Star Trek: Armada Maps

For the game Star Trek: Armada quite a number of maps were made. The game already includes 28 standard maps by default. They range from 1 vs 1 maps to full sized 8 player maps. Custom missions are also possible.

Traditionally maps are named with a leading digit indicating the number of available player slots. Technically speaking, the StartLocations value would suffice to indicate the player slots. But the naming convention allows for getting this information with a quick glimpse. In-game you can filter for the number of players.

There are a lot of custom maps and that can become a problem: Maps all have to be placed in the addon directory of the Armada installation. However, if you have too many of them, Armada crashes every time you try to create a server. It doesn't matter whether it's Internet, Instant Action, or via Local Area Network. It has also been reported, that placing maps inside the bzn folder (where the original/standard maps are located) may make the game crash.

If a player does not have a map the host is using, the client downloads it automatically from the host. And that works rather fast, especially since Armada maps are not excessively large. So don't panic if you are hosting and want to use an exotic map. Just select it and you're good to go. The rest is done by Armada itself. In the meantime you're not hindered by the download. You can see the download status as well.

There are 28 maps shipped with Armada.

Map Name	Picture	Note
2blue
2borders		This map can turn out to be highly unfair for the player starting out on the left side. E.g. when starting as a Borg player, the first Processing Node cannot be placed in the vicinity of the moon at the starting location. This effectively gives a hard disadvantage for having either to produce more than two additional Dilithium Collectors to max out the moon or head out to the next one in a distance. The player starting out on the right does not have this impediment. This map is therefore not fair.
2deadzone
2divide		On this map you can easily reproduce the AI knowing the map instantly: Use an AI opponent, that is not Romulan, so their scouts cannot cloak. Use the lower starting position for yourself and keep the Fog of War and the Shroud turned on. Right after starting the match send your own scout north, to the wormhole in your starting »box«, but do not enter it. (The map is divided into areas enclosed by asteroid belts so there is only this one entrance to your area.) Now just wait. For all intents and purposes, the AI should not be able to know where the moons are, unless it would either scout the area or know the map in detail anyway. As the distance between the AI's starting position to your wormhole is way longer than for you to it, your scout will arrive at the wormhole long before the AI ever could, even if it sent its scout to it right away as well. You will not find any scout entering your area of the map at first. And yet, the AI will sent two of its constructors to the second moon in your area right away, without ever having scouted out the area. This proves, that the AI knows the area without having to scout it. (Much in contrast to what Westworld's Big Book of Modding states, when they describe how the AI derives where to build its Mining Stations. The AI does not need the Fog of War or Shroud to be turned off, in order to know exactly where to go.
2duel
2hidden
2maze
3race		When playing against the AI, this map has a tendency to crash the game after a while of playing it.
3triad
4across
4brown
4crux
4first
4green
4hole
4hub
4junky
4mama
4more
4nirvana
4redsea
4strange
5assault
6brown
6violins
8compete		This map is also rather unfair in terms of starting positions. While the three players starting in the lower left corner have one moon inside their lair, the others have two, which of course is a significant strategic advantage for the other five.
8nirvana
8open		This map is particularly bad for bots. While everyone has their two starting moons in the vicinity of their starting location. There is only one further moon in the center of the map, that is an infinite moon. But as bots by default build three Mining Stations, they all head for the same moon, wasting valuable resources basically for nothing.

On the map 4junky a lot of empty ships are placed at the center. Two of them, a Galaxy and the Premonition are sucked into the Black Hole right at the binning.

There is an editor for the game's maps. With the patch 1.3 you can reach it very easy by entering edit into the chat console when in-game.

The map preview is stored as a 24 bit Windows Bitmap (BMP file) in resolution 128 x 128 pixels. If for some reason a map does make the game crash when using it, the BMP may be the cause for it. If you can verify that this is the case (e.g. move the BMP out of the bzn or addon folder and it does not crash any longer), check out whether the file can be opened with a graphics editor, e.g. MS Paint or Gimp. If so, then it's probably only stored in the wrong format. BMPs come in different formats. A valid BMP for Armada map previews must be in 24 bit color depth and it must have 128 x 128 pixels resolution. You may find graphics editors trying to store the file actually in 32 bit depth, which makes the game crash. If you cannot open it with a common graphics editor, then it's very likely corrupted and obtaining a working version is unavoidable.