[WIP] Rifraf's SP+ Mod

[Rifraf]

So I thought I'd plug my mod a little here instead of the thread in the Armada Discussion forum and also talk about modding in general, ask some questions and get ideas if anyone feels like sharing thoughts/opinions.

For now it's called the SP+ mod or single player plus. I wanted to have the single player campaign intact with the base game 100% replaced/visually updated and some slight alternate coding so I use stock A2 with the 1.1 patch and midnight universe 2.0 as a base. I used Aad's Card, Fed, Kling, and Rom races and Chiletrek's 8472, but Borg undecided still as I can't find one I like. With the exception of the Borg race this portion of the mod is complete with the exception of a few permissions.

I altered some stock weapon textures, used others from the community along with other effects/gui's etc. I altered some coding in the RTS_CFG and ART_CFG to try to make it play/look better as well. I'll attempt to make it a stand alone mod for FO if I don't run into issues or at least use the classic mod as a parent. The end user would only have to swap out each specific race.odf, techtree and build list files to play either single player or my mod. I tried to keep the impact of this low.

The second half of my project is my actual mod. I don't have a story or anything, but will use altered stats/costs for ships/stations like most other mods have. Balancing is my biggest problem as many of you have dealt with. I use very few special weapons as I don't care for them so that exacerbates the problem. Another thing is I like to see a variety of ships in use so let's say I have 5 cruiser class ships all with different costs/build times/damage values. There really isn't a reason to use 4 of them as you'd choose to use the most cost effective ship to get the most damage so you already negated the use of 4 ships you spent time putting in game. I'm leaning more towards how A1 was set up in that ships of each class will be reletively the same stats so that I can get the variety of ships in game instead of the single one that's the best.

Anyone have any ideas how to improve upon this? I realize a mod is made for the individual first and foremost, and most people say "boring" to ships of all equal stats with only slight variations, but just looking for ideas/opinions.

Thanks in advance

 

[Majestic]

Firstly if you haven't done much work on the coding side, I would recommend that you use FO straight off the bat and not worry about using the classic mod. While not everyone plays FO, the advanced features it offers really is hard to ignore. Plus it's still being worked on so does get updates and improvements, something A2 doesn't.

Now that is out of the way. I once did a A2 mod based on A1. How A1 was set-up was all the weapon strengths were the same and only the health was different. That made it easy to balance but also meant it was cheaper to just build heaps of destroyers or Akiras and use quantity over quality. It does make balancing easier. I hate balancing and not very good at it. There is also nothing wrong with using the balancing someone else has done for a mod as a guide or inspiration for your mod.

Also as for your races, have you thought of just turning the Borg into a NPC faction? You could replace them with the Dominion, today there are a lot of good Dominion models floating around, something not available 10 years ago. If you decide to go down the Borg route and also decide to use FO as a base you could always use their models as you'll only need to reference them in your ODF files and that way you'll not be redistributing any models and it does save a load of permissions. The FO mod support feature is a real bonus here, one of the best features they have ever introduced as you only need one FO install.

Lastly, as you stated you're making it for yourself first and that is the right track to be on. Go with what you want, people will download it and play it that's for sure, if they don't like parts they'll probably mod those themselves so I wouldn't worry.

 

[Rifraf]

Thanks Majestic. I do need to ask more questions in regards to not using the classic mod. I had thought of making two versions, one for stock A2 and one for a mod of FO so we'll see.

In regards to using A1 concepts I guess is really sorta only slightly similar. I've used 5 classes of ships: battleship, cruiser, light cruiser, destroyer, and scout. Let's see if I can set this up:

ship--------class - build time - officr - crew - dilith - metal - hull hlth - shld hlth - shld rate - phsr dmg - shot delay - torp dmg - shot delay - wpn range - snsr range

galaxy-------B--------- 105-----------20--------750------583------466----------2600------------4000----------11--------------75 --------------2.3---------------150-----------4.6-----------------600------------900
intrepid------C----------60-----------15--------175-------324------259----------1300-------------2000-----------9-------------65---------------2.5---------------130-----------5.0------------------575------------875
excelsior----LC--------41-----------10-------300-------180------144-----------650--------------1000----------7--------------55----------------2.7--------------110-----------5.4------------------550------------850
sabre---------D-----------27------------5---------80--------100------80------------325-------------- 500----------5--------------45----------------2.9---------------90---------- 5.8------------------525-------------825

A light cruiser is +50% build time over destroyer, a cruiser is +45% build time over light cruiser and battleship is +75% build time over cruiser. Each class uses only 80% more resources than the previous and gets 100% more shield health. Each phaser class is a little more powerful each step up and photons do twice the damage as phasers and take twice as long to fire. I'm trying to keep the incentive to proceed to each next class instead of building a thousand destroyers. 2 destroyers could take a light cruiser, but you'll spend a little more and wait a little longer to get them. Each race is essentially the same stats with minor exceptions. I've worked months on excel spread sheets with all the stats trying to get it just right. I'm such a nerd

I really do want to keep the borg as playable. Obviously not a super race though. I usually make their ships twice as strong for each comparable class and cost twice as much. You spend more, but each ship lasts longer. I don't like the machine gun phasers/torps so upped my shot delays and also use the forceInvalidateTarget = 1 command to stop every ship from firing on one target to keep the battles going a little longer.

 

[Majestic]

Sounds like you've put a lot of thought into this which is good for any mod. So many, probably myself included, try and start too big and sometimes don't think the entire project through or change their focus half-way through changing things. Planning is key to modding.

If you have any questions about FO, I and others here will no doubt be happy to help.

 

[MrVulcan]

I'm liking the idea here. An update to the stock game (and missions?) with fresh balancing and spiffy graphics sounds appealing. I do agree with Majestic on going straight to Fleetops. The extra features and updates will give the mod just that much more oomph, and a lot less headache on your part.

If you're comfortable using MS Excel for the number crunching in your balancing, may I recommend the ODF/Excel Tools

My goal was to get all the ODF data into several excel sheets (ships, stations, weapons, etc). With a single click of a button, everything gets written into ODFs, avoiding the need to edit things one file at a time. However, you now also have a lot more control over how to compute all the stats, set weapon and ordinance parameters such as hitChance and damageBase on a class-by-class basis. Ie, all cruisers will have a hitchance of 0.5 for this ordnance, and all destroyers should have hitchance of 0.3, and so on. All weapons get updated automatically (with a bit of setup in excel).

There is a tutorial style readme in the download that goes over the features. Let me know if you'll find any of it useful and I'll guide you through the tool set

Cheers

 

[Rifraf]

Thanks Mr Vulcan. Is that a link to a download on this site? I don't want to get caught downloading something I don't have the priveledge for yet, but would like to check it out.

This is my fourth complete rebuild from scratch of my mod in the last 1 1/2 years so been doing tons of thinking and testing/changing and starting over. I think I like tinkering with it all so don't really mind all the busy work. It's easier to start over when you haven't actually made your own models/textures.

I ask a lot of questions over at FO, but only just the other day asked about FO coding being used in my mod. I see the info about the modification modules, but never gave it a second thought till now. So essentially I want my my mod to be playable in FO with my ships/stations and my A2 stock maps in the FO environment with some FO coding like upgrade classes and such. That is essentially what it is correct? I know Squire James is working on his KA2 mod in FO, but never looked into it really.

I see many posts from the past on FF or AFC and people are like "I'm not using the borg because I can't use them like the tv show or because the ships can't be the correct size." I don't want to limit myself just because it isn't exactly like tv or something so find other ways to do it. I also like my Dominion to be mixed with the Cardassians as opposed to an individual race. It's been hard to translate trek concepts into a game with limited potential. FO is way better than stock yes, but still limited as a game. It's been fun and challenging to find something that works.

 

[MrVulcan]

That link is to another topic where I introduced the tools. I hosted the files on an external site for the time being. Main reason being is that the excel sheets aren't set up with all the Fleetops commands. Once it is fully setup for A1, A2, and FO, I'll look for a more permanent home for them. Adding new odf commands is super easy; just add a new column with that command name at the top row.

Agreed entirely on the last point. Modding wouldn't be fun if it weren't a challenge. So many ways of doing things, and new ideas always pop in while working on something else. I think of RTS games as upgraded board games, so obviously they can't be true to a TV show or reality. Meant to use imagination a bit, and have fun with it.

 

[Majestic]

Rifraf, you should be able to download all but my files. Well you could download mine, but they are passworded protected. So you wouldn't be able to open them but you do have the permissions to download and open all the other files here on MSFC.

 

[Rifraf]

@ MrVulcan: When I follow the link it says it can't be downloaded because it's been deleted by the owner?

In regards to using FO, the last evolution of my mod I did get working in FO using the classic mod as a base. Everything worked perfectly and looked great in higher resolution. I browsed the FO guide again today and read through the modification modules so will attempt to put in what I have now as a stand alone mod just to experiment. From what I read I can use the FO maps or use the command to not use the parent maps and use the stock A2 ones in my mod correct? I'm torn between warp and no warp. I turned it way down from over 400 in stock to around 200 in my build.

Besides playing against the AI with FO I've studied their odf's and put one of their ships in my game. I do use their explosion effects though which look great and I also use one of their shields in conjunction with Achilles' shield fix SOD that he did from Elronds' blue shield mod. It doesn't look as great as the FO ones, but it's a reasonable compromise. Time to get my hands dirty under the hood. Or should I say bonnet for my British and Australian colleagues.

@ Majestic: I was waiting until I had 30 rep points I think the main page said before going into the downloads so thank you much for the info.

 

[CABAL]

I do use their explosion effects though which look great and I also use one of their shields in conjunction with Achilles' shield fix SOD that he did from Elronds' blue shield mod. It doesn't look as great as the FO ones, but it's a reasonable compromise.

If I may shamelessly plug myself, you may want to check out my blue shields mod and my shield disabled effect mod. In particular, my blue shields actually display shield integrity, as shown with the Intrepids in this screenshot.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, my shields may not change color in FO. I'm not sure how their shield stuff works.

 

[Majestic]

If you like I can give you a blank template for using the mod modules. I made one years ago when the system first came out so I could save them when starting mods. I attracted it to this post for you or anyone else who may want it. It's nothing fancy but might help anyone starting out.

As for rep points, I just gave you rep, you have over 200 now, the advantages of an Admin giving you rep.

 

[Rifraf]

@ MrVulcan: Thank you for the PM. Nice work on the tools. My spreadsheet looks fairly similar to yours though I have no formulas or anything like that. I just use it to input the values in columns to compare and manually alter stats one at a time. Look forward to digging further into it. I'll let you know if I have any questions or run stuck.

@ Cabal: I do have your shield mod and tried it out. We had spoken some in the shield thread I made at FO in regards to Elronds' blue shield mod. I wanted to have the explosion plumes appear before the shield animated, but his had the shield bubble inside the ship so the explosion was out in space away from the ship and I used the SOD file that Achilles had altered to correct the shield bubble. You said I could mess around with your files and if I came up with something you'd let me release it. I just couldn't come up with anything that looked presentable beyond what you did. I tried different colors, and altering the TGA's and using different textures in their place, but nothing turned out very good. I may have to give it another go.

@ Majestic: Wow, I'm honored thank you. And thank you for the template. That's brilliant. So simple to pop it in place and add my files to it. Nice.

 

[CABAL]

@ Cabal: I do have your shield mod and tried it out. We had spoken some in the shield thread I made at FO in regards to Elronds' blue shield mod. I wanted to have the explosion plumes appear before the shield animated, but his had the shield bubble inside the ship so the explosion was out in space away from the ship and I used the SOD file that Achilles had altered to correct the shield bubble. You said I could mess around with your files and if I came up with something you'd let me release it. I just couldn't come up with anything that looked presentable beyond what you did. I tried different colors, and altering the TGA's and using different textures in their place, but nothing turned out very good. I may have to give it another go.

I remember that now. That was a while ago. For alternate textures, I believe Jetfreak has given it the FO shield textures or something. It looks pretty in screenshots, so you might try PMing him and see what exactly he did.

 

[Rifraf]

Can someone tell me how to post a picture using the spoiler tag please? I'll see if I can get a couple of pics of what I came up with.

 

[Majestic]

Can someone tell me how to post a picture using the spoiler tag please? I'll see if I can get a couple of pics of what I came up with.

If you look in the icons above where you post, in the post window, the second last icon is the spoiler one. Alternatively you can post the following: [noparse]

Spoiler: Spoiler Title

Spoiler Content

[/noparse]

For uploading images, using the attachment feature is the best way, as it automatically adds them into the post as thumbnails for you, plus MSFC users have unlimited attachment storage, meaning no need to worry about storage. However a max of I think (if memory serves) 20 images per post is allowed. Using the attachment feature is recommend as a lot of the image hosting sites have pop-ups and some like Imageshack have had viruses in them, hence why Imageshack links aren't allowed on MSFC.

 

[Rifraf]

Thanks Majestic. Here are a couple a shots of my shields. They are essentially the same as FO in that there is the initial white strobe-like electrostatic discharge when the weapon hits that carries a little bit into the shield anim and then the actual shield anim both from FO. The only downside is that Elronds' blue shields SOD renders the animation flat instead of looking like the shield envelopes the ship. At certain angles you won't even see the shield animate which sucks, but seems the best I can do. It's a nice large anim on stations, but on ships the animation is pretty small so hard to see sometimes unless in strategic view.