Armada I vs Armada II Gameplay/Questions

[Rifraf]

I was reading some old threads over at AFC and kept seeing people state that A1 was more challenging. I know a lot of people liked it better and having only played A1 once and not remembering much about it even I know A2 leaves a lot to be desired.

So I'm curious why people think it's better/more challenging? Was it the AI? The build list order? The game play mechanics? All of the above?

Things I recall are that you only had 4 races with a small number of ships each, only harvested dilithium, there was no colonizing, and you build officer quarters at the starbase. Did you accumulate crew or was it all officer based?

I was thinking for a mod in A2 to get rid of colonizing and instead use one of the research stations to build pods to get more crew similar to the idea of officer quarters. Does anyone recall if there were costs to build officer quarters?

 

[CABAL]

You did gain crew in A1 and there was a cost to build new officer quarters. You also can't recreate the officer quarters thing in A2 since it has no way to increment the officer cap. The FO4 loader might have something, though.

I think that part of what made A1 more challenging was the build costs and build times. Given time, you could build a huge pure-Sovereign fleet, but it was very difficult to do. Costs in A2 were so low compared to mining rates and build times so short that a Sovereign armada could be made extremely quickly.

Some of the gameplay features weren't very well thought out either. Warp was a cool idea, but the implementation made differences in impulse speed irrelevant. 3D space was interesting, but the camera wasn't designed for it and you couldn't build one station on top of another so defenses became useless since you could just fly over them. Colonizing planets was neat, but the crew gains were so large that crew was never an issue.

Ultimately, I think the biggest issue was resource scarcity. In A1, you always needed more dilithium and fights for dilithium moons became vicious since neither side could afford to not have the moon, and then you fought constantly to keep it. You were always low on crew which made repairing ships difficult. You always needed a few more officers for that assault and they took dilithium, and losing a starbase brought the cap down. I felt like A2 just threw resources at me. Starting locations tended to have two dilithium moons, the starting planet gave me all the crew and metal I needed, latinum was hardly used, and I'm not sure I ever hit the officer cap.

I also personally thought that the art was worse. The models looked more like plastic, the map lighting was too bright, and even the voices sounded cheesier.

 

[Rifraf]

You did gain crew in A1 and there was a cost to build new officer quarters. You also can't recreate the officer quarters thing in A2 since it has no way to increment the officer cap. The FO4 loader might have something, though.

The officer cap in stock A2 was 600. I do remember hitting it many times, but I could just lower it still to maybe 400-500 then alter officer counts on ships/stations? I know I can't recreate the officer quarters so I was thinking of using crew in that respect. No colonizing so if you want more crew build a pod on a research station to gain more. Maybe 500-1000 crew per pod or something? So the crew just accumulated similar to A2, but you didn't have to do anything to get them?

I think that part of what made A1 more challenging was the build costs and build times. Given time, you could build a huge pure-Sovereign fleet, but it was very difficult to do. Costs in A2 were so low compared to mining rates and build times so short that a Sovereign armada could be made extremely quickly.

Would you or anyone else happen to have a few A1 ODF's you could send me as examples or post here some costs?

Some of the gameplay features weren't very well thought out either. Warp was a cool idea, but the implementation made differences in impulse speed irrelevant. 3D space was interesting, but the camera wasn't designed for it and you couldn't build one station on top of another so defenses became useless since you could just fly over them. Colonizing planets was neat, but the crew gains were so large that crew was never an issue.

Were the maps in A1 as large as some of the 6 and 8 player ones in A2? I never liked the 3D space in A2 either. It's an easy fix though by limiting the map depth in the RTS_cfg. I did for the Upgrade Project mod and feel it worked fine. So the AI in A1 played reasonably well then? I just don't recall.

Ultimately, I think the biggest issue was resource scarcity. In A1, you always needed more dilithium and fights for dilithium moons became vicious since neither side could afford to not have the moon, and then you fought constantly to keep it. You were always low on crew which made repairing ships difficult. You always needed a few more officers for that assault and they took dilithium, and losing a starbase brought the cap down. I felt like A2 just threw resources at me. Starting locations tended to have two dilithium moons, the starting planet gave me all the crew and metal I needed, latinum was hardly used, and I'm not sure I ever hit the officer cap.

I could alter the stock maps to have less, more strategically placed dilithium moons to be more like A1. Hearing your descriptions almost makes me wish I would have given A1 a chance. I gave my copy to a friend ages ago, maybe he'll gift/sell it back?

I also personally thought that the art was worse. The models looked more like plastic, the map lighting was too bright, and even the voices sounded cheesier.

Yeah, the A2 models were horrific in my opinion. I use the mods by Seanabooth (spelling?) that takes the A1 voices and you can put them in A2. I did extensive map/lighting alterations for the UP mod as well so that's no issue. Half the work is already done if I use them. Just have to rework the the resources. I appreciate all the info.

 

[CABAL]

The officer cap in stock A2 was 600. I do remember hitting it many times, but I could just lower it still to maybe 400-500 then alter officer counts on ships/stations? I know I can't recreate the officer quarters so I was thinking of using crew in that respect. No colonizing so if you want more crew build a pod on a research station to gain more. Maybe 500-1000 crew per pod or something? So the crew just accumulated similar to A2, but you didn't have to do anything to get them?

FO4 is supposed to have a way to adjust fleet caps in the XML tech tree. A variable cap replacing the officers should serve the same purpose. I'm not sure how it works, though.

I've also toyed with the idea of having officers as a standard resource and making them be payed out and expended in certain circumstances, using the set of commands that do things like cause resource gains on kills and make the supply-buy command work.

Would you or anyone else happen to have a few A1 ODF's you could send me as examples or post here some costs?

They're actually right here in the resource section. I think they're actually about the same as A2's, though. Like I said, a big part of it is that resources are everywhere in A2.

Were the maps in A1 as large as some of the 6 and 8 player ones in A2? I never liked the 3D space in A2 either. It's an easy fix though by limiting the map depth in the RTS_cfg. I did for the Upgrade Project mod and feel it worked fine. So the AI in A1 played reasonably well then? I just don't recall.

A1 maps didn't get anywhere close to the scale of the larger A2 maps.

The AI wasn't actually good, but the terrain, for lack of a better word, was a bit more cramped and asteroids and red nebulae frequently hampered your movement, forcing your ships into choke points. The map size was also a factor. In A2, a science ship was annoying and could only cause fairly minimal damage before being crushed under the sheer weight of your volley. In A1, your fleets are much smaller so the science ship specials, despite being identical, have more of an effect as they hit a larger percentage. And the AI liked science ships, if they got high enough in the tech tree.

I could alter the stock maps to have less, more strategically placed dilithium moons to be more like A1. Hearing your descriptions almost makes me wish I would have given A1 a chance. I gave my copy to a friend ages ago, maybe he'll gift/sell it back?

Fewer resources would probably help. You could also try changing the rate that miners mine and/or drop off resources.

If your friend isn't interested, A1 goes for much less than A2 does. A quick search on Amazon showed two listings that were both under $20. It helps that there were more copies of the game pressed than A2 had.

 

[OpetJa]

I always thought A1 was better than A2... I dont know, but I always had a better feeling while playing A1...Only 2 things A1 lacked are a) more ship classes and b) 2 more playable races, imo - Cardassians and Dominion... and than that would be ultimate ST RTS game

I'd be great to play A1 on modern systems with 2 things added I mentioned before

Far as I know, no one managed to add fifth race to A1, but maybe I'm wrong

 

[Rifraf]

Thank you for all the info Cabal. Until my copy arrives and if you or anyone happens to have A1 installed would anyone be so kind as to send me or post the AI personality files and build lists? I'd like to get an idea how they had it set up.

Thanks in advance if anyone has them.

 

[OpetJa]

Thank you for all the info Cabal. Until my copy arrives and if you or anyone happens to have A1 installed would anyone be so kind as to send me or post the AI personality files and build lists? I'd like to get an idea how they had it set up.

Thanks in advance if anyone has them.

I'll get it to you later today...
---------------------
here it is...

 

[Rifraf]

Thank you much OpetJa. Interesting setup with the AI files. Not too unlike A2, but here and there different.

It's interesting how the cruisers had the same damage as the battleships. More like a battlecruiser. I still don't like the idea of artillery ships in A2 though. Just added for a game play mechanic like other RTS's, but just doesn't fit the source material.

Looking at everything it makes me wonder whey they even bothered making A2 at all. They kept almost all of the ODF's, but changed a few values here and there for damage/health, added colonizing, upgrades, warp, latinum and metal mining, and 3-D maps, but removed how you acquire officers. Actually makes me a bit sad. No wonder everyone modded the hell out of A2.

 

[CABAL]

It's interesting how the cruisers had the same damage as the battleships.

They actually do less damage since they only have one weapon. The specials kept them useful, though. Part of A2's problem was that the new ships added to existing factions, like the Intrepid, didn't have specials to keep them interesting.

 

[Rifraf]

Oh yeah, I see the disabled the torpedoes on the cruisers and destroyers.

In your opinion would making say the Intrepid have phasers and torpedoes be enough of a value if the Akira only had phasers since it has a special? Give it a reason to be built like the other ships.

I was thinking about what you said about adding warp nullified any difference in impulse speeds. I guess one way to sort of compensate in A2 would be to have different enough warp speeds. I think they were different in stock A2, but the differences weren't very large to even matter.

I like how in A1 they have all the damagebase, damagevariance, damagethreshold and modifiers for the weapons set properly. In A2 they used the same files, but upped the damage by many factors ignoring to bring the rest of the values inline. I always hated how the crew did in seconds in A2.

I also like how they did the hitchances in A1. Much more realistic and even accounted for the differences between small ships and large ships.

 

[CABAL]

Oh yeah, I see the disabled the torpedoes on the cruisers and destroyers.

In your opinion would making say the Intrepid have phasers and torpedoes be enough of a value if the Akira only had phasers since it has a special? Give it a reason to be built like the other ships.

Making it a battlecruiser would probably help a good deal. I think the game already does this a bit (been a while since I played A2), but not enough to justify the lack of a special weapon.

I was thinking about what you said about adding warp nullified any difference in impulse speeds. I guess one way to sort of compensate in A2 would be to have different enough warp speeds. I think they were different in stock A2, but the differences weren't very large to even matter.

More distinct differences in warp would be great. You could even set the Borg warp drives so fast that they're nearly instantaneous to simulate transwarp, but then you would need to give the Probe a new special. The Transwarp Gate would also be completely obsolete, but standard warp did that anyway. Besides, the Fusion Cube is a superweapon all on its own.

 

[OpetJa]

First, all they needed to do in A2 was to add 2-3 races but keep mechanics and graphics as it was in A1...Mayne increase level of detail (graphics)...Of course they added new ships but they weren't interesting without special weapons...They said that A1 was balanced...Play against 4 Borg opponents and evetnually you'll be assimilated... Voice acitng in A2 was bad too, weapons sounds same for Feds and Cardassians, and for Klingons and 8472...They released game too soon...

That's why I always sticked with A1, but is there way to make it better with stuff from A2 - warp, trading, more races??

And second, I was wondering about this long so if anyone can give me an answer I'd be nice... How to make Borg use Transwarp gate in Instant Action of A1?? We've seen Borg use Transwarp gate in one-two missions and that's it... Developers for A2 were too lazy to make a new model of Transwarp gate and they used same model from A1 in A2 >.<

God too bad there wasn't A3... Mod for Sins I don't find as sequel of A2...

 

[OpetJa]

Instead of starting new thread I have to ask just too quick questions..
1. Is there any way stations in A2 are in same "level" like in A1, so they are not above or below one of another?
2. Since I've never moded A2 too much, how to edit tech tree files? I know there were .tt files in A1, but I dont know where are those files in A2.

 

[Terra_Inc]

Instead of starting new thread I have to ask just too quick questions..
1. Is there any way stations in A2 are in same "level" like in A1, so they are not above or below one of another?
2. Since I've never moded A2 too much, how to edit tech tree files? I know there were .tt files in A1, but I dont know where are those files in A2.

1) One thing you can do is make very flat maps. This way there's not much vertical space to use. In Fleetops, the map is perfectly flat, but I don't know whether you can do the same in A2. Someone with more FO experience might be able to help you out with that.

2) I think the tech tree files work very similar in A2. It's been a while since I've looked at an A2 install, but there should be a techtree folder. If you want to know the details of techtrees, the Big Book of Modding is always a good read.

 

[Rifraf]

Terra's correct. You can edit the map depths in A2 as well. In the RTS_cfg file in the main folder there is a section that has all the map heights. Just change them to + and - whatever you want. FO uses +/- 250 I believe as you want a little bit of room for ships to maneuver if they have to go around/above/below each other.

I edited them all along with all maps in the Upgrade Project I did so they weren't so crazy. Keep in mind though that if you make them more shallow you may not be able to access planets/moons that fall above or below your settings.

For the tech trees look in the techtree folder in A2 and you'll find them all in there. tech1.tt being the main one.

 

[Rifraf]

My copy of A1 arrived today. Time to dig into the AI and game play