[Sandwich]

Actually, the "tactics" and "strategies" in FS and FS2 aren't. It's not a tactical nor a strategic ame - it's an action game, pure and simple.

But that doesn't mean that we can't project what kind of tactics and strategies the different races would use.

Oh, yeah - awesome job on the MOD so far, dude.

[Stalker]

Originally posted by Bishop
May I give some golden advices?

How many Karats? j/k... go for it.

I player Armada2 for many many years, and Freespace2 aswell. In Armada2 you attacked your enemies with 200+ ships while in Freespace2 you never saw more then 1 Orion, 1 Deimos and 6 squads of fighters in a battle.

It depends how you played Armada 2. Freespace 2 also wasn't a situation that lent itself to massive fleet confrontations, due to the way that the NTF was spread out, and also due to the way the Shivans invaded.

My advice:

-Make shipbuilding very slow. 3 minutes for a deimos, 6 minutes for an Orion and so on. People who played the Starwars mod and who wait 20 mins for a Super Stardestroyer to finish know what I mean.

I actually have a 5 MB Excel spreadsheet I used to balance everything's costs. While the only "shipbuilding" taking place will be Non-Combat ships and fighters/bombers, Capital Ships will still have "build times" appropriate to their speed and rarity within the FS universe.

-Allow a limited number of crew to be used. Would be unrealistic to build 20 Orions. Give enough crew for 4-5 at most maybe.

Crew will no longer be gathered by planets, as much as it will be by stations. Also, crew is more of a "background" resource now. Command Points will limit the deployment of larger ships, as well as your control over a map's Subspace Nodes.

-Make ship speed low, at this way you got enough time to send fast fighters in to try and intercept the enemy.

Ship speed is accurate to FS2. So... the Orion goes at speed 15 (sllooww), while a Perseus flies at speed 80. Etc.

-Make fighters function in squads (not solo fighters) as is done in the B5 and SW mods for Armada2. This gives a more overseeable situation.

Since I made (or in B5's case, assisted in) those mods, I will definetely be incorporating some form of fighter squadrons. Probably simple flights of 3 fighters each. We'll see...

-Make nebula's harvestable, this could result into a more freespace enviroment.

Dilithium moons were replaced by Nebulas... but that's an interesting idea. I might just make all Nebulas have resources. Hmmm...

-Allow upgrades of weapons. Fighter Subach -> Prometheus etc.

Fighters will have static weapons loadouts. This is to prevent everyone from upgrading to Prometheus S+Kaysers on every fighter/bomber. hehe.

-Armada2 has the ability to fuse ships. (Borg cubes and galaxy-class seperation). Use this! Allow 3 squads of the same fighter-type to fuse into one squadron to have a slight advantage.

This doesn't work that well in practice. Trust me on that...

-Armada2 has wormholes, Freespace2 has Jump Nodes. It could be wise to make Jump Nodes in the game, acting as the wormholes.

Actually, Wormholes will be totally removed. Ships will have Subspace drives for travel "in-system", and there will be Subspace Nodes... but Nodes will really be, essentially, shipyards.

-What if you make a messon bomb and allow freighters to fuse with them into a freighter hauling a messon bomb? (Like making a Galaxy class saucer section fuse with the stardrive section). You could then unfuse where you wish to leave the bomb and click detonate to create a large explosion. If you could make an AWACS class of ship it could cloak the bomb and itself, resulting into an unlucky Orion flying by, being blown to bits. Tactics are what the GTVA is well known for.

One of the early ideas for a GTA superweapon was a Deimos loaded with 3 meson bombs. Of course, that was back when the Shivans could build a Knossos portal as well. hehe. If Meson Bombs appear, it will be in an extremely specialized role.

-At all costs, avoid the situation of: build that type of ship to win easilily. The starwars mod allowed 100 fighters to be build per minute. The players simply builded fighters-only or fighters + light cruisers to quickly overwhelm the enemy, leaving tactics to nearly 0. Freespace is known for: pop up behind the planet and kill the Ravana or hide in the nebula and ambush them with a scisor formation.

...

Ouch. I actually designed the Star Wars half of the mod you're talking about. Suprisingly, the build 1000 fighters tactic wasn't all that effective, and oftentimes judicial use of hyperdrive meant the difference between winning and losing the game.

But, I digress.

I've modded (mainly 3d modeling and texturing) since my 13th and I know some amazing things can be done in Armada2. Try to exploit these things to the max.

Thanks for the advice. of it is actually already in the process of being implemented. If you know Armada 1/2 Mods, you've probably heard of Star Trek vs. Star Wars and/or Star Wars: Fleet Command. I was actually team lead on both those puppies If you have, you know I'm going for quality and realism as much as possible. I also love to push the engine to it's limits as well (/me  prays for Activision/MadDoc Software to release their grip on the A2 sourcecode)

[InfernoGod]

I once had a similar idea, only where you had to build an installation. Once you got the most important things up and running, you could add drydocks to build a fleet to defend your station from attack by the Shivans. Kind of like SimCity, if anybody has ever played that. I canned that, thinking that I couldn't do it. This looks much better than what I had in mind, though. Can't wait to play it!

[Bishop]

Those were my online experiences only

Though I always loved the feeling in game of: OMG I can build a Destroyer! Followed by me careful is if it was mother's china commanding it, trying not to get it wrecked

*Thinks back on the homeworld series*

[ShadowFox]

Originally posted by Sandwich
Actually, the "tactics" and "strategies" in FS and FS2 aren't. It's not a tactical nor a strategic ame - it's an action game, pure and simple.

Freespace 2 has great tactics. The player just has no input on them.

[Stalker]

If you want, feel free to join in on our forum discussion regarding map design and playstyle of Freespace: Armada...

http://www.sgnonline.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=29571

[Ace]

One question:
Where did you get the font for the "FS2 Armada" text in the main menu?

As far as I am aware the font for the FS2 text was custom and has never been released.

[Stalker]

Click Here and save to your Windows/fonts directory.

Enjoy.

[Drew]

great. now i have a use for the load of **** my brother has sitting in the CD folder

[Drew]

great. now i have a use for the load of **** my brother has sitting in the CD folder

[Havock]

I would suggest to give the shivans expensive units though, so they have quality instead of quantity.

would it be possible to have a random factor of a lucifer interfering when another player tries to capture a shivan vessel?

[StratComm]

I disagree; the shivans always have a ton of ships that they are seemingly willing to just throw away.  I don't know how they would be balanced, since numbers/strength are usually not good together when it comes to making everything fair, but the Shivans, to me, would be better suited as swarmers rather than the superweapon faction.

[Drew]

holy crap Stalker your a CBT fanboi tooOo



marauder sweeet

do you play dark age by any chance?

[Jetmech Jr.]

Originally posted by Havock
I would suggest to give the shivans expensive units though, so they have quality instead of quantity.

would it be possible to have a random factor of a lucifer interfering when another player tries to capture a shivan vessel?

But didnt the shivans have a huge crapload of ships, though?

[Viper1000]

I got an idea... you all should buy me a copy of Armada 2 so I can experience this.

[Fear]

i cant see how an rts for FS2 will be good... afterall rts is about balancing for every aspect and player in the game. while in FS2 my ship alone could destroy a cruiser.

my only solution to that is heroes, like in WARC3. they will be stronger carrying a larger amount of weapons. though they wont have special skills like magic and so.... but otherwise it will be nothing as freespace2 expect the shell(design) ofcurse.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Fear
while in FS2 my ship alone could destroy a cruiser.

Your ship was piloted by the almight Alpha 1

Put an AI fighter up against an AI cruiser and it becomes fairer

[Fear]

but agian i was an hero.... so i say put a hero in the game it could be cool and call it dan. will be funny to see me as a hero.

[Stalker]

Originally posted by Havock
I would suggest to give the shivans expensive units though, so they have quality instead of quantity.

would it be possible to have a random factor of a lucifer interfering when another player tries to capture a shivan vessel?

Shivan units will cost about the same as other races.. but will take slightly longer to build in some cases (like the lilith).

That Lucifer interference IS possible, but unfortunately the programmers turned off the "scavenger can fire" command, resulting in a Lucifer that would just sit there. Nice idea though.

Originally posted by StratComm
I disagree; the shivans always have a ton of ships that they are seemingly willing to just throw away. I don't know how they would be balanced, since numbers/strength are usually not good together when it comes to making everything fair, but the Shivans, to me, would be better suited as swarmers rather than the superweapon faction.

I'm trying to get away from the traditional "this faction has this strength, and this faction has this other strength, and everything fits together like a jigsaw puzzle". That's not how real combat works... sometimes the other guy just has the bigger gun, and you have to fight smarter in order to beat him. Each race has a style of play and certain characteristics that make them unique, but I'm not putting them in a strict mold.

The Shivans have slighty more expensive, powerful units (they're also SCARY). They can also use unstable jump nodes to their full effectiveness. They also kick everyone's butt in boarding actions.

The Terrans are pretty much, like always, the average. Their fighters and bombers are more powerful than most, and they have pretty balanced capships.

The Vasudans like speed. Everything they have is faster and longer ranged than almost anyone else's stuff. This comes at a cost to their armor and shields, as well as base defenses.

Originally posted by Drew
holy crap Stalker your a CBT fanboi tooOo

http://www.sgnonline.com/vb/avatar.php?userid=105&dateline=1082480168

marauder sweeet

do you play dark age by any chance?

Hehe... old school tabletop CBTer, actually. Some Dark Age, when my little brother-in-law wants a game. Gooo Jade Falcons!

Originally posted by Fear
i cant see how an rts for FS2 will be good... afterall rts is about balancing for every aspect and player in the game. while in FS2 my ship alone could destroy a cruiser.

my only solution to that is heroes, like in WARC3. they will be stronger carrying a larger amount of weapons. though they wont have special skills like magic and so.... but otherwise it will be nothing as freespace2 expect the shell(design) ofcurse.

Well, I used to have a saying "balance over realism". In many ways, this holds true still... but the FS universe has a certain character that I'm not going to change. Like the Star Wars universe, the FS universe is inherently balanced (minus Alpha 1 of course!), so it's easy to just stick it into really any genre.

Assuming the Single Player campaign portion of the mod gets done, you'll see "Hero Ships" like the GTD Aquitaine. Heros will be harder to kill/hit, but that's about it

Oh yeah, and to everyone out there... here's my "balance sheet" as it currently stands. Keep in mind that nothing here is final, and it's all in flux (due to formulas throughout the spreadsheet). It's by no means complete... but it gives you a feel for things:

Freespace: Armada Balance Sheet

[Fear]

So multiplayer wont have hereos? * the dan dream goes away*