Star Trek Fleet Operations

[Redwarf]

I've done a search for something on this game in these forums and haven't seen it, so I figured I'd let you know what you are all missing out on. I did have screenhots to illustrate some points but I can't quite figure out how to upload them and saving them from the website is a tad difficult because of their viewer. If anyone could let me know how to upload them i'd greatly appreciate it. Until then, take a look at the website (http://www.fleetops.net)

I trust that some of you played Star Trek Armada and Star Trek Armada II. Well you might remember them being fairly simple games, fun, but simple. Well if you found yourself wanting something "more" than either of those games, then Fleet Ops is for you. Fleet Operations (aka Fleet Ops, or FO) is a total conversion mod for Armada II. FO has been in development now for a long, long time. Years. And the polish on the game shows. They describe it better than I could;

"Fleet Operations is a popular multiplayer orientated modification for Activision's Star Trek Armada II. The project target was not only to create a simple "modification" but trying to make Armada II a worth successor to the second best selling Star Trek game Star Trek: Armada (behind Interplay's Star Trek: 25th Anniversary by a small, but fair margin).

As Armada II is much different from what everybody thought the successor of Armada I should be, we started to change the philosophy of the game. The objective of our mod is to bring the game back to the Star Trek root. We do not believe in the sense of creating big fleets within seconds and battles based on the pure number of materials. We do not see benefits of an unbalanced weight between the races. Our mod is based on the conviction that each ship should have its defined task and does not loose its importance during the game. We designed each ship new with more realistic textures. Each race has its single new designed techtree. We introduced a credit system that gives you the possibility to create a certain number of race specific special ships. We designed new surroundings for the maps, more realistic asteriod fields, more animated star maps to increase perception of the game."


And man did they succeed at doing just that. Set about 10-20 years in the "future" of the Trek we know now, you can play as Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Dominion and Borg using ships both familiar to you, and some new designs. Each race has a distinct and unique techtree as well as a choice between two 'avatars' which then give you different bonuses and unique ships (although currently the AI only seems to choose one of the avatars all the time). Additionally, you may gain further unique ships and variations on your own ships by capturing enemy construction ships. The Borg in particular have a unique resource called "priority." The story behind it is that you gain priority through research and building ships, but you *need* priority before the collective will give you access to more research and more ships. Hopefully in future releases we'll see more unique resources but until then, this is a nice touch.

Whilst the tech-tree's of the Feds, Klingons, Romulans and Dominion are similar to what you'll see in other RTS's the Borg again have their own special way of doing things which fits into their character. The Borg don't have multiple shipyards which construct only certain ships, they have one shipyard for every ship, which is destroyed after creating a ship (meaning one shipyard = one ship, you've got to build another before you can get a second ship, but they are cheap and quick to build), and the ships appear instantly (albeit expensively). The real interesting part comes in "creating" your ship. Each Borg vessel has X amount of hardpoints, and with these hardpoints you can augment its armament to include more beam weapons or torpedo weapons, or special weapons like a holding-beam or an auto assimilator, or you can even fill hardpoints with sensors, regeneration and armor modules (maxing out the armor modules creates the "tactical cube" look that we saw on Voyager). The customization of their vessels is very interesting, and I'm happy to say the AI uses all of this very well. I've only played as the Borg properly once, but man are they fun.

The feel of the game is great. Each ship is worth something to the point where you almost hate to loose a single one, and almost every ship has a unique and useful ability (*almost* every ability is useful. Can't win them all). Each ship has reduced loadout from the cannon (eg. an Intrepid has only 1x phaser emitter and 1x photon torpedo launcher, but it has the special weapon of a tricobolt torpedo), which may annoy those who like their Galaxy class's able to burn multi-paragraph essays into enemy hulls, but this weapon format really "fits" into FO. Each ship has three values associated with it; Offensive, Defensive and System. These values appear when you mouse-over a ship/station and allow you to see at a glance its worth compared to other vessels. Offensive gives you a rough estimate to the damage it can put out, Defensive to the damage it can take, and System to let you know how vulnerable its subsystems are (engines, weapons, life-support, etc) and how fast it will repair them. Certain ships can also be refitted in the field, and all ships can "rank up" like in other RTS's (something which was considered impossible to do in the Armada engine - these guys have a habit of doing things once thought undoable)

I probably can't describe the game in a way that does it justice, but should you have an Armada II CD lying around, or are able to get one, I'd recommend downloading it and trying it for yourself. Currently only Instant Action (skirmish) and multiplayer are available, and the AI tends to cheat. Thankfully you can alter various handicaps to make it a more even fight.

http://www.fleetops.net

[Tsukiyumi]

I'll have to check this out.

[cbosdell]

I've been playing it for quite a while. It's all kinds of awesome. Probably the best Star Trek game ever doe which is impressive for a mod.

[Mark]

What software do you need to play? Armada?

[Redwarf]

You need an Armada II (2). You don't have to install it though. The mod comes with an installer that will copy files direct from the CD, but you'll still need the CD to play.

[Tsukiyumi]

Well, you'd need the cd files, anyways.