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True-to-Life Ships
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Cheap-ass MOD by Matt_el_g, A.K.A. Matt Lever

E-mail: mattelgreato@hotmail.com

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Acknowledgements:

8of5, for his Assimilatable cloak which is used in this mod to add that touch of authenticity. I mean, if the Borg wanted to assimilate and use a cloak, why couldn\'t they? (e-mail: griggy55@hotmail.com)

While its not really the same .odf anymore, I feel oblidged to thank shadow_class, as the original .odf was his \'Super Defiant\', which I\'ve modified a little. (e-mail: philip.pawlega@cogeco.ca)

BTW, lol, neither of these guys know who I am, but sometime I will e-mail them my thanks.

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Introduction/Brief Description:

Right, this really is my FIRST EVER mod, and while the actual coding I put into it wasn\'t really all that complicated, as the .odf\'s are surprisingly user friendly, it did take a while for me to form a balance. In fact, I\'m not entirely sure that I\'m happy with some of the ships still, but I wanted to get the mod on the Files Network to see whether anyone thought it was worth carrying on. If I get some good feedback, I\'ll probably give y\'all a couple of updates.

This read-me is, as you probably deduced already, an essay. lol. I hate those read-me\'s that have virtually no details at all, so I\'m being thoughrough. You don\'t have to read it all, but hey, if you get a spare minute give it a go.

Basically, this mod makes the ships more true-to-the-series, or tries to. I\'m not sure if anyone\'s done something similar or not, though I\'m sure if they have I\'ll be told. Loudly by the author, no doubt, but at least I\'ll know.

Please note that I have included all the ship .odf\'s and all the station .odf\'s, even ones I haven\'t modded. This is in part due to me being lazy and not sorting through them, and also because I didn\'t bother to note down which ones I did mod, so I just bunged the lot in so as to not miss anything out. Its still only a few KB, so what the heck.

Finally, I very kindly put it in .zip format; I\'ve noticed that a lot of you pro modders out there are using .rar archiving, and that can pee people off who only have Winzip. I had to download Winrar on a 56k connection, dammit. So this file can be opened using any archiver.

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Installation Instructions:

OK, first off you\'ll want to backup all the files under
(Your drive letter, e.g. C)\\:Program Files\\Activision\\Star Trek Armada II\\odf
in subdirectories \'Ships\' and \'Stations, and the file \'gcloak.odf\' in the subdirectory \'special_weapons\', coz these\'ll all get replaced, and if you had a wonky download, then you might be looking at a reinstall without the backups.

OK, once you\'ve stowed them away safely, unzip this mod into a seperate directory, and copy all the files in the unzipped folder into the relevant folders. The files inside the zip are laid out in the right pathways, so you should be able to figure it out. If it asks to overwrite some files, don\'t worry, just make sure you\'ve made back-ups and click \'yes\'. If you still have probs, e-mail me at the address at the top of this read-me. If you\'ve installed mods successfully before, you should have no problem with this, it doesn\'t require any mod packer or anything like that. Just some common sense.

Of course, I have checked the entire .zip for viruses before sending it off with a fully updated (as of 18/08/2002) version of Norton Antivirus 2002, so if you do find a virus in there, please don\'t look at me.


To use the mod:

Once you\'ve copied and overwritten the relevant files successfully, the mod will just work... simple. Start up your game, and the ships will be updated when you enter a Quick Battle or Single Player game (still haven\'t tested Multiplayer yet).


Testbed:

This mod was made and successfully tested on the following system spec:

Clean Install Armada 2 V1.1
1Ghz AMD Athlon Thunderbird Processor
768MB PC100 SDRAM
64MB Geforce 2 MX400 graphics card
Soundblaser Audigy Soundcard
24GB 5400RPM Quantum Fireball Hard Drive
28X CD-Rom
Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer
Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro
(Told you I\'d be thoughourgh ;))

It worked fine with no real slowdown at 1024x768 32bit resolution.

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Disclaimer:

He he, I know its not necessary, but it makes this read-me look good ;)

If this mod completely screws up your system, or contains a virus, its not my fault and I take absolutely no responsibility for it. You download at your own risk. I have tested all the files inside for viruses and stability and found them to be fine, if you don\'t blame a faulty download or something, not me.

This mod took me hours to make, not the coding, but the balancing of it. You can modify it for your own use by all means, but if you make a change to it that you intend to put up for download or just share with mates, I would like you to ask me first, and maybe show me what you\'ve done so I can learn something...

THIS MOD IS NOT MADE, DISTRIBUTED, OR SUPPORTED BY Activision
TM & (C) INTERPLAY & PARAMOUNT PICTURES.

Copyright notices:

Star Trek, Bridge Commander, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: The Next eneration, Star Trek: Voyager (and the various logo devices used in them) are copyright Paramount Pictures, as are the characters, related images, and sound from the productions.

This mod took me hours to make, not the coding, but the balancing of it. You can modify it for your own use by all means, but if you make a change to it that you intend to put up for download or just share with mates, I would like you to ask me first, and maybe show me what you\'ve done so I can learn something...

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Ship Backgrounds/New Stats:

Many vessels have been upgraded with additional/different weapons banks. Also, their hull integrity and shield strength has been upgraded. While I\'ve tried to balance them roughly as they would be on the series, in the interests of fairness in-game, some of the more powerful vessels take longer/cost more to build than normal. The Warbird is now so powerful that it takes nearly 3 minutes to build! Also, most of the Starbases have been scaled up in size a little, to make them more realistic. The Warbird is now twice the size of the Galaxy class (I had to make the Advanced shipyard bigger too, as the Warbird kept poking out of the top), as it should be. I was going to give you some details, but then I realised it will be more fun re-learning the ships configurations in-game. Remember, the more expensive, the more powerful, and probably the longest to build.

The most major developments are on the Klingon side of things. Not only are all the vessels that have appeared on the TV/movies equipt with a cloak, as they should be (the Qeh\'Rahl is just equipt for one because it is a staple ship in the game, and should have one logically). Also, the Vor\'cha has been upgraded significantly, and is now just under the strength of the Galaxy class, like the show. Its also a tinsey bit bigger than it was. Those of you who understand the simple code can go in and have a look at what has been done.

Borg vessels are also more resilient, at least a few of them are, like they should be. I haven\'t gone overboard with them, but a Tactical cube can take on quite a few enemy vessels now.

As well as being bigger, the Starbases also have a few extra pulse phasers than they used to, to balance against the more powerful ships and to just be more authentic, and have more powerful shields and hull. The defence platforms such as the Torpedo Launcher are also stronger to counter the more powerful ships; they now have improved shields and two or three banks of their weapons.

You must understand that while I like Star Trek, I haven\'t seen EVERY SINGLE episode. Some of the ships have been left un-modded because I haven\'t seen them on TV, either because they\'ve been made up or I\'ve just missed their appearence. Besides, most of the un-modded ones are cheap, which means you still have some to build up in a hurry. Also, for example, if I gave the Galaxy its rightful 12 phaser banks, it would cause a terrific slowdown on the system if two or three of them fired at once. So, for those reasons, I\'ve just scaled them correctly (in my opinion) against each other, rather than given them the exact attributes as on the DITL.