Comments - Jan_B

Changelog of version 4.0.9:

- There are now 3 “AI types” in Roots. By default each AI chooses one of these types randomly, but this setting can be changed in the advanced settings of an instant action or multiplayer game setup. The "balanced" type is a standard AI, with 4 basic and 3 advanced shipyards, the "expansionist" type builds several expansions and focuses on building ships from the advanced shipyard, with 3 basic and 4 advanced shipyards, the "rush" type focuses on building lots of ships early on from its basic shipyards to overwhelm the enemy, also building very few base defenses, with 5 basic and 2 advanced shipyards. This makes AI opponents more diverse and unpredictable in their strategies.

- The Roots AI now scouts more during the early game.

- The Roots AI doesn't use Klingon construction ships in attack fleets anymore, and also doesn't let them get lured out of its base by enemy fire anymore.

- Shield impacts are now handled more efficiently, improving game performance by up to 10 extra frames per second during all but the largest battles.

- In the stock Fleet Ops 4.0 sub mod the Teutoborg and Descent call-ins from the Federation's Starfleet Command station now are proper warp-ins again, instead of the ships appearing instantaneously.

So were the optimisations noticeable in your games?

On the AI. It's a difficult tightrope for me: make the AI expand just a little and before you know it they're insanely vulnerable to an enemy intercepting its construction ships and trapping it in its build list. The map designs are also too diverse to get consistent results: on "Duel" even one expansion means crossing half the map, on "Nirvana" the AI can build two expansions pretty much next to its base, behind a wormhole.

What might be possible though (I'm not sure) is to have different build lists that depend on the techtree somehow, similar to how TM has build lists that the AI picks from somewhat randomly.

If that's possible I could add techtree options for the player that set "regular", "expansionist" or "turtle", or "rush" AI types, like in Supreme Commander. The caveat would be that all the AI teams in that game would have the same AI type.

EDIT: version 4.0.9 now has a system like this.

Changelog of version 4.0.8:

- The AI now chooses resources moons in order of distance (instead of resource type) to decide where to build its expansions, giving it a more compact and logical base building posture, this can be overruled in the AIP files (Fleet Ops engine change, so will transfer to any sub mods).

- The Roots AI now builds mining stations at the two resource moons closest to its starting base.

- The stock Fleet Ops 4.0 sub mod's AI now expands in a more compact fashion: expanding to nearby moons first, this makes it better able to protect its territory and build up its bases more quickly.

- The sensor/weapons range mismatch for large ships has been reduced so large ships not on high movement autonomy will now return fire when attacked by a smaller ship at the edge of the larger ship's sensor range (Fleet Ops engine change, so will transfer to any sub mods).

- Improved response by mining freighters after using a an ability with classlabel "replaceweapon": they will now keep mining the same moon if they replaced themselves while near that moon, rather than going to the nearest mining station and mining from the nearest moon to that station (Fleet Ops engine change, so will transfer to any sub mods).

- Cloaked enemy ships revealed by a scout ship in Roots are now continuously visible (until they're out of range), rather than blinking in and out of vision intermittently.

- Fixes an issue where the map for the Free Borg mission "Adapt" was missing.

- The "Box" (default) and "Column" fleet formations in Roots now fill out their front rows first, presenting more forward-facing firepower for small fleets. They also put the more powerful ships at the front nearly always now.

EDIT: 3 May 2024 hotfix:

- Fixes an issue where individual ships on medium movement autonomy could still be lured away (kited) by enemies firing on them (Fleet Ops engine change, so will transfer to any sub mods).

- Further reduces attack range mismatches, especially involving the largest ships. This is partly a Fleet Ops engine change, and partly optimisation of shield bubble sizes, sensor ranges, and weapon ranges which are specific to the Roots mod itself.

- Federation, Klingon, Dominion, and Cardassian artillery ships in Roots now have the correct movement speed (from 135 to 150 map units per second).

EDIT: 11 May 2024 hotfix:

- The improved weapons and shields upgrades in the FO 4.0 sub mod now work correctly.

- Brings several optimisations that improve game performance with 5-20 extra frames per second, even with dozens of ships on-screen.

- Adds 4 new maps to both Roots and the FO 4.0 sub mod ("Helix", "Pyroclasm", "Red Matter", and "Tri-Locked").

- Adds several minor visual improvements to Roots.

Changelog of version 4.0.7:

- Cloaked AI-controlled fleets (but not scouts) decloak when they stop moving if enemy ships are nearby, making the AI use cloaking more effectively and preventing AI fleets from staying passive while permanently cloaked (Fleet Ops engine change, so will transfer to any sub mods).

- The "Box" (default) and "Column" fleet formations in Roots can now turn or reverse more quickly and ships are now less likely to get stuck in them.

- The "Game Difficulty" setting in the "Game Settings" menu now affects the Roots single player missions: on "Hard" the enemy deals 20% more damage to your ships, on "Easy" the enemy deals 20% less damage to your ships and your mining ships mine 10% more quickly, note that "Game Difficulty" does NOT affect instant action games.

- The "Create Shortcut" button in the "Mod Loader" menu can now be pressed in the correct position.

- Fixes some issues with the "Single Player" menu that would appear with the A2 Classic Mod (or other sub mods that would have a single player menu), also enables written descriptions of the campaigns when hovering the mouse over the campaign buttons for the Roots campaigns (Fleet Ops engine change, so will transfer to any sub mods).

- Adds several defensive weapons platforms to the player's left flank in the mission "A Good Day To Die" to balance the mission.

- Background star fields in the stock Fleet Ops 4.0 sub mod are now less blurry.

Changelog of version 4.0.6:

- Fixes a bug where the crew cost of an item would still show up even if the crew cost was 0 (Fleet Ops engine change, so will transfer to any sub mods).

- Whitespaces between resource costs in tooltips are now smaller, making many tooltips less wide (Fleet Ops engine change, so will transfer to any sub mods). Note that this new narrow whitespace replaces the "$" character, so any modders that want to use this should adjust their font_final sprite files accordingly.

- The Cardassian Fighter Drones in Roots will now disappear when their carrier has been destroyed, even if another carrier is nearby. This is effectively also a slight nerf because it makes the tactic of targeting the carriers instead of the drones more effective (this was always the best way to handle Sartan Class drone carriers, but now it works even better than before). At the same time, the drones are now a bit more likely to engage enemies on their own at medium range.

- Cardassian Fighter Drones now show up in the admiral's log.

- Refund drones now take up only one line in the admiral's log, instead of two, and the Klingon Field Shipyard now has a picture in the admiral's log.

- Increases the range of the Ion Storm weapon from 600 to 700.

Thanks. Yeah, the drones were certainly a bit OP in some situations. I think they're still powerful after the nerf, but now at least they can be suppressed by secondary weapons and you'll need something like 50% more Sartans to get a drone deathball.

Changelog of version 4.0.5:

- Fixes a bug in the modified game engine where if the AI is set to build stations outside its main base and has to go through a wormhole to get there the construction ship would refuse to enter the wormhole (this affects the stock Fleet Ops 4.0 sub mod).

- Fixes a bug from stock Fleet Ops 4.0 where the Romulan, Dominion and Federation AI would get stuck in their build trees around the point where they start to build large battleships.

- Fixes a texture crash in the stock Fleet Ops 4.0 sub mod when playing as the Borg.

- The stock Fleet Ops 4.0 sub mod now has a working, and sensible, "Free Tech" .XML techtree option for instant action/multiplayer (it now has build limits and upgrades/research can't overlap anymore).

- In the stock Fleet Ops 4.0 sub mod starbases can no longer be upgraded while building a ship (this would cancel, without a refund, any build process). - Now only stations with ainame = "StarbaseProcess" and classlabel = "Starbase" can use special weapons while building something (classlabel = "shipyard", in combination with decommissi and repairFacility = 0, can be used instead in most cases), this ensures compatibility with several mods, including Tryptic's TM mod (Fleet Ops engine change, so will transfer to any sub mods).

- The Cardassian Fighter Drones in Roots have been nerfed a bit: they now have 25 percent fewer hitpoints and their respawn time has been increased from 7 to 10 seconds.

- Many small improvements to the single player missions, including balance/difficulty changes for some missions.

- Adds 5 instant action/multiplayer maps converted from the "Fleet Ops Remastered" mod (thanks to Admiral Nat), these were also added to the stock Fleet Ops 4.0 sub mod.

Note that these changes break multiplayer compatibility with versions 4.0.3 and 4.0.4.

P.S. I found that when large formations of large ships seem to get "stuck" in a crowded area in some of the single player missions this can usually be resolved by pressing the "S" key and then ordering the move command again.

Changelog of version 4.0.4:

- Fixes a glitch in the mission "Improvise" where the victory condition would not trigger if you cycled through the Borg Cube's special weapon loadout.

- Fixes a glitch in the Mission "Adapt" where the Dominion would become hostile again if you saved and loaded the game after making peace with them.

- Fixes a glitch in the mission "Duet" where the Dominion would be stuck in their techtree too early so they would barely build any ships.

- Minor texture improvements.

None of these changes break multiplayer compatibility with version 4.0.3.

Changelog of version 4.0.3:

- Fixes an issue where Borg units would all cost zero collective connections (or tritanium in the stock Fleet Ops 4.0 sub mod).

- Crew cost now no longer shows up in a build button's verbose tooltip, just like in Fleet Ops 3.2.7 (Fleet Ops engine change, so will transfer to any sub mods).

- Moved the shield projector weapon from starbases to sensor platforms, and those now will use the weapon under special weapon autonomy, unlike the starbases, and Borg mining ships now also have a shield projector.

- Fixed an issue where in the advanced setup menu for instant action an illegitimate techtree could be selected by selecting one of the "---" entries, especially in the stock Fleet Ops 4.0 sub mod.

- "Overcome" (the final mission of the Free Borg campaign) is now more difficult than before.

- Several minor improvements: slightly decreased starbase footprint sizes, visual improvements to the Galor/Keldon/Emergency Mining Center models, and the Fek'lhr is now actually immune to ion storms, like its tooltip says.

Changelog of version 4.0.2:

- Fixes an issue where ships and fleets would sometimes be unable to permanently return to the level plane of the map.

- When first installed on a system with desktop scaling the game no longer requires forcing DPI scaling to be overridden by the application to run. It will now launch without crashing and automatically set the correct scaling mode the first time an instant action game or mission is launched.

- Small improvements to the missions "Resistance" and "The Means of Construction", also in all Borg missions Sphere 617 now starts with low special weapon autonomy so it doesn't use its holding beam unintentionally.

- Jem'Hadar Attackships and Topmey Class mining ships now always refund 50% of their resource cost when lost, even when they're captured by the enemy, or destroyed in a ramming attack.

Does it work now?

AFAIK this is stock Fleet Ops behavior for fighters: the Avalon's fighters in stock Fleet Ops also behave like that.

Okay, another upload today:

- There is no Armada2.ldl file in the mod anymore.

- Movement autonomy has been changed: on low ships truly won't move unless ordered, on medium they will also not move, but will surround a manually (by the player) designated target so they can all fire their weapons. A lot less babysitting will be required now and medium movement autonomy is now actually very useful, and the default setting (Fleet Ops engine change, so will transfer to any sub mods).

- Fixed a bug that made many missions from the A2 Classic Mod crash/freeze if that was ran as a sub mod within Roots.

- Fixed an old Fleet Ops bug where after exiting a wormhole AI-controlled ships would sometimes sit still and not fire weapons, even if they were under attack (Fleet Ops engine change, so will transfer to any sub mods).

- Some improvements to missions, including countdown timers in minutes instead of intervals of 5 minutes.

- Formations are now more efficient and when they have to turn around ships are less likely to get stuck in them.

- Mining ships that possess regular weapons (the Klingon one) can fire those while mining (Fleet Ops engine change, so will transfer to any sub mods).

Thanks for catching that, it's been fixed in the new upload.

Well, I had to upload another file after all (4 February 2024)... I replaced the Armada2.ldl with a file with random content (since it's non-functional anyway, it just has to be present in the file structure) to prove I'm not secretly a dirty pirate giving away the GOG.com executable to people so they can run stock Armada 2 without buying it from GOG ;-)

But I put in some actual updates content too, mostly as a result of more gameplay testing:

- The default movement autonomy for ships is now "High" in instant action/multiplayer and most missions. I found that "Medium" doesn't have any advantages over "High", and it can cause groups of artillery ships to move closer to their target than they need to (even to within the target's weapons range), that is fixed by using "High" movement autonomy.

- Starbases can no longer be outranged by ships (except artillery ships of course, and in edge cases the Borg Cube, which has a slightly longer range than other ships because it's so large and range is calculated from the center of a ship).

- Starbases are now slightly easier for ships to physically navigate around.

- The Emergency Mining Center will now be selected as a non-combat ship (like mining freighters and construction ships) when dragging a selection box.

- Fixes to glitches that could occur in two missions ("Improvise" and "Adapt") if you skipped cinematics, and balance/pacing fixes in some other missions to make them less frustrating. I can now definitely vouch for all missions being beatable for experienced, but not top-tier, RTS-players, most missions can be completed within 30 minutes realtime at max game speed, a handful will take 60-90 minutes.

- Fixed a visual glitch in the Serkas' ship model.

Sorry: yeah, fingers crossed this was really the last time. My vision for the mod is complete, so it was only because of major bugs that I uploaded new versions. Hopefully that's now done.

Things I've changed since the first upload of 4.0:

- workaround for an out-of-sync issue in multiplayer that plagues Fleet Ops, I can't guarantee it will solve all OOS in Roots, but it seems to definitely solve most of them. I didn't have any afterwards and the only ones that were reported to me were fixed by this, but you never know with such an old game and stock Fleet Ops is known for having OOS issues (though Roots has way fewer elements that can potentially cause OOS issues than stock Fleet Ops does).

- changes to the engine so construction ships can't be ordered to move (via group-select), decommission, etc... while building, but starbases can still use (special) weapons while building, also a fix to the longstanding Fleet Ops issue where a mining ship that got promoted or transformed would stop mining.

The Borg Cube fires more rapidly, but less damage per shot, so same DPS, but better against swarms of small ships.

- The Borg Support Node now generates resources.

- Improvements to some mission maps (like location of moons, and the pacing of The Raptor's Wrath).

- Better race icons for the admiral's log.

- AI-upscale of the ship explosion textures.

- Slightly more spread out formations to reduce ships getting stuck.

- Slightly reduced range for mining beams to reduce mining ships getting stuck.

-The Cardassians now start with an Emergency Mining Center, which can now also move around slowly.

- Fixed a 12-year old bug in the Fleet Ops engine where the application would crash to desktop if you ended a game while a build or ship command menu was open.

- The ReadMe now has a bit more explanation on the differences between the factions.

Changelog, part 2:

- Converts the mod back to Fleet Ops 4.0, this brings back all the small
improvements of Fleet Ops 4.0, and it solves the intermittent lighting/hull
reflection issue with Fleet ECM and Fleet Coordination

- Improved installer which now allows the user to choose small or large
in-game fontsize and ensures everyone has the same version of the game,
verification before installation can be done with either a valid Armada2.exe
file (for example from the GOG version of the game), or a valid CD

- The AI is now much more likely to starts exploring and attacking early in the game, instead of staying inside its base for a long time

- The "Lines" formation has been replaced by the "Wall" Formation which is
perfect for massing fleets of artillery ships without them bunching up or straying too close to targets that can shoot back, but can also be used by other ship types to bring as much firepower as possible down on a single immobile and valuable target, like a starbase

- The default formation is now two vertical layers deep and slightly more tightly packed, making it easier to maneuver fleets through chokepoints and around nebulas

- All formations, including the default formation, now have the fleet lining up behind where the move cursor was clicked, not around it, this makes it easier to move fleets just outside of enemy weapons range or around nebulas

- Tooltips are now more compact, taking up less screen space, and build tooltips now display the build time for objects, in in-game seconds (which varies based on the game speed)

- Decreased texture memory usage for smoother gameplay without compromising
on visual quality

- Further reduces the impact of cloaked ships (using the CloakingDevice classlabel, as all ships in Roots do) on the screen on the game's framerate, even while displaying larger numbers of them before it starts to hide them from view

- Ships systems repairs are now faster faster, and the Borg and Cardassians repair their ships' subsystems 50% faster than the other factions

- Ships and stations now have Borg nodes appear on their hull if assimilated or built by the Borg

- Warp-ins now have the vessel warping in across the map, providing some delay
and warning for warp-ins behind enemy lines

- Fixes shadow-like black areas on some ship models for some graphic cards

- Fleets now move and stack up more seamlessly, especially larger ships, and now are much less likely to point upwards when standing still

- Many lower-resolution textures have been carefully AI-upscaled, but not so much that it affects game performance

- Fixes a bug where the destruction of a Jem'Hadar Attackship would not always
return part of its resource cost to its owner

- Supply generation is now 20% slower to make supply more relevant as a resource

- Buying dilithium and tritanium at starbases now happens in increments of 1000, instead of 100, and the supply/connections cost per unit of dilithium or tritanium has been increased, because of the game engine modifications resources can now be bought while the starbase is building something

- The Romulan Holo-emitter now has a limit of up to 4 for the number of vessels it can target

- The Romulan Serkas Class artillery ship now has the same cloaking device as all other Romulan ships, and it can still fire while cloaked

- The "Game Difficulty" setting in the "Game Settings" menu now affects the Roots single player missions: on "Hard" the enemy deals 20% more damage to your ships, on "Easy" the enemy deals 20% less damage to your ships and your mining ships mine 10% more quickly, note that "Game Difficulty" does NOT affect instant action games

- The Roots AI now builds mining stations at the two resource moons closest to its starting base

- There are now 3 “AI types” by default each AI chooses one of these types randomly, but this setting can be changed in the advanced settings of an instant action or multiplayer setup, the
"balanced" type is a standard AI, with 4 basic and 3 advanced shipyards, the "expansionist" type builds several expansions and focuses on building ships from the advanced shipyard, with 3 basic and 4 advanced shipyards, the "rush" type focuses on building lots of ships early on from its basic shipyards to overwhelm the enemy, also building very few base defenses, with 5 basic and 2 advanced shipyards

- Several minor fixes such as reducing the Z-fighting on several ship models and adding music for observers back in.

Changes since Roots version 3.2

- Game engines modifications:

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

- fixes the invalid pointer crashes in the Fleet Ops 4.0 engine

- now shows tooltips on objects belonging to other teams

- disables the checksum protection on the dll so others can improve it
further

- shell menu and button fonts no longer resize to outsized proportions
when Windows desktop scaling is enabled on the user's system

- when loading a savegame all objects already under construction are
now correctly counted towards the unit caps

- the user profile, savegames, saved maps, etc... are now stored in a
different folder to avoid interference with other versions of Fleet
Ops, the path is the same but ends in "Star Trek Armada II Fleet Ops
Config" instead of "Star Trek Armada II Fleet Operations"

- crew cost is no longer displayed in verbose tooltips of buildbuttons, just like in Fleet Ops 3.2.7

- ships using a cloaking device with classlabel "CloakingDeviceImp"
are now more visible against the background of space (for their owner
and allies)

- ships using a cloaking device with classlabel "CloakingDevice" no
longer have their alert status automatically set to yellow when they
cloak (this was bugged in the stock game where the alert status would
stay yellow even after decloaking)

- construction ships can now build stations from farther away (100
units instead of 15), vastly reducing the chance they'll get stuck trying
to reach a hard-to-reach build location

- starbases (the object needs to have ainame = "StarbaseProcess" and classlabel = "Starbase")
can now be ordered to use special weapons while building a ship

- nebula objects are now hardcoded to not rotate, except for the
rotation animation from their .sod models

- increases the size of the shell menus by 50 percent (from 800x600 to
1200x900)

- provides a hack that can make ships fire conventional weapons while
cloaked with a classlabel "CloakingDevice" cloak, for this set
maxspecialenergy = 0 in the ship's ODF

- mining ships replacing into another mining ship will now keep following their mining orders

- mining ships can now fire both regular and special weapons while mining

- construction ships can now fire regular weapons while building something

- fixes a glitch where AI-controlled ships would sometimes stay completely passive for
long periods of time after exiting a wormhole, not even defending themselves when
attacked

- the AI has been reprogrammed to make cloaked AI-controlled fleets decloak when they stop moving if enemy ships are nearby, making the AI use cloaking more effectively and preventing AI fleets from staying passive while permanently cloaked

- the AI now chooses resources moons in order of distance (instead of resource type) to decide where to build its expansions, giving it a more compact and logical base building posture, this can be overruled in the AIP files

- large ships will now return fire when attacked by a smaller ship at the edge of the larger ship's sensor range (sensor/weapons range mismatch for large ships has been reduced)

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

- The game now comes with vanilla Fleet Ops 4.0 installed as a mod, which has
been made compatible with the game engine modifications and with better-looking background objects, reduced impact on the framerate by cloaked ships, and the optional larger in-game font

Installation Instructions

- Run the Fleet Ops Roots Mod 4.0 Installer exe.

- Do not install into a folder that already contains files, instead choose an empty folder or create one during installation when the installer asks for a destination location.

- You do not need an existing Fleet Ops installation, but you will need a valid Armada 2 copy from GOG.com, or an Armada 2 CD-ROM.

- The installer will ask you for either the setup.exe located on a mounted CD-ROM, or a valid Armada II executable (armada2.exe) file from GOG.com, this can typically be found in:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Star Trek Armada II"

- Run the game from the desktop icon and set graphical, sound and gameplay settings under the Options menu. If you run into trouble here you may have to change the game's "High DPI Settings" to "Scaling performed by Application", and if that doesn't work set the game to Windows 8 compatibility mode (although the latter may lower performance)

- Also note that setting the game speed directly from the main menu may not always set it correctly ingame, in that case set the game speed from the escape menu during a game, or from the advanced settings menu under the instant action setup (and then click “Save Settings”).

- Play the game and enjoy!

EDIT: since people have asked me how to shift between the two (in-game) font sizes after installation, here is how to do that:

- open \Data\Sprites\FontFinal4_18.spr

- change the line @include FontFinal4_XX.spr where "XX" should be "16" for the smaller font, and "17" for the larger font (without the quotation marks).

Ah well, it's a continuous search for the perfect balance. I chose to give the Romulans this bonus because it would make sense for them, lorewise, to be good at detecting cloaked ships, but mostly because they are lacking in other departments, like their ships being slower and them not having economic/cost bonuses like the other races (the discount Klingon players get for weapon upgrades already covers the cost of the tachyon detection research, for example), apart from that using their strategic station steals some resources from an enemy. Of course if it turns out to be overpowered, I'm open to changing it.

Specifically against the Klingons you can see the cloak detection as something minor to make up for the fact that Romulan ships are too slow to catch Klingon raiders, so ambushing them is the only way to defend (apart from having cloaked mining freighters, but that is negated if the Klingons rush researching tachyon detection, which any opponent of a Romulan player probably would). Yes, that makes Romulan cloak not very strong, but I haven't found a way to make the Romulan cloak really central/core without insanely overpowering it (right now it just forces the opponent to maintain scouts and sensor platforms and spend resources on tachyon detection, which is a small bonus for the Romulan player, but yeah, nothing major), if you have suggestions I'm always listening ;-)

P.S. Romulan construction ships can cloak and can build stuff while cloaked, so that's also a bonus the Romulans get while expanding during early game.

For most of the menus (except the admiral's log) you can revert the background images to 800x600 by going into the \Data\bitmaps folder and replacing all the bitmaps with their 800x600 counterparts (the ones that have "_small" appended to their names).

I chose 1200x900 because the vast majority of people, and even more in the future, have 1920x1080 monitors, or above, and 800x600 looks tiny on those, which is a common complaint about Fleet Ops, which is why I spent weeks upscaling the menus to begin with. Even on a 1680x1050 monitor a 1200x900 menu still looks fine.

I only have them in 1200x900. If you have a sub-1650x1080 monitor you can still get 98% of the mod's functionality and 800x600 shell menus by:

- replacing FleetOpsHook.dll in your installation folder with the file (you of course have to rename it) FleetOpsHook_4_0_edited_but_with _regular_sized_menus.dll that's in \Data\devstuff\UnlockedFOdlls.rar

- replacing Armada2.ldl with the GOG Armada2.exe (rename it/change the extension to Armada2.ldl) that you pointed the installer to during the installation process, which was probably in "C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Star Trek Armada II"

The fontsize affects the size of the font in-game, like ship names, tooltips and the resource panel in the top left, not the size of the shell menus.

Changelog (from version 3.1 to 4.0), part 2:

- Tooltips are now more compact, taking up less screen space, and build tooltips now display the build time for objects, in in-game seconds (which varies based on the game speed)

- Decreased texture memory usage for smoother gameplay without compromising on visual quality

- Further reduces the impact of cloaked ships (using the CloakingDevice classlabel, as all ships in Roots do) on the screen on the game's framerate, even while displaying larger numbers of them before it starts to hide them from view

- Ships systems repairs are now faster faster, and the Borg and Cardassians repair their ships subsystems 50% faster than the other factions

- Ships and stations now have Borg nodes appear on their hull if assimilated or built by the Borg

- Warp-ins now have the vessel warping in across the map, providing some delay and warning for warp-ins behind enemy lines

- Fixes shadow-like black areas on some ship models for some graphic cards

- Fleets now move and stack up more seamlessly, especially larger ships, and now are much less likely
to point upwards when standing still

- Many lower-resolution textures have been carefully AI-upscaled, but not so much that it affects
game performance

- Fixes a bug where the destruction of a Jem'Hadar Attackship would not always return part of its
resource cost to its owner

- Supply generation is now 20% slower to make supply more relevant as a resource

- Buying dilithium and tritanium at starbases now happens in increments of 1000, instead of 100, and the supply/connections cost per unit of dilithium or tritanium has been increased, because of the game engine modifications resources can now be bought while the starbase is building something

- The Romulan Holo-emitter now has a limit of up to 4 for the number of vessels it can target

- The Romulan Serkas Class artillery ship now has the same cloaking device as all other Romulan ships, and it can still fire while cloaked

- Several minor fixes such as reducing the Z-fighting on several ship models and adding music for observers back in.

Changelog (from version 3.1 to 4.0), part 1:

- Game engines modifications:

- Hex-edited the FleetOpsHook.dll library to make Fleet Ops 4.0
viable:
- fixes the invalid pointer crashes
- now shows tooltips on objects belonging to other teams
- disables the checksum protection on the dll so others can improve it
further
- shell menu and button fonts no longer resize to outsized proportions
when Windows desktop scaling is enabled on the user's system
- when loading a savegame all objects already under construction are
now correctly counted towards the unit caps
- the user profile, savegames, saved maps, etc... are now stored in a
different folder to avoid interference with other versions of Fleet
Ops, the path is almost the same but ends in "Star Trek Armada II
Fleet Ops Config" instead of "Star Trek Armada II Fleet Operations"
- objects with negative resource costs are now priced correctly when
lowering “Global Build Cost” in an instant action/multiplayer game setup

- Hex-edited the Armada2.ldl file to bring the following changes:
- ships using a cloaking device with classlabel "CloakingDeviceImp"
are now more visible against the background of space (for their owner
and allies)
- ships using a cloaking device with classlabel "CloakingDevice" no
longer have their alert status automatically set to yellow when they
cloak (this was bugged in the stock game where the alert status would
stay yellow even after decloaking)
- construction ships can now build stations from farther away (100
units instead of 15), vastly reducing the chance they'll get stuck
trying to reach a hard-to-reach build location
- construction ships and starbases can now be ordered to use special
weapons while building something, this also means starbases can now
trade resources while building a ship
- nebula objects are now hardcoded to not rotate, except for the
rotation animation from their .sod models

- Hex edits in both FleetOpsHook.dll and Armada2.ldl increase the size of
the shell menus by 50 percent (from 800x600 to 1200x900)

- Hex edits in both FleetOpsHook.dll and Armada2.ldl provide a hack that
can make ships fire conventional weapons while cloaked with a classlabel
"CloakingDevice" cloak, for this set maxspecialenergy = 0 in the ship's odf

- Hex edits in both FleetOpsHook.dll and Armada2.ldl fix a crash that
occurred when ending a game while a unit's build menu was open

- The game now comes with vanilla Fleet Ops 4.0 installed as a mod, which
has been made compatible with the game engine modifications and with better-looking background objects, reduced impact on the framerate by cloaked ships, and the optional larger in-game font

- Convert the mod back to Fleet Ops 4.0, this brings back all the small improvements of Fleet Ops 4.0, and it solves the intermittent lighting/hull reflection issue with Fleet ECM and Fleet Coordination

- Improved installer which now allows the user to choose small or large in-game fontsize and ensures everyone has the same version of the game, verification before installation can be done with either a valid Armada2.exe file (for example from the GOG version of the game), or a valid CD

- The AI is now much more likely to starts exploring and attacking early in the game, instead of staying inside its base for a long time

- The "Lines" formation has been replaced by the "Wall" Formation which is perfect for massing fleets of artillery ships without them bunching up or straying too close to targets that can shoot back, but can also be used by other ship types to bring as much firepower as possible down on a single immobile and valuable target, like a starbase

- The default formation is now two vertical layers deep and slightly more tightly packed, making it easier to maneuver fleets through chokepoints and around nebulas

- All formations, including the default formation, now have the fleet lining up behind where the move cursor was clicked, not around it, this makes it easier to move fleets just outside of enemy weapons range or around nebulas

Version 4.0 brings a ton of technical and visual improvements, like a modified game engine, larger shell menus, better AI, and better ship movement physics. It also comes with the original Fleet Ops, made compatible with the modified game engine, installed as a submod.

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:

- Run the Fleet Ops Roots Mod 4.0 Installer exe.

- Do not install into a folder that already contains files, instead choose an empty folder or create one during installation when the installer asks for a destination location.

- You do not need an existing Fleet Ops installation, but you will need a valid Armada 2 copy from GOG.com, or an original Armada 2 CD-ROM.

- The installer will ask you for either the setup.exe located on a mounted CD-ROM, or a valid Armada II executable (armada2.exe) file from GOG.com, this can typically be found in:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Star Trek Armada II"

- Run the game from the desktop icon and set graphical, sound and gameplay settings under the Options menu. If you run into trouble here you may have to change the game's "High DPI Settings" to "Scaling performed by Application", and if that doesn't work set the game to Windows 8 compatibility mode (although the latter may lower performance)

- Also note that setting the game speed directly from the main menu may not always set it correctly ingame, in that case set the game speed from the escape menu during a game, or from the advanced settings menu under the instant action setup and (then click “Save Settings”).

- Play the game and enjoy! (And leave a review if you enjoyed it.)

EDIT: Version 4.0 is now available here: Moddb.com

Version 3.1 brings several technical and visual improvements. The factions have now also been made slightly more distinct, for more details, install instructions, and the game's hotkeys, see the ReadMe.

Here is the changelog (from version 3.0 to 3.1):

- Re-adapt the mod to Fleet Ops 3.2.7 (Fleet Ops 4.0 turned out to be fundamentally unstable) for stability reasons, this solves the invalid pointer crashes, as well as the straight-to-desktop crashes, it also brings back tooltips for ships/stations not in your team, and thanks to Megadroid's help the save/load buttons in the singleplayer escape menu from Fleet Ops 4.0 have been preserved

- Added an option to the installer to install Roots as a mod within an existing Fleet Ops installation (note that users may still have to replace the Armada2.ldl file of their existing Fleet Ops installation to give the Roots Mod more memory to work with), see the install instructions on this page or the ReadMe for more details

- Improved the framerates in crowded singleplayer missions

- Reduced the framerate hit when cloaked fleets appear on screen, partially by bringing back the old Armada 2 cloaking effect (the Serkas Class is an exception, but it still does have a reduced framerate decrease)

- Improved visual effects for torpedoes, pulse weapons, explosions, and shield projectors

- Improved pathing for ships when going around starbases, and improved general pathing for (and around) the Borg Cube, D'deridex Class, and Invictus Class

- Added global minimap/sound event/warning for strategic actions (regen wave, warp-ins, etc...)

- Reduced Z-fighting on ship models

- The Fleet ECM, Fleet Optimizer and Cloak Enhancer now have the correct (larger) ranges shown by their weapon range stat

- Balanced and presentation improvements to several singleplayer missions

- Diversified the factions' attributes somewhat to make them more distinct, for example all factions now have a change to a resource collection/raiding mechanic, details can be found in the ReadMe

- Rebalanced some special abilities

- Changed the Romulan strategic weapon: Targeting Sensor Disruption was broken and has now been changed to Tal Shiar Infiltration, which also steals resources from a random opponent as a side-effect and can now properly stack with the Klingon Death Chant

- Warp-ins are now instantaneous

- Stop nebulas from spinning like crazy on any map

- The Cardassian UI now includes button click and rollover sounds

- In missions where the player gets to choose their faction/race the UI (except mouse cursors, they seem to be handled separately) by the game engine) now changes accordingly.

Oh yeah, if I was just limited to A2 models it would be tough, but Bridge Commander and Starfleet Command 3 models can be converted, luckily.

Thanks for the help with the crashes. I never get the straight to desktop crashes, so unfortunately I can't test for those myself, but with your error logs (even just a screenshot) I might be able to figure some things out.

Oh yeah, one last big F-you from a Klingon freighter before it dies, that's a nice idea for the Klingons, not a huge change to gameplay but it adds some flair. An explosion that does damage automatically may not be possible for technical reasons, but I could give them a ramming weapon, like the Jem'Hadar Attackship, powerful enough to take out a destroyer or damage a cruiser, and call it the "Sto'vo'kor Express"... My general philosophy for the Klingons is that they're good at raiding and that you're encouraged to play aggressively.

Thanks for the continued praise! I'm looking into the crashes with savegames, together with Megadroid, what is the error you keep getting on crashes? Does it say something like "access violation at address so and so"? And what is that address?

And yeah, the Upgrade Project 2.0 textures are probably the best you're going to find for Species 8472, and they're ready to use too.

Yeah, I collected so many models from anywhere I could find, painstakingly converted a lot from Bridge commander mods as well, and did a lot of texture editing. Sometimes I just got lucky like when I found out some of Armada 3's models use the same texture coordinates, with some minor changes, as Aad Moerman's models, so I could combine his models with their textures. And Drayzon's Dominion textures are very easy to make the main surfance transparant while keeping the details and then overlaying them over a better base surface texture. In the end what makes things look extra good is to have a bit of a common theme for a faction's ships and stations, just changing the hue so they look more alike does wonders. It's been fun and educational because I didn't know how to do most of these things before I started working on this mod.

And the Klingons... well, I hadn't thought of anything. I mean armed noncombat ships should help with raiding and the B'rel can stop ships from escaping, plus they have the higher damage output which is often more useful than stronger shields, and have the ion storm. Turrets are more expensive for them, but weapons upgrades are cheaper. It's been hard to think of something else to set them apart.

Hmmm, I just played three games on game speed 6 with 7 merciless AIs free for all, all races and 1 extra Federation because they probably eat up the most texture memory, and me sitting in one of the boxes, with 7 starbases around my wormhole so I wouldn't die, on Nirvana II.

The first game crashed after 20 minutes in-game (so 10-15 minutes in real time), the error said something about an invalid pointer, it wasn't a normal error that refers to a location within the exe, I had never seen it before and I think it's something that ahs nothing to do with my mod, but is a memory or game engine problem, though I can't be sure. Is that the error you get every time it crashes?

The second game just kept going and after about 75 minutes in-game time (40-45 minutes in real time) I just ended the game. My savegames from that game all load without problem.

The third time it ran for 45 minutes in-game time and I pulled the plug, but one of the savegames gave the old error I had the day before yesterday.

I can also consistently let the "The Battle of Cardassia" mission run for over an hour and (at least with me spectating) on the Battlepit family of maps 3v3 merciless AI, all races, matches consistently end after about 45 minutes in-game time with one side beating the other and ending the game naturally. I've also seen Fleet Ops Remastered eat up just as much memory as my 7 AI merciless game and not crash, though Remastered is on the 3.2.7 engine, not 4.0 like Roots is.

It's nice that it works most of the time (at least on my 16gb RAM system), but it's frustrating to try to solve these issues this way.

I was trying to add some more distinction between the factions and I though these round out the economic differences. The Romulans didn't have any economic advantage until now (except that they could cloak freighters, but have to stop mining) when under attack, maybe this change forces other non-Romulan players to really think about buying the Tachyon Detection Grid early. Plus if the player leaves the cloak on after the enemy has bought the detection grid the freighters actually die much more easily because they don't have shields up. The Federation was also SOL with economic advantages, except slightly cheaper turrets, so maybe the 1000/1000 (honestly that's the extent of it I think) in resources they save on research during an entire game helps a bit with that. The Klingons get their armed freighters, the Cardassians have hardened freighters and the Keldon mining ability, the Dominion get 50% of the cost of an Attackship back when it gets destroyed, and the Borg have cheap turrets, uncapturable freighters and mining stations, and eventually get some economic advantage out of not needing to have advanced shipyards and the Cube being extremely survivable (basically if you lose a Cube you're doing something wrong, while for example losing 1 of your 3 Sovereigns and having to rebuild it is to be expected). Or that's the theory at least...

P.S. I also used to play Armada 2 as a teenager, those were the days and it was only in 2018 I even found out about Fleet Ops because I was looking for a Star Trek RTS.

And for Species 8472 I know the Armada 3 mod for SIns of a Solar Empire has a Bioship with half-decent textures in it. You could use the "blank" parts of that as a background layer for new 8472 textures (a technique I used to improve a lot of the Klingon/Romulan/Dominion textures in Roots, see the dominion_background.tga file in the Roots texture folder). I never managed to port the model meshes from that game, but the textures are dds files that you can edit with paint.net and work similar to Armada's tga files.