[T-Man]

I recently got back in touch with a mod I followed years back called 'Fleet Operations', for an old Star Trek RTS Game called 'Armada II' (AII wasn't an amazing game, but still fun for the occasional run). This mod is a total conversion that adds a ton of new ideas and redesigns practically everything to an extent that actually scares me a little (seriously, here is a pic of the vanilla game's graphics... now go look at the mod... yes those models on the front page are in-game, same engine ). Some of their team even managed to bolt scripting into the game for adding new content.

I thought I might plug it here partly in case any Trek fans or owners of the game were around (I’d heartily recommend this mod; it installs and runs separate to the original to boot so no sacrificing the vanilla either), but I mention it mainly because I thought RTS and fleet designing enthusiasts might be interested in the design ethos of the faction trees. The mod makers are trying to give each and every unit in each faction strengths and weaknesses across the whole tech tree; no unit is made obsolete by another and no one unit can be spammed easily, so players need to mix their fleets and fight a rock-paper-scissors game with the enemy. Some nice inspiration perhaps?

Buy yeah, hope it's of interest to people, even if just as a cool website to visit when bored. Do think this is probably one of the best non-FS mods I’ve seen on the net, so definitely worth a mention and drop-in regardless.

[/shameless fan plug]

[An4ximandros]

Romulus stands and falls for T-Man's post!

I came across it a long time ago. installed it a month or so back. It is indeed fantastic work, though it is not technically the same engine. They use a code injector in order to get new mechanics in.
It's quite beautiful. I love the Romulans, the whole refit for specializations and having to micro your ships to use them at their best makes the battles quite interesting. Goodness help you if you let the Borg start pumping cubes in game. THERE WILL BE DRONES!

[Sto Reference]Also apparently they were planning on adding Iconians some time, since they are the spawn of evil itself and source of every Star Trek plot ever.[/Sto reference]

[TrashMan]

Is this a multiplayer only mode, or can you play the singleplayer campaign too?

Speaking of which, I hate the rock-paper-scissors system, where the damage and stuff is artificially boosted against a certain enemy...just because.

[Colonol Dekker]

I still have this somewhere, the vanilla is the one with 8472 right?

[An4ximandros]

Aye, and Cardassians. The mod only has Feds, Roms, Klinks, Borg & Dominion so far. (Still missing 3 playables, the mini and most pseudo factions)

[Spoon]

I looooved Armada 1 back in the day but found 2 super lacking and never bought it because the demo put me off from it. This looks like a pretty amazing modding job though!

E: http://www.fleetops.net/images/Gallery/FleetOpsV326/1%20%282%29.png what the heck is that ship?

[General Battuta]

I was exactly the same. If I still had a copy of Armada 2 I'd kill to play a salvaged version of it - it was ambitious but totally dire.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Was Armada 2 the one where, after the battle, you could review a history of every single ship you built? "On stardate foo, the USS Avenger was constructed. On stardate bar, it participated in the Battle of Planet X. On stardate baz, it was destroyed by Borg Cube #573 in orbit around Planet Y." I thought that was an insanely cool feature, and I wish it had been present in a more interesting game.

[An4ximandros]

Activision no longer makes copies of the game (They have no ST rights). The devs said they don't care how you get it, just do not give any links or discuss it in the forums. I had a copy thankfully, but others won't be so lucky... Apparently the devs almost managed to get the engine to go open source, but there was a last minute fallout with one of the many companies involved. I think it was Paramount?
Anyway, there has been mentions around the forums about a possible new engine, made from scratch, but it's a long ways off.

Ralwood: Yes, both the first and second games had that feature.

Spoon: Those are two of the three Fed support ships, they have abilities that boost your other ships or protect them (Such as PD phasers)

[TrashMan]

So no singleplayer...but skirmish does work I guess.

Hmmm.....

[TrashMan]

Turns out there are singleplayer mods for both Armada 1 and Armada 2 campaigns.

Yeesh, I don't like the original balance at all. Time to MOD.

[T-Man]

*Cue Thread Necromancy* A little update in light of some interesting news I thought some who posted might like. In short the FO Team decided AII has reached it's limits in terms of modding, and so have found some local game developers, added them to the team, and are making their own engine for their mod (with good progress by the sounds of it *taps wooden desk*).

Since Paramount are fine with Star Trek non-profit projects, this means they should be able (as they plan) to have the the next version of FO not require Armada II to run and be a free download (the main reason I'm updating; thought some people would want to hear that).

[TrashMan]

Thank you T-Man.
Now I find myself wasting the entire day modding this s***.

Damn you to hell.