[NX] A few things I'd like to see

posted on March 25th, 2014, 4:46 am

Firstly, good luck on the NX development project. I can understand that it was a hard decision to flush the Armada 2 release, and I hope that things proceed as you hope on this new path.

As you've made a call for ideas, I thought I'd make a couple of requests related to things that have been annoyances, albeit ones that were in place due to the various engine limitations.

1) More detailed ships
One of the things that I always preferred in the Starfleet Command series of games over Armada is that the ships are more detailed and have most of the abilities depicted on film (tractor beam etc). I'm not saying that Fleet Operations need to go into that much detail, but making the ships feel more like their film counterparts would hopefully be doable.

2) Better behaved ships
My largest gripe with the Armada ship behaviour settings (ie movement autonomy etc) is that there's no middle ground between "frustratingly passive" and "running around like a drunken maniac ignoring 80% dead things for other things half the map away". What would be especially great would be some pre-done basic behaviours and then the ability to create customised behaviours that can be applied to groups at once (eg tell a ship that it is expected to move in range of the enemy when issued an attack order, but not pursue an enemy vessel if slower; and so on).

I also would be happy seeing better "attack on the move" behaviour. Right now, half my fleet seems to not want to fire at targets in arc and range when moving.

3) Don't make Feds a "learner" faction
It's an over-worn Trek game design trope. Version 3 suffers from it, unfortunately, but version 4 looked like it wasn't going to suffer from it. Please don't fall back into that pattern.

posted on March 25th, 2014, 1:16 pm

I concur with all of this

Ships in my mod have tractor beams, probes etc, but it would be nice if we could have different shield facings rather than just (basically) another health bar.

posted on March 25th, 2014, 9:47 pm

I guarantee we will NEVER see this new engine release. Just like every other code our own engine project crap realizing its way too much work and leaving it as it is.

If they don't undo their insane decision 3.2.7 is the last we will ever see of fleet ops.

posted on March 25th, 2014, 9:58 pm

To supplement what MadHatter said about ship movement, make sure that there is an option for ships auto-retreat when damaged. The old A2 kind-of made the self-destruct pointless.

posted on March 25th, 2014, 11:23 pm

Eraldorh -- please don't shit on this thread with your negativity. If you want to rail against the decision, the place to do it would be on the news post's thread, not here.

posted on March 26th, 2014, 12:28 am

I guarantee we will NEVER see this new engine release. Just like every other code our own engine project crap realizing its way too much work and leaving it as it is.

If they don't undo their insane decision 3.2.7 is the last we will ever see of fleet ops.

Did you not read the announcement? They actually have the devs who made the engine working with them on this project. That is huge and the best you could ever ask for with any mod/indie project. You literally have no idea what your talking about so take it somewhere else.

Nice ideas MadHatter.

posted on March 26th, 2014, 9:55 am

Madhatter, I hope you don;t mind me adding some ideas to your thread.

I would really like to see realistic damage. For example you get a critical hit on the engines you can blow off a warp nacelle and the ship can't go back to full operation until it returns to a drydock for repairs.

Realistic planets, you can set up colonies, orbital defense systems, have ships orbit it and attack planet bound colonies and you can see the colonies in flames and damaged from orbit. Also scaled more accurately to ships and stations.

Monthly new missions, single player and a campaign is always fun and I'd love to see something like a monthly patch where new missions to continue the story could be introduced. It would have the added bonus of keeping players interested and involved between major releases.

These ideas came from Syf and myself when we were attempting to get a game off the ground (not Trek though). These features I feel would really liven up a Star Trek universe RTS environment.

posted on March 26th, 2014, 11:00 am

The new engine opens up some exciting new possiblities in terms of adding in random events on a map. Imagine getting prepped to send a scout fleet out to find that elusive enemy base and suddenly having an encounter with an NPC fleet which neither player suspected was there.

posted on March 26th, 2014, 2:27 pm

Whee, that's collecting ideas fast! Thanks guys

One key topic I'm working on ATM is ship control, behavior and AI. This is a crucial part of an RTS and sadly not one of Armadas strong points.

We already have a quite flexible command queue and a basic command execution system. This allows us to do much more tailored unit behavior, like a Freighter acting differently on incoming damage than a Sovereign, .. or a Borg Cube.

Another important topic mentioned here is realistic damage. We can't foresee yet on how realistic damage will become in Fleet Ops NX, due to gameplay reasons, but I'll definitely add support to have subsystem targeting and "you hit my nacelles, I'm off" for mods.

//edit: whoops, almost forgot: Random events
This is probably one of the features I'm looking (and implementing) forward to most: making space and maps more vivid and interactive. This is something on my wishlist for a decade now, but we were never able to implement it in a real good way for A2. We will definitely focus on that for NX.

Keep the ideas coming!

posted on March 26th, 2014, 3:12 pm

Yo! First things first. Great job dev team, hope you will continue the work much easier from now on, cuz the new engine.
And now to some of ideas, that i would personally like to see in startrek strategy game.....

1) Energy alocation - This is part of startrek that is in every movie and startrek TV show. (Riker - keep our bow to the Scimitar, auxilary power to forward shield) The idea is, the higher your system value, the more you can boost one of your system. Only by a 5-10% but it will bee enough to get a little bit more punch to your raiding fleet (weapons), or defensive fleet (shields), your fast response task force (engines), or scout that is parked outside the enemy base (sensors). This is the most importatant thing that i would like to see. please comment on this, i would like to know what other peeps think. (devs mainly )

2)Better waitpoint controll - would be cool to have like transparent little line along your selected path, when you select unit, that should move that way. Also it will be nice to queue up a few buildings, that your constructor will build in that order. One of the most important things that i miss is, that you cannot queue up orders like "move here, then here, then alocate energy to weapons, then decloak)

that all for now....
So again thanks the Dev´s and good luck in development ! and keep warping in neewsposts

posted on March 26th, 2014, 4:26 pm

With the new engine I'm sure comes added complexity so I'm hoping that there won't be more involved micro management? Hopefully it'll still be based around the click and send ship here, click and fight here etc and not have to manage individual ship systems like in Bridge Commander or something like that.

I'd like to see them implement some type of warp dynamic again and not just use slow impulse speeds to get everywhere.

posted on March 26th, 2014, 5:01 pm

I want micromanagement to feel like I'm giving ships orders which are carried out in an orderly manner. At present micromanagement feels like an exercise in optimism -- maybe the ships will do what I asked, maybe not. I'm positive that some things called out as errors in some of the replays are in fact the game doing something lunatic.

posted on March 27th, 2014, 1:52 am

Talking to people on Teamspeak, we have decided a new mechanic for the new game.

When the Galaxy class dies, rather than blowing up, the saucer should separate instead. The saucer is not a controllable object, simply an untargetable npc. The engine then explodes, but if there is a planet on the map, the saucer will travel there and use the old A2 colonization animation, then fly down to the planet. This entire sequence will have no effect on gameplay whatsoever

posted on March 27th, 2014, 2:37 am

(1) How about resource transport. And I don't just mean from the freighter to the mining station. I mean from the freighter to the refiner (if applicable) to the construction ship, shipyard, starbase or research center.

(2) Multiple construction ships working on a station at a time to make construction go faster.

(3) Borg actually adapt to your weapons and weapons need to be remodulated.

(4) Dependent on 3, do research to get more weapon modulations (modulation range) so that in longer games against the Borg, you'll last longer.

posted on March 27th, 2014, 3:03 am

(1) How about resource transport. And I don't just mean from the freighter to the mining station. I mean from the freighter to the refiner (if applicable) to the construction ship, shipyard, starbase or research center.

(2) Multiple construction ships working on a station at a time to make construction go faster.

(3) Borg actually adapt to your weapons and weapons need to be remodulated.

(4) Dependent on 3, do research to get more weapon modulations (modulation range) so that in longer games against the Borg, you'll last longer.

I really like these ideas TChapman500. Those would be pretty awesome. I have a personal mod that I did before The Upgrade Project that had a similar concept for the borg in that I set up the borg to do research that would enable you to build the same ships that took a certain % less amount of damage from all enemy weapons. Once you researched the next level they would take a larger % less amount of damage and so one for up to 3 levels. Sorta kind of gave the feeling that the borg adapted.

It was tons of editing to the weapons odf's to add every ship, but kinda cool. Good ideas though