Fleet Ops Roots 4.0 is now available.

posted on February 10th, 2024, 5:15 am

I noticed FO 3.2.7 as sub mod. Does the vanilla armada 2 3.2.7 mod work with 4.0.0?

The A2 Classic Mod does work with Fleet Ops 4.0 in general, pretty much out of the box actually*. For Roots though there is currently a glitch that causes crashes/freezes for about 2/3 of the A2 Classic Mod's single player missions. I did track down the issue and have fixed it but that will be in the next upload, probably in a couple of days, that also changes the movement autonomy system to something more useful (no more babysitting your ships). The A2 Classic Mod does have 800x600pixel shell menu assets (bitmap folder), so that looks ugly with Roots' 1200x900 menus, but it will work and someone could manually scale up the bitmap pictures.



*To get rid of the warning that says the mod is too old make sure you have AssetVersion=40000 in the info.ini for the A2 Classic Mod.

posted on February 10th, 2024, 6:56 am

Okay that new version is now online and I've tested it with the A2 Classic Mod as a sub mod and that runs fine, except for that shell menu size mismatch.

posted on February 10th, 2024, 6:36 pm

Hey @JanB -- very excited to try this out, but running into an EAccessViolation error upon completion of a mission/instant action loading screen. Any ideas? I'm running on an M2 Mac via Parallels w/ Windows 11 so there's a lot of layers of emulation going on; vanilla (GOG) Armada II and FO 3.2.7 both run fine (the latter after manually replacing Armada2.exe with the one from the GOG folder). Is there something different about yours vs. regular FO that would cause a crash? Have tried all the compatibility mode options, high DPI stuff, even some of the DX9 wrapper apps; nothing seems to get past it. Appreciate any advice you might have! Bug report attached.

[Edit] I should say, FO 3.2.7 loads fine by itself as a separate instance; when loading it via the Roots launcher, it also crashes.

exceptArmada2.txt

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posted on March 2nd, 2024, 7:59 pm

Roots installer fails silently on Win 11 canary not sure why

posted on March 3rd, 2024, 4:03 pm

Roots installer fails silently on Win 11 canary not sure why

At which step does it fail, and what happens exactly? Also do you know if it works correctly on regular Windows 11?

P.S. maybe it's a false positive from Windows Defender or your antivirus software, try disabling those.

posted on March 4th, 2024, 4:52 pm

It's something with canary build. I was able to install on Windows 11 22h2

posted on April 21st, 2024, 12:43 pm

Looks really cool. Once I figure out how to even launch regular fleet OPS over the GOG STA2 Install Ill let ya know.

posted on April 21st, 2024, 1:38 pm

Wait, why would you need to run anything "over" the A2 GOG installation? Fleet Operations is standalone, just follow the install instructions, don't try to copy it into the A2 folder, that will unnecessarily complicate things and cause issues.

posted on April 22nd, 2024, 10:48 am

Oppsie Dupsie Poopsie. Then Ya I did do that. So you think I should do a full uninstall of both and do clean installs in different locations?

posted on April 22nd, 2024, 10:50 am

Oppsie Dupsie Poopsie. Then Ya I did do that. So you think I should do a full uninstall of both and do clean installs in different locations?

Yeah, I would advise that. Also when you install Roots, install it in a third locations (in addition to one location for the original Armada 2 and another for normal Fleet Operations).

posted on April 23rd, 2024, 7:02 pm

Ah I c I Sea. Well I will get back to you that whence I figure out the " you need your STA2 Disc " Feature.

posted on July 26th, 2024, 11:14 pm

Version 5.0 is out now, it adds Species 8472 and 3 single player missions to the game!

https://www.moddb.com/mods/fleet-ops-ro ... s-roots-50

posted on August 12th, 2024, 11:21 am

I have just tried the mod, and while it is mostly good and fun to play, I have to admit some missions are way to difficult to finish, and the worst of them are the two bonus missions involving species 8472.

Now the first mission called Eviction I have barely managed to pass, and only after I managed to place 4 mothers around the gate, otherwise wave after wave of Borg ships would kill it off eventually. Still, it is doable, but requires tons of ships, stations and babysitting the gate.

However, when it comes to mission Foothold, it seems impossible to do anything to pass. I have tried several different strategies, along with placing as many Nexuses as I can around the area, or building lost of high tier ship including a single cube allowed, but the onslaught species 8472 do in that mission is just to much. On top of that, Sphere that needs to survive tend to die sooner or later. I guess this mission would be better if instead of Sphere I had a Cube at the start, and secondly if there was not a constant influx of new enemy fleets coming my way. They just don't stop attacking at all. I played many RTS games so far, and many different mods as well, on various difficulties, but even on easy this seems like hardcore brutal. I tried playing on medium first and had no problem with it on most of the missions, but these two I mentioned and especially Foothold are way to hard. Then I tried playing Foothold on easy difficulty and almost nothing changed. I really don't know what I have to do in order to pass this mission. I thought of rushing them, but they have way to many ships at the start, which means it would be a suicide mission.
So there should be at least some pause between those constant attacks, or maybe have them attack me with smaller fleet of less powerful ships first, because this is just annoying. What's worse, is they tend to go for builders as well way too much often so my defenses gets obliterated before I had a chance to build them. They also go around from the side and attack those research structures in the back leaving me without option to build more powerful vessels. And on top of it all even with upgraded weapons I can't take down quickly species 8472 fleets, before to many of them pile up and overrun me again. So that last mission definitely should be fixed, made easier, but the previous one as well I'd say.

Now I don't know what's the case with the rest of the missions except for the ones of Allies which were doable without much trouble, but if any of them is even half as difficult as the Foothold mission then it won't be much fun.

posted on August 12th, 2024, 12:39 pm

I have just tried the mod, and while it is mostly good and fun to play, I have to admit some missions are way to difficult to finish, and the worst of them are the two bonus missions involving species 8472.

Hmmm, surrounding the gate with Mothers in "Eviction" is the intended strategy and once you have that set up you can build up a fleet right behind the gate (so you can quickly use the Leviathans and Behemoths to intervene when there are too many Borg artillery ships incoming). Shouldn't be too difficult on "medium", let alone "easy" (where your ships take 20% less damage).

Foothold is definitely harder, but I've beaten it on "medium" multiple times. What worked for me on multiple playthroughs is to build a Nexus on each side of the starting Nexus, build an Adaptation Node to get weapons upgrades, then go for Support Nodes, more Nexii to the west and put 2-3 Detection Nodes behind each Nexus (Shield Projection becomes very powerful when you have many of them). The first ship you should build is a Cube for active defense on your flanks and from then on it's just a matter of adding more Support Nodes and building up your fleet. Having a Cube means you also have a Transmission Node which you can use when you're in a tight spot.

These bonus missions are harder than the regular missions, I'd say the hardest regular mission is "A Good Day to Die" in the Allied campaign, followed by "Overcome" and "Adapt" in the Free Borg campaign. So if you've beaten "A Good Day to Die" you should be good.

P.S. I did some tweaks between the 28 July and 1 August uploads of the mod, so if you still have the 28 July version then "Foothold" might be a bit harder than intended.

I've included a screenshot of my base during "Foothold".

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posted on August 12th, 2024, 10:30 pm

Hmmm, surrounding the gate with Mothers in "Eviction" is the intended strategy and once you have that set up you can build up a fleet right behind the gate (so you can quickly use the Leviathans and Behemoths to intervene when there are too many Borg artillery ships incoming). Shouldn't be too difficult on "medium", let alone "easy" (where your ships take 20% less damage).

Yes, that's about what I have done in my playthrough. I surrounded the gate with 4 Mothers, and kept calling ships through until I had a decent sized fleet of 10 to 15 ships to be as a backup. Then further back where were shipyards I have built another fleet, got around the map and leveled the Borg stations. So yeah, that mission only seemed hard at first, because I thought 2 mothers would be enough, but it really isn't. Plus I forgot to setup resource collector at the upper biomatter moon at first, which I did later so I could gather resources faster.

Foothold is definitely harder, but I've beaten it on "medium" multiple times. What worked for me on multiple playthroughs is to build a Nexus on each side of the starting Nexus, build an Adaptation Node to get weapons upgrades, then go for Support Nodes, more Nexii to the west and put 2-3 Detection Nodes behind each Nexus (Shield Projection becomes very powerful when you have many of them). The first ship you should build is a Cube for active defense on your flanks and from then on it's just a matter of adding more Support Nodes and building up your fleet. Having a Cube means you also have a Transmission Node which you can use when you're in a tight spot.

I managed to beat the mission eventually, but on easy difficulty. The trick I did was the same at first with building two Nexuses on the both sides, a couple more Detection nodes and quite a decent sized fleet of about 15 of 20 ships including Cube, Spheres, Diamonds and Dodecahedrons. So, when I had fleet that big I simply decided I had enough of 8472 attacks so I rushed their base and won. I left couple of Spheres and Diamonds at the base to be on lookout for oncoming ships.

These bonus missions are harder than the regular missions, I'd say the hardest regular mission is "A Good Day to Die" in the Allied campaign, followed by "Overcome" and "Adapt" in the Free Borg campaign. So if you've beaten "A Good Day to Die" you should be good.

Yes, I noticed they are rather though, as well as ''A Good Day to Die'', but that one I passed without much trouble. I built additional Starbases and cluster of turrets in front, as well as many high tier ships (mostly Negh'Vars and Qeh'Rals) as possible and held out without much losses. At first playthrough though I have tried to take my fleet out and destroy Dominion base, but that ended up mission impossible, since I haven't made it not even through half of map before having my fleet decimated. It was more of an experiment if I could do it. I did destroy part of their base though.
Haven't played ''Overcome'' and ''Adapt'' yet, so thanks for the heads up I guess.

P.S. I did some tweaks between the 28 July and 1 August uploads of the mod, so if you still have the 28 July version then "Foothold" might be a bit harder than intended.

Well, since I've downloaded the mod durign the last week I'd say I have a final version.

I've included a screenshot of my base during "Foothold".

Seen it, my base was smaller, but I think I might have had more shipyards, because I tried to focus on building up strong field asap, so I don't get overrun again. It was a good strategy in the end.


So anyway, I ran into another troublesome mission called ''The Enemy of my Enemy" which I played on easy difficulty. Well, if Foothold was difficult this ended up being even more, 'cause I don't recall how many times I tried it by now (must be dozen I believe). The thing here is that I can't seem to build a fleet soon enough before Free Borg gets overrun and Sphere 617 destroyed. I managed to clear the rear base one time, but still got overwhelmed at the end by forces from northern base. So I'm stuck on that mission now. Got any hints for it?