improved player base , ideas.

posted on July 16th, 2011, 1:59 pm

Is anyone planning or have an idea on how to improve the player base for this mighty game?.

there is the obvious of hosting a packed up  version of the game on to various torrent sites but would this go down well with the creators?.

i feel this game deserves a better player base so plz post your ideas here!.

posted on July 16th, 2011, 2:06 pm

Any comments about hacks/torrents/etc should not be discussed on the forums please

I'd simply recommend telling friends, posting about the game on other sci-fi forums etc 

posted on July 16th, 2011, 2:38 pm

is it illegal to host a mod on a torrent site? torrent sites are not all illegal content. dont get me wrong i know hosting A2 would be but just the MOD?

posted on July 16th, 2011, 2:43 pm

Ah - that is a question best suited for Doca, but I believe that would be fine. After all, Fleet Ops does use many mirrors, and is hosted by a great many sites either knowingly or unknowingly .

posted on July 16th, 2011, 4:43 pm

from the fleetops license:

2. DISTRIBUTION.  You are hereby licensed to make copies of the
SOFTWARE as you wish; give exact copies of the original SOFTWARE to
anyone; and distribute the SOFTWARE in its unmodified form via
electronic means (Internet, BBS's, Shareware distribution libraries,
CD-ROMs, etc.). You may charge a distribution fee for the package,
but you must not represent in any way that you are selling the
SOFTWARE itself. Your distribution of the SOFTWARE will not entitle
you to any compensation from the Auhtor.  You must distribute a copy
of this EULA with any copy of the SOFTWARE and anyone to whom you
distribute the SOFTWARE is subject to this EULA.

so yeah, you can even charge for distribution not that you'll get any buyers as its downloadable for free in so many places. the best way to distribute and not break the licence would be to distribute an exact copy of the installer that you can download from this site.

i doubt fo (just the mod installer) would work well as a torrent as who would seed it? patches dont come out often enough for a swarm to keep going between patches.

a2files used to host the fleetops installer, not sure if they do anymore.

posted on July 16th, 2011, 5:04 pm

They do still.  Thy are just not fast about getting mods up.   it usually takes a week or two.

posted on July 16th, 2011, 5:45 pm

They do still.  Thy are just not fast about getting mods up.   it usually takes a week or two.

A week or two? Try months. 
I'd not count on A2 files for anything FO related, or anything really. I took almost 3 months last year to get my mod up, and the recent version still has not been uploaded in over a month. 

I imagine if FO ever went standalone then the playerbase would grow dramatically. I personally know over a dozen people I have advertised FO to but became upset after they installed it and it asked for a CD.

posted on July 16th, 2011, 6:07 pm

Make a google+/Facebook page, and invite all friends maybe? I would join 

posted on July 16th, 2011, 7:09 pm

just out of curiousity is there a way to make FO standalone with minimum work? illegal or not.

posted on July 16th, 2011, 7:19 pm

just out of curiousity is there a way to make FO standalone with minimum work? illegal or not.

they could, just make the installer not need a disc/previous install and include a nocd (many are publicly available, doca even uploaded one to gamecopyworld).

to be honest you could probably do all this yourself with a little thought, but you couldnt post it/a link to it here

this would be 100% illegal. if the rights holders for a2 (not sure who exactly that is, activision/blizzard, paramount/cbs maddoc etc) said its ok then they could do it, but i dont think these companies care about a2.

posted on July 16th, 2011, 7:39 pm

For a modification the reputation of Fleet Operations is very good. There have been various articles and even video footage on print magazines and their DVDs. The problem is that this only happened for the German gaming market and even there the effect of a user boost did not happen.

There are some other reasons why there is a too small user base. A detailed analysis would help to figure out the entry points of still unused potentials/opportunities -  but that involves lots of work and who's going to do a fricken analysis and PR managing for what benefit? Having a dozen more games on Tunngle? The insentive to really come up with such an undertaking is incredibly low. It's so low that noone even considers to start a fully fletched PR programme. You need capacity (money, man power, know how...), you need connections and insentives for platforms that give you want you want - they want something in exchange and you get a communication array reaching as many people as possible. You also need PR material such as videos, ingame footage, alpha people that show up and keep the topic alive, interviews, future prospects ... and all the PR crap you find for professionally handled games. It's heavy.

You first have to ask yourself what goal you have. You want to increase the player base by 50%? are you speaking of online players? cool - that could (perhaps) be achieved when you get that game into the brains of the US Americans and people from the UK. Especially The US people will play a major role - capture them and you won at least 100%..ah wait... put an additional zero. They are the Star Trek geeks. Yes, watch out for the Star Trek geeks nations on this planet and tell them they have to know Fleet Operations if they want to have fun (if they know they maybe trying it). Actually, I'm kidding because it's by far not that easy! What else do you have to consider? Do these geeks play RTS games? Do they prefer online gaming or single player? Oh riiight! We dont have a single player campaign - that is sad because its a major insentive for customers to even consider to have a look into a game. Another thing: Do they find their way into the game easily? Till now it's rather difficult to find a way into playing Fleet Operations, right? you still rely on an original Armada II CD or an image and you need to get yourself involved into Tunngle. Any idea how much an Armada II CD costs theses days? And if I buy that CD I still have no Single player campaign.... crazy shit I'd rather go for a Star Trek Online or an Infinite Space. They are Stand alone games - huge capacities, heavy PR machinery aaaand !!!DINDINGDING!!! - support from CBS Studios. Boggz could you PLEASE pop up in their office and tell them about FO? Ok...I'm getting rediculous. What we need is the rights to go standalone. That there are no killing restrictions to copy and distribute the game. This will most likely not happen. The previous dealers of the Armada and Legacy approaches even lost track on the source code! Mad Doc blew off, Bethesda totally lost interest on making ST games and same with Activision(-Blizzard) - the source code is even forgotten or is floating around somewhere in the nirvana of their archives ripped of by some nerds called trainees.

Ok now that I discouraged you - what can we do:

You as the ordinary dude you are go on print magazines forums such as PC Gamers or IGN or GameStar and search for topics related to Fleet Operations. Keep the discussion going. Don't hesitate to share your opinion about this game. When there is no Fleet ops thread, create one. Be creative. Start polls, go on their nerves and advertise the shit out of them. even bad advertisments (when it's done by ordinary dudes) will attract people. It's just you they hate, not the game. That is what you can do! amazing, is it?

Facebook - ok idea. Would I press the  I like? If you ask me - maybe. Will that make my friends play FO? No because they hate Star Trek and they don't like RTS when it's not a Starcraft II.


Spam Email - interesting... you'll get problems.

Hackers DDos major websites with FO logos? Really bad idea...

Give Gaming Clans and STO Fleets money to participate in a Fleet Ops tournament? could work - who'S got the money? Rise your hands!

Make D.Stahl from Cryptic talking about FO as a great example of user created content of the Star Trek gaming community when having an interview? If you achieve that you earn my life time respect.

Getting Zach from Hailing Frequency to answer on your requests for an dveloper interview in one of their shows and even be it STO radio - forget it. Tried and terminated.

Introduce Fleet Ops on a gaming convention - smuggle it through and place yourself with your PC directly next to the longest people waiting line of the upcoming SciFi game.


Visit the next Star Trek Convention in your area and set up an information desk - I'd do it if someone would pay me.

Banner Advertisment on various platforms - sort of an overkill dont you think as too expansive...


I'm tired now...  you have any other ideas? birng them up...

posted on July 16th, 2011, 8:12 pm

This site needs to have a Armada 2 game download for more players.

My friends wont pirate the game, the only other access to this game is through Ebay(amazon, etc, etc). The prices on online auction sites is to high for a game that is not leading in graphics or gameplay material. This implies that this game will remain small untill it is able to reduce the sell price of the Armada disc, allow a downloadable version, or both.

Unfortunately  most people who like star trek, that I know of, have a good moral compass..............

posted on July 16th, 2011, 9:23 pm

well the devs cant legally offer downloads of a2. i dont think anybody has ever had a legal online distribution method for a2. certain old games have recently had cheap online distribution through shitty content delivery networks (like steam). total annihilation is a good example. i doubt the owners of a2 care though, because a2 isnt really a popular game. total annihilation was popular on a far bigger scale.

to run fleetops illegally you dont even need an a2 disk, its not about how easy it is, the only problem is that this site could never hold the info or a link to that info, so prospective players would never find out about it. even if current users agreed to pm prospective players with ways to do it, these prospective players must first post on the forums requesting this help in illegally running fo, and they are unlikely to do this as its a lot of effort. and if any person had money to set up a site and get it ranked high in google searches and the owners of a2 found out, they would probably whine about it to google and google would remove the search ranking for that site or something. basically the effort always rests on the prospective player, they always have to actively seek to break the law. something that could even make some people uncomfortable.

posted on July 16th, 2011, 9:24 pm

im afraid the prices of origional armada 2 game is judt going to get higher and higher, the best bet would be for someone who is in no way affiliated with this site to host a no CD version/standalone on places such as torrent/megaupload sites, this would require minimum work and proberbly the cheapest way to do it.

posted on July 16th, 2011, 9:27 pm

im afraid the prices of origional armada 2 game is judt going to get higher and higher, the best bet would be for someone who is in no way affiliated with this site to host a no CD version/standalone on places such as torrent/megaupload sites, this would require minimum work and proberbly the cheapest way to do it.

anyone could do this, problem is how would people know to go there? people discovering fleetops are gonna come here, to fleetops.net they arent gonna know about the illegal copy somewhere else. because fleetops.net cant have a link to this file. as i said, upon discovering how awesome fleetops is on this site (check out the description, watch a few replays etc) they now must actively go google search to illegally obtain a2/fo or post here asking how to get it. most people will just give up and go somewhere else

and yeah, the prices people want for a2 are stupid