Fleet Operations: Tactical Maneuvers

posted on May 10th, 2024, 3:25 pm

We've had cases of antiviruses falsely detecting Fleet Ops as malware in the past, because of the way it uses dlls. To my knowledge there should be nothing wrong with the folder I sent, but I'm curious if your antivirus pointed to a specific file?

TM is not Roots, it simply shares the executable and dlls that Jan B has been working on.

posted on May 13th, 2024, 6:03 am

Malwarebytes found it at the main exe of the mod.

Attachments

fleetops-malware.jpg (109.94 KiB) Viewed 602 times

posted on May 16th, 2024, 11:37 am

So with regard to roots and fleet Operations, why was ship warp and map depth pretty much removed from the game?

I am curious as to the specific coding challenge of these issues or philosophy of why they weren't included in the mods.

posted on May 17th, 2024, 12:21 am

So with regard to roots and fleet Operations, why was ship warp and map depth pretty much removed from the game?

I am curious as to the specific coding challenge of these issues or philosophy of why they weren't included in the mods.

From the FAQ section under the Guide tab above:
http://guide.fleetops.net/guide/faq/gam ... d-features

posted on May 17th, 2024, 11:20 am

Hrmmm. Interesting. Thought that woulda changed by this year.

Ill look into the full conversion mod for Sins of a Solar Empire.

posted on May 18th, 2024, 6:00 pm

Short answer:

gameplay.



Long answer:

I don't think anything was changed to disable warp. Some ships in the original A2 didn't have warp and that was set in their physics odf files, Fleet Ops and Roots just expanded that to all ships, but the A2 Classic Mod has warp and that works just fine with the Fleet Ops and Roots engines. Warp was a pain because you could always use it to just jump your fleet into the middle of an enemy base, take out an important target and jump out again, that kinda ruined the gameplay a lot in the original A2: base defenses or ambushes were pretty much useless.

Maps with depth had a similar problem (they're disabled through a setting in RTS_CFG.h, and can still be enabled). Base defenses and map objects don't work well with them, you would need more of a homeworld-style game engine, with mobile bases (and no base defenses) and very slow gameplay so the depth stuff doesn't take up the majority of the player's attention. Problem is Star Trek canonically has immobile starbases, shipyards, and research stations, and in the shows defense works out because weapon ranges are very long, but the game wouldn't work well if weapons ranges were longer than the player's field of view on the screen and map depth so deep that you can't visually see enemy ships that move below or above your base to get behind it.

posted on May 19th, 2024, 10:31 am

Ya, i guess thats understandable for the overall engine/ base coding for A2 for the year.


But .. damm guys. I personally would pay $100 USD for a star trek aramda 3 with the fleet OPS/Roots models and tech trees but with fixed ( no curving warp)


Guess Ill just pipe that away into the fever dream delusion box.

posted on June 3rd, 2024, 12:07 am

Version 5.0.0 has finally released! As always, it can be found at https://www.moddb.com/mods/fleet-operat ... -maneuvers

This is the first version to use its own installer, which checks to make sure you own either an Armada 2 CD or the GOG version of A2. As long as you have one of those, you can install the whole thing from the installer.

There have been some concerns about antivirus programs flagging the mod, which is a false positive. Sometimes this happens because of the way that extra code is injected into the original A2 executable, and isn't real malware. Still, please let me know if you encounter this so I can track it and maybe someday resolve the issue.

Version 5 uses a modified version of the unfinished Fleet Operations V4 engine, which comes with a lot of new features. I'm looking forward to seeing what you all think!

Version 5.0.0 changelog

V4 engine changes
-all menu sizes increased
-station construction snaps to a grid
-ships using transporters do not stop transporting when ending a move or given a Stop command
-special weapon buttons show cooldowns
-construction ships and yards show what they are building next
-yards show a line to their rally point
-ships with a repair order show a line on the minimap to their destination yard
-construction ships with weapons (Chor) can fire while building
-ship maneuvering improvements while set to Medium movement autonomy
-shipyard build queues will cancel unstarted ships if their tech requirement is gone
-ship construction buttons do not turn red when a ship cap is met

Bugfixes
-fixed Assimilate avatar being unable to build Spheres
-fixed Diamond with double Diamond modules being unable to remodulate
-fixed crash when AT Charges fires
-fixed crash when using Conquest Mode on Officer T-15 Alpha/Romulan tech
-fixed Rank 1 Siege Cruiser with Fed Tech having 2 torpedo launchers during Guided Quantum Torps
-fixed Federation Outpost beam weapon dealing incorrect damage
-fixed Vutpa Concussion Volley damage too low

Balance
-LOTS of station footprint changes
-Fast Tracking Computers adds damage bonus vs low Defense
-Ablative Armor Plating adds resistance vs low Offense
-FTC and AAP gain penalties vs Long range (again)
-Projectile weapons lose damage bonus vs low Defense
-Conduction Matrix Defense increased to 140 at all levels (formerly 100/120/140)
-Conduction Matrix can now queue up vinculums during upgrade
-Pyramid build cost greatly increased
-Dominion yards have reduced build cost, increased upgrade cost
-A-10 Destroyer (Bug) has slightly reduced build cost
-S-2 Escort Cruiser has slightly increased build cost
-B-8 Warfrigate Veteran passive changed to Shield Mitigation: takes reduced damage from low Offense
-Generix Spectre refit gains AAP, loses Refractive Shielding

Progress
Added many mixed-tech ship variants
Added new ship/weapon textures by Drayzon

posted on June 4th, 2024, 5:11 pm

I had a quick look and the virus scanner no longer worked with 5.0.0 I have noticed the following points so far:

1. Resolution is not applied correctly.

On my monitor (3840x2160, secondary monitor) TM is displayed too ‘large’ in windowed mode. This means that, for example, 1920x1200 utilises almost the entire height of the display. So I cannot select 25xx x 16xx as usual, because then the window simply becomes much larger than the display.

With 4.3.7 I have not noticed any problems here.

2. Grid system

Basically very cool, BUT the grid still shows green at the edge of the playing area, but then refuses to construct the building. And e.g. turrets require too much grid space during construction (the grid after construction is significantly smaller).

3. Newton-class repair ships

The training for the shield repair is ‘secret’, i.e. you cannot see the status of the upgrade.

posted on June 4th, 2024, 6:48 pm

Thanks for the info.

Which turret is having the footprint issue? is it a Fed platform, or one of the others?

I'll get that fix for the Newton.

For the resolution, is your computer scaling the Fleet Ops output? It sounds like something that would happen if the previous version was too small and you deliberately set it to scale bigger. Or maybe the computer itself started to do this. I'll talk to Jan_B since he did the menu scaling, but I didn't think it applied to in-game.

posted on June 5th, 2024, 5:53 am

Abotu the turrets: Yes, the fed turret. The footprint when building is too big.

//

When I use my default resolution (2560x1600) for the game in windowed mode, it looks like the attached pictures. Something is scaled completely wrong. There is no problem with TM 4.3.7 (and predecessors).

Could it be that the resolution is being recognised incorrectly? My setup:

1st display: 2560x1600 (notebook)
2nd display: 3840x2160 (Set as the main display in Windows; TM is displayed and used here)

I can currently only use TM 5.0.0 in windowed mode if I set a correspondingly smaller resolution in TM - e.g. 1920x1080.

Attachments

TM 5.0.0 with 2560x1600 px

tm-5-0-0.jpg (453.62 KiB) Viewed 329 times

TM 4.3.7 with 2560x1600 px

tm-4-3-7.jpg (449.83 KiB) Viewed 329 times

Launcher of both versions side by side

tm-launcher.jpg (572.54 KiB) Viewed 329 times

posted on June 5th, 2024, 3:53 pm

The menu part is intentional: Jan_B got into the Fleet Ops executable and made changes to scale up all of the menus because they were too small on large monitors. It really seems that your computer is scaling them up extra.

The part where the in-game resolution is bigger is weird though, that's what we'll be looking into.

posted on June 5th, 2024, 4:04 pm

As I said, this phenomenon ONLY occurs with the new 5.0.0. When I start 4.3.7 (or another older version), the window also opens in exactly the right resolution/size.

The new version must therefore somehow trigger this behaviour.

posted on June 5th, 2024, 4:09 pm

Right, I'm saying that TM V5 uses a totally different executable. It's a brand new program compared to 4.3.7 so the issue wouldn't be seen there. However, I'm also not going back to the old program so we need to figure out a solution with the new one. It'll take us a few days to check it out.

posted on June 6th, 2024, 8:08 pm

Abotu the turrets: Yes, the fed turret. The footprint when building is too big.

//

When I use my default resolution (2560x1600) for the game in windowed mode, it looks like the attached pictures. Something is scaled completely wrong. There is no problem with TM 4.3.7 (and predecessors).

Could it be that the resolution is being recognised incorrectly? My setup:

1st display: 2560x1600 (notebook)
2nd display: 3840x2160 (Set as the main display in Windows; TM is displayed and used here)

I can currently only use TM 5.0.0 in windowed mode if I set a correspondingly smaller resolution in TM - e.g. 1920x1080.

Hmmm, this is weird, does running in fullscreen mode fix it? The menus should only be 50% larger than before, on your screenshot they seem to be scaled up even more. I have never tested using a second monitor but I know additional scaling can normally happen in one of two circumstances:

1) it's the first time you run the game and Windows hasn't determined the scaling of the program yet, this will resolve once you run the game a second time (maybe you have to run it once in fullscreen mode though)

2) the program is forced to always scale up by the factor you have set for Windows desktop scaling (for example 125%), you can get rid of this by changing the DPI settings (right-click the desktop icon -> properties -> compatibility -> change high DPI settings -> high DPI scaling override -> override by application.