I immediately felt the urge to go back to this game and have massive fleets of Federation vs Romulan ships battle it out against each other. This shot reminded me so much of when you had the Federation all teched up and would send waves of Sovereign-Class ships into battle.
Posted Mar 27, 2020, 3:18 AM UTC · edited
14 year old me brought a friend home to show off this game after school. Was excited.
We did not play it.
September 11th 2001.
Episode 10 should have been called "Copy and Paste." It's offensive how lazy this was. Even in the poorest of Treks, they showed different ships. This was literally, copy and paste 200 times.
Yep. Given all the TOS ships turning up in next gen, it would be entirely reasonable to see Galaxy, Soverign, Intrepid, Defiant, class starships in that fleet.
The fleet from First Contact, a 23 year old film, looked better than that.
Same with the DS9 fleets, older and on a television budget
I wrack my brain on this decision. It's like did they think "people who like star trek don't care about cool ships". This applies to the whole Picard series. Least discovery had a couple cool ships.
I'm not sure they understand the audience with attitudes like that.
In a disappointed tone I said out loud to an empty room "awww" when those lazy ships appeared. It's not like CGI models don't fucking exist for other ships that look as good or better.
There are fan made models that people would have gladly donated. They could have done so much better with that fleet.
But this makes sense for Picards era.
Here are some things we know from the shows:
From 2360-2380 the Federation underwent severe attacks from:
The Borg (X2 (3 counting Endgame))
The Dominion
The Cardassians
The Klingons
The Romulans (Shinzon)
When the Romulan star went nova - LaForge/Utopia Planetia streamlined the ship construction process to help build a massive aid fleet
Not to mention fringe disputes - I don't think it's unrealistic at all that we wouldn't have the kitbash fleets of previous Trek and would instead have more uniform fleets of ships turn up for mass disputes - With the older/alternative ship classes still out there doing their thing.
See you shouldn't have to assemble material from sources, or even explain anything away at all. I love Trek. But it's still a sign of bad writing and coordination. Plus, I know how the industry works. It was copy and paste. No thought or communication on it. Just an email from a producer.
The show had more than enough budget and time to have a massive fleet of different ships if they wanted too - It was an artistic decision.
No. It absolutely wasn't. But I'm not going to waste time arguing on the internet over a T.V. show.
All of my friends work in the industry. I worked in the industry. I know exactly how and why it happened, and I've outlined it. It's lazy, and bad communication from showrunners and the studio, and either the graphics group was out of time or also lazy. Probs the former.
An exec calls in: "The writers said there'd be two hundred ships. Can you make that happen?" The studio, absolutely CANNOT, but don't want to say this cause they dont disappoint if they want to be used again for the next season - so they mash out whats possible. Not whats good.
Picard looks like it has about 1/4 of Discovery's budget.
It makes sense to me that they would streamline their fleet, they had an absurd amount of diversity during the Dominion war, Miranda and Excelsior were both in service for over a 100 years which is frankly absurd within a canononical sense (just look at how different Warships look from the 1920s to 1930s) ofc the meta reason of "they already have the models and its cheaper to reuse" is fair enough.
I will admit that Im not a fan of the gunmetal grey everything, but the ship designs look right as they look like a logical evolution from the Sovereign. Shrunk down and mass produced to fill out the spaces that would have been vacant post Dominion war or filled by ships that are well out of their service life.
Plus, wasn't Utopia Planetiae destroyed? They may not have had the capability to build some of the more exotic classes and had to instead churn out assembly line ships.
As a "ship guy" myself, I have to agree. But Admiral Clancy told Picard she would send a squadron, so my explanation is they've formed a fleet of the "toughest, newest" ship in Starfleet to send them against 218 Romulan ships, rather than a regular fleet or task force consisting of a variety of older and newer ships.
On the other hand, it looks like the squadron is made of about the same number as the Romulan fleet. That would be about 1/3rd of the Sacrifice of Angels fleet from DS9. I guess Starfleet issued a new regulation that states they never are to be caught with their pants down ever again.
I played and modded Armada and Armada II for yeeears! They were what first got me into the online Trek community on the old startrek.com message boards!
My favourite tactic was to capture construction ships and build a little bit of everything I liked from every faction!
Like in the Dominion war, have Birds of Prey soften them up with hit and runs before going in with the big ships?
Oh, the good old boards/forums. It's so sad that there isn't any longer a place like it on the web. All are dead now :(
Loved those games, shame they run like crap on Windows 10
Load it into Fleet Ops. Works fine, if you do.
Well, I'm nearly done with a replay on Twitch and didn't have any problems with the singleplayer. The only problem we have is with the mutliplayer.
Remember? hell, I've played it in the last week. It loads up just fine when you look up the "Fleet Ops" mod. AND you can fleet up 30 ships. Not really wild about the interface or gameplay of the SE mod, though.
I’m still waiting for someone to get around to putting these games on the steam store. I don’t know who owns the rights to it but they are wasting my money by not letting me buy it. Seriously been waiting like 15 years.
You don't have to spend a single penny they have been abandon ware for years get it from here
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Sorry mate I wish I could help but I haven't tried installing them yet so never looked for a work around. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will be able to help
My workaround was installing a VM program, installing ubuntu on that virtual machine, getting "wine", a Linux program that helps you install windows files like .exes and then installing Armada on a USB drive. That drive then worked in combination with the CD, I'm pretty sure I was able to just move the folder to windows easily and then play. And then there's a No-CD patch out there, if you want to get that. Should the CD ever break or corrode, that is probably a good thing to do since these things have gotten darn expensive.
This might seem convoluted and it sure is, but it was the only way I even got the game to install. Tried everything, all compatibility modes, admin rights and so forth.
I loved that game. Finding a legitimate copy is excessively difficult. I wish it was on steam
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This may work for you.
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I had similar problems with the CD. Couldn't get it to work even with a virtual xp. This site fixes them so they work (not perfectly but they do work) with newer systems.
I just posted a bit down here a very easy guide ;)
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Yeah they were fun
First heard of that game when NerdCubed played it
Upvote for the nerdcubed! His elite force play through was fantastic.
They were great fun.
loved that game. and had a great B5 mod for it, too. really loved that series and the apparent golden age of trek gaming.
That was one thing I disliked about the first Armada -- its limited number of ship classes. Eventually online multiplayer battles became whoever was the first to send a zerg rush of Sovereign-class ships, rendering strategy pretty pointless. Even a fleet of Borg Cubes stood no chance because of the Sovereigns' corbomite shields.
Could you not fly in with fast ships, let them burn their shields while you retreat, then attack before it can recharge?
Not without a mod, no. The fast ships were good for scouting, but even a squad of 8 would get chopped to bits by a single Sovereign. Likewise, a Defiant was laughably weak compared to the source, where one Defiant was basically 3 of those fighters. There were mods that made fighters a bit more viable for such hit-and-run tactics.
Plus, both sides could build a maximum of (I think) 80 ships in the first game (10 squadrons of 8 ships each), so 80 Sovereigns vs. 80 assorted ships of various classes meant the Sovereigns would win, since the only way to go after building the equivalent to a Sovereign (like a Cube or Negh'var) was down the tree. If the game gets to the point of 80 ships on both sides of nothing but Sovereigns or the equivalent, you dare not spend resources on a squadron other than a Sovereign in that confrontation. And sending weaker ships to strike at the enemy base while you're building up your fleet means your resources go to waste because they'd be better off turtling with turrets and concentrating on building the Sovereigns.
The Red Alert games, imo, handled the different strengths of various units much better. Armada 2 was somewhat improved, but the number of people playing multiplayer was much lower than Armada 1, I found.
Armada II tried to up the number of ships in the game by providing alternatives that didn't have special weapons but had stronger hulls and conventional weapons (Saber for the Defiant, Intrepid for the Akira, Galaxy for the Sovereign) as well as some more specialized ships specifically designed for fleet support, but in retrospect it made things far more cluttered. I feel like Armada III had a better handle on it, with specialized fleet support ships that could still fight (Constellations handle mobile repairs, Norways handle planetary bombardment, the Curry is a dedicated light carrier) and with combat balanced such that even early-game ships still have a use in late-game engagements.
Armada 3 has an advantage in that it's a fangame, too. Not to diss the devs, but it typically means more time for production (and time to think of these mechanics) rather than a more rushed project.
I remember in the original Armada, you had to team up with the Borg to beat one of the other factions, and then the Borg would turn on you.
So I built up these remote cannons all around the Borg base, and when the Borg turned against me, those remote cannons just automatically fired on the the Borg base, just annihilating them without issue.
You can download a copy that works on newer computers https://oldgamesdownload.com/?s=Star+trek+armada
Anyone have a working copy of Starfleet command like this? I have all of these games and love them but none of them work on my laptop no matter what I try.
GOG sells it, not sure about compatibility though.
I have them from GoG, they work perfectly fine - no tweaking required.
What is GoG?
iirc its a platform from cd Project, they have tons of great games including new titles and old abendonware titles. All DRM free. I browse it from time to time and bought some classics from my childhood like vangers: one for the road and raptor: call of the shadows and other stuff. And it all worked flawlessly on my win7 System. Check it out! :)
Kinda like Steam.
I spent way too much time on those games... I think I even still have an original Beta CD for Armada II laying around somewhere.
Nice, how did you became a beta tester?
If I remember correctly there was a small article in PC Gamer (the physical magazine) with an emailadress asking for testers.
I never would have guessed that they do it that way :)
Was the beta version good or did they have many bugs?
Played the heck out of both of those games. I’d go in on a third one.
Look up Star Trek armada 3 a mod for sins of a solar empire. Great game and mod
Honestly the best Star Trek experience I've had. Bridge Crew in VR is super close... But Armada has so much depth, and it's amazing having a big diverse fleet, and engaging the enemy in cinematic camera mode with no UI.
I like Bridge Crew, but I could only find good ship mates during the early days. Every time I’ve tried to play it since, its either screaming in the background so that a person’s voice comms are useless or people who don’t actually want to play the objectives.
I have found some good people. But not always. They should do a DS9, then Voyager DLC, get more life blood in the game.
A Dominion War mode (where you have an ongoing back and forth of system control) would make you feel like a part of something bigger.
A Stranded mode (with the Voyager DLC) would have your ship completely on its own in the Delta Quadrant. You could add more diplomacy options/NPCs as well as a more filled out ship repair (maybe even model Engineering/Sickbay/The Mess Hall).
With VR and Star Trek the options are endless.
My problem with Bridge Crew is that it's more a tech demo, than a game with content. A game with this tech and the content from Bridge Commander or Pulsar would be amazing.
I would buy that.
How’s the balance? I’ve installed it and messed around, but have been nervous of playing a full game because mods are often more like a sandbox than a balanced game.
Fleet Operations is a great mod for Armada. - The base game is pretty balanced until the Borg get along their tech tree, then they steamroller everyone.
Which makes sense
I didn't like it. I got stuck in the tutorial, of all places :P
I "comfort" play this game all the time still. Excellent escape and soesnt take a huge amount of time.