[WIP] The Wastelands

[Terra_Inc]

Hehe, surplus Galaxy saucers must be abundant these days if they're integrated into commercial stations like that lol but the division of roles for bases is a neat idea, you could even try unique build lists for every base, for even more diversification. Let's say Station 1 could build freighters but Station 2 could build the same model but with a larger cargo capacity.

Yeah, I know... makes you wonder, where have all of those stardrive sections gone?
Although these saucers here are not really Galaxy saucers, as they're perfectly round. The same goes for Jupiter Station. I assume that it's just a convenient design.

*************************

Actually, I've lied. (Gasp!) There will be more than two types of starbases. I forgot to mention the one the player starts with. This will probably be the Avalon type starbase designed by R5D5. There will also be different mining and trading vessels.
The trading thing is actually pretty much self-explaining. As long as you don't have access to the real cargo freighters, you'll use shuttles. They can transport small amounts of cargo and they're pretty cost effective. There will also be an early mining freighter as long as you can't build industrial freighters.

Maybe I should mention this, once and for all. There will be no conventional "teching up", like: Good Ships -> Better Ships -> Best Ships. Instead, it will be mostly like this: Completely useless -> Barely usable -> Okay. One might replace "completely useless" with "nonexistent" for several units. Building a fleet won't be cheap. For the beginning, you will want to evade battles because they are costly, dangerous and don't bring you any useful resources (that is, until you have enough firepower to take over a mining site).

Also, I should elaborate on my concept of the player sides.
Most of the units will be identical. There's just not enough fitting material to fill several sides with different units. But there will be slight differences, and each side has its unique advantage. That can be a ship, a technology, a station...
Choosing a player side means to choose a mining company to support you. The Corporate Outpost is one of the most important buildings and one that you will want to build as soon as possible. It allows you to build industrial units and opens up other parts of the TechTree for research. Without your Corporate Outpost you don't stand a chance.

No pics for today. Stay tuned! More info coming.

 

[Chiletrek]

Hello:
I like what you are thinking, because it is totally different to what we are used to see in Armada games.

As for the ships themselves, well, I don't believe in the existence of "useless" ships so you bet people will all find a way to get the best of each and every unit you will release .

Keep it up!

 

[Majestic]

This sounds more interesting each time you post Terra.

 

[Terra_Inc]

As for the ships themselves, well, I don't believe in the existence of "useless" ships so you bet people will all find a way to get the best of each and every unit you will release .

Well... not completely useless. More like uneconomical.

This sounds more interesting each time you post Terra.

Good to see that people like my concept...

 

[thunderfoot]

Terra, no ship is ever, "useless" or, "uneconomical". It is a fact the US Navy during WWII used "obsolescent" destroyers to sweep for mines, provide local ASW support and various other things which their original designers had never foreseen and could not anticipate. This because they had the virtue of being available right now for duty. Thye may not have performed as effectively as a Sumner class with SJ and SD radar and FM sonar, but they did perform much better than having no destroyers at all.

One of the things which bugs me about A2 is how little it includes the intangibles of a fighting force. Things like the skill and daring of the force commander, the quality of the crews and their level of training. We've all played or seen someone online who takes the Cardies, never builds anything bigger than a Brinok, and beats the arse of someone who is pumping out Sovvies as fast as he can.

Too many A2 players discount the light forces or the second line ships in favor of an all battleship fleet. I would not want a fleet composed entirely of Galaxys breathing down my neck but is this really an effective use of resources?

 

[Starfox1701]

That is mainly a balance problem as the BBs aren't expensive enough to make keeping DDs and CLs on the payrole look appealing. Somthing we all have probably taken a crack at fixing 1 time or another.

 

[Terra_Inc]

Terra, no ship is ever, "useless" or, "uneconomical". It is a fact the US Navy during WWII used "obsolescent" destroyers to sweep for mines, provide local ASW support and various other things which their original designers had never foreseen and could not anticipate. This because they had the virtue of being available right now for duty. Thye may not have performed as effectively as a Sumner class with SJ and SD radar and FM sonar, but they did perform much better than having no destroyers at all.

One of the things which bugs me about A2 is how little it includes the intangibles of a fighting force. Things like the skill and daring of the force commander, the quality of the crews and their level of training. We've all played or seen someone online who takes the Cardies, never builds anything bigger than a Brinok, and beats the arse of someone who is pumping out Sovvies as fast as he can.

Too many A2 players discount the light forces or the second line ships in favor of an all battleship fleet. I would not want a fleet composed entirely of Galaxys breathing down my neck but is this really an effective use of resources?

That is true, yes. And it is something I try to realize with Wastelands as well as with my private mod. It is really a shame how poorly unit balance was implemented in A2, because it - literally - means teching UP. Up to better ships. In a well executed metagame, there would be no up or down. For example, I think that the FleetOps people have brought A2 at least somewhat closer to a balanced metagame. (Of course, in pure battle scenarios, a single Battleship IS often better than a single Destroyer, but that's not what it's about.) Battleship Spam is not and was never a really viable strategy.

The scenario you described is very close to what I want to achieve with Wastelands. Calling those ships "unusable" was the typical mistake of my ignorant civilian half. The concept I wanted to express was the following: We as A2 gamers are all used to having hi-tech. I never complained that "my cruiser is outdated, it can't outrun the enemy's battleships!" Or "I don't have normal mining freighters, all I have are some overgrown runabouts!" Or "Why, oh why didn't they refit my ship so I can use these new powerful torpedoes!" Because, StarFleet would never send s****heaps to defend the Federation. (Well... not in A2. TMP? Wolf 359? Operation Return? Are these guys crazy?)
But in Wastelands, that is the feeling I want the player to have. "Oh *beep*, why didn't they give me GOOD ships?!" After all, this is not a StarFleet campaign. It's the Wastelands. You can't expect the newest hi-tech here.

 

[Majestic]

One of the things which bugs me about A2 is how little it includes the intangibles of a fighting force. Things like the skill and daring of the force commander, the quality of the crews and their level of training. We've all played or seen someone online who takes the Cardies, never builds anything bigger than a Brinok, and beats the arse of someone who is pumping out Sovvies as fast as he can.

Too many A2 players discount the light forces or the second line ships in favor of an all battleship fleet. I would not want a fleet composed entirely of Galaxys breathing down my neck but is this really an effective use of resources?

It's one of the driving forces from the start with YY, cruisers play a very important role and one can only build so many dreadnoughts and battleships due to their expense and build restriction.

Wastelands is going to be so awesome. I am looking really forward to this Terra.

 

[StarBlade]

Too many A2 players discount the light forces or the second line ships in favor of an all battleship fleet. I would not want a fleet composed entirely of Galaxys breathing down my neck but is this really an effective use of resources?

It is and it isn't. The sad part is that A2 depends on relatively little in order to equate to victory. You can crank out certain units at a relatively higher rate or speed of finished units vs. another, and if you know how that adds up, it boils down to attrition over time. It's a tactic that actually, ironically, has more in common with early fighter deployment than with fleet actions, and using your shipyards the way they used carriers in the Pacific in WWII isn't all that much fun.

It's not so much the ships as the weapons setup. Every ship gets a hit when targeting in stock, most of the time, and each ship fires and fires again at rates not in keeping with what we've seen on Trek, with damage based on numerical rather than precision values. And the damage is almost always cumulative-- if I fire the same phaser at the same target five times, it'll do damage based on points rather than based on precision. And yet we've always seen phasers to be the precision weapon. Worf would be most unimpressed at stock A2. He'd find it to be a victory without honour, precisely because there is no place for the commander to show his worth. Simple numbers and shows of force NEVER made the difference in the Trek we've all seen-- there was an element of what one might call the prestige, or the demonstration before it came to fighting. The closest this gets to an emulation in A2 is the effect of special weapons, and these tend to be either underwhelming (the Flux Wave, Technology Assimilation, the Nanites, the various jammers) or ridiculously imbalanced (the Holo-Emitter, Psionic Insanity, the Ultritium Burst, the Fed Repair Team). Unless used wisely and correctly, it often proves to just be easier to spam and rush, especially when the enemy AI does nothing else BUT spam and rush your base, and what few multiplayer games are to be had depends on who gets those Defiant swarms dispatched first.

This was something I rather enjoyed about Star Wars Fleet Command: the ship was clearly still intact, but everyone on board was dead and the cost of fixing it up as salvage was almost as much as building a new one. It simulated the Wolf-359 sorts of moments in Trek rather nicely. I also found thunderfoot's Weapons Project was helpful in this regard. Idiotic rates of precision, even for battles where every shot is targeted by onboard tactical computers, and a far-too-simplistic damage model. Random chance does not operate in one's favour every time.

 

[thunderfoot]

You are to be commended Terra, for getting people to think outside the box once again. If this project does nothing else, it will still have achieved this.

One of the things I hope to see in Wastelands is...lots of near misses with weapons fire. I tried to facotr this into the Physics Project some. But it was a broad blanket type of miss instead of the way it should be done. What should be done is every single weapon should be evaluated for to hit probabilty vs. every single target. This would make an ordnance file about 750 Kb or so and there is no way to include all the variations of all the ships and weapons which have appeared over the years.

 

[Starfox1701]

you know a way to cut that might be if you can get it to think in broader strokes like cruise3 or scout instead of each individual ship.

 

[Terra_Inc]

You are to be commended Terra, for getting people to think outside the box once again. If this project does nothing else, it will still have achieved this.

One of the things I hope to see in Wastelands is...lots of near misses with weapons fire. I tried to facotr this into the Physics Project some. But it was a broad blanket type of miss instead of the way it should be done. What should be done is every single weapon should be evaluated for to hit probabilty vs. every single target. This would make an ordnance file about 750 Kb or so and there is no way to include all the variations of all the ships and weapons which have appeared over the years.

you know a way to cut that might be if you can get it to think in broader strokes like cruise3 or scout instead of each individual ship.

That is one of the things I wanted to put into Wastelands. It was actually inspired by the balance introduced in the Sigma TC. In the early days of A2 modding, we often balanced via damage modificators. That's effective, but not realistic. It's better to balance via hitChance, which is what many people do today.
Some of these people have been complaining that balancing a whole TC mod via hitChance is too complicated and too much work. It is true that it takes time, but I think it's worth it. I suppose you have (at least once) taken a look at AOW's weapon files. (I did, because AOW was my preferred modding platform for a long time.) Achilles used basic files that contained the redundant commands. The weapon files used to refer to in the ODFs contained just the commands that had to be different for every unit. The hitChance multipliers are such a redundant command, and I can spare me a lot of work if I arrange the files similar to those in AOW. I suppose you can call them "Cascading Object Definitions"... *nerd lol*

 

[FahreS]

Ah great we have a new "Somewhat Less Total Conversion"
Sure that you dont want Nu Lites for this?

 

[Dominus_Noctis]

That is one of the things I wanted to put into Wastelands. It was actually inspired by the balance introduced in the Sigma TC. [...]

Oooh... I'd be careful about that - the current balance in Sigma is more a stand in until some tools get released. When we were doing balance testing for Sigma, without those tools it just became fiendishly hard to make additional betas (and to find additional testers and time) to work out issues, so balance was laid a bit on the backburner

 

[Terra_Inc]

Oooh... I'd be careful about that - the current balance in Sigma is more a stand in until some tools get released. When we were doing balance testing for Sigma, without those tools it just became fiendishly hard to make additional betas (and to find additional testers and time) to work out issues, so balance was laid a bit on the backburner

Thanks for the tip. I didn't intend to copy it 1:1 but now I can at least spare me the work of going through the code too much. The interesting thing about it is the concept. The idea that all of the ship sizes are balanced, so that the huge ships have a hard time shooting at the tiny ones and so on. In Wastelands, I want to encourage the use of smaller ships, so that aspect is really interesting to me.
About your balancing tools: I have done something similar (see Modder's Toolbox) but I hear that yours are far better.

Sure that you dont want Nu Lites for this?

Well... now that you remember me... R5D5's ships have lots of running lights, so... it would be useful.

 

[Dominus_Noctis]

Thanks for the tip. I didn't intend to copy it 1:1 but now I can at least spare me the work of going through the code too much. The interesting thing about it is the concept. The idea that all of the ship sizes are balanced, so that the huge ships have a hard time shooting at the tiny ones and so on. In Wastelands, I want to encourage the use of smaller ships, so that aspect is really interesting to me.
About your balancing tools: I have done something similar (see Modder's Toolbox) but I hear that yours are far superior.

Yeah, the Modder's Toolbox is quite a nice tool; I wouldn't mean to imply otherwise

If this helps, I believe the way that TUN had originally designed balance in Sigma was a balance between three types of classes: battleships, destroyers, and cruisers.

I can't remember off the top of my head (so don't shoot me ), but I believe that destroyers were originally designed to best battleships, cruisers were designed to annihilated destroyers, and battleships killed cruisers with the identifier being in the tooltip and usually according to size (I actually can't remember the miss percentages right now, but I think they are 40% against destroyers, 20% against cruisers). What that didn't account for so far was harassment possibilities and differential production factors

As far as I know, he used FO "passive" percentages to calculate the damage increase to a ship type, and did excel calculations to determine a method of balance for most. Since the number of ODFs is increasing so rapidly with the addition of the other factions, I believe that he's waiting for Optec to release the FO balancing script because of the sheer number of different calculations and damage amounts to put in each ordnance file .

If you are looking for potential advice, one thing you might consider (if you haven't already thought of it) is playing with the balance between beams, torpedoes, and pulses.

Beams being a "base damage" dealer being mostly mounted on run of the mill ship, pulses having higher base damage, but dealing less and less damage to larger vessels (and thus better against smaller vessels, which you could make your earlier game ships) and torpedoes dealing higher base damage but missing more and more against smaller ships.

This might allow you to preserve the identity of capital ship killers, anti-small vessels, and just generally good "fleet fillers". Sadly since I deal mainly with FO balance I can really only offer suggestions from what I've futzed around with there

 

[Terra_Inc]

Sadly since I deal mainly with FO balance I can really only offer suggestions from what I've futzed around with there

No, it's okay. That was pretty useful to me. I can make something out of that, thanks!

 

[FahreS]

Well... now that you remember me... R5D5's ships have lots of running lights, so... it would be useful.

You can have it then, just dont edit the tga files

 

[Terra_Inc]

You can have it then, just dont edit the tga files

No problem, thanks!

 

[Adm_Z]

One thought on balancing form me is maybe, instead of doing a rock paper scissors style, maybe you can do it a little differently like this:

You could make the ships where 1 on 1, a battleship is still the best, but the number of availability would make it so that you would have 4 destroyers to every battleship. So, 4 destroyers could beat a battleship, but 2 or 3 could not. Basically, a destroyer is 1/4 the price and build time and cost of a battleship, but powerful enough that 4 could beat a battleship. Alternatively, 1 battleship could take out 2 or 3 cruisers. Make the Cruisers about 1/2 of the price and build time of the battleship, but they are more susceptible to its weapons. You do the same so that 2 Cruisers could beat 4 Destroyers because the cruisers weapons do more damage to destroyers than battleships.


So: 1 Battleship, in cost and time = 4 x 1 destroyer = 2 x 1 Cruiser.

• 
  4 Destroyers = 1+(more than 1) battleship in weapons, but -2(less than 2) Cruisers

• 1 Cruiser = 2+ destroyers, but less than .5 battleship,

• 2 Cruisers = 4+ destroyers, but -1 battleship

• 1 Battleship = 2+cruisers, -4 Destroyers, or some combination of the two.

You could do more with making battleships huge and really high on the tech tree, so that people would mostly work with cruisers and destroyers until they got battleships.


I believe this is only possible if you can add exceptions to the damagebase of weapons in stock, and I'm not sure if you can tbh.

I actually really like that idea though, so if you don't use it I might in a future mod.

 

[Terra_Inc]

One thought on balancing form me is maybe, instead of doing a rock paper scissors style, maybe you can do it a little differently like this:

You could make the ships where 1 on 1, a battleship is still the best, but the number of availability would make it so that you would have 4 destroyers to every battleship. So, 4 destroyers could beat a battleship, but 2 or 3 could not. Basically, a destroyer is 1/4 the price and build time and cost of a battleship, but powerful enough that 4 could beat a battleship. Alternatively, 1 battleship could take out 2 or 3 cruisers. Make the Cruisers about 1/2 of the price and build time of the battleship, but they are more susceptible to its weapons. You do the same so that 2 Cruisers could beat 4 Destroyers because the cruisers weapons do more damage to destroyers than battleships.


So: 1 Battleship, in cost and time = 4 x 1 destroyer = 2 x 1 Cruiser.

• 
  4 Destroyers = 1+(more than 1) battleship in weapons, but -2(less than 2) Cruisers

• 1 Cruiser = 2+ destroyers, but less than .5 battleship,

• 2 Cruisers = 4+ destroyers, but -1 battleship

• 1 Battleship = 2+cruisers, -4 Destroyers, or some combination of the two.

You could do more with making battleships huge and really high on the tech tree, so that people would mostly work with cruisers and destroyers until they got battleships.


I believe this is only possible if you can add exceptions to the damagebase of weapons in stock, and I'm not sure if you can tbh.

I actually really like that idea though, so if you don't use it I might in a future mod.

I hoped to (sort of) combine both. The method you explain is quite similar to how I set up my personal mod, though I balanced that one absolute and not relative. I will repeat that method for Wastelands. Additionally, I'd like to do the hitChance via RPS. Seems more realistic to me. I don't know if or how that will work out, but it was the original intention.

There won't be many battleships in Wastelands. The Starchaser (II) will be the most powerful ship of the player sides and she acts as a battleship, but she's basically a super-powered Heavy Cruiser. The AI sides will have better ships, but only one or two battleships.

Yes, we can modify the base damage in stock a2, just like we can do hitChance modifications. It's a lot of work, but it can be done. The game makers did a few hitChance exceptions, but no damage exceptions AFAIK. The command does work, though.

 

[CABAL]

The base damage exception was a carryover from A1 where it was used to make conventional weapons ineffective against Species 9341 in the Borg missions. It's very helpful, especially if you want to have passive abilities ala Fleet Ops.

 

[Dominus_Noctis]

One thought on balancing form me is maybe, instead of doing a rock paper scissors style, maybe you can do it a little differently like this:

You could make the ships where 1 on 1, a battleship is still the best, but the number of availability would make it so that you would have 4 destroyers to every battleship. So, 4 destroyers could beat a battleship, but 2 or 3 could not. Basically, a destroyer is 1/4 the price and build time and cost of a battleship, but powerful enough that 4 could beat a battleship. Alternatively, 1 battleship could take out 2 or 3 cruisers. Make the Cruisers about 1/2 of the price and build time of the battleship, but they are more susceptible to its weapons. You do the same so that 2 Cruisers could beat 4 Destroyers because the cruisers weapons do more damage to destroyers than battleships.


So: 1 Battleship, in cost and time = 4 x 1 destroyer = 2 x 1 Cruiser.

• 
  4 Destroyers = 1+(more than 1) battleship in weapons, but -2(less than 2) Cruisers

• 1 Cruiser = 2+ destroyers, but less than .5 battleship,

• 2 Cruisers = 4+ destroyers, but -1 battleship

• 1 Battleship = 2+cruisers, -4 Destroyers, or some combination of the two.

You could do more with making battleships huge and really high on the tech tree, so that people would mostly work with cruisers and destroyers until they got battleships.


I believe this is only possible if you can add exceptions to the damagebase of weapons in stock, and I'm not sure if you can tbh.

I actually really like that idea though, so if you don't use it I might in a future mod.

The problem with that sort of balance is that it becomes a pure numbers game . You can't get up to battleships (unless you make them really cost effective, but then that means you won't be making cruisers/destroyers ever again without caps...) because you'll have hordes of the best destroyers or cruisers already, ala CnC . It is the easiest method of course, but it becomes hard in my experience to give each ship a unique character with that type of balancing ethos

 

[Adm_Z]

hmm, I"m not sure how? you could have more Battleships than everyone, but the truth is, unless you build a balanced fleet, there is a simple hard counter to sheer spam.

 

[Dominus_Noctis]

hmm, I"m not sure how? you could have more Battleships than everyone, but the truth is, unless you build a balanced fleet, there is a simple hard counter to sheer spam.

Think about it this way: if battleships are at the highest tier, cruisers lower, and destroyers the lowest, battles will be fought in the early game with destroyers. You'll already have quite a few out and since destroyers are the cheapest (and probably the fastest building) you can produce more firepower without having to use money to tech up, meaning that it actually becomes a liability in most situations to produce cruisers. :Y

The end result is that you'll have to both build a scalar in that makes cruisers and battleships more cost effective than destroyers, without making a tech up to either one rendering the destroyer (or the cruiser) useless (and taking into consideration what the other factions can do tech-wise).

If on the other hand you try to balance out the early Sigma-style method of one class doing more damage to another, and taking more from the third class, you'll get a rock paper scissors idea... that will unfortunately only work if both factions have very similar tech opportunities, and close to equal cost structures between the units. I.E. if a Zev destroyer costs 1/3 as much as a VRA destroyer, a VRA destroyer should do nearly 3x as much damage (if both are at tech level 1).

Although simple methods of balancing seem the most appealing, if you're really trying to enforce use of every vessel uniquely, a more complex balancing method must be placed on top in my opinion, to ensure that simple numbers wars don't become feasible.

That starting point incidentally was essentially balancing in FO 3.0PreRelease .

 

[thunderfoot]

When balancing anything I've modded or added, such as the weapons in the A2 Physics Project, Terra, I try to keep the Fuzzy Wuzzy principle in mind. Something with 2X the firepower of another unit is not twice as effective but rather the square root of 2 more effective, because enough firepower will kill either one just as dead. It is called the Fuzzy Wuzzy principle because there was a tribe in South Africa called the Fuzzy Wuzzys who defeated a British Army regiment while equipped only with spears and knives.

Balancing something well can be very rewarding and challenging. I suggest you start as you have and then adjust off of it. Try for subtle. Maybe one race's cruisers have sensors with a longer range. And one of the others mount more weapons. While yet another mounts cruiser grade weapons on destroyer hulls.

What you ought to do is what feels right to you. Suggestions are nice and well meant and probably good advice. But it is your mod. Mod for yourself first. If others like it, great! If not, well okay, you didn't make it for their enjoyment anyway. You made if for yours.

 

[Terra_Inc]

Thanks for your ideas, people. I'll find a way to balance that thing once it's done.

 

[Terra_Inc]

I've been working on the techtree recently. Looks pretty unconventional right now, I like that. I don't want people to rush through this like "Bah, just another TC mod... gimme my research station and I'll start building battleships!" I've got some more green lights, now the whole thing starts getting into motion.

Soon I'll be able to present you the backstory on the first of the player sides plus some nice in-game screenshots. Ah, and there is also this other thing... for now it's secret.

 

[Knight]

All sounds rather promising, I'm looking forward to it

 

[Terra_Inc]

Here's an update. I have some new screenshots to show, and a few comments about the progress of the mod, and some other stuff.

-------------------------

I present you: The Eagle class cruiser. Remastered by Jetfreak himself, this jewel is sort of a heavier version of the Hunter class destroyer. While it's not as fast and cheap as the Hunter, it packs a mean punch.

Spoiler: The Hunter And The Eagle

Spoiler: Prospectors

And here we have Fireball's McMillan class frigate. She's the Federation's smallest combat ship in Wastelands. Isn't she cute?

Spoiler: Escort

-------------------------

It's time to introduce the first player side. As I've stated before, the player sides are basically the same race, but with small variations. One might have early access to fighters, another may have cheaper stations or a unique ship. One might be very good during early game, others may be better during the end game. It works a little bit like FlOps' avatar system. I thought it would bring some variety into the mod. Try the different sides and find the one you prefer.
The player sides are named after the mining companies that support them. The first one is...

Intersolar Mining Corporation
Founded in the TOS era, Intersolar is one of the oldest existing mining companies. The people of Intersolar have always been very liberal, and they have good relations to their employees. They are always ready to invest into anything that might prove lucrative.
Playing Intersolar allows you to create a infrastructure faster than any other player side. Their basic stations are a bit cheaper than usual, which allows you to quickly "tech up" to industrial standards. This can give you a considerable advantage in the early game. Make sure to defend your installations and ships, though. Quick expansion means that you'll have to keep an eye on the enemy. He might overrun your mining outposts faster than you can react...

-------------------------

I have posted Chapter 1 of the background story for Wastelands in the Fanfic section. Reading this will lead you into the campaign (not too far, though). It is also a bit of a preview - several details from the story will show up in the mod and campaign. We're not in the Wastelands yet, but we will be there soon. Don't hesitate to give comments, it helps me to shape the campaign.

-------------------------

That's it for now. Stay tuned, people, soon there will be more. A new chapter for the story, more information on the player sides, more screenshots... be ready.