Units and (special) weapons in Star Trek: Armada are made available by means of a so-called tech tree file. Tech Tree Files are text files with the extension .tt, placed either in the addons folder, or (as part of the originally delivered content of the game) inside assets.zfs. They contain the names of ODF Files, that are made available for a specific tech tree and under consideration of the existence of certain other items, e.g. research pods or stations.
They are basically ASCII files with Windows line feeds (0x0d 0x0a). Each line represents the availability of a unit or weapon, and if set so, the dependencies which must be met, before this item is made available. A typical line inside such a tech tree file would look like this:
fgalaxy.odf 1 fresear.odf // Galaxy
or as an abstract:
<element_to_be_made_available>.odf number_of_requirements_before_available <requirement1>.odf <requirement2>.odf //[...]//
The first value is the ODF file name of the element to be made available. If an ODF of a unit or special weapon is not made available with such a line, it is not visible or usable at all.
The second value defines the number of elements that must already exist, before the element is available. If this is set to 0, the item is available right from the start. If it is higher, then more parameters are required:
Each consecutive value after the second value is a requirement that must be met (read: must be in the players possession), before the element given by the first parameter is actually available. An element that is in principle reachable but whose requirements are not yet met is greyed out (and not yet usable) but already visible. Once all requirements are met, the element is also made available for use.
Mind the .odf extension. If it is missing for any of the required ODF file names, the game will crash.
Tech Tree Files allow for comments to be made, either for entire lines of he tailing end of a line. A comment is started by two slashes (//) and always ends at the end if its current line.
In the given example the fgalaxy.odf requires one item to be in the players possession (built or stolen or placed on the map right from the start), the fresear.odf (Research Facility).
There are seven multi-player Tech Tree Files for Star Trek: Armada:
For more details on them, see also Tech Trees.
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