Less Ships - More Making Them Count

posted on October 12th, 2013, 5:03 pm

The main problem I find with this mod is it is too easy to spam one type of specifically powerful ship either because the build time/resource cost is rather easy to get. There is no limiting factor to the number of ships that you can have. I would like to see a "Unit Limit" option as this would not break the game and would make it more easier to manage, especially on internet games where building 500 defiants can cause considerable lag. This was one original feature from Armada that I was surprised was not kept in the game.

I would also like to see a game mode where you have to "protect heroic ship". For example, you get "Janeway's Voyager" or "Picard's Enterprise-D" like in the original armada which has added special abilities and more stats then a usual ship of that class and if that ship is destroyed, you lose the game mode. Would it be possible to see things like "Sela's Warbird" and "Martok's Neghvar" back in the game?

Failing that, what about making your Avatar an Actual Ship? Like "Risner's Phalanx" etc and if they get destroyed, you also loose the game.

posted on October 12th, 2013, 6:09 pm

Heh all of these ideas have been presented before believe it or not. Don't feel bad though, its good to have something relevant to talk about.

A unit cap is something that is used for specific ships, but not all of them. I don't know if it is ever going to be an optional feature, but if you play online it is almost never an issue. Games end pretty quick if you get to that point. If you want to see a game where that is a feature, check out the Tactical Assault mod over at A2files. Every ship and station has a cap, and though it does help keep certain ships limited, at a certain point you feel like every fleet is the same. It is like a forced cookie cutter on every game you play. There are ways around it, but generally, giving the player less options in such an obvious way is not as fun.


Aaaannd Hero/Admiral/command ships is probably the second most requested feature behind Saucer Sep. I am personally in favor of it, and I don't know that the devs are particularly against it, I think they just haven't come up with a practical way to implement it with A2's limited code.

posted on October 12th, 2013, 6:16 pm

The main problem I find with this mod is it is too easy to spam one type of specifically powerful ship either because the build time/resource cost is rather easy to get. There is no limiting factor to the number of ships that you can have. I would like to see a "Unit Limit" option as this would not break the game and would make it more easier to manage, especially on internet games where building 500 defiants can cause considerable lag. This was one original feature from Armada that I was surprised was not kept in the game.

stopping single unit spams is now the purpose of counters. check the guide for a list of these counters (in the database entries for each ship it tells you the vulnerabilities it has). some vulnerabilities are obvious from their stats, eg excel 2 is really slow. big ships get hit by torps really badly.

defiants for example have really low crew for such an expensive and late game ship. the borg assimilator is available early, is big (so unranked defiant pulse weapons do 40% less damage) and has a weapon that kills the defiant's crew with ease, also you can research the boarding special for all borg ships. strip those defiants clean, beam to them (borg don't have shields to drop). if they wanna beam back, they drop shields. otherwise you get easy ships. give them to a fed ally if you can. any non borg ally can decom them.

other races have slightly less severe counters for defiant spam, klinks and dom have troopships, romulan tavaras have a boarding special that is instant.

defiant spam isn't a huge problem. it's a late game, slow to build, expensive ship, and it's not too generalist. fleetops isn't balanced for 500 ship fleets. basically there's no way you should let them get 500 of any ship. mistakes were made if that is happening. either:

a) you left him alone a lot. a hint is that if you are standing around looking at something building and you aren't doing anything, then you're pointlessly idle. go attack his miners or something.

b) he left you alone each time he completely wiped out your military so that he could continue building more ships, in which case he was just being a dick and you should have gg'd.

scout his base to see if he's spamming defiants, if he is, then you switch to assims. he should never get more than a handful.

the defiant isn't even spammable. most spammable ships have crushingly hard counters. bug spam for dominion is an oldie. every race has counters to bug spam: leahval, canav/norway/, c11/bugs/b5, qawduj, dodecahedron. bug spam is pointless.

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I would also like to see a game mode where you have to "protect heroic ship". For example, you get "Janeway's Voyager" or "Picard's Enterprise-D" like in the original armada which has added special abilities and more stats then a usual ship of that class and if that ship is destroyed, you lose the game mode. Would it be possible to see things like "Sela's Warbird" and "Martok's Neghvar" back in the game?

i'm guessing more game modes are planned for the future. sadly this is not easy to implement. the devs probably have the ability, but it would take time.

posted on October 12th, 2013, 6:29 pm

So what you are basically saying is that the game HAS to be fast paced and HAS to be played aggressively. My Fleet and people that I play with had to put a cap on how many Cube Class Vessels one player was allowed to have that we agreed to beforehand. I also think it would be nice to have the option to cap units so that you can make ships count... there are other strategies rather then rushing in with a massive fleet. I feel that the lack of this function unbalances the mod slightly and makes it more about rushing.

But that is just my personal opinion since I'm not particular good at micro-management. (Why I play Borg )

posted on October 12th, 2013, 6:42 pm

So what you are basically saying is that the game HAS to be fast paced and HAS to be played aggressively. My Fleet and people that I play with had to put a cap on how many Cube Class Vessels one player was allowed to have that we agreed to beforehand. I also think it would be nice to have the option to cap units so that you can make ships count... there are other strategies rather then rushing in with a massive fleet. I feel that the lack of this function unbalances the mod slightly and makes it more about rushing.

kinda. if you want multiplayer to be at its most balanced.

you can always make a submod of fleetops which has caps on ships.

"rushing in with a massive fleet" is self contradictory. rushing is early attacking, big fleets take time. you don't have to rush if you don't want to. although i think we may have different definitions of rush. i'd recommend attacking before you get 7 ships built. that isn't a rush necessarily.

that's just the way fleetops plays. each game has its own feel. in fleetops, each ship is very valuable, as fleets don't usually get very massive.

posted on October 13th, 2013, 3:55 am

At first I didn't like games that had cap limits but after playing them I found them to be essential. I like how games like MW and others have soft caps that let you pick which units to use but the more powerful and elite units use up more of the cap. I would like to see this implemented in FO v4.

posted on October 14th, 2013, 2:31 am

I like how games have soft caps that let you pick which units to use but the more powerful and elite units use up more of the cap.

1 word: Supply.

posted on October 14th, 2013, 7:22 am

1 word: Supply.

i think he didn't mean to say soft cap (like supply), i think he meant a hard cap, but one that is pooled between all ships. with bigger ships taking more slots, like warpin slots.

personally i think it would unbalance the game at present, but i would try it as a mutator/mod.

posted on October 14th, 2013, 11:37 am

Sounds like the 'officers' from stock, I could've swore the devs said they don't like things like that.

posted on October 14th, 2013, 11:50 am

Sounds like the 'officers' from stock, I could've swore the devs said they don't like things like that.

very similar, iirc officers could be increased up to a limit? nathanj didn't specify whether this global cap could be increased.

posted on October 14th, 2013, 5:35 pm

Yeah sorry I should probably have not used soft cap. A hard cap limit but with different ships taking up different amounts of the cap. I got used to it in games like Medieval War and frankly it adds more strategy to the game by forcing you to pick your units.

Once I can build Defiants...............I don't build anything other than Defiants because I can just keep building them till I hit critical mass. It would be nice to have a reason to build something other than all Defiants if they took up a significant portion of my cap. I would be more inclined to build ships which make up for some of the Defiants shortcomings but as it is now I can just build so many Defiants that it doesnt matter as I can wipe out an entire base area in less than two minutes with 90 or 120 upgraded Defiants (I don't usually go after the bases themselves until I at least get the quantum torpedoe upgrade for many of them) if I couldn't build a bazillion Defiants then I would be forced to build some ships that would provide some buffs or debuffs for enemy ships to help protect them.

This also makes a bit more sense since supply is essentially endless there is no reason to not just keep building high end ships all the time like Norexans or Sovereigns since they payoff in firepower and durability etc. is so much more than the extra cost to build them. If you have a cap and different ships use different amounts you can still build nothing but Sovereings but you would be limited to only 10 of them versus someone who might opt to build 50 K'vorts. (just random numbers I picked not meant to be an actual ratio)

As for upgraded the cap I am not opposed to it as long as its expensive, time consuming and can only be done a fixed number of times.

Sometimes when I play I have over 150 ships at one time especially against some enemies like the Dominion where you need tons of ships to take out their massive amount of defenses it seems like half of Starfleet was in one sector.

posted on October 14th, 2013, 6:26 pm

This is almost too funny to interrupt.

But I can't resist to ask one question: Do you guys play with ceasefire, game speed or resource modifiers?

If yes: If you screw up the very basic rules , you simply cannot expect the game to be balanced for that situation...
If not: It means: You are doing it WRONG! You play extremely passive and have a lot to learn about rts games in general....

Whatch some educational videos here: http://guide.fleetops.net/video or come online on tunngle and ask some experienced players to teach you the game, mostly they are very helpful!

If you like to fool around aginst ai or play games with your buddies with fundamentally altered rules thats totally ok, your business, have fun! But with complaining about game balance or even on individual ship power on the basis of your obviously limited knowledge, you just make yourserlf look comical.

If you play the game as it was designed for, aginst humans and without breaking the basic rules of the game already on the set up screen, you will never ever see "defiant spam" or "cube spam" (jeez even writing down these terms feels ridiculous) .

These ships are very hard to get aginst a reasonably skilled opponent in a 1v1 game. You can try for sure, but they fit they role as more like a support fire or game-ender unit, not a baseline ship, wich is what they did in the shows more or less (wich were of course infamous about beaing stupidly inconsistent). I think the devs made the best compromise to maintain game balance and beaing faithful to the shows.

And guess what, they didn't even needed to do that because they have thier own original story for the game, so even if they would shit in the face of the TNG-DS9-Voyager universe, that would be totally ok!!!

So arguing about this is totally nonsensical... But entertaining at lest

posted on October 14th, 2013, 10:36 pm

This is almost too funny to interrupt.

But I can't resist to ask one question: Do you guys play with ceasefire, game speed or resource modifiers?

If yes: If you screw up the very basic rules , you simply cannot expect the game to be balanced for that situation...
If not: It means: You are doing it WRONG! You play extremely passive and have a lot to learn about rts games in general....

Whatch some educational videos here: http://guide.fleetops.net/video or come online on tunngle and ask some experienced players to teach you the game, mostly they are very helpful!

If you like to fool around aginst ai or play games with your buddies with fundamentally altered rules thats totally ok, your business, have fun! But with complaining about game balance or even on individual ship power on the basis of your obviously limited knowledge, you just make yourserlf look comical.

If you play the game as it was designed for, aginst humans and without breaking the basic rules of the game already on the set up screen, you will never ever see "defiant spam" or "cube spam" (jeez even writing down these terms feels ridiculous) .

These ships are very hard to get aginst a reasonably skilled opponent in a 1v1 game. You can try for sure, but they fit they role as more like a support fire or game-ender unit, not a baseline ship, wich is what they did in the shows more or less (wich were of course infamous about beaing stupidly inconsistent). I think the devs made the best compromise to maintain game balance and beaing faithful to the shows.

And guess what, they didn't even needed to do that because they have thier own original story for the game, so even if they would shit in the face of the TNG-DS9-Voyager universe, that would be totally ok!!!

So arguing about this is totally nonsensical... But entertaining at lest

Caps wouldn't even apply to multiplayer games. I thinks its assumed that we are talking about against the AI and it doesn't matter if I use ceasefire or not (I actually prefer to use it because its to easy to choke the AI very early on with just a couple of ships so I let them build up some) I still end up with a bazillion ships and so does the AI. Every single youtube play through I have watched has ended with literally at most a couple dozen or so ships being made and many of them before they even get to the highest tier of ships. It is ridiculously easy to spam Defiants once you get 3 or more resource moons of each type which isn't hard.

posted on October 15th, 2013, 1:56 am

Yeah sorry I should probably have not used soft cap. A hard cap limit but with different ships taking up different amounts of the cap. I got used to it in games like Medieval War and frankly it adds more strategy to the game by forcing you to pick your units.

Once I can build Defiants...............I don't build anything other than Defiants because I can just keep building them till I hit critical mass. It would be nice to have a reason to build something other than all Defiants if they took up a significant portion of my cap. I would be more inclined to build ships which make up for some of the Defiants shortcomings but as it is now I can just build so many Defiants that it doesnt matter as I can wipe out an entire base area in less than two minutes with 90 or 120 upgraded Defiants (I don't usually go after the bases themselves until I at least get the quantum torpedoe upgrade for many of them) if I couldn't build a bazillion Defiants then I would be forced to build some ships that would provide some buffs or debuffs for enemy ships to help protect them.

This also makes a bit more sense since supply is essentially endless there is no reason to not just keep building high end ships all the time like Norexans or Sovereigns since they payoff in firepower and durability etc. is so much more than the extra cost to build them. If you have a cap and different ships use different amounts you can still build nothing but Sovereings but you would be limited to only 10 of them versus someone who might opt to build 50 K'vorts. (just random numbers I picked not meant to be an actual ratio)

As for upgraded the cap I am not opposed to it as long as its expensive, time consuming and can only be done a fixed number of times.

Sometimes when I play I have over 150 ships at one time especially against some enemies like the Dominion where you need tons of ships to take out their massive amount of defenses it seems like half of Starfleet was in one sector.

In a nutshell, that is exactly what I am getting at. Spamming Defiants because they are cheap and way too powerful for their resource cost and shorter build time then Sovereigns. Like I said in my previous topics, its obvious that the Devs for this mod do the same as a lot of other games and hold the Defiant on too high a pedestal when it really does not deserve to be. Thats why the Defiant is so easy to build, cheap in resource cost as well. Pure bias towards that ship.

Plus, I find it extremely arrogant for people to say "you are playing it wrong"... the whole point of RTS games is to incorporate your own strategies, your own WAY! Not be locked into a race of who can spam the most ships and win with overwhelming force. Sounds a bit... well "simple" for me.

I would also like to remind you that Federation ships are versatile, powerfully so and thats why you do not need massive Fleets of ships unless you are fighting in the Dominion War. For example, in "Descent", the Enterprise was assigned to a task force with just two other vessels. What I am getting at is that this game should be about USING the ships YOU HAVE not just spamming them until you win by sheer force. That's a really simple idea and literally takes all the fun and strategy out of the game.

In this mod, individual ships just do not seem to matter which is certainly not what happened on Star Trek. Even the loss of a single vessel was significant. A hard cap would simply allow better control over the spamming of specific ships. Rather then just building Defiants... what else could you use instead, looking into other ships and their associated powers.

posted on October 15th, 2013, 3:14 am

Yeah but... this is an RTS... In RTS games the individual units rarely have particular value in the long term. The devs did a great job with the veteran system to make players value and protect their units, but the base line units will always be throwaways.

Just look at first contact, or wolf 359. Look at how many ships were destroyed. (by a single borg cube for that matter) When a battle is about more than a hand full of ships, there will always be greater casualties. Not every Star Trek game can be STO.


It sounds to me like you just hate the defiant though. Maybe you should just start a "The Defiant is OP" Thread?