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[Timeisaperception]

Let me start off by saying that, courtesy of this forum, my interest in Starfarer has been jumped tenfold. Reading through other people's threads on modding, the techniques concerned, and having access to the tools to make it easier motivated me to start this little project.

As of right now, I'm feeling for interest in what I consider to be a personal project (to be shared among my self and a few of my friends) and a learning experience. I see that there's already a Star Trek mod as a WIP on the boards, but I figure this is different enough to warrant a new thread. So here it goes...

My presently unnamed mod (Let's just call it Star Fleet Starfarer or something for right now) focuses on converting ships from the Star Fleet Battles universe into Starfarer. There are two reasons for this - Starfleet Command 2 already has an excellent selection of models to view top/down, and Star Fleet Battles gives a good list of stats that can be translated back into Starfarer for some baseline balancing. As such, this mod essentially covers three eras: The Original Series (where models are applicable), X1 (first half of the film series), and X2 (second half of the film series) - each representing a leap in weapons and ship technologies.

The sprites come from either models made by Taldren, or fan-made models for Starfleet Command 2; sounds come from Taldren, or a Star Trek fan site that offers such content. Weapon scripting is Frankensteined from various other parts of the game, and balancing is a constant struggle. The mod as of today only covers most of the Federation and one Klingon ship (the D7), so I'm reluctant to release it to the forum until a little more can be done. If anyone is interested in a potential release sometime in the future, please let me know in the thread.

Again, I extend my thanks to the forum for helping bring out my creative streak. A few pictures:

[Timeisaperception]

[Durendal5150]

Oh

My

God

You get me models for SFB stuff and I will code the bajeezus out of them.

[Archduke Astro]

My presently unnamed mod (Let's just call it Star Fleet Starfarer or something for right now) focuses on converting ships from the Star Fleet Battles universe into Starfarer.

Boldface mine. I haven't seen those fateful three little words together in a long, long time.

As an ex-player of the game going back to the early 1980s, and a veteran of the late unlamented tabletob / hexmap / pencil-and-paper / WAY TOO MUCH manual bookkeeping & accounting version of the game, I have strong opinions about the game. Star Fleet Battles was a potentially great wargame in a varied and logically-consistent mythos, but it suffered badly from autocratic management by an abrasive designer, and the then-unavoidable limitations of purely analog, handwritten data tracking & gameplay mechanics.

But seeing some SFB content freed from its various shackles and ported into a moddable game such as Starfarer? Win.

SFB was fine for one-on-one duels or small squadron actions (3-4 ships per side), but the workload increased roughly according to the cube of the number of ships in your force. Full fleet actions greatly slowed down the game, which was a real shame as those were the kinds of fights that interested me the most. I'm at a point now in my life where I have minimal patience for the kind of rampant "rules-lawyering" that such stuff demands, and I'd rather just have Starfarer handle the mundane procedural crap while I point a Klingon B-10 battleship at Weapon Status III with all disruptors overloaded, straight towards something tasty-looking and make it go boom.

(Haha..."boom," get it? SFB...Klingon hull design...boom section? No? Oh well. )

There are two reasons for this - Starfleet Command 2 already has an excellent selection of models to view top/down, and Star Fleet Battles gives a good list of stats that can be translated back into Starfarer for some baseline balancing.

I agree. [-chuckle-] And if there's one thing SFB definitely had in abundance (to put it mildly), it was stats.

BTW, if you're serious about doing a proper SFB mod for Starfarer, that green crap all over the Klingon cruiser sprite has to go. I know that's not your fault, but here's the problem: Klingon hulls from the TOS episodes and Kirk-era movies have a light gray base hull color, and Star Fleet Battles continues that trend fully. The sprites that Interplay created for the Starfleet Command PC game may therefore need some help to excise their own additions / tweaks / weirdness compared to the original hullforms as seen all over SFB.

You can still make ST:TSFS "Klingon Birds of Prey" green if you want, though...the original draft of the script had Romulans as the foe; got changed to Klingons; idiot f#ing writers still kept the Romulan cloaking device on a Klingon ship. (Grrrr!) So paint that bastard purple with orange polka-dots for all I care.

But seriously, if this is truly going to be SFB within Starfarer -- and not merely Star Trek or Starfleet Command within Starfarer -- then these distinctions are important. Regarding additional hulls & races, I can give other advice about hull coloration, misc. physical details & etc. if you'd like; I promise not to bite. It's your mod - I'm just an informed spectator.

As such, this mod essentially covers three eras: The Original Series (where models are applicable), X1 (first half of the film series), and X2 (second half of the film series) - each representing a leap in weapons and ship technologies.

You nailed that split between the eras. Great! [-applause-] By the way, I already tend to think of certain vanilla Starfarer units (such as Tempests) as X-ships, anyhow.

Oh

My

God

You get me models for SFB stuff and I will code the bajeezus out of them.

Now that's enthusiasm. Looks like Durendal is firmly on-board with your mod.

Timeisaperception, if you're still in need of quality top-down images for SFB races aside from the Federation, you should do a detailed search for the artwork of Ted Geibel. IIRC, Ted no longer does that sort of thing due to a close brush with major illness, but in the 2000 to 2005-ish period he was the very best. I'll check my own archives for any usable pix of his, but I doubt that I actually saved much (if any) of them to my hard drives back then. I foolishly assumed that that sort of thing would "always be around" so I procrastinated -- I feel like an idiot for that lapse now.

Best of luck with your grand endeavour!

[silentstormpt]

Feel free to use up any material im using on the other Star Trek mod, the size im doing is 1 px = 1 meter and the images quality so far are really good

[Sunfire]

I would love to playtest, but will be out of town  and away from the internet for about a month, but when I come back, I will playtest this mod forever and ever

[Timeisaperception]

  Whoa! Suddenly, interest, EVERYWHERE.


@Archduke Astro: A friend of mine is presently helping me with the conversions (we're using arbitrary equations for things like hull (number of boxes on the SSD * .25, if I'm not mistaken), armor, and so forth - so it's almost quite literally a conversion of Star Fleet Battles into Starfarer. As of right now, we're at the stage of getting things into the game as not only part of tinkering around with the idea, but also as a learning stage; as the mod expands, most of the sprites will be redone, and there will be distinct differences between the eras as you pointed out (and as I've started to attempt using the Federation.) As it stands, ships are differentiated with by their sprites, weapon era (which includes changes to charge up/charge down times, and number of shots), and shield efficiency.

As I pointed out above, it's not a -perfect- representation of SFB; you see the 'charge em up and fire' type of photon torpedos vanish after the original era, and get replaced with the torpedos we see in the first six movies - particularly as showcased in the Wrath of Khan. Prior little projects (mainly tabletop) had us use hyperdrones to represent TMP-era torpedos, so it was one of the first things I made for the mod. We're teetering on an all-SFB inclusive weapons list and walking a fine line between whats represented in the movies versus what's in the board game: for instance, the TOS-era phasers work as solid beam weapons, while the TMP-era (X1/X2) fire in pulses much like in the movies, which changes the game's pace entirely.

Either way, it's a mighty big project, and I thank you for your wishes of luck!

@ Silentstormpt: And I wish the same from you. I saw that you were having problems getting phasers to work properly, which is something I ran into early on. It's easy to code the solid beam phasers as just that - solid beams, but when I got around to pulsed fire, I changed the delivery method to projectile so they could fire in bursts and do damage per shot instead of a damage per second. Dig around through my (crazy) coding if you want and assimilate it (no pun intended   )

@Sunfire: I am flattered by the forever and ever part, and will be happy to accept any feedback from playtesting!

@Durendal: In due time I may call upon you! But for now, please, enjoy ripping open the hulls of enemy starships.

[silentstormpt]

Sad thing is i did copy the code on that specific weapon from the pulse gun, im having problems with running the mod since im having a missing "}" error somewhere making impossible to even play the test mission, i will probably copy yours if it is just like a Star Trek beam

The Star Trek project im doing is same timeline as the Star Trek Online, a few years after the Star Trek Nemesis (the early 2400s)

There will be most influential empires on the series with their armadas and different 4 Quadrants and maybe even the Fluid space (for the Undine aka Species 8472 known by the Borg) or/and the Mirror Universe where only the Alpha Quadrant would available and dominated by the Terran Empire.

After Alex adds systems i was planing to add random Borg Invasions from Delta Quadrant, Dominion Getting Deep Space 9 and starting to build up their army and later sending armadas into Romulan/Klingon/Federation and even Borg space (and end up getting literally destroyed by the Borg the minute they go in Delta Quadrant).

The torpedoes due to be fact they have ammo, should be Ballistic in their nature (you shouldn't be able to shoot down them) with a few exceptions...

[silentstormpt]

Sorry the double post but why don't we "join forces", were both making a star trek mod, while you are going for Mission like combats, its possible to make separated ship Variants or even *.ship files and weapons so they can only be used on the TOS and TMP era missions, while the pos-2400s ones would be available on a "Test" mission like Neutral Zone Skirmish or Borg Invasions and the Campaign

[Durendal5150]

You get back here.

[Timeisaperception]

Did somebody say bump?   Working on re-spriting and re-organizing for a tier one release, creatively titled the 'Basic Set.'



From left to right: F-CL, F-DD, F-CC, F-CA, F-DN
Not featured: F-BT

Or, in plain speak: Federation Light Cruiser, Federation Destroyer, Federation Command Cruiser, Federation Heavy Cruiser, Federation Dreadnought, and Federation Battle Tug.

And of course, a taste of the weapons already implemented in the mod (with need of slight coding tweaks and such)
- Drone Racks (Slow, Medium, Fast, sizes Small-Large)
- Defensive Drone Racks
- Photon Torpedo Launchers (Small-Large)
- Type 1 Offensive Phasers, Type 2 Offensive/Defensive, Type 3 Point Defense Phasers, Type G Gatling Phasers (Small-Large)
- Disruptors

Weapon mount size matters in the mod simply because it equates to how much firepower you throw down range. A small photon torpedo launcher represents one tube loading one shot, while a large launcher represents a burst of three torpedoes; likewise, the difference between a Small Ph1 and a Large Ph1 is 20 shots in the capacitor (IE 10 versus 30)

Until dual-mount beam turrets are able to be added, phasers come in their pulsed forms with varying accuracy based on the type - Ph1 being the most accurate, while Ph3's and PhG's literally hose down their firing arcs. This was done as a translation of weapon accuracy in SFB - it also encourages different play styles for different phaser mounts (do you stay back and play it safe, or do you strafe in with your Ph-G and rain fire on the enemy ship?)

Defensive drones were added to represent the Anti-Drone mode for most racks in SFB - but unlike in the tabletop game, you have to choose between carrying a regular drone rack for offensive purposes, or a defensive rack. Defensive drones can outpace both fighters and other drones, knocking them down with counter missile fire.

[Spiketail118]

i think the buzzards need to be brighter
and the ship hulls are very bright mabye to bright maby next time post them on dark background
so they dont blend in with the forum thread]

other then that sounds boss

[Pelly]

this looks really nice, carry on making such a good mod

[Durendal5150]

Query: Perhaps you should remove the registration numbers? It's gonna look weird when a fleet of three destroyers are all the same registry.

Maybe even replace it with the hull code? XD

[Timeisaperception]

Query: Perhaps you should remove the registration numbers? It's gonna look weird when a fleet of three destroyers are all the same registry.

Maybe even replace it with the hull code? XD

Well, to me, the registration numbers are just an essential part of the 'look' for Federation ships. I've toyed with removing them altogether and the saucer sections just look too plain IMHO, so they'll be sticking around in their current form. It's one of those minor things that may be noticeable right now and in the load-out screen, but during gameplay, you'll be too busy trying to maneuver around and destroy the enemy to pay it any heed.

@silentstorm: While I'd love to team up on the mod, my particular side of the fence is being balanced as a total conversion using Starfleet Battles SSDs - as it stands, your standard Ph1 pulse does 1000 damage per shot, and you can launch a volley of up to 30 from an emitter as long as you have the flux - a single drone strike does anywhere from 12000 to 16000 damage, depending on the type, and the hyperdrones (TMP style torpedoes) do 24000 damage. It'd be a big challenge to scale the numbers up to what would equate to an X4-era and above ship from your mod, and that's even if we could find suitable SSDs to use as a baseline .csv file.

To everyone else, thank you for your support. A playable version will be out within a week or two.