Animated Ablative Armor

posted on July 11th, 2011, 4:59 pm

A few years ago (way back in 2004) I had a chat with some of modders who had been moding armada since the dawn of time (Major A Payne and Westworld) about animated ablative armor (as seen in voyager endgame). At the time I had just started modding and didn't have the ability to actually get this working at all. I made a few models and just left them in my todo folder. That is until today when I've just finished off the animations:



I've been thinking about it and I think with a bit of backfacecull setting trickery I could significantly reduce the polycount and also add the blue flashes that appear right before the armor appears. In the mean time enjoy the video.

Also I am looking for a better incursion class to use in this, the one I'm currently using is a very minorly modified one I made myself based on the stock A2 model. Could really use one that's up to fleet ops standard otherwise I'm going to have to spend time making one myself.

posted on July 11th, 2011, 5:11 pm

Looks very nice

Perhaps this one? Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations - Incursion Class (3.0.7)

posted on July 11th, 2011, 5:13 pm

You know it would be awesome to have that animation in the stock game. Nothing as powerful but a homage to it you know? Something that says the Federation is in experimental stage of armor technology. Would be interesting to see that on the Decent or an experimental warpin.

[Tyler]

posted on July 11th, 2011, 5:19 pm

Last edited by Tyler on July 11th, 2011, 5:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Love the transition... definatly FO worthy.

You know it would be awesome to have that animation in the stock game. Nothing as powerful but a homage to it you know? Something that says the Federation is in experimental stage of armor technology. Would be interesting to see that on the Decent or an experimental warpin.

I think have heard of possible plans to use a watered-down version of the armor a while back. Mixed-Tech, I think I read.

posted on July 11th, 2011, 5:54 pm

My thoughts are when this is released I'll add it as a random warpin incursion that is a test bed for experimental technology. Not sure entirely how I'll balance it or whether it will be balanceable (I'm not sure how fleetops handles damage when using a replace weapon). Have a lot of work to do to the animation and armor first to get it down from the roughly 1.6K polys the armor's using at the moment.

I think I might have it so the ship has no shields but deploying the armor disables all weapons with the exception of torpedoes and roughly doubles the hull strength and increases the hull repair rate.

posted on July 11th, 2011, 6:00 pm

Just curious, but why the interest in poly reduction?

posted on July 11th, 2011, 6:01 pm

heres another nice incursion class
Armada 2 Files - Error!

posted on July 11th, 2011, 6:05 pm

Seems to be a problem with either that link or the file it goes to...

Is the Incursion really the best ship for the armor? It's a stealth ship, practically Section 31 in starship form. Though it's supposedly based on the Defiant, so I guess it would have good battle capabilities.

posted on July 11th, 2011, 6:58 pm

Just curious, but why the interest in poly reduction?

Now I think about it it's just habit. It currenly stands at 2.5k polys all in all. Back in the old days when I started modding this was too high. Any suggestions to a good poly count for ships in FO?

Seems to be a problem with either that link or the file it goes to...

Is the Incursion really the best ship for the armor? It's a stealth ship, practically Section 31 in starship form. Though it's supposedly based on the Defiant, so I guess it would have good battle capabilities.

To be honest I never really considered it. The only reason I chose it really is it's a small but simplistic design so not so many armor panels to animate.

posted on July 11th, 2011, 7:30 pm

WOW! thats awesome!  I haven't seen something like that since FahreS's animated movable yard.

Dan 1025 made a good one at a2files. Incursion Class Retexture 1.1 Download, Star Trek: Armada 2 Ships

and there is a jetfreak retexture of it available at msfc(I think)

And Aad Morerman made one which is int his pack here. Armada 2 Files - Error!

However, the most up to date one is, i think, Majestics from MSFC.  It is pretty slick, however if you used it your mod would have to be msfc exclusive, and there is a waiting period before you can download.  


wow, I forgot to hit post .


Oh, and that poly count is fine.   especially for a rare ship.

posted on July 11th, 2011, 7:41 pm

its an issue with filefront some links are bad you just need to refresh them a few times and it'll work

posted on July 11th, 2011, 7:52 pm

Well, if you want, you can use an FO benchmark - basically all new FO models will range between 6 and 7k polies, and rarer ships go from 10k+ . Most older FO models are between 4-6k polies

posted on July 11th, 2011, 8:51 pm

Borg mixed tech item, anyone?
It doesn't have to be as strong as "Voyager armor", but the effect just screams "put me in the game!!!"

posted on July 11th, 2011, 8:53 pm

I think that is what's planned, at least that's what I think was said before. It's been a while since I've seen the armor brought up...

posted on July 12th, 2011, 5:02 pm

Ok New Update 



I've been thinking alot about a good way to implement the armor and here's what I've come up with:

Ship will be aquired through the experimental warpin.

Armor Retracted:
Ship is used to intercept long range vessels and packs a powerful punch. It will have two pulse phasers and a quantum torpedo launcher. It will also have the high density shield passive giving it an advantage against long range targets.

Armor Deployed:
Ship is now used in an anti-short-range-battleship role (i.e. good against things like the Negh'var). The pulse phasers cannot fire under the armor so only the quantums are available. The armor will essentially last slightly longer than the shields would have done. It will have the Ablative Armor Plate passive making it effective against short range ships.

I'm thinking for the veteran rank the holographic generator would be suitable, especially if I can find a way to give it some disadvantage (If I remember right most of it's features are hardcoded).


So thoughts and ideas?