MOD: STA2 Upgrade Project 2014 - A stock A2 mod in FO

posted on March 28th, 2014, 12:04 am

You missed the Titan and Miranda, but otherwise correct.
The new thing is not among the ships. Take a look at the ship specials.

posted on March 28th, 2014, 2:21 am

I see them now TrashMan. Had to squint pretty hard. So I completed the redo of all the wireframes minus the 8472 ones. Aad has given permission to use them in the mod so I'll zip them up and release a patch. I'd like to thank you, Xanto and Yochenhsieh for the instruction in how to do them.

I also want to change the hitchance values of all the ships weapons. Why should a little scout be as easy to hit as a battleship? They won't be severe changes, but will spread them out a tad. Let me get these value changes done and I'll hopefully post it all tomorrow nite.

@SquireJames: I see what you mean now. They are all group 1 so that gets shown on screen? Makes sense. I never noticed that before.

posted on March 28th, 2014, 7:17 am

So I take it you won't be needing me to send you the wireframes?

posted on March 28th, 2014, 2:39 pm

I'm sorry TrashMan. When I got in after work last nite I just sat down and banged them all out and sent them to Aad for permission. Didn't think about it so I'm sorry. At least you can use all the others I did.

I still don't understand what the little symbol is next to each ship in the map in your picture? I tried in the editor and placed about 15 ships and then selected them all with the mouse, but I get no symbol like that? Do you have to assign them to a group to get that or is it something you added in?

I'll actually release the new wireframes, a new borg phaser sound and redone warp speed physics files tonite when I get home. I'll work on the weapon hitchance modding this weekend as it will take a little bit of time with all the files I'll have to go through

posted on March 28th, 2014, 6:07 pm

yh that icon is for groups or fleets how ever you want to name it

posted on March 29th, 2014, 1:02 am

Thanks Blade. I had never assigned to groups before so didn't realize that.

I posted patch v1.2 in the first post so grab it if you're interested.

posted on March 29th, 2014, 1:54 am

downloading and trying now. Gonna kick some spoonhead arse!!!

posted on March 29th, 2014, 3:35 pm

@rifraf

Highlight a bunch of ships and press ctrl + 1, then another group of ships and ctrl 2 etc. Then when you want to send that fleet somewhere, just hit 1, 2, 3, whatever the fleet is designated and you can send them anywhere, issue orders etc, without needing to select them.

It's particularly useful if you have a group of ships on search and destroy, find something sizeable and need to summon all of them, press the fleet number and it automatically selects all ships in that fleet.

Was also particularly useful in the original when you could only have 16 ship fleets. You could build up several fleets of 16 ships, give each a number, then send them to a destination with just a few key presses/clicks.



Also wondering what tweaks you've done to the AI. I'm finding the ships to be.. lets call them challenged..? They're incredibly slow to respond to commands, like move away from the starbase blasting you.. and consistently target the least threatening enemy, ie if there's a sensor array and a torpedo turret, they attack the sensory array. If there's a scout and a battleship, they target the scout. If there's a fleet of ships, they work their way up from least dangerous to most dangerous target.

It's been a while since I've played the original game, so I can't remember if this is normal behaviour or not, but it's been bugging the hell out of me this time through.

posted on March 29th, 2014, 5:37 pm

Thanks for the info EvilGenius. I'm no serious strategy game player so never did that.

As to the AI, I am still playing with it so the behavior could be part me, but most is how it was in stock. If they are slow to engage you then that could be because I've altered the min and max attack-force settings so it won't engage you until it has the minimum number of ships available. Also, I have my min-matching-force-ratio at 89% so it won't attack you unless it can match 89% or more of your force. There seems to be a lot of conjecture as to whether the second part works or not, but I left it in.

As to the AI attacking the enemy in what order that has to do with the attackpower and intrinsicvalue settings assigned to each ship/station from stock. Things of tactical value like ships, bases and turrets that have weapons on them should have an attackpower assigned to it and they project a threat on the map that the AI uses for assessment. My value is 1.0 for all of those.

Now things of strategic value like shipyards, mining and research stations have no attackpower as they have no weapons instead they have intrinsicvalue which I've assigned as 1.0. The sensor is .05 by the way. The game decides where to attack based on intrinsicvalue and what to attack once there by attackpower. It's imperfect to say the least. Another factor will be which ship comes into sensor range first.

You can read here for an explanation of this: http://guide.fleetops.net/guide/modding ... insicValue

So it attacked the sensor station first because it could without risk and win. The turret has weapons the sensor doesn't. And smaller ships have less health than larger ones and based on how attackpower is calculated -current hitpoints/attackpower- smaller (weaker) ships will be attacked before larger (stronger) ships. This was stupid in stock and I am modding it, but just haven't gotten that far.

Something else is that all ships have basically a 75% hitchance for phasers, 50% for photons and 30% for pulses so a tiny scout and a huge battleship will each be hit 75%, 50% and 30% of the time for each respective weapon. Again, illogical and I am also modding this to make smaller ships have a little less chance of being hit than the next larger size/class. I'm probably going to increase the shot delays as well because if I make ships hit more accurately the action will go by pretty quickly so I'll slow the shots down some to compensate. I'll be releasing these edits in another patch.

posted on March 30th, 2014, 3:18 am

Fair enough. Just get the feeling the ships are a little more clumsy then I remember.



I've just got up to the same point in the klingon mission again, the unknown prize. I still can't get through the wormhole

I have your mod and Blade/Apoclaydon's classic version mods installed and the same thing happens in both.


Is there a way to tell the game I've beat the mission even though I haven't? Can't think how else to get past this spot.

posted on March 30th, 2014, 5:40 am

Gorandius1256 posted this on page 1:

"for those who wish to play past this(a) mission, just hit 'Enter' and type 'kobayashimaru' and hit 'enter' again in order to skip to the next mission."

I'm attempting to mod the hitchance values of weapons, but finding that it is a little more tricky than I first thought because I don't want to screw up the dynamics of the single player missions. As it is now for hitchance (stock) pulse turrets have 100%, torp turrets have 50% and the Starbases have 90%. For ships it's basically 75% for phasers, 50% for photons and 30% for pulses.

Torps really should have the highest hitchance as they track. Phasers should be next with 80%-90% and pulses should of course be last at probably 50%-75% as they don't track. I'd like to leave Starbases with the best hitchance just to be able to reasonably defend themselves. Pulse turrets really shouldn't be 100% as a ball of energy can't track a target and torp turrets should do better than 50% chance to hit though it's easy to see why they chose these values from a game play view. Any suggestions from anyone?

I don't want to change the whole game dynamics, but really want to mod these in a way now that it enhances the instant action and single player aspects as opposed to waiting to do a balance mod at the end. As everyone's aware a lot of the ships are pretty fragile so upping the hitchance would just exacerbate this. I'm thinking of increasing the shot delay to compensate which will make the battles last a little longer. I'll include backups in case people don't like whatever changes I make.

Everything I changed will be listed in the change log so those who've already modded their game won't want to just drop in the patch and loose it all.

posted on March 30th, 2014, 12:22 pm

Oh of course.. I forgot all about the cheat codes.. Thanks for that.

posted on March 31st, 2014, 6:03 pm

Armada 1 possible in FO?

Thanks!

posted on April 1st, 2014, 4:57 am

@emmett: I don't believe Armada 1 can be ported over as has been done with Armada 2. You should check out the Super Classic Mod by Cabal here on this site. It's game play inspired by Armada 1 utilizing the FO assets.

I posted a new update download in the first post. It should make the ships less glass fragile (due to crew loss) and battles last longer. Hope you like.

posted on April 1st, 2014, 10:07 am

I'd say phasers should be the most accurate.
Lightspeed weapons and all that jazz.
Torpedos do track, but they aren't that fast or nimble, so you might be able to dodge them.
Pulse phasers would technicly be the least accurate.


But I don't really recall anyone missing in ST.