[Mod] Yesteryears Updates

[Shadow]

I see. I was hoping they'd be a little like the stock armada 2 wireframes. (The wireframes being in 4 or 5 parts, if that makes sense, and seethrough)

 

[Majestic]

Well since it's not a A2 mod, and considering the amount of work those wireframes can involve you can probably understand why I am going the FO route.

 

[Shadow]

I do understand. which was why I had said I was hoping that they'd be like the stock a2 wireframes.

 

[Chiletrek]

Hello:
I can understand both points of view.
A2 stock wireframes are useful as you can see system damage as they happen, but they can be very messy to do. But if Yesteryears is going to be a FleetOps, then it makes sense the wireframes follow that style, specially since FleetOps likes to show stats on different weapons (for instance).

 

[Majestic]

Been meaning to get back to this for a while now, and since I got sick I have been itching to finish up the Feddies for YY. So I did a little test run today, did some basic odf and tt coding to get a running game started.



Note: Some things aren't right, like the build hardpoints for the shipyards are in the wrong spot as I haven't really done much to the odf's yet other than make sure they won't crash on me.

 

[Zelph]

Looks fantastic! You're a stud, Maj.

 

[Majestic]

Thanks Zelph. Been meaning to get back to it for a while. Going to try and do a little each week for the next month and hopefully I can get a beta released soon.

A stud in Australia means you're hot and sexy so thanks mate.

 

[Knight]

Excellent work Maj, brilliant stuff

 

[CABAL]

A stud in Australia means you're hot and sexy so thanks mate.

It means the same thing here.

 

[Rifraf]

The mod still looks great Majestic. That mining station is pretty sweet and the sensor station as well. I keep thinking back to how you were going to have the sensor station manned which in the early days of the Federation makes perfect sense. Such a great idea to add to game play.

Kind of hard to do in the TNG era when everything is so automated. Keep up the great work

 

[Starfox1701]

Great work I like the one that's an Excelsior study model. Is that your Ingraham Class?

 

[Majestic]

Thanks everyone. I'm currently working on the Miranda upgrade weapon which is giving me some issues.

Great work I like the one that's an Excelsior study model. Is that your Ingraham Class?

That's the Excalibur class, a original design by me, basically my version of the Lexington.

 

[Majestic]

Thanks to some help from Dom, I finally got the Miranda upgrade weapon working, seems it can't be used while a ceasefire is in effect.

I also did some dynamic strings for some of the units. Keeping the useful info that FO has along with some additional info on my part. Mostly fluff but I like it.

 

[Starfox1701]

Thanks everyone. I'm currently working on the Miranda upgrade weapon which is giving me some issues.



That's the Excalibur class, a original design by me, basically my version of the Lexington.

Ah that makes since The KA Lexington is a nice ship but is not to everyones taste

 

[Majestic]

Ah that makes since The KA Lexington is a nice ship but is not to everyones taste

Yeah I did try my hand at redesigning it and I did for a while have an alternative design however I grew to not like it and thus went back to the drawing board and came up with the Excalibur that is a mix of Excelsior and Conny tech. I really like the Excalibur design and think it works in great with the YY timeline and feel.

 

[Terradyhne]

i like your great model of the Okinawa class frigate

 

[Majestic]

i like your great model of the Okinawa class frigate

Thanks mate, I tried to keep it faithful to the original with my own tweaks to make it how I think it should be.

Main changes were including a shuttlebay in the rear, I think all Feddie ships should have a shuttlebay even a small one. I moved the impulse engines to the underside of the hull and took a clue from WickedZombie and added in some torpedo launchers in the forward section of the engineering hull. Without these features she doesn't feel right to me. She wasn't too hard to texture either, mainly getting the window sizes correct.

 

[Majestic]

I decided to take a look at my balancing plan before getting neck deep into it. I decided to overhaul it a little and would like some feedback.

First thing I did was scrap the scout and merge it's abilities with the frigate to give the frigate and additional use. I didn't want the design to go to waste as not everyone does early raiding in-game. Plus it allows me to save time with one less unit to make. The Oberth will now become a map unit, the I'rexa for the KDF will now become a frigate and other units have been moved to compensate for this change.

The draft of the balance sheet. Feedback welcomed.

Spoiler: Draft

(FF) Frigate

• basic combat vessel, can also be used as a long-range scout
• low health, weak weapons
• fast movement speed
• extreme long range sensors
• strong against utility vessels and frigates
• weak against frigates, destroyers and above and stations

Basic vessel and first combat ship. Best used for very early raiding, patrolling and scouting. Frigates are designed to be fast produced, quick and fast in speed and to be able to cover long distances to serve as early warning systems. Weapons and health is weak and should not be considered a combat unit against combat craft, it's speed is it's best defence in such circumstances.


(DD) Destroyer

• support and raiding vessel, ideal for raiding and low offensive missions.
• low health, average weapons
• fast movement speed
• long range sensors
• strong against destroyers, frigates, scouts, turrets and utility vessels
• weak against cruisers and above

Excellent early raiding unit, and support and flanking vessel for cruisers. Various types of destroyers perform different roles better and it's best to have a mixed fleet of destroyers over producing a single destroyer unit. Excellent spot for larger units with low range sensors keeping the usefulness of destroyers in late game along with continued mining raids.


(CL) Cruiser

• low level general combat ship
• average health and average weapons
• average movement speed
• medium range sensors
• strong against destroyers, cruisers, heavy cruisers, utility and turrets
• weak against scouts, frigates, battlecruisers, dreadnoughts and battleships

Best used as an early combat unit as well as a supporting unit in late game. Like destroyers, cruisers have various types all of which preform a particular role better than others and so a mixed fleet is important for a successful fleet and battle. Some cruisers can be upgraded or refitted to preform particular roles more efficiently.


(CA) Heavy Cruiser

• primary combat vessel
• strong health, strong weapons
• average movement speed
• medium range sensors
• strong against cruisers, heavy cruisers, utility, command cruisers, battlecruisers and stations
• weak against destroyers, frigates, scouts, dreadnaughts and battleships

Heavy cruisers are the main combat unit in any fleet, supplemented with cruisers and destroyers. Most fractions have two types of heavy cruisers, each slightly different. The standard heavy cruiser is an all round unit depending on faction traits, the second is a more specialised or prototype heavy cruiser and is more costly to produce.


(CC) Command Cruiser

• high level support vessel, design for supporting the fleet
• average health, average weapons
• average movement speed
• medium range sensors
• strong against
• weak against

Best used with a reasonable escort, this unit's focus isn't on combat but supporting the fleet with passive abilities. Expensive and weak for it's size, it's best defended while in combat.


(BC) Battlecruiser

• heavy multi-role combat vessel
• very strong health, very strong weapons
• low movement speed
• medium range sensors
• Unit cap of 8
• strong against cruisers, heavy cruisers, command cruisers and battlecruisers
• weak against dreadnoughts, starbases and battleships

Enhanced combat unit, basically a heavier version of the multi-role heavy cruiser. Usually more technologically advanced than anything before it and as such usually includes a passive weapon that gives it a unique advantage. Expensive and slow to build, best used with a small fleet for best results.


(DN) Dreadnought

• artillery vessel and base buster
• very strong health, extremely strong weapons
• extremely low movement speed
• low range sensors
• Unit cap of 4
• strong against starbases, battlecruisers, dreadnoughts and battleships
• weak against utility, frigates, destroyers, cruisers, heavy cruisers, command cruisers

Artillery unit with a focus on weaponry over defence. A heavy hitter, with an extremely powerful offensive capability best uses are destroying enemy bases and to be built as needed due to time and cost requirements. Should be defended at all times with a sizeable force of cruisers, heavy cruisers and destroyers.


(BB) Battleship

• extremely heavy combat vessel
• extremely strong health, very strong weapons
• extremely low movement speed
• low range sensors
• Unit cap of 4
• strong against starbases, battlecruisers, dreadnoughts and battleships
• weak against utility, frigates, destroyers, cruisers, heavy cruisers, command cruisers

The opposite of the Dreadnought, the Battleships emphasises defence over weaponry and is much better at survival during combat with stations and heavy fleets. Able to withstand more punishment that a dreadnought, a battleship like the dreadnought has a very low sensor range so requires a spotter or fleet to accompany it.

I put a unit cap on larger units so the player will focus more on cruisers rather than trying to fall into the habit of battleship rushes which will be highly expensive (be like the cost of two fleets of cruisers like the Miranda) and slow to produce but also very powerful.

Anyway feedback welcome and desired.

 

[Sqweloookle]

I need Yesteryears! Please please continue to work on it!!!

 

[CABAL]

I like the setup. What is the AOE and shot speed on the Dreadnaught's artillery like? Could it be used to break up a fleet or is it exclusively a base-buster weapon?

 

[Terradyhne]

I think all Feddie ships should have a shuttlebay even a small one.

I think all the races should have a shuttlebay on all their ships that are bigger than a runabout

 

[Rifraf]

Looks good Majestic. Great idea on scrapping the scout and giving that duty to a larger more useful ship. Well thought out groundwork to start from.

I have a question though. Are you primarily making your mod for player vs player or player vs AI? Reason I ask and what I struggle with for a personal mod is because it's hard to balance both together so if you have PvP will it play well in single player?

If for PvAI how do you get the AI to use your well laid out ship classes that serve certain roles and purposes to play in a style remotely close to what you imagined? I guess the ultimate challenge is to get the AI to use your work in a manner that's even close to human behavior. Obviously you decide what the AI builds and how fast to build it and can even generally make it perform in a way that approximates human behavior, but it's still just kind of build, attack, build, attack.

I like the change with the scout duties going to the Frigate. You automatically created a ship that the AI can scout with, but can also now raid and perform some general attack duties since it has reasonable health and weapons instead of just sit there in one spot and provide line of site. Opens up game play a bit. That's kind of what Cabal said about thinking outside the box.

I always do my mods for single player action so have to struggle with these great ideas and then implement them in such a way that the AI can use them in a reasonable manner and still have the mod be something close to what I imagined.

 

[Majestic]

I need Yesteryears! Please please continue to work on it!!!

Don't worry I am doing work each week on it. I am not going to put down a date as I never seem able to meet those deadlines. Lets just say I have a small handful of station models left to map and texture then it's all coding and in-game graphics then I can get an alpha or beta released of the Federation.

I like the setup. What is the AOE and shot speed on the Dreadnaught's artillery like? Could it be used to break up a fleet or is it exclusively a base-buster weapon?

Thanks mate. I haven't fully decided on this, hence posting up that draft. Each race will be different I am thinking some factions might have it to work only as a base-buster and others more focused on busting up fleet formations. Another idea is have it with two weapons one focusing more on base and another more on fleets. Perhaps make it a toggle weapon for the player or just have it done automatically.

Decisions, decisions. One thing I can say, the Ulysses has enough torpedo launchers to do whatever I want with it. My original idea of it was to be a slow moving unit that needs a heavy escort but now that you asked the question I might try and make it more flexible in it's usage.

I think all the races should have a shuttlebay on all their ships that are bigger than a runabout

I agree, however some ships aren't designed for one. I never saw one on a B'rel.

Looks good Majestic. Great idea on scrapping the scout and giving that duty to a larger more useful ship. Well thought out groundwork to start from.

I like the change with the scout duties going to the Frigate. You automatically created a ship that the AI can scout with, but can also now raid and perform some general attack duties since it has reasonable health and weapons instead of just sit there in one spot and provide line of site. Opens up game play a bit. That's kind of what Cabal said about thinking outside the box.

Thanks Rifraf, however I have to give credit to Cabal for the original idea.

At first I was thinking too much like Fleet Ops and Armada 2 with a small scout used for fast scouting then I thought more in the mod production terms and felt spending anywhere from 2-6 hours on modeling a scout another 2 on mapping and about 6-12 on texturing it wasn't worth it just for a ship people rarely use or take notice of. I also looked at the frigate which is a lot like the Sabre in Fleet Ops. Some people use it, others don't so merging those two gives the frigate a new lease on live and makes it useful for more than one thing. It pretty much guarantees than every player will at least build a couple of these if only for scouting.

I have a question though. Are you primarily making your mod for player vs player or player vs AI? Reason I ask and what I struggle with for a personal mod is because it's hard to balance both together so if you have PvP will it play well in single player?

If for PvAI how do you get the AI to use your well laid out ship classes that serve certain roles and purposes to play in a style remotely close to what you imagined? I guess the ultimate challenge is to get the AI to use your work in a manner that's even close to human behavior. Obviously you decide what the AI builds and how fast to build it and can even generally make it perform in a way that approximates human behavior, but it's still just kind of build, attack, build, attack.

I always do my mods for single player action so have to struggle with these great ideas and then implement them in such a way that the AI can use them in a reasonable manner and still have the mod be something close to what I imagined.

A good question, while I play a lot of Player vs AI lets face it, the A2 AI is stupid beyond belief. I get more of a challenge in AOE3 against easy and moderate AI levels. So I will be building it with the AI in mind, but my main focus will be on the Player vs Player scene. Once I get a few factions out I will probably look at organising a MSFC match or two.

I want to try and make it challenging but my AI writing skills aren't that good so I will probably just modify the FO AI files to suit my needs. I might look at outsourcing that part after the beta and see if anyone here wants to take that job up. I used to have Terra_Inc do that for me and he did a good job, however since he has become rather absent that option is no longer available.

There won't be a single player component for Yesteryears, at least not until I finish the factions at which time I would suspect that I would transfer the mod to the FO-NX project or maybe use it as a template/prototype to make my own strategy game. Most likely the former. So at that point I am sure I would be able to make a campaign for it. In fact my original hopes was to have a fully functional campaign as YY is very story driven and it's a major turning point in the Trek universe.

 

[Majestic]

I did some testing today and some more balance work. I probably won't get anything done next week due to the workload of assignments. So I did away with playing STO this weekend so I could get more work done here.

My aim is to try and make each faction just different enough to bring different strategies to play. More so than stock FO. I wanted the player to be forced to adjust their strategy and play style between the different factions.

Starting with the Federation and making sure my ideas will work by testing I have come up with some neat ideas.

In YY there are 3 resources that each faction uses. Duranium, Tritanium and Deuterium. The first two are mined from moons like in FO/A2, the last one is basically supply from FO. Now some races will have to buy deuterium, the Federation is one of these, others will have them automatically generated from their refineries (I tested that to make sure it worked first). So far I have decided the Federation, Romulans and Gorn will purchase deuterium ( I tested this and it works too) and the Klingons, Kzinti and Cardassians will auto generate it (yup tested it). Basically the higher tech species buy and lower tech/economy factions auto-generate it.

The Federation will be one of two factions that have repair yards as their shipyards can't repair, the other faction with repair yards will be the Kzinti as they are planned at this stage to be a fully warp-in faction so it might not be the best AI faction due to this. Repair yards for the Federation are fragile but quick and cheap to produce. Excellent for expansions.

The Feddies also use phasers which are multi-directional with a 260 degree arc (at this stage) and are multi-target weapons. However they are weaker than the more narrow arc disruptors that all the other factions use. The Gorn use both phasers and disruptors (at this stage). The Federation have stronger photons than other factions however, though the Romulans use massively powered plasma torpedoes and the Kzinti use missiles instead of photons.

Also the Federation can't replace their outpost, once it's destroyed it's gone. So the shipyard can build the Caldwell, Darwin and Okinawa classes. Deuterium for the Federation can be bought from either the outpost or refinery so if you loose the base, you can still progress, also a reason the shipyard can build the utility vessels and frigate. The Federation will also be the only faction with cheap and fast to produce turrets. Other factions will have much more expensive (some manned) turrets or defence installations which are slower to build. Again this is all at this current stage, things are subject to change.

The trick of playing with the Federation will be you have the ability to expand fast and with a good economy you can achieve this. However if you loose your main base you can't recover fully (due to the outpost) so just because you can doesn't always mean you should.

Again I want feedback, what you like and don't. Negative feedback and alternative ideas, or just ideas are more important. However if you want to throw in "I approve" or "Nice work" I will also appreciate that.

 

[CABAL]

I remember I also experimented with making phasers multi-target in A1. I'd recommend you limit the number of targets they can hit, though. I remember a test I did where I couldn't see the battle because of the dense web of phasers. The CannonImp weapon has some multi-target features you may be interested in. For instance, if you set basetargets = 3 and maxextratargets = 1 the weapon would always hit three targets and half the time would hit a fourth.

 

[Majestic]

I was planning on having a max of 2 or 3 targets. Considering most Federation ships only have 2 phaser arrays and 1 photon torpedo launcher of various types/power. The Phaser arrays are the high arc multi-targeting weapons. The Federation and Gorn are the only factions that use phasers all others use disruptors that have more limited arc's but are more powerful. Some Federation ships will also use phaser cannons that are more powerful, have a very limited arc and don't quite match pulse disruptors.

Some factions will use beam disruptors which again are more powerful than phasers but don't have the same arc. They will probably have a 180 degree arc.

 

[Rifraf]

Here I go again thinking about what we saw on screen but are you having phaser strips on your fed ships or the ball type phasers we are used to for the ships of this era? If the ball type wouldn't say a Connie have 3 double sets on the upper and lower saucer fore, port and starboard? I'm just wondering and don't mean to sound like a nuisance

 

[Majestic]

Here I go again thinking about what we saw on screen but are you having phaser strips on your fed ships or the ball type phasers we are used to for the ships of this era? If the ball type wouldn't say a Connie have 3 double sets on the upper and lower saucer fore, port and starboard? I'm just wondering and don't mean to sound like a nuisance

Nuisance huh? Not at all.

Ball type phasers are what I am using although technically it's a beam as far as the game is concerned. Just a texture with a broken beam and a different sound effect.

Game mechanics and balance mate, it might have on the top of the saucer 3 double ball emitters but when arcs are put into the equation, the front one wouldn't be able to fire backwards now would it? The bridge and top/bottom part of the saucer would be in the way.

EDIT: Okay last update for a while. I managed to get the pushbuilditem problem fixed thanks to help from @Dominus_Noctis

I also got this done.



Yesteryears doesn't have avatars, but it doesn't mean I can't take advantage of some of the nice features FO uses. And yes I know about the typo with Interstellar it has already been fixed.

EDIT 2:

Yesteryears now with ship system images.

 

[Majestic]

The other night I decided to do a quick and bare bones GUI as the FO one felt out of place with YY. I decided to do a more simple approach as it was a much more simpler time and fits in with the feel of Yesteryears as well. A better one will probably come out in some future release but for the alpha/beta this will be the GUI.

Also as mentioned in the edits on the previous post, I got system images in. Nothing fancy I just converted the models to obj file imported them into Daz Studio and did a quick and dirty lighting setup and rendered them.

I need to reduce the size of the system images a little (again) as some of the images conflict a little overlapping the GUI slightly. All in due time.



I also got all the verbose tool tips in, using the dynamic strings incorporating elements from both stock A2 and FO. The best of both worlds. Does it look too cluttered or do you guys like having the tactical info and unit background in one?

 

[Rifraf]

Looks really good. I really like the GUI. Simple, dated looking to fit perfectly in with the era. I don't necessarily think the tool tip is too cluttered, but perhaps slightly too much wording? Maybe shorten up the info or something? Anyway, nice job