2 New Special Weapon Ideas For Star Trek Armada II

posted on September 6th, 2010, 5:21 am

Well researching more about the Romulan D-7 (the Klingon D-7’s the Klingons gave the Romulans during the brief Klingon-Romulan Alliance (Also when the colony planet Chal was founded – See William Shatner’s Star Trek novel “Star Trek The Ashes Of Eden, Star Trek The Return, Star Trek Avenger, Star Trek Spectre, Star Trek Dark Victory, Star Trek Preserver for more on this planet and James T. Kirk’s remarkable Klingon-Romulan Hybrid bride Teilani)) I ended up finding these two remarkable weapons that the Klingons used on the D-7 Class Battle Cruiser. I was wondering if anyone could possibly help me come up with a way to create these two weapons, for Star Trek Armada II, and of course the Devs. are free to use this idea in their Fleet Ops. Mods. Here is the exact description of the weapons from Memory Alpha the internet site for all Canon (or all onscreen related Star Trek) things. I have also posted the pictures as attachments for these two weapons so you can see them in action.

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**Magnetic Pulse Weapon (Source: Memory Alpha – memoryalpha.org) **

The magnetic pulse weapon was a type ship-mounted weapon used on the Klingon D7-class battle cruisers in the 23rd century.

In 2267, a battle cruiser attacked the starship USS Enterprise with magnetic pulses following a formal declaration of war between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire. The Klingon attack caused damage to decks 10 and 11 of the Enterprise, and minor buckling of the antimatter pods. The Enterprise managed to destroy the attacking vessel by returning fire with phaser proximity blasts. (TOS: "Errand of Mercy").


**Projected Stasis Field (Source: Memory Alpha – memoryalpha.org - Projected stasis field - Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki) **


A projected stasis field, also referred to as a stasis weapon, was an experimental Klingon weapon of immense power, capable of completely paralyzing an enemy vessel, including all vital systems. The weapon was first field tested against the Federation in 2269, aboard the IKS Gr'oth.

The threat of this new weapon to the Federation was analyzed by the crew of the USS Enterprise during an encounter near the Klingon-Federation border on Stardate 5392.

During the confrontation, the Gr'oth successfully disabled the Enterprise, but upon further analysis by Science Officer Spock, it was determined that after prolonged use of the weapon, the cruiser's power cells were too quickly drained, proving to equally crippling to itself. In order to complete any prolonged assault, the cruiser was required to wait several hours for the weapon to recharge to full power.

Ultimately, it was determined that the use of this weapon aboard D7s was impractical in standard combat. (TAS: "More Tribbles, More Troubles")

BACKGROUND:
While the weapon is referred to as a "stasis weapon," it does not truly place the target in stasis, as the crew of the affected ship are still able to act. It does, however, disable all weapon systems and engines. In the episode, it is able to fire at up to at least three simultaneous targets.

In Stephen Cole's Trek-based board game Star Fleet Battles the Klingon stasis field comes into more general use, but is still quite limited in deployment, as the ship using the "Stasis Field Generator" requires other ships as escorts in order to be effective.

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Here are the ideas that I have for creating the weapons, this might use stock material for Star Trek Armada II unless anyone has any better ideas to create them and to texture them, I’m open to them. After all, I’m just trying to report a new idea for a new Special Weapon Mod that anyone can create.

*For The – Magnetic Pulse Weapon:*

To me and the prospective I’m having, this is almost like the Negh’Var-classes Ion Cannon Special Weapon, the only difference is its on a cruiser type vessel and its color is Blue instead of the Orange/Yellowish weapon known as the Ion Cannon.  If the Ion Cannon’s special weapon was used as a basis to create this in game, I’d think that the texture for it should be changed to Blue and the strength of it should be scaled down. Instead of causing severe physical damage to the targeted ship, I’d think that it should cause minimal damage but slightly severe damage to shipboard systems, possibly life support, engines or shields (or if your very interested all 3 instead of just one of them). This type of Special Weapon could possibly use the same button as the Ion Cannon.

*For The – Projected Stasis Field Weapon: *

To me and the prospective that I’m having, this weapon could almost be like the Theleron Weapon on some of the Scimitar-class Reman ships, I don’t mean with the same effect, I just mean with the texture because they are both blue beams, the same can be said if the Borg Uitritium Burst was used as the texture for the weapon. The only differences is that somehow it would have to designed to fire three beams at once that can hit three targets (I don’t think that this effect has to look exactly like it does in the picture I provided but if it did it’d be more canon). Like in the description that I provided from Memory Alpha, I’d suggest (and think) that this Special Weapon should have immense power and be able to completely paralyzing an enemy vessel, including all vital systems. Also like described, I believe this weapon should also be able to cause severe damage to itself not just by draining its Special Energy Reserves but also by taking away energy/power from “the vessels power cells” in other words, another vital system, thus this weapon will with prolonged use would cripple the “D-7 Cruiser” (or other ship) using it.

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What do you think about these two Special Weapon ideas? Anyone interested in trying to create them or helping me create them? If I create them, it will be incorporated into my mod, but also released to the Armada II Community on Armada Fleet Command’s site or I’d upload it to Megaupload and post a link for everyone interested in it. If I did have to create it myself, what programs would be needed to create the new textures and get the desired effects?

Attachments

posted on September 10th, 2010, 4:33 am

I was wondering if anyone actually read this and has any suggestions on how to create these weapons and if anyone would actually want to help me test out a few ideas for them?

posted on September 10th, 2010, 11:47 am

Sorry mate, I'm not sure how to do it in the patch project, only in FO 

posted on September 14th, 2010, 9:36 pm

Sorry mate, I'm not sure how to do it in the patch project, only in FO 

How would you do this in Fleet Ops? Maybe the Process won't be so different using Star Trek Armada II with the Patch Project.

I'll take any advice that is offered.

Also here is another Special Weapon that I've created, its called "The Tantalus Mask" and is from Star Trek Preserver by William Shatner, it is a Special Weapon for Terran Empire shiips. It needs some testing though and I have a few Terran Ships to test it with, but because of the other crashing errors, I haven't gotten to it.

NOTE: This weapon is supposed to allow you to attack well cloaked, its not really supposed to be a cloak but a sensor jammer that renders the ship invisible to All Kinds Of Sensors. If anyone has any ideas how to profect it, I'm open to them...

Attachments

Tantalus Mask.zip

(15.37 KiB) Downloaded 277 times

posted on September 14th, 2010, 9:44 pm

I know how to do it with the cannonImp classlabel, but that doesn't exist outside of FleetOps 

posted on September 14th, 2010, 10:06 pm

I know how to do it with the cannonImp classlabel, but that doesn't exist outside of FleetOps 

In regular Star Trek Armada II, there is the Ion Cannon for the Klingons and the Borg get an Utranium Beam, that beam has been used for Theleron Special Weapons so it might be possbile to use that to make the "Projected Stasis Field" and if there was a way to change the color for the Ion Cannon, then that could be the "Magnetic Pulse Weapon".

How would anyone go about doing this?

posted on September 14th, 2010, 10:12 pm

Copy the Ion cannon texture and change the color in a texture editor, then copy the weapon sprite entry and chance the texture and weapon name. You could make it red, blue or a dancing frog if you wanted.

posted on September 14th, 2010, 10:25 pm

Copy the Ion cannon texture and change the color in a texture editor, then copy the weapon sprite entry and chance the texture and weapon name. You could make it red, blue or a dancing frog if you wanted.

Ok, I can try that, but I don't know what program will allow me to edit textures to change the colors, I would change it to Blue so it matches the weapon from the episode.

posted on September 14th, 2010, 10:28 pm

The guide has a page on textures.

http://guide.fleetops.net/guide/modding/visuals-effects/models-textures

posted on September 14th, 2010, 10:51 pm

The guide has a page on textures.

http://guide.fleetops.net/guide/modding/visuals-effects/models-textures

Thank you, I think I might have now found a tool to exit textures thanks to that guide. Thank you.

posted on September 14th, 2010, 11:10 pm

i believe in a2 it is possible to make a weapon based on the behemoths neb generator weapon that may be able to make a tempory nebular to disable the targets weapons and engines but the info on the magnetic pulse weapon is very limited and apart from minor hull damage it doesnot appear to have any other effect but i think there is an a2 odf code that allows weapons to ignore shields so maybe look into that

posted on September 14th, 2010, 11:19 pm

Yeah, ignoreshield is the command I think. However I can't recall if it has to be used with cannon or one of those commands now. Like I said, I'm only familiar with FO commands now sadly 

posted on September 14th, 2010, 11:22 pm

i believe in a2 it is possible to make a weapon based on the behemoths neb generator weapon that may be able to make a tempory nebular to disable the targets weapons and engines but the info on the magnetic pulse weapon is very limited and apart from minor hull damage it doesnot appear to have any other effect but i think there is an a2 odf code that allows weapons to ignore shields so maybe look into that

Thank you for that suggestion, I'll look into it.

Yeah, ignoreshield is the command I think. However I can't recall if it has to be used with cannon or one of those commands now. Like I said, I'm only familiar with FO commands now sadly 

I'll check into all that later, I'm first going to concentrate on getting the crashing errors in my mod fixed up first.

[jetnova16]

posted on September 15th, 2010, 9:20 pm

Last edited by jetnova16 on September 15th, 2010, 9:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Alright, I made one of these weapons that I mentioned, the Klingon Magnetic Pulse Weapon. I used a program called "TgaTool2". I found the link for it on the guide that I was linked to by Tyler. The program works pretty well and I think I might be able to use it to make other buttons for my game too. I edited the texture colors using MSPaint and I'm not fully happy with how they look, but it is my first time at making something like them.

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Now on to the weapon I made in general. I used the existing ODF files for the Ion Cannon for the Negh'var-class battleship for the Klingons (gplasmac). All I did was rename the files that it was going to need and did some editing and of course edited the textures.

There was some problems testing this weapon in game and I'm not sure what I did wrong in the creation of this weapon because technically, this is my first Weapon that I've created (not including the Tantalus Mask).

If anyone can please take alook  at my attempts to create this weapon, I'd appreciate it. I've also included the bugreport for the error. I can tell you that my created weapon button looks somewhat alright but at least showed up in game, you can see it in the screen shot.


EDIT:

I've added the .ZIP file that I have made for the mod that I was making on this Weapon. For those who want to test it out and or tweak it, they have my full permission.

Attachments

[The extension has been deactivated and can no longer be displayed.]

bugreport (6) - Klingon Magnetic Pulse That I created crashes the game before even launching the weapon.txt

(22.16 KiB) Downloaded 234 times

Magnetic Pulse -Klingon Special Weapon for D7 Battlecruisers.zip

(35.98 KiB) Downloaded 303 times

posted on September 15th, 2010, 9:39 pm

Did you edit 'weapon.spr' in the sprites folder? Try to use a sprite without telling it what texture to use will crash the game because it won't know it exists.

Just search for 'wplascannon' and add underneath it (I'm assuming you forgot this because the readme doesn't mention it):
Wmagneticpulse Wmagneticpulse 0 0 42 42 @anim=tex3x3

The first 'Wmagneticpulse' is the odf sprite entry, the second is the texture.