ST A2 Upgrade Project 2019 Vanilla Ultimate

[Rifraf]

Well replacing my tech1.tt file with a stock copy seems to have fixed it. All that was in my modded one was some extra ships and another race. I wasn't even using them so not sure why that would cause issues? I keep testing through games to be sure though.

One thing I have to do is restart my comp more often after making changes to the game. Maybe win 10 is more finicky? When I keep it restarted more often it seems not to crash Armada 2. I appreciate all the advice though.

 

[Rifraf]

Is there any adverse effect making a folder, copying the A2 game into it, and making the shortcut then just playing vs installing the game as normal and playing that way? Are both just as stable as each other?

 

[Terra_Inc]

Is there any adverse effect making a folder, copying the A2 game into it, and making the shortcut then just playing vs installing the game as normal and playing that way? Are both just as stable as each other?

From my experience, it doesn't matter whether you simply copy-paste the A2 folder or install it from disk. Both works fine.

 

[Rifraf]

I figured, but thought I'd ask. I thought I fixed the out of memory issue as I had 2 long games with the AI building into the end game, but then just played a new one last night and got the same error/crash in the middle of the game.

testing everything in the map editor isn't crashing and the randomness of the crash in a real game is frustrating. starting to redo everything from scratch again until I find what this issue is.

 

[Archonon]

The tech1.tt file is very finicky about what's on it. If you forget to add a ship/station to it and you have it in your queue in a yard you will crash, mispellings = crash, forgotten special weapons = crash, you altered a file name in game and forgot to update the entry = crash. Yeah, it's a crash fest. Lol.

The only times a new race has given me problems is when there's a screw up in the races.odf, or the odf of the race itself (Ie. fed.odf) or one of the starting units. But since it wasn't active at the time, I am baffled.

I'm glad that it sounds like you got it under control now.

 

[Rifraf]

Does anyone know if the hardpoints have to be listed in order? Per the example below would this crash the game? See how hp04 and hp05 come after hp08 for instance under lifeSupport for instance....

enginesTargetHardpoints = "hp06" "hp09"
lifeSupportTargetHardpoints = "hp08" "hp04" "hp05"
shieldGeneratorTargetHardpoints = "hp07" "hp04" "hp05"
sensorsTargetHardpoints = "hp08" "hp12" "hp13"
hullTargetHardpoints = "hp04" "hp06" "hp08" "hp10" "hp12"
criticalTargetHardpoints = "hp05" "hp07" "hp09" "hp11" "hp13"

 

[Jetfreak]

I dunno if it helps. But I recently discovered you can do blank hard-points without any adverse effects.

enginesTargetHardpoints = ""
lifeSupportTargetHardpoints = ""
weaponsTargetHardpoints = ""
shieldGeneratorTargetHardpoints = ""
sensorsTargetHardpoints = ""
hullTargetHardpoints = ""
criticalTargetHardpoints = ""

I tried it on my Akira and no issues so far at game play. Don't know if it makes a difference to damage distribution.

Bummer to hear about your tech1.tt issues, I can imagine the pain of reconstructing a personal build piece by piece.

 

[Archonon]

I don't believe that order affects HPs in any adverse way. At least when it comes to weapons, HPs can be listed in any order and they will work as listed. (Ie: You can have hp04 before hp02 because you want hp04 to fire first). I usually use this with the forward and aft torpedo HPs.

As Jet has mentioned, I've seen odfs which have no listings of HPs in the damage distribution area and seem to work fine. From what little I understand, and someone please advise if you know more, the damage HPs work in terms of affecting specific systems such as sensors, engines, life support, etc. That said, I will often find that even though I list a single HP in life support and various in the hull, one of the first things that enemies usually destroy is my life support as I suffer death of crew far faster than damage to ships other systems or even the ship itself, many times my ships are left adrift with moderate to severe damage. So who knows if the damage HPs work as intended?

 

[Rifraf]

Good info all. I always thought of having more than 1 hardpoint means the system has redundant back ups. You could do some interesting things by limiting hardpoints on certain systems.

I kept playing 6 player games and was pulling hair out to find what the crash was. I should have been playing one race at a time. DOH. So last night I played a game against 8472 on a 2 player map (I take Romulan so I can cloak and watch the action all around and testing the AI) and played to the endgame and never crashed. I played another game against the Cardassians on a 6 player map so they'd have more resources and it crashed with the out of memory error. I'll try other races on the same 6 player map and if no issues then it's either that specific 6 player map or the cardassians.

I'm going through each odf for the cardies and comparing them to stock and the hardpoints on the SOD to make sure everything is good. I saw a post somewhere I think over at FO where someone thought the cardie station with the really long name exceeded the naming convention for windows 10 or something? I think it's cardassian_upgrade_station or something? It's the station with the extremely long name. I thought of shortening it to see if that plays any part. I don't know a thing about something like that and windows 10 so that may not even be an issue.

 

[Jetfreak]

In the stock odf's, the Cardassian cupgrade.odf has an issue I think.

podHardpoints = "hp01" "hp02" "hp03" "hp04" "hp05"
buildItem0 = "carpod11"
buildItem1 = "carpod12"
buildItem2 = "carpod13"
buildItem3 = "carpod14"
buildItem4 = "carpod15"

secondaryBuildItem0 = "carpod21"
secondaryBuildItem1 = "carpod22"
secondaryBuildItem2 = "carpod23"
secondaryBuildItem3 = "carpod24"
secondaryBuildItem4 = "carpod25"

There's only five hardpoints for 10 items, can that cause the crash? I'm not sure.

Some crashes can also be traced to the SOD themselves. Maybe a bad export or some hp typos. Did you have a modded Cardie ship or a replacement model in your fleet?

 

[Rifraf]

I never had a crash due to only having 5 of the needed 10 hardpoints on the upgrade stations in stock, but what I ran into is that the AI kept deconstucting the level 2 pod to build the level 3 pod. Then because the level 2 pod was missing it would deconstruct the level 3 pod and rebuild the level 2 then be stuck in a permanent loop deconstructing/reconstructing because it didn't have enough hardpoints.

I hope I solved the crashing though. In rebuilding the mod I found Dan's Cardie trading station had no hardpoints listed for the criticalTargetHardpoints. I'm thinking you can have no hardpoints for the other systems, but maybe the critical ones must have them? At any rate I assigned some hardpoints there and played a game and no crash. I'll play a couple more just to be sure.

The only other thing I've found so far is Aad's Cardie repair ship had an extra space between the = sign and the first " on its criticalTargetHardpoints line. I found this previously on his Klingon colony ship. Strangely having that extra space still allowed the ship to colonize a planet with no orbital mining station on it, but if the planet had an orbital built around it then it wouldn't colonize no matter what I did. Once I removed the extra space it would then colonize any planet with an orbital around it. So it must be very picky in how many spaces are between the = and the first " or possibly between any two ".

 

[Archonon]

It has been a while since I incorporated some of the excellent vanilla replacement ships/stations available but I think that one or two units may have had a typo in an odf that caused a crash or two. I fixed those issues once I found them and I can't for the life of me remember if it was Cardassian or not, but that rings a bell; hopefully if you caught the issue, that will stabilize your game.

I've seen mods that use the same hp for multiple pods, some stations have had the same hp (Sometimes hp01 or root) as their only hp. So I don't know whether using the same hp for multiple things affects the game in any way or not.

 

[Hath]

If you keep having to restart things or if it takes foreverrrrrr to load I found that defraging your drive really helps!

 

[Rifraf]

Well, I started over and took a more organized, methodical approach and so far in all the testing I appear to have exercised the crashing demons. Basically everything is done except redoing all the map lighting/backgrounds on the mission maps. Instant action maps are done. Not sure yet if I'll update the map sizes or ship/base layouts on the mission maps similar to the ImpSPCam mod or not? Or release updated maps later? Just so glad I got everything fixed.

 

[CABAL]

If you keep having to restart things or if it takes foreverrrrrr to load I found that defraging your drive really helps!

Armada is one of those games that's heavily affected by drive fragmentation.

 

[Rifraf]

I have 2 SSD's and from what I've been reading you don't need to defrag them. Thoughts?

 

[CABAL]

I have 2 SSD's and from what I've been reading you don't need to defrag them. Thoughts?

Do not defrag an SSD, ever. SSDs aren't infinitely rewritable like HDDs are and each rewrite will reduce the life of the drive. When you erase data on an SSD a power surge is run through the relevant transistors to reset them, which has the side effect of slightly damaging them. Do that too many times and you kill the drive. Each SSD has an upper limit on the number of times a block can be rewritten before hardware failure sets in.

 

[Rifraf]

That's what I thought Cabal, but wanted to be sure. I have multiple installs of A2 testing different things, but it makes me paranoid now as I delete them when I'm done testing what it was. I know it takes many years to get to the fail point from what I've read, but still...

 

[Tiger_A2Vanilla]

Hi, just came across this post today. I'm part of a group that still plays stock a2 and was wondering if you ever got round to finishing this project off.

Hope you did as there has been a decent bit of activity with the game coming on gog.

 

[Rifraf]

Hi, just came across this post today. I'm part of a group that still plays stock a2 and was wondering if you ever got round to finishing this project off.

Hope you did as there has been a decent bit of activity with the game coming on gog.

Hey there. Thanks for the interest. I never released a version for stock A2 because when I upgraded to Win 10 I lost the ability to play the game. Absolutely nothing I've tried will work except playing it as a mod inside the Fleet Ops mod so I haven't played stock in a couple years.

I have a working version of the mod on a stock install from when I last played it and I was in final testing to squash bugs. I believe everything worked. If you or some friends have any interest I could zip it up and provide if you'd be willing to play test and report any issues?

 

[Tiger_A2Vanilla]

Fantastic, that would be brilliant and we would definitely give it a good going over and give you feedback.

As for not not getting it to run on Windows 10 we all experienced some issues but for most of us running in compatible mode worked a treat. Another user had to install via safe mode then it ran as normal. I've came across a few work arounds online and there is a few YouTube videos showing various methods. Maybe give it another go?

This is probably the reason why it has not yet been released on gog as of yet. Maybe they are working on a 100% fix.

There's gonna be a lot more people interested in this once released on gog.

Let me know how to get my hands on the file and I'll get the old pros trying everything out. Thanks again and cant wait.

 

[CptBenSisko]

Once the GOG version for both games drops.. a lot of these issues will be resolved.. especially being able to play on higher resolution displays and widescreen monitors..

 

[Terra_Inc]

Once the GOG version for both games drops.. a lot of these issues will be resolved.. especially being able to play on higher resolution displays and widescreen monitors..

I honestly hope that that's the reason they haven't released it yet... I would hate for all of this enthusiasm to fizzle out because the release never comes.

 

[CptBenSisko]

I mean.. FO allows us to play A2 at 1440P right now.. it only makes sense that the GOG version allows you to as well.

 

[Chiletrek]

Hello:
It's just a bummer people will have to buy again the game in order to be able to play it, even if very cheap! Because other developpers, like those of Sw:EaW keep making patches for their game.

 

[CptBenSisko]

Unfortunate... but EAW had a much larger following than the Armada series did...

 

[dvatreknerd314]

Unfortunate... but EAW had a much larger following than the Armada series did...

That and Activision broke their deal off with (Viacom?) about half way into their 10 year contract due to Enterprise not being all that popular and causing Activision's profits to drop on their Trek content. I doubt they could have released much in the way of patches with that issue in the way.

 

[CptBenSisko]

Also, EAW was built on a purpose built engine for Star Wars combat...

 

[sierra078]

Hey Rifraf, I don't know if you remember, but the 2014 version had an AI/formation crash, at least with me; it did, and I was posting on the Fleetops forums about it, but we never figured out a solution. Here is an updated post with someone trying to help me out.

AI formation crash : Star Trek: Armada I / Armada II - Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations

I'm getting a seemingly random crash, and all it says is something about crafts, formation, and AI. I haven't the slightest idea what is going on.

www.fleetops.net

I tried a fresh install on the mod with all the patches and everything and still got the crash, but only with the Klingons and Romulans. The Federation, Borg, AltBorg, Cardassians, and Species 8472 all worked just fine. Also, were you planning on releasing the 2019 version on the Fleetops forums or just here or anywhere else?