Roots Mod 2.0 is out, including single player!

posted on April 15th, 2022, 3:15 am

Found what I remembered from years ago. Appears in the example.aip in stock A2:

// A goal will only be executed if ships with enough force have been committed to
// the goal. The amount of force committed to a goal is the total maximum shield
// strength of each craft multiplied by the attack_power of the craft. This
// force amount must exceed the same computation of enemy ships in the cell times the
// max_matching_force_ration below. For example, if the ratio is set to 0.8, then
// only goals in which the AI can match 80% of the enemy threat will be executed.
double max_matching_force_ratio = 0.8;

Maybe the devs confused their team with conflicting info here and there

posted on April 15th, 2022, 7:26 am

Found what I remembered from years ago. Appears in the example.aip in stock A2:

// A goal will only be executed if ships with enough force have been committed to
// the goal. The amount of force committed to a goal is the total maximum shield
// strength of each craft multiplied by the attack_power of the craft. This
// force amount must exceed the same computation of enemy ships in the cell times the
// max_matching_force_ration below. For example, if the ratio is set to 0.8, then
// only goals in which the AI can match 80% of the enemy threat will be executed.
double max_matching_force_ratio = 0.8;

Maybe the devs confused their team with conflicting info here and there

You probably already know all of this, but for other people reading: this comment from the example.aip file is actually correct (in contrast to many other comments in stock AIP files), at least partially, according to my testing, but it's about the way the AI chooses goals for fleets of ships (attack base, attack an enemy fleet, defend a base, etc...) on a strategic level, in that context a higher attackpower means a more attractive goal. This is separate from how the AI chooses individual targets on a tactical level (which doesn't have anything to do with AIP files) where a lower attackpower is preferred for the order of attacking ships within a fleet. Even the tactical AI may actually see high attackpower ships as more valuable targets but firing at low attackpower targets first seems to have been a design choice meant to kill as many enemy ships as quickly as possibly and give hero ships a better chance of survival. It may also be an artifact from Armada I where ships could last quite long in fights and the biggest ships could often successfully retreat from combat, meaning any shots fired on them were effectively wasted since repairing ships doesn't cost resources. In Armada II ships died much more easily, but maybe the programmers didn't have time to change the targeting programming or didn't understand why they should.

posted on April 15th, 2022, 4:22 pm

Appreciate the explanation. I played with the AI for several years and think I just got tunnel vision trying to make it play better that I closed my mind to other avenues with all those setting in the AIPs.

posted on April 17th, 2022, 10:05 pm

The game isnt detecting my rtx 3080, only sees my intigrated radeon graphics for some reason.

posted on April 18th, 2022, 8:20 am

The game isnt detecting my rtx 3080, only sees my intigrated radeon graphics for some reason.

Unfortunately this is Fleet Ops game engine stuff I can't fix, see this thread: https://www.fleetops.net/forums/technic ... -gpu-12752

If you're on a laptop this is the underlying issue (and if you're lucky your laptop has that BIOS setting they talk about): https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads ... t.3432872/

One long shot I can think of is copying the attached file (you have to change the extension back from .txt to .dll) into your game installation's \Data folder. It's the directx dll file from GOG.com Armada II version. It will shift the game menus to the top left corner of your screen but since the GOG programmers wrote it to make Armada II more compatible with modern operating systems and hardware there's a slight chance it makes the game detect your graphics card.

EDIT: I'm assuming other FO installations also don't recognize your graphics card, if they do then it's worth investigating further. My mod runs on top of this FO 4.0 build: https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21A ... ion=locate does that have the same problem?

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posted on April 20th, 2022, 12:26 pm

The final missions for each faction are a bit over the top difficult. Im not even sure they are possible with the exception of the battle of cardasia which is easy to win as long as you destroy the sensor relay but the dominion victory is life mission and especially borg over come mission are just insane. I can only build one cube but the enemy borg can have many. They spam ships like any other faction even though they are expensive and powerful and they swarm you from the start. Theres no way you can do that without cheating.

posted on April 20th, 2022, 1:34 pm

The final missions for each faction are a bit over the top difficult. Im not even sure they are possible with the exception of the battle of cardasia which is easy to win as long as you destroy the sensor relay but the dominion victory is life mission and especially borg over come mission are just insane. I can only build one cube but the enemy borg can have many. They spam ships like any other faction even though they are expensive and powerful and they swarm you from the start. Theres no way you can do that without cheating.

They're definitely beatable, I find "A Good Day to Die", "Operation Duet" (if you play as Federation), "Improvise", and "The Battle of Tyra" harder, and my APM is atrocious A Korean could probably use tactics like using ion storms for defense, having artillery ships force-fire at places where enemies are likely to pass, assimilate enemy battleships, place (and keep alive) low-movement-autonomy support ships right behind base defenses (ECM Optimizer works on weapons platforms and starbases), etc... but I can't and you don't need to to beat any mission in my mod.

What worked for me in "Victory is Life" was keeping an active patrol of battleships and dreadnoughts only, constantly sallying slightly outside of the base (and still within weapons range of friendly base defenses, remember that merely having a dreadnought near the front boosts the firing rate of all nearby friendly base defenses and ships by 20%) and calling them back once they start taking damage (just press "R" to make them retreat back to the base and get repaired), it helps to focus-fire enemy battleships, dreadnoughts and support ships. If you're playing as Dominion it also does wonders to call in those warp-in Attackships in the middle of a large enemy fleet attacking your base defenses (if you play as Cardassian the allied Dominion AI will do this for you), they will immediately be distracted by those bugs. This got me through the first couple of minutes. You then get some time to breathe because the enemy has lost many ships and needs time to rebuild. Meanwhile you're building berserkers and support ships (roughly at a 3-to-1 ratio). When you have about 60 ships (including your battleships and dreadnoughts) send them to flank the enemy along the very bottom or top edge of the map, attack the Klingon or Romulan base from the side and focus-fire their starbases, construction ships and shipyards (though without starbases and construction ships they won't build new ships even if they have shipyards left, but I guess using that can be considered a cheesy exploit). Focus only on one base, just like the hint says, you'll lose your fleet in the process but enemy production will be permanently reduced and your defense becomes easy while you build up the next fleet. Your allies will also continue to spam units and will push to the other side of the map if you cripple enemy production enough. Useful to know (if you didn't already) you can sell Tritanium for Dilithium at a starbase to keep your ship production rolling along.

In "Overcome" you have to actively help out with defense using your Cube and Spheres (also constantly sallying out and retreating), but again, you get enough leeway to build up support ships and berserkers and you can flank the enemy fleets along the edges of the map. I alsways set my Spheres to low special weapon autonomy so they won't use their tractor beam. The enemy starts out with two Cubes, but can only maintain one afterwards, it helps to take out one of these Cubes quickly, but that's not strictly necessary to hold out.

P.S. did you get the game to recognize your graphics card, or does it run "good enough" on the integrated GPU?

posted on April 20th, 2022, 4:38 pm

I finished a good day to die as klingons quite easily once i had destroyed the sensor station which i didnt immediately with my starting fleets. Once the cardasians join the fight is over and its pretty easy to breeze through.

For victory is life i found that being dominion mad eit difficult as the ram abilty which i intended to use to decimate most of their fleets and starbases just wasnt working. Id ram a deridex multiple times and all it would do is disable the engines so that tactic failed merserably. I then played as cardasian and immediately went on the offensive and fought my way towards the middle and destroyed a circle of turrets and once they were gone i pushed hard towards the federation base and destroyed multiple starbases before pulling back to the middle reinforcing and going in againt using the cardasian missiles to destroy turrets and damage stations. Though to speed it up i did cheat a little as i couldnt be bothered to wait for the resources.

So far though overcome has been too difficult. The borg come too hard too fast and i cant replace my ships fast enough and neither can my ally.

No i never managed to fix it and i didnt really bother trying as my ryzen 9 5900hx and its integrated radeon gpu can handle the game on max settings just fine without any issues. There are some minor slow downs when multiple massive fleets meets up but its not a big enough deal for me to faf about with it.

These missions were very enjoyable, well done. Hope you decide to add more.

posted on April 20th, 2022, 5:22 pm

I finished a good day to die as klingons quite easily once i had destroyed the sensor station which i didnt immediately with my starting fleets. Once the cardasians join the fight is over and its pretty easy to breeze through.

Wait, that's "The Battle of Cardassia", where the trick is indeed to take out that relay as fast as possible, "A Good Day to Die" is that Klingon mission where you have to defend for half an hour against Breen and Jem'Hadar ships, without using save games I die on about 50% of my playthroughs if I don't exploit my knowledge of the mission's design and triggers.

For victory is life i found that being dominion mad eit difficult as the ram abilty which i intended to use to decimate most of their fleets and starbases just wasnt working. Id ram a deridex multiple times and all it would do is disable the engines so that tactic failed merserably. I then played as cardasian and immediately went on the offensive and fought my way towards the middle and destroyed a circle of turrets and once they were gone i pushed hard towards the federation base and destroyed multiple starbases before pulling back to the middle reinforcing and going in againt using the cardasian missiles to destroy turrets and damage stations. Though to speed it up i did cheat a little as i couldnt be bothered to wait for the resources.

So far though overcome has been too difficult. The borg come too hard too fast and i cant replace my ships fast enough and neither can my ally.

Yep, using Cardassian Pinpoint Missiles against turrets works wonders because it's a guaranteed kill every time, but in the end you have to flank the enemy to win, I'm amazed you got as far as you did by going through the middle. The base defenses of you and your allies can tear through enemy fleets much more efficiently than your own fleet can, so let them handle the bulk of the enemies while you flank

For "Overcome" you have to actively defend throughout the mission but Borg are suited to defense anyway: your turrets are cheap, your starbases can recharge friendly shields (I use them to recharge the shields of the southern Federation starbase), you have the Regeneration Wave superweapon, and the mission gives you a Cube from the start. Just don't send your fleet down the middle where it will get murdered by enemy Borg. There are two wormholes quite close to your base that will lead to just outside the enemy base, they're impossible to miss as soon as you look for a way around the stream of enemy ships in the middle.

No i never managed to fix it and i didnt really bother trying as my ryzen 9 5900hx and its integrated radeon gpu can handle the game on max settings just fine without any issues. There are some minor slow downs when multiple massive fleets meets up but its not a big enough deal for me to faf about with it.

Ah, that's a relief (that it still runs, I mean). I barely notice FPS differences in this game even when my GPU is mining ethereum in the background, so I had a suspicion modern GPUs aren't a bottleneck for this game (the memory limit and it being single threaded probably are), but I'm glad to see that confirmed and that it runs on an APU.

These missions were very enjoyable, well done. Hope you decide to add more.

Thanks! Which are your favorite(s)?

For now I'm taking a break from modding, but a new mission pack in the future isn't entirely outside the realm of possibilities now that I'm satisfied with the rest of the mod and already know how to make missions. Of course feel free to use my mission scripts (in the Data/missions folder) for inspiration for your own missions.

posted on April 22nd, 2022, 1:22 am

I didnt have too much problem on a good day to die, iv done that twice now and beat it both times. I just built turrets and kept a fleet on top of them and replaced the turrets that were destroyed as quickly as possible. Gets a bit sketchy in the last few mins though.

Iv noticed theres a major pathing bug in the battle of cardasia where when you send your fleets to destroy the sensor station the fleets dont want to go between those blue nebulas they want to go all the way around even as you destroy everything in the entry and it screws everything up when this happens as the entire fleet runs away from where yours trying to punch a hole and gets hanmmered by the swarms of dominion ships.

I managed to finish overcome by spamming turrets as you said and just weathering the storm of borg ships and spamming dodecahedrones and sending them through the wormhole to attack the borg base, i then discovered that i could just do the whole thing with a cube and a couple of diamonds and just use the diamonds special to make the cube invulnerable and then move the diamonds back while the cube destroyed everything and rinse and repeat.

Adapt is one of my favourites although i hated that purple nebula right in front of the base. i also liked all the finish missions for all factions although the pathing bug in the battle of cardasia ruins that one a bit.

I might look into doing my own missions if it isnt too complicated.

posted on April 22nd, 2022, 11:57 am

Iv noticed theres a major pathing bug in the battle of cardasia where when you send your fleets to destroy the sensor station the fleets dont want to go between those blue nebulas they want to go all the way around even as you destroy everything in the entry and it screws everything up when this happens as the entire fleet runs away from where yours trying to punch a hole and gets hanmmered by the swarms of dominion ships.

Yeah, this happened for me as well, I had to destroy the Cloning Facility guarding the entrance to get my ships to go through it (manually targeting the Cloning Facility also makes your fleet converge on it). I don't know what causes this, pathing is not something I set using the map editor or the mission scripts, pathing issues just seem to pop up out of nowhere on some maps.

I managed to finish overcome by spamming turrets as you said and just weathering the storm of borg ships and spamming dodecahedrones and sending them through the wormhole to attack the borg base, i then discovered that i could just do the whole thing with a cube and a couple of diamonds and just use the diamonds special to make the cube invulnerable and then move the diamonds back while the cube destroyed everything and rinse and repeat.

Haha, the shield remodulation strategy is a fun idea, I didn't expect that to work, I thought the enemy would just rip through your diamonds.

posted on April 23rd, 2022, 6:22 am

As for gameplay, I do have one big concern and that's that the difference between scout vision/artillery ship range and station weapon range is so incredibly small, that artillery ships constantly fly into station range and die.

Adapt is one of my favourites although i hated that purple nebula right in front of the base. i also liked all the finish missions for all factions although the pathing bug in the battle of cardasia ruins that one a bit.

I'm gathering suggestions such as these (also the pathing issue in "The Battle of Cardassia", which there's a small chance it might be fixed by replacing the blue nebulas with asteroid fields) and on moddb one player found a game-breaking (and fixable) bug. There's a good chance I'll release a version 2.1 next week.

posted on April 26th, 2022, 12:29 am

As for gameplay, I do have one big concern and that's that the difference between scout vision/artillery ship range and station weapon range is so incredibly small, that artillery ships constantly fly into station range and die.

Adapt is one of my favourites although i hated that purple nebula right in front of the base. i also liked all the finish missions for all factions although the pathing bug in the battle of cardasia ruins that one a bit.

I'm gathering suggestions such as these (also the pathing issue in "The Battle of Cardassia", which there's a small chance it might be fixed by replacing the blue nebulas with asteroid fields) and on moddb one player found a game-breaking (and fixable) bug. There's a good chance I'll release a version 2.1 next week.

Nice, looking forward to the update.

posted on April 26th, 2022, 10:15 am

Nice, looking forward to the update.

Thanks! I'll probably drop it tomorrow.

Btw, I can't seem to reproduce that pathing issue in "The Battle of Cardassia". My ships will avoid the blue nebulas initially, so you can't sneak-attack the relay (which is by design), but once I take out the Dominion starbase between those nebulas my ships, even the biggest Romulan warbirds, will happily go through the gap and attack the relay station. But on "Adapt" I will do something about that purple nebula, especially because artillery ships can sometimes, somehow, fire at you from inside of the nebula.

posted on April 27th, 2022, 2:07 pm

Version 2.1 is now available for download here: https://www.moddb.com/mods/fleet-ops-ro ... -roots-21/

It fixes two bugs, one where the "Premonition" bonus mission would lock up, the other where during long instant action games the AI would eventually stop building ships and stations.

I removed the purple nebulas in front of the player's base in "Adapt". In "The Battle of Cardassia" the Dominion gets an extra shipyard because the mission was too easy IMO if you rushed the Jamming Facility. I also reduced the weapon and sensor ranges of stations by 50, there's really not much else I can do for the artillery range problem because there's no way to get artillery weapons to not target the center of a target and making a special (hidden) artillery weapon just to attack starbases is not possible because artillery weapons do not obey the validtarget command. Increasing the range of artillery weapons, and sensor range of scouts to make sure they can still act as spotters, creates a lot of balancing issues (for example turrets becoming pretty much useless), and that (IMO) outweigh the relatively minor problem of a human player having to be careful when they attack a starbase with artillery ships.