diversity. Apologies for the rant, no insult to you at all.
I get that you're not crapping on it, don't worry. Actually my one regret about the mod is that I couldn't add more assymetry (especially for the Dominion and Borg, and I wanted cloaking to have more of an impact). Going the Age of Empires/Supreme Commander route instead of the Starcraft route was a deliberate choice for me because it's impossible to balance an assymetric RTS on my own, every change just butterflies out of control too quickly. Calibrating the campaign missions was already very hard and time consuming and that's child'splay compared to balancing more than two assymetrical factions (C&C had it easy with two factions and no special abilities). Even the original Starcraft is still getting balance patches, with "only" three factions, and the Starcraft II campaigns and multiplayer have basically become different games, where nothing you learned in the campaign applies to multiplayer, and they have whole dev teams and professional testers. There are also limitations with the old engine/AI. For example, the Armada AI can't properly use ambushes and time special weapons in a smart way, and it relies on cheating with resources, so an expensive but powerful Borg faction wouldn't work, and you already notice the AI has an easier time playing the spammy Dominion than the micro-intensive Romulans, even with the relatively small factional differences.
I also thought both Armada games, most mods, and even Fleet Ops (and a majority of RTS games in general) are quite unbalanced (and don't even have any meaningful RPS-system, so you never use most ship types) that was one thing I desperately wanted to avoid. But yeah, if I had a dev team and testers then the factions would be more assymetrical.
Having said that, I do still think if you don't play on highest game speed, and with low/medium starting resources against a human player, a skilled RTS player CAN definitely exploit the factional differences that do exist. You could hunt down freighters in early game with B'rels, or call in a Pinpoint Missile against a mining station behind an impassible asteroid field, or cast shield remodulation on a Cube and have it rampage through a base, or ram enemy cruisers/berserkers with cheap Jem'Hadar Attackships, or kite enemies with Cardassian fighter drones, etc... For some if these you need high APM/micro skills, but that's true for most RTS games.
Okay I see your point, thanks for the reply mate.
I am curious, are you planning to add mixed tech units like stock Fleetops?
I decided against it because it clutters the techtree and the AI can't use mixed tech units anyway. But you can use synergies because some factions' abilities/strengths complement each other, for example the Klingons have more firepower but lower shield/hull strength than the Federation while the Federation support ship offers more protection from enemy fire than the Klingon support ship, and the Borg regeneration wave helps their allies a lot if timed right.
I can't even play it says that i need to enter the cd
Did you replace the armada2.ldl file with a valid "armada2.exe" (renamed to "armada2.ldl") file?
Hey, the Mod is great but unfortunately I can not play it in Multiplayer (Local Area Network). Whenever me or a friend try to join a game the other has created it says that we have a different version. Although we both installed it with the neweset version here and the exe from GOG. Any Idea what the reason is?
My suggestion mate, is join the fleetops discord. They play mutliplayer games daily. There you can find out how to play online and then use it for Roots. I am playing roots with my friends online. You can get the link to the discord on the fleetops server, look at the bottom of the page
Yes, thanks for the help! Unfortunately I never got to test it myself, but yeah, it should work as long as everyone has the same version and installs in the same way (replacing the ldl file, not the exe file).
Can you send me a link to this? It appears their original site has gone down for good now and I can't find the discord.
Join the discord, like the other person said. They know more about multiplayer than I do. Also, I had been uploading a lot in the last couple of months (I know that got confusing for people, but I just kept finding bugs/issues for a time) so there's a good chance you do have slightly different versions. But as of now (11 April) I think my vision of the mod is complete and if I upload a new version it would only be to fix bugs, so you should be good if both of you download the latest version (and both of you replace the ldl file, not the exe file, as per the install instructions).
I am curious, will there be another faction added or is the mod basically done?
I did think about adding Species 8472 for a while but decided not to in the end because it would be a lot of work, especially making new campaign missions for them, and I've already neglected my life outside of this mod a bit too much for a bit too long...
Plus there aren't many good textures out there for Species 8472 or other races, and I never wanted to make one of those mods that seem to be in a race to see who can have the most low-res ships that don't add anything to gameplay.
I noticed that the tutorial mission, the bonus one crashes as soon as I load it. During the cutscene is just bombs to desktop.
Good catch! For some reason one of the starting ships got renamed and that screwed up the mission script. This has now been fixed in today's release, which also includes some other mission bug fixes/improvements, a nerf to the "normal" AI, and a graphical overhaul of the Dominion faction because that was the last faction that was still largely on stock models/textures.
I was wondering why the dominion support ship has that abaility to summon the destroyer. If fails most of the time and it's use is actually quiet questionable. If I take any other faction that has an offensive type support ship, those ones can really change the game. Being as these support are, especially as strong as they are. I would like to propose that they be restricted to how many that you can build. I would say 15 is a good number, even 10 isn't bad. These support ships can truly change the outcome of the battle, I know I killed multiple merciless AIs with support ships.
The summon an Attackship ability works 33% of the time, that's intentional because you're getting a free ship without needing an endgame/reinforcement station and its 5 minute cooldown, though those summoned Attackships are subject to the same cap (max 21 ships) as warped-in Attackships. You can use the cycle ability and go with the Dampening Charge (fire a couple of those at a starbase and you can completely disable it for a precious couple of seconds) or fleet ECM abilities.
I think Fleet ECM is the most useful ability (at least with my mediocre micro skills) in general for support ships, and yes, that is powerful, but it doesn't stack with multiple support ships, so at some point you're better off building cheaper cruisers and berserkers. I can (if I have a good chokepoint to turtle behind, otherwise I can't beat a merciless AI and I respect anyone who can) kill a merciless AI with just cruisers, or especially with just berserkers, too, but that doesn't mean it's the most efficient way and if you only built support ships against a human opponent they could counter with berserkers.
I see your point. It's just feels like that ability is honestly a place holder ability. It's understandable you get a free ship, but if you have a 33% chance that it would even work, then why use it in the first place. It would be a waist of good ship energy which could be used in other abilities. When you play against a merciless AI, its hard to cycle to change to the ability you want while leaving the ship on high special energy autonomy. The AI tends to use the bug ability and usually if fails lol. All I use is well the other two abilities. I just thought it would have maybe been a better option if you had maybe given it maybe a cloak rather (could even lock it behind that research you use for the bug ship, you could even go so far to give the standard Breen ship even benefit from that same upgrade as the battleship), at least that would be a useful thing that would work all the time. I'm my private version of your mod, I have added in the cloak as a 4th ability, mostly due to the lack luster bug ship ability and due to the Breen having cloak in canon. Since that's what they used to attack earth when they joined the dominion.
Now that energy damping ability is absolutely scary when you have like 30 support vessels. You one shot almost anything when it's used in mass. Most of the support ships have honestly some real scary abilities if used right. I use then with some micro to honestly beat these merciless AIs. The games are so intense I usually crash to desktop due to run out of memory issues. That was until I used the 4gb patch, it kind of solved that issue. But back to point that's why from a balance point of view, I would rather capped these support units as well.
Oh yeah, there's definitely some abilities that are more placeholder than others, but I can only balance so much. But maybe support ships should be a little bit more expensive, I'm not sure...
The way I use the Breen abilities is generally to use summon Attackship while building up at my base, and before an attack I divide the ships into two groups, one with dampening charge, the other with Fleet ECM. I think Dampening Charge is still balanced because a lot of the time the AI will waste it on a scout, or an unarmed station, or a Cardassian fighter drone, or 10 ships will all fire it at the same target, plus there's only a 40% chance a charge will disable weapons or shields instead of sensors, engines, or life support.
The Klingon support ship has the Ion Storm which can also be devastating, and can be stacked to punish players who rely too much on static defenses, and the Romulan holo-emitter is also pretty good. On the other hand the Federation, Cardassian, and Borg support ships have a superior version of Fleet ECM (30% miss-rate instead of 20%).
But against a good mixed fleet or a wall of turrets it's most cost-effective to pair a few support ships with a larger fleet of berskers/battleships/cruisers, and even spending the resources on a couple more scouts can be worth it to draw fire.
First thing I have to say, your dominion models changes are amazing, it truly looks canon. It's really amazing how you put attention to environmental changes, the dilithium moon for example really looks amazing. The nebulas and background planets are amazing as well.
Back to the main topic. The support ships really are devastating that is true. The Klingon one is perticular nasty as it can be used offensive and support quiet quickly. Your choice for the abilities really matches the Klingon game play that's for sure. Due to how your mod works in pricing I would obvious not intend for you to change the units stats, but the overall price increase does have Merit to it to be honest. It doesnt have to be more expensive than a Battleship, but at least close to it. Maybe if you increased the price by 150 tritanium for example it might stem its use slightly. It would be more expensive than the battleship class in the tritanium department, but it's effects can be more devastating than a Battleship if used right. I still believe a cap could be used, but I guessing that won't work in your eyes. A price increase is a good point to look at at least.
Using the Breen ability at your base has merit I agree with you. But let's say I have 10 and I use the Emergency beacon ability. I know I will get two bug ships everytime, sometime absolutely nothing. Now take it to 20 I will get 4 ships. No in the long run, all that work for so few ships under the heat of battle is not viable at all. Especially when you play skilled players or merciless AI. So how you use the ability personally doesn't really make sense in general to use it. I'm not attacking your design for the faction, just highlighting what I noticed while playing against AIs and playing with friends. I would have rather preferred to have seen another support ability that doesn't duplicate the Warp in reserves ability. A cloak which was locked behind a tech upgrade like standard fleetops would be more viable, from my testing with the AI yesterday I could use the Breen battleship to its fullest when doing that. This is just me trying to maximize the units abilities while keeping it canon. I mean I am sure you want canon as well, if you look at the federation every ship is canon and the Borg probe for example, which I truly appreciate as you are a man of great taste doing that.
You are right about using these skills in a mixed fleet, but imaging a fleet of 30 Klingon support ships in the mix, it is devestating how those ships rip into the other fleet. That's why start fleetops limited the BortaS to 3 because of the Ion storm. I hope you see my point.
Also talking about the Klingons, I noticed alot of units have standard fleetops names when you highlight the units name. The support ship is called BortaS for which it should be Fek'hlr class right? Maybe you left it due to coding issues and that, I just thought I would highlight it.
Thanks! Yeah, I want the mod to look pretty, and still look good 5 years from now, and for as much of it to be canon as possible. And that includes things like the Borg Probe, and those Klingon class names stuck around from earlier models, they should be updated, true. I think too many mod makers are lazy with graphics and we don't have the excuse of slow hardware anymore.
Hmmm, yeah, I am seriously thinking about that price increase, but its tricky though. I mean 34 berserkers or 40 cruisers you could build for the price of 30 support ships (and with faster build speed and not needing a support station or advanced shipyard) would also rip through pretty much anything...
And cruisers and berserkers also add their own perks: cruisers don't have a support ship's vulnerability to berserkers and berserkers kill enemy support ships, capital ships, and base defenses more easily. Berserkers are vulnerable I actually expected people would start spamming berserkers the most and complain that you could win the game with only berserkers...
Originally I applied a formula like this: a support ship costs 33% more than a cruiser and requires an advanced shipyard and support station, with normal Fleet ECM it's 1/0.8 = 25% more combat effective, but 1 support ship and 39 cruisers would have the same Fleet ECM boost as 30 support ships, the support ship's other abilities (or enhanced Fleet ECM for other factions) are supposed to make up that 10-20% difference in cost-effectiveness, and it may be that the summon Attackship ability falls way below that and the Ion Storm ability way above it. But on average it sort of works, maybe, and micro is hard for most people, like it's much easier to pull your fleet away from an ion storm than it is to fire an ion storm at the right place at the right time.
P.S. when you say you got the 4GB patch, doe you mean you replaced the ldl file, or something else?
It's true, your mod really focuses on every aspect of the game. It can actually really becalled the spirit successor to Armada 1. You really did get that part right 👍. The environment and models really conform to a high standard and the last 5 years have shown. It's a real treat thanks. I got back into Star Trek Armada 2 due to this mod. Thanks allot me and my friends are having a blast
As for the balance I see what your aims are and I will leave it at that as I know you have really thought this out. I stated my opinions and I am happy you engaged in this discussion, it's is really appreciated. I also got to see your take on how you made the mod and honestly this mod just stands way above the other attempts that people tried to change stock fleetops. Your mod stands above them that is for sure. So in retrospect your idea how to balance the mod I leave to you since you have a good hold on it thanks.
The 4GB patch I used directly on the Armada 2 file, the reason why I didn't go down the road of changing to .LDL file as I remember Doc Cola said it would limit the ram manage from 3GB to 2GB. The 4GB patch has made it so I could play 7 player game against multiple merciless AIs without the ususl desktop crash. Now disclaimer I won't say I have tested it through and through to say if it works effectively, but for some reason the games can actually finish now, where in the past it would be a crash to desktop with an error report. Now it's stable again this is on my system at least
Thanks for the praise (and leave a review if you want to).
I think a core design tenet I had that doesn't always come across is that most ship types are equally cost-effective if you disregard the RPS system and survivability. You can win the game with destroyers if you want to because you can build them faster and cheaper in pretty much the exact ratio you need to make up for their reduced low DPS and hitpoints. Of course RPS and survivability matter so the game should encourage you to use mixed fleets, at least in theory... but if you can beat a merciless AI without turtling behind a wormhole (not to brag but I think my merciless AI is really brutal compared to stock Fleet Ops) and can micro well then you're probably in the 99th percentile of RTS players and don't really need mixed fleets😉
But that 4gb patch, is that something you downloaded separately? I thought the Fleet Ops version of the armada2.exe in the \Data folder was the patch, that's why I changed the install instructions to replace the ldl, and for me that did seem to fix the crashes and texture glitches when the game gets crowded.
Btw how did you use cloak effectively? I find it really hard against the AI because it always researches the tachyon detection grid (I had to program it to do that, otherwise the Romulans would be OP) and mixes scouts in with most fleets.
You are welcome, I left a review. This mod is a 10\10 anyday.
The RPS is easy to understand and easy to learn. Like I said in my review. You could go months or even years without playing it, then pick it up and just play again, it's that easy. Your tutorials is even made for this mod system, show me a mod that has done that!
The 4gb patch can be downloaded from ntcore. You can just google the 4gb patch and it should give you the results. I can play around with the changes that you stated and see if it makes the same improvement or if the 4gb patch is better.
The cloaking is actually quiet easy. I mean you made it extremely easy to see its effective range lol. The circle shows all. So to exploit that is quiet easy. Remember the AI will mass build units, but it won't scout its base, unless it's units that got out then stopped there for some reason but no general scouting from what I have seen. You can lure the units away and it will send everything once you bait the AI with a few units. The only real problem is the bases defensive sensor. As the playing with the romulans is dam easy especially with their artillery ships that can fire through cloak, you can easily knock out buildings before the AI has time to respond, if at all. The Scout looking ahead of the artillery is deadly to say the least, a real dangerous combo. The 1 second charge to the cloak is easily the most effective. It's shoot and move to get away.
The Klingons are something completely different that 3 second charge can really be used like the Roms cloak. Basically I use the cloak to sneak in behind the enemy base and commit to a full out offensive with battleships, support vessels, you name it. Those Klingon Fek'lhrs are powerful, those ion storms are deadly. Place it infornt of an invading fleet in key areas, and watch the carnage.
Personally I did like Fleetops cloaking system and you could exploit that 10 second gap to do real damage. Their it felt like you can use cloak like it's intended. In your mod, it's quite difficult to use it the way you would want. It's more like standard Armada 2 cloak, but well that's what it is. Each cloak has its pros and cons.
Move after testing, I get a crash straight to desktop. I did a stress test using 6 merciless AIs against each other. My player profile did nothing just cloaked at the edge of the match and watched it okay out. It crashed to desktop, that's without any error.
The normal way with the 4gb actually lasted much longer by the looks of it. I see it crashed, but with an error. Well this was just a few games on my end.
Haha wow, that baiting tactic is a good idea: I always got my cloaked ships slaughtered because of a stray scout or a sensor platform tucked in between defense platforms. Btw I think Fleet Ops cloaked detection doesn't actually take 10 seconds, it just activates at 10 second intervals and detection time can be anywhere from 0 to 10 seconds depending on where the scout or sensor platform happens to be in their scanning cycle. I tried creating cloak detection that would actually have a constant 5 or 10 second delay but couldn't find a way.
Thanks for the review, that means a lot to me! And I tried that 4gb patch, I haven't noticed a difference yet, but could you test it where you patch the 275kb armada2.exe in the \Data folder and replace the ldl file with your 3.5mb valid armada2.exe as per my install instructions and see if that combination still reduces the crashes? If it does then I can package the patched armada2.exe directly into the mod, and that means a new upload so then I might as well throw in a tritanium cost increase for support ships and Klingon ship class name changes, and maybe make the summon attackship ability have a 50% chance of success.
EDIT: I ran some tests with 10 Breen Warships and I can pretty much spawn ~6 attackships per minute, so I think it's plenty powerful. I did have one occasion where only 1 attackship spawned so that can skew your impression, but on average I got 3-4 and with the very fast special energy recharge that's pretty good (also remember when that attackship gets destroyed you get 50% of its dilithium/tritanium value for free).
Yup baiting them is fun, it doesn't work against a player thou lol. But the mod really is fun when using all the right combos.
Oh yes this is important please, what ever you do, please do not add the GOG exe to your installer that you release to the public, as this could be seen as a copyright violation. The normal exe still requires the CD to work. Without the CD the game won't load. Which is still fine, but the GOG one starts the game. So just be aware of that mate, I don't want this mod banned or for you to get into trouble.
I tried alot variations of the 4GB patch and the .lbl file. I used the CD exe and GOG exe. It's kind of random to be honest. Sometimes I get a crash straight to desktop when I use the GOG exe converted to .lbl. Then using the exe with your installer, it doesn't go to desktop it gives a error report. The times I did the stress tests the maps were the same but the crashes were random. What I did notice, I you have a mean really alot of units in the area all firing there weapons at once the game begins to stutter then, boom crash to desktop. Then this is just me playing 1 merciless AI, which honestly be the amount of units on the map, maybe a Fleetops 4.0 engine problem, just a guess thou. For me the best time I saw the AI games last the longest when I used the 4GB patch on the armada 2 exe, fleetops exe and on the armada 2 lbl file as well. Remember the lbl is still a exe file just renamed. It in the end did crash but not as frequent as the other combos.
As for the stock cloak detection, I honestly learned something new. I need to play some stock fleetops to see that. My perception about it might be so wrong, thanks for pointing it out.
The change you make to the Breen support ship sounds quite OP, but the ability is honestly a gamble. You can get a great hand, or a crap one, it really just about luck. The ability is not as constant as some other support ship abilities, it has a high point or a low point when used. In the long run I agree with you if you average 3 to 4 that's fine. It's much better than 1 to 2 or even nothing for every 10 ships used. Really a nice change thanks.
About the Klingon ship names, something stuck to me about the Romulans. The Destroyer is called the Shrike right? The model I can't place what it is actually called. I do know the Shrike is a completily different ship thou. If you intended it like that, honestly it wouldn't be a smash, I just thought I would highlight it for you.
EDIT: I forgot to tell you, this mod run absolutely smooth. It has no lag even on some medium sized battles which would make 3.2.7 easily stutter. It's a real testament to your mods fighting system and editing while still keeping the game highly detailed. Like some definitive edition of sorts. It's really amazing
Yes, exactly, I don't want to include the GOG.exe. I did patch both the 275kb armada2.exe and the 270kb fleetops.exe, according to HXD for the first one not a single byte was changed (so it apparently was already patched by docacola), but for the other file there were some changes. In any case it can't hurt.
With these crashes, does it happen on specific maps or with specific races? I never get crashes on launch, though I haven't tested for all maps. I did get a crash when loading a crowded savegame on the map "Nirvana II", tracking down the error location in IDA Pro seems to suggest it might have had something to do with the ion storm torpedo, at least the function referred to that and the repulsion wave, but there are no repulsion wave-type weapons in Roots. I did change some code, hopefully it helps. But if you can figure out more of a pattern to the crashes I might be able to fix some of them before I reupload.
Other changes:
- lowered the damage for the ion storm (it was higher than the aimed for 1200 over 30 seconds it was supposed to be, it was more like 1800), it now also takes 200 energy instead of 190
- gave the Borg cube a little more weapons range (because of its size and how weapons hardpoints work enemies could hit it before it could hit back)
- the Borg Assembly Expansion now costs 2500/2500, down from 3000/3000
- increased the cost of support ships from 800/400 to 900/450,
- made some of the M-class planet polar ice caps less bright and made them actually look darker when in the shade
- removed the Cardassian repair drones because the AI could never use those right
- Federation support ships (Nebula and warp-in Ambassador) now have 250 special energy
- Federation research and research stations are now a bit cheaper
- the Keldon class can now demobilize into an Emergency Mining Center that acts like a mining station, but it processes ore much more slowly, so it can really only support 1 mining freighter, it can also be demobilized into a Keldon class again
- the texture for the Cardassian worker bee was missing, the Cardassian support ship couldn't properly cycle through its weapons loadouts, and the Klingon construction ship didn't have a proper shield bubble, so I fixed those things
- Klingon construction ships and mining freighters now have a disruptor beam, two mining freighters can take on a scout but one of the freighters will get destroyed in that fight and mining freighters have to stop mining to fire
- Romulan mining freighters can now mine while cloaked
About the Shrike, I didn't like the design and there are no good textures for it anyway, plus it's not canon to begin with, so I just replaced the model ;-)
Regarding stability. My theory is stock Fleet Ops just has so many ships and replacement weapons (for example their ship rank system is actually a very long list of replacement weapons) and all the interactions between them have to be coded properly and that's hard. There's a modder called Tryptic who has a mod that's mostly (quite sensible) balance changes and that mod keeps getting game-breaking bugs/crashes literally because he forgot to update 1 file out of the hundreds he has to change to adjust one weapon, or because he made a typo in one of them. Stock Fleet Ops also has so many exotically coded weapons/abilities with long chains of effects going on under the hood and the engine doesn't like that. I avoid all of those problems by just having fewer and simpler objects/weapons/abilities.
Then there's mods that just have 2048x2048 (16mb) textures with no detail levels for when you zoom out, so of course those run into memory problems or get sluggish. I figured out that depending on the size of the object and how the textures are divided across files most of the time anything above 1024x1024 (4mb) does not make it look better in-game, even on my 1440p monitor, and I made sure to add detail levels for every texture, including the weapon textures (which stock Fleet Ops doesn't do), which weigh more heavily on the game because so many of them have to be loaded really quickly.
One big thing I figured out is that having bump maps is really good for the framerate of the game so I made sure every ship and station has them (most just draw one the same dummy bump map to save on memory and bump maps are mostly invisible to the naked eye anyway with the A2 engine). It really changes how the game calculates lighting and shading and also makes some effects look much better on ships. That's how I can still get high frame rates with much higher poly models and higher res textures.
Hey mate apologies I have been busy and haven't had much time to get to the game. I probably won't have much time in the near future. I will try to look, but I cannot promise anything.
What I usually did on my stress test was play any 8 player map I could get. I would set myself as A romulan player and Ally with on AI player. There would be 6 merciless AIs in play, each one representing the different factions. Game speed at 4 and start the game. When it's starts I sell my starbase and go straight to my allies base and cloak my builders (this is something I love about your mod). I then let them Duke it out. It can take about 5 minutes before the game crashes. Using that setup I told you with the 4GB patch, I get about 10 minutes before I get a crash with the "run out of memory error).
Yup your take on stock Fleetops is more or less what I guessed. Also I have been modding Fleetops for years, hence I said I modded in cloak for the Breen battleship and cruiser for your mod. Also, I am going a step further and adding in 8472 for the fun of it using your mods system and balance as a basis. Just a person mod don't worry, I won't release it at all. As for tryptic and his mod, I have played it for a few years since 2015, I think. I stopped playing Armada 2 about 3 years ago. So I did catch up on the new editions. Also I am on the fleetops discord. I played even Fleetops remastered, Drayzons work as you know. Anyway I have been playing star trek armada 2 since the filefront days lol.
The issue is with most 32 bit games, the game has real limited ram restrictions at 2GB. Alot of modern mods introduce alot of higher graphic models, into the old games. Like you said the files are bigger in poly count which would then cause real issues into the games ram limit. Hence thats why the 4GB patch exists. I have been using it for years on these 32 bit games. I am 37 btw. Your changes I expected to have this issue, but honestly a modest game of 2 or 3 enemy AIs even on merciless is still really manageable with no stutter. This is why I am impressed. Your mod even has better graphics for the Dominion that Drayzons Dominion as I see it. My opnion thou.
You bumping the maps really had a performance improvement that is for sure and quiet a genius idea I might add. I dont really mod in game mechanics, more like the typical take from this mod and put in that mod. So I am a basic type modder, I enjoy playing more than modding. Even at my basic skill I can see you really went deep into the mod. To go so far as to get an original Dev to help you, shows your skill level. I really like the Microsoft Azure voices you used for the campaign that is dam amazing. I was blown away by that to be honest. Hence your mod is truly epic mate.
The new balance changes are interesting:
The cardassian repair drone ability is understandable as even in game it was all over the place. It never hit a damaged ship lol
The rimulan cloaked miner is going to be OP without early game cloak detection. It will make harassing a romulan player in early game impossible.
Wow the keldon class change sounds interesting, I will definitely need to try that.
The ion storm and cost changes are really welcomed. These support ships can be terrifying and that ion storm especially.
The federation change to the cost is really going to make them tech quite quickly. It can be OP, but I would need to test that to be honest.
Hmmm, I just played three games on game speed 6 with 7 merciless AIs free for all, all races and 1 extra Federation because they probably eat up the most texture memory, and me sitting in one of the boxes, with 7 starbases around my wormhole so I wouldn't die, on Nirvana II.
The first game crashed after 20 minutes in-game (so 10-15 minutes in real time), the error said something about an invalid pointer, it wasn't a normal error that refers to a location within the exe, I had never seen it before and I think it's something that ahs nothing to do with my mod, but is a memory or game engine problem, though I can't be sure. Is that the error you get every time it crashes?
The second game just kept going and after about 75 minutes in-game time (40-45 minutes in real time) I just ended the game. My savegames from that game all load without problem.
The third time it ran for 45 minutes in-game time and I pulled the plug, but one of the savegames gave the old error I had the day before yesterday.
I can also consistently let the "The Battle of Cardassia" mission run for over an hour and (at least with me spectating) on the Battlepit family of maps 3v3 merciless AI, all races, matches consistently end after about 45 minutes in-game time with one side beating the other and ending the game naturally. I've also seen Fleet Ops Remastered eat up just as much memory as my 7 AI merciless game and not crash, though Remastered is on the 3.2.7 engine, not 4.0 like Roots is.
It's nice that it works most of the time (at least on my 16gb RAM system), but it's frustrating to try to solve these issues this way.
I was trying to add some more distinction between the factions and I though these round out the economic differences. The Romulans didn't have any economic advantage until now (except that they could cloak freighters, but have to stop mining) when under attack, maybe this change forces other non-Romulan players to really think about buying the Tachyon Detection Grid early. Plus if the player leaves the cloak on after the enemy has bought the detection grid the freighters actually die much more easily because they don't have shields up. The Federation was also SOL with economic advantages, except slightly cheaper turrets, so maybe the 1000/1000 (honestly that's the extent of it I think) in resources they save on research during an entire game helps a bit with that. The Klingons get their armed freighters, the Cardassians have hardened freighters and the Keldon mining ability, the Dominion get 50% of the cost of an Attackship back when it gets destroyed, and the Borg have cheap turrets, uncapturable freighters and mining stations, and eventually get some economic advantage out of not needing to have advanced shipyards and the Cube being extremely survivable (basically if you lose a Cube you're doing something wrong, while for example losing 1 of your 3 Sovereigns and having to rebuild it is to be expected). Or that's the theory at least...
P.S. I also used to play Armada 2 as a teenager, those were the days and it was only in 2018 I even found out about Fleet Ops because I was looking for a Star Trek RTS.
And for Species 8472 I know the Armada 3 mod for SIns of a Solar Empire has a Bioship with half-decent textures in it. You could use the "blank" parts of that as a background layer for new 8472 textures (a technique I used to improve a lot of the Klingon/Romulan/Dominion textures in Roots, see the dominion_background.tga file in the Roots texture folder). I never managed to port the model meshes from that game, but the textures are dds files that you can edit with paint.net and work similar to Armada's tga files.
Hi mate, I noticed I made some mistakes while typing that message. It was late and I was tired. The correction I wish to make was yes the mod crashes for me between 20-30 minutes on maps. The ones that really causes crashes frequently are open area maps. Nirvana II is a choke hold map. Also the reason why I go straight for my allies base and do what I do, it's so I don't give the AIs a target to target outside of the other AIs.
I have a 64GB system and for what it's worth it still crashes lol. I still think it might be like you say Fleetops 4.0 engine. From what I understand it was supposed to be an experiment engine that was never completed. In 3.2.7 that is quiet stable and as you say in Fleetops remastered I noticed the same thing as you. I can play large games and it won't crash, but it will Lag like hell. From the point I guess from what I have noticed, all mods running 4.0 crashes at some stage when it's at that level of fighting.
You know the more I you tell me about your mod, the more you talk about the inner working and your thought process of your mod the more impressed I get. Dam this mod is complex yet the design is simple. You really did sit down and think of everything. You create quite a debate with me and my friends regarding your mods inner workings to a point they tell me to just play it as is and I agree with them now. Your romulan changes makes sense when you think about it from a economical point of view. I was just worried that harassment basically won't exist against the Romulans in early game and that can been seen like the other factions don't have ships which can be captured. It will force you to research tachyon detection grind, but if you face the Romulans you should anyway do it.
I am curious the Klingons are you planning to give then anything in the near future, they really feel like the "normal faction" without much gimmicks compared to the other factions. I mean the Federation has cheaper upgrades and buildings, the dominion has their bug ships (everything around that unit). The Borg had assimilation and units impossible to board. The cardassians have ships that has multiple abilities and functions. The Romulans by defention had cloak and abilities as the game play. The Klingons feels kind of shows nothing makes them special, besides the offensive and speed increase in the units stats but at the cost of health to everything. They have cloak but it's a 3 second delay which can cause issues in battle. I was just wondering since you are doing some changes to the other factions, are you planning anything for the Klingons? Or maybe I am missing something, your insights are always interesting.
Fleetops I found right about when they moved on beta 2 I think. I found them since Doca Cola was incharge of the Armada 2 upgrade project. You needed his patch to play basic mods that time. Honestly those were the good old days when Major A Payne was still modding and talking on Filefront. My teen and after school years were playing this game. Fleetops changed everything with the new modding system added to the game and all the features which you use in your mod currently. It's been epic to see it evolve. I can wait for their custom game to be eventually released.
I took the 8472 models from Armada 2 classic upgrade project 2014. It's not the best quality but it has some nice units compared to stock Armada 2. Your mod really did bring out some interesting models, I was curious to see how you got the models to looks so good now I know. I could try this and see how it goes but alas I am but an advit modder. I don't basic modding on all the different mods I have touched, whatever that game lol.
Thanks for the continued praise! I'm looking into the crashes with savegames, together with Megadroid, what is the error you keep getting on crashes? Does it say something like "access violation at address so and so"? And what is that address?
And yeah, the Upgrade Project 2.0 textures are probably the best you're going to find for Species 8472, and they're ready to use too.
Yeah, I collected so many models from anywhere I could find, painstakingly converted a lot from Bridge commander mods as well, and did a lot of texture editing. Sometimes I just got lucky like when I found out some of Armada 3's models use the same texture coordinates, with some minor changes, as Aad Moerman's models, so I could combine his models with their textures. And Drayzon's Dominion textures are very easy to make the main surfance transparant while keeping the details and then overlaying them over a better base surface texture. In the end what makes things look extra good is to have a bit of a common theme for a faction's ships and stations, just changing the hue so they look more alike does wonders. It's been fun and educational because I didn't know how to do most of these things before I started working on this mod.
And the Klingons... well, I hadn't thought of anything. I mean armed noncombat ships should help with raiding and the B'rel can stop ships from escaping, plus they have the higher damage output which is often more useful than stronger shields, and have the ion storm. Turrets are more expensive for them, but weapons upgrades are cheaper. It's been hard to think of something else to set them apart.
Hi mate, no problem. I believe credit where credit is due and after reading now how painstakingly you went to get models and keep it to this standard, I am even more impressed, especially starting with no prior knowledge. You really have my respect, and no cap I mean it mate.
What I will do is try to copy the text from the error log when it crashes again. The crash to desktop crashes I use to get was straight to desktop with no error log, this happens to me with the GOG exe file. The one you provide in your mod gives a log. Just a pity I got busy now, but I will try to get some games in while I am busy.
Yup that's why I went for those 8472 model. It kind of good enough for now and it also has about 9 models, just right for me to go add it to your mod. But I will do this endeavour once your mods development is complete. I for now will concentrate on the crashes when I get time, but again I can't promise anything.
Reading this part of the models blow my mind dam. Seriously this is impressive. Here I was debating with my brother and friends where did you get these models from, since there was nothing I knew in Armada 2 that had this quality outside of remastered.
The Klingons is basically a warrior faction. I get it there is not much that you think would be in there favor, but you surprised me. The Cardassians for example you went down the road and made half the units automated. This was honestly a brilliant move as if you think of it, they had the dreadnaught missile and the defense platform which used automation. You really hit it out the park when you followed this part when looking at canon. Anyway back on topic about the Klingons. They are an amazing team, and something they are was canon focused would really work. Now what it is, I not sure I could give you ideas. But if I know what you main focus would be for the team, that could be a big help. What I could suggest for now is what about if the miner or builder get destroyed it makes a small area explosion. Obviously not large damage but in small quantities it could damage scouts or so.
Oh yeah, if I was just limited to A2 models it would be tough, but Bridge Commander and Starfleet Command 3 models can be converted, luckily.
Thanks for the help with the crashes. I never get the straight to desktop crashes, so unfortunately I can't test for those myself, but with your error logs (even just a screenshot) I might be able to figure some things out.
Oh yeah, one last big F-you from a Klingon freighter before it dies, that's a nice idea for the Klingons, not a huge change to gameplay but it adds some flair. An explosion that does damage automatically may not be possible for technical reasons, but I could give them a ramming weapon, like the Jem'Hadar Attackship, powerful enough to take out a destroyer or damage a cruiser, and call it the "Sto'vo'kor Express"... My general philosophy for the Klingons is that they're good at raiding and that you're encouraged to play aggressively.