the way I was seeing it you would have

Federation

Dominion (plus breen and cardassian)

Klingon Empire (this is the most difficult)

Well you have to have the Romulans, they where a part of the war... eventually, and an Iconic ST race. Plus its one of the Six they (the team making the mod) said they where doing. The Romulans should be easyer than the Breen nd maybe the Cardassians too.

I they will have use the DS9 Dominion War (the WHOLE war) time frame PLUS final conflict as it has needed ship canon - as mentioned the Scimatar and Veldorn for the Romulans, as well as the Sovriegn. True at the beginning of the movie there is no refrence to the Dominion War (You would think the flag ship would be leadinga fleet for sure) but thats up to them (the mod team) to decied. I think its neccisary. Otherwise its just a large collection of TNG left overs. The Federation is the only race where we will have this problem of "too many ships". I think the Klingons are preatty well fleshed out. Although it maybe 4 different sizes and variations of the basic Warbird Design although that is just true to the Klingons, they HAVE used that basic design for over 400 years. If it works... keep beating your opponant over the head with it... thats just the way they work. in the TNG the only romulan ships you see is the good ol' Bird of Prey, a shuttle and a scout/patrol craft. I was going under the mindset that basically just TOS and ST:E were off limits and Voyager (minus the Intrepid Class). Cardassians should be covered by TNG and DS9. The Breen are just going to be a bit$h as i think they only had like 3-4 different ship types used in the war.

I hope the use they Orian Syndacit instead of the Maqui as the Pirates (i would be ok with the Borg, if they didnt dumb them down, with a long timer so they only come in every 2 hours, and the start with and equal bounty on all players, and attack all players untill the equall bounty is used up, Devistating to the worlds they pass. I think its possible under those guide lines i think. You guys listing??? heheh...

However this does open the door for a second mod "The early years" going from Enterprise to the TOS: Movies. Now my mouth is drooling... not just for dinner... but for dessert as well...

so... should i issue the challenge to the boards, to move from the Federation to start figuring out ideas for the Klingons? Ship structure, Capital Ship "LOOSE Roles" (to get an idea what "speacials" the capitals should have) Tech Tree? (This may be complicated, it looks like they want to completely over haul it, not alot of info yet on what they plan on doing with that this early) They want the ship availability to depend on researched tech (Defiant requires pulse phaser lvl 2, Ablative armour lvl 5, and shields lvl 3 and a tech for the hull design as an example) So with ships keep in mind what systems and weapons they are equpiped with not just size = power.

One issue that has sat in the back of my mind regarding the carrier issue is, fighters werent prevalant untill the Maqui, however the Akira Class and the Battle shots from the Dominion War show thats where the Federation was going. But other than this... who else uses fighters other than the odd (usually misguided or "evil") minor race??? Klingons? ok the 12 crew BOPs work, the Romulans? Not really... The Cardassians? not that i can remember. The Dominion... i guess you could consider their attack ships fighters but i think they're just small frigates (they look to be the size of the larger full 300? crew Klingon BOP to me). The Breen... no.. cool looking ships... and their capital ships could be all about locking you down but no fighters. So does this mean only the Federation has fighters, or we dont give them fighters even tho we can...

Man this mod looks like it is shaping up to be somethign special. So much so I'm starting to entertain thoughts of one of the evil Killer B's trying to shut it down on some kind of IPR violation. Because they think it may "hurt" some licensed product being secretly developed right now.

Shhh.... *slips 1Spartan $20* you didnt hear nothin...

I forgot the Star Trek Licence was just picked up...

$20???? You insult my capitalistic greed. After all we are in the BU$h error. I will settle for nothing less then $20k - cash.

Planetary bombardments have been used. Improbable Cause and The Die Is Cast dealt with the Cardassians and Romulans doing just that to the Founders' homeworld.

Additionally, fighters have turned up, just not usually in the scale the class normally describes. Jem'Hadar light cruisers are described as fighters, and so is the Peregrine - which is, going by Voyager, a moderate-sized frigate or light frigate and capable of holding a sizable crew. Additionally, they (fighters in general) were used in one of the TNG episodes as a trainer... no doubt the Federation does have some kind of light fighter-like vehicle in widespread use - economically, a fleet comprised entirely of large capital ships doesn't make a lot of sense when most of the firepower packed onto those big ships could be carried a lot cheaper on dozens of smaller fighters.

Even if Trek doesn't have fighters in that sense, that description would be more than enough to give it a fanon reason to include them in a mod.

A quick suggestion for the Borg. Maybe you could make them randomly appear like they did with the Dread Lords in GalCiv2. I have no idea if this is possible, just putting it out there. I'm a big fan of the Borg.

i can just repeat my suggestions.

Add the Borg as pirates. U can change the frequence of the attacks so that it takes a lot longer before they come (maybe just all 30 minutes) but then they are really powerfull and u could make a Borg cube really threatening.

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Add the Borg as pirates. U can change the frequence of the attacks so that it takes a lot longer before they come (maybe just all 30 minutes) but then they are really powerfull and u could make a Borg cube really threatening. [/quote]

If you dont nerf the Borg, they can be a "game-breaker" if they just go after one person, the tricky part is to get them to be a threat to everyone equally, even if chosen randomly and late, if someone gets the borg two times in a row, it could kill them, one attack from a borg cube SHOULD weaken you to the point someone else surely could take advantage.

Thank you for all of your suggestions, everyone. We're glad there's a lot of community interest in the mod already and are confident we can deliver another great Star Trek experience.

That said, right now our primary focus is getting ship models into the game. We have a rough outline of a Starfleet ship list and some initial choices for the other races as well. For now we're going to spend most of our time designing and modeling the ships. Finer points of balance, ship roles and abilities will be considered once we make significant progress on the art front.

Regarding the ship list, Major Stress has alluded to this already, but we're not looking for the right Trek units to do a 1:1 replacement of the ships in Sins. There is obviously some overlap but it's not important that we find the Federation equivalent of a siege frigate or a Klingon equivalent of a carrier.

Once we've reached the point where most of the ships are flying around in-game, we'll have to take a good look at what we can do with the abilities and how we can develop the mod to give it a play style unique to the Trek universe. I don't think any of us want the mod to just be a Trek "skin" for the stock Sins experience.

It's also important to note that while we're obviously taking a lot from DS9 and Trek lore, we don't feel strictly beholden to "canon." There are other important yardsticks to consider, like how it plays in the game and if it makes sense without bending over backwards to make up bullsh*t explanations. Obviously we don't plan to do any grievous violations of Trek Lore "just because we can" but we reserve the right to change things if it suits the purpose of the mod.

So, to answer some specific concerns:
The Borg: Besides the fact that the Borg don't have anything to do with the Dominion War, right now there isn't a way in Sins to do the Borg justice. We're not a fan of Voyager-Borg, which is the type of Borg that'd be in play if we turned them into the Pirates. If Ironclad ever add scripting into the game then a random Borg event might be in the cards, but until then it's off the table, period.

If that's a deal breaker for you then we're sorry. We won't miss the money you won't be paying us for a free mod.

Carriers: There have been some interesting suggestions about carriers. As we already have enough types of ships for the Federation without resorting to any of the weird DS9 "Frankenstein fleet" we're going to stay away from ships like the Through Deck Carrier for now.

The Akira was dropped as a carrier because its bays aren't big enough for the Peregrine fighters that were used in the Dominion War. It will still appear sporting an intimidating arsenal of torpedoes, though.

In general the thing to remember about "Carriers" and "Fighters" in Trek is that we only really saw combat fighters in the Dominion War, and even the smallest fighters in play by all sides were more like corvettes as someone has already mentioned. The Starfleet Peregrines were much larger than the Runabouts. Comparable ships for the Cardassians and the Dominion were larger still.

In Star Trek the necessity of a dedicated carrier vessel for such craft is questionable. Since they have faster than light capability, sport several crew and sustain that crew indefinitely using things like replicators and can receive supplies without landing (via transporters) the primary purpose of a carrier in such a universe would be mainly to repair, rearm, and refuel said fighters when necessary. Carriers would not have to store the fighters on the way to and from the battle, perform major equipment overhauls or extensive battlefield network support.

It might be helpful, then, to think of "carriers" in the Star Trek vernacular as more like flying tankers than anything else. And thus, the complexity in construction required to build a Trek carrier is much less pronounced. The only real requirement is enough temporary hangar space for the fighters and enough cargo space for their fuel. Permanent accommodations for the pilots and permanent storage and maintenance systems for the fighters aren't required for a Trek carrier to do its job. Also, since the computer and sensor systems on the fighters are already so sophisticated a dedicated command and control system is not needed.

For Starfleet, the Galaxy and Miranda classes have the one thing you need to be a Peregrine carrier: hangar doors that are big enough for these ships to fit through! Who knows how many of these ships are actually assigned to support Peregrine flights, but in our mod that will be only one of their functions.

Starfleet ships are nothing if not versatile, and the carrier ships will have other roles besides that of carrier. Mirandas will still be "meat for the grinder" and Galaxies will still be fortresses and explorers...but they will also be able to house fighters. I'm hoping we can assign a high cost to deploy squadrons of fighters from either class of ship making the carrier ability an option and not the sole purpose of building the ship.

Also, the idea of a carrier module for the Nebula is something I've thought of before too. It might be explored down the road but right now, for Starfleet, we're going to focus on designs we've already seen. The Nebula will probably end up as a support cruiser with an AWACS style module like the USS Phoenix.

The Races: We have six races planned right now. These will not change as we have a lot of art done for some of these races already and hey represent the major powers in the Alpha Quadrant during the Dominion War.

1. United Federation of Planets
2. Klingon Empire
3. Romulan Star Empire
4. Cardassian Union
5. Dominion Hegemony
6. Breen Confederacy

Some of the ship lists for these factions are thin right now, but I'm working on fleshing them out with non-canon concepts. If you see a cool design in your Web travels go ahead and let us know about it, but make sure you talk to the designer first. We're big on giving the credit to the right people.

Timeline:As far as the proper timeline and what to include and what not to include, as I mentioned before we're not really interested in getting into extended debates about the finer points of canon.

In the specific example of the Sovereign class, just because we never saw it fight in the war doesn't mean it never happened. Its absence in the war sequences probably had more to do with television production issues (branding concerns, special effects deadlines, model ownership) than a purposeful omission by the show's producers.

Our initial selection of ships, and to a greater extent the ideas we hope to implement in this mod, starts with what we saw in the Dominion War episodes itself and then will expand outward to what we can infer about what's going on just to the right or left of what our TV sets could actually show us.

The nice thing about volunteering on a Star Trek project is that there is no budget, no deadlines and no producers to get in the way. We can make the Trek game we've always wanted to play and put our own stamp on the universe we love so much. It's going to be an interesting ride, I hope, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it all turns out just as much as you guys are.

Sweet, positive responses. I'll go ahead and see what Trek like tracks I can put together and get back to you guys.

Cool project brief. I hope you guys take us where no man has gone before! :CONGRAT:

I don't know if anyone else has posted anything like this, but I have an idea for how you could implement the Borg. You could have them, not as a playable faction but rather kind of like what the pirates are like now.

But make the come much much MUCH less frequently, on a sort of random timer, or perhaps only once very late in a game.

Anyway, you wouldn't put bounties up or anything obviously. It would be an interesting mechanic, where the players would have to set aside their differences temporarily to focus on the Borg.

Something like that may be interesting.

If I have to pick one ship that makes it into the mod, it would have to my favorite, the Olympic-class starship. Although I'm not sure how a medical ship would fit in.

Well unfortunately, I can see most of my ideas being an incompatible fit for this mod as it is shaping up (not that that is a criticism). All I can do now is sit back and wish you all the best. I'll be waiting on the final product.

I had a list of abilities for some ships but such is life.

Gook Luck!

Thanks for the feed back and the clarification. I kinda figured you guys had the models and the gritty parts handled. I figured this thread could be a collection of ideas for when you get stuck, or give you a head start when you get to the next section of WORK. That and i wanted to get the post count up. There was just no way the Star Wars Mod should be 200-300 posts long and Star Trek just 20 (dont get me wrong i like star wars and own SW:EaW). This could give us fans some where to moan and whine
(Although i think the Races, Cannon, Timeframe, Ship Models, and the BORG ISSUE are dead now :)). That and i wanted an excuse to read up on some Star Trek stuff i hadnt looked at in a long time. I am a big fan of the Gal Civ 2 Star Trek Mod and played Homeworld 1 & 2 a little bit, since this game is a cross of the two slightly; the modeling and ships are homeworld terriory but i hope you guys get in contact with the Gal Civ Star Trek Team that memebers of must be around these forums somewhere, for some quality help when it comes to the more 4X sides of the game (much later). The tech tree and what not. Unit acnowlagments that are sound clips from orders being issued in the right language. (i personaly loved it when i coulnt get detailed information on a planet because my sensors couldnt reach i got in the TNG Enterprise computer voice "Command in operable, sensor relays damaged") the little bits that pull a mod from BETA to 1.00 "finished".

Some more Tw0-Cents: Federation ships are not ships of war, so they should have lots of researchable uprades or abilities. The ships themselves may not be that powerful, but all have little useful abilities. The Klingon should have the best war ships, simple but effective. Romulan ships more powerful than the Feds but with more abilties than the Klingons. Cards i guess would be the mass spammers of the 6. Dominion would have the most powerful ships, but highest cost. Breen... Special abilities, maybe with an unbalanced weapons/shield-armour ratio 2:1. I just dunno much about the Breen... but i guess thats the idea....
"You know Dumar... they say the Breen wear those suits to keep their bodies at sub zero temperatures... yet there homeworld... is a warm planet... a mystery..."

WOW. This is an amazing idea. Can't wait, for it. It will give me an excuse to leave Armada 2 in the background.
I'm not sure about the modding part, but the guys that made Fleet Operations for Armada 2, did an awesome job; you could ask them.
Not sure if they would go along, but I guess it doesn't hurt to ask.

-I can see it in my head, a huge fleet of Klingon Ships descending on the federation with the mighty Negh'Var in the foreground. And Swarm numbers of B'rel ,K'Vort and Vor'cha class attack ships backing the Negh'Var up. Gives me goosebumps. "Q'pla" hehe-

A question though: how are you guys gonna bring in the element of cloaked ships? And will the planet rings be different or removed all together, to fit the warp issue?

I've been thinking about how to do cloaking and if it's even possible. I can come up with some workarounds, but none of it's really cloaking. We'll see

For now while Stress is away I started working on getting the "race" set up. Mainly tons of naming, string additions, etc. Got some neat ability ideas to test out once I'm done with that

Just want to make something perfectly clear for all to read:

There will be no BORG in this mod. As already stated on a number of occasions, balancing the Borg from a gameplay perspective would make them weak and totaly un-canon from what we've seen in the shows/movies. At Wolf 359 a single Cube destroyed 39 Starfleet ships and I don't know how many other ships belonging to other powers such as the Klingons. Thou not seen, Admiral Hansen mentioned asking for help from the Klingons and -possibly- the Romulans as well. One would think a DS9-era Cube would be even more threatening than an early TNG-era Cube seeing as the Collective regularly assimilates new blood into their ranks as well as technology.

The way I see it, if the Borg would make an appearance in SoA: AR there are 2 possibilities:

1. We balance the Borg to be playable versus human players, which means making a human fleet consisting of only 5-10 ships able to take out a singular Borg Cube. A Wolf 359-esque fleet of 40 ships might be needed if the Borg attacked in greater numbers, but either way the Borg would be severely gimped from the powerfulness that they rightfully deserve.

2. We don't balance the Borg to be playable versus human players, which will lead to having a Borg fleet consisting of a half-dozen Borg Cubes, 1-2 Tactical Cubes and a couple dozen Borg Spheres attacking 1 or more players, obliterating everything that stands in its way.

With option #1, the Borg aren't fun because they'll feel too weak. With option #2, the Borg won't be any fun either because they'll be so vastly overpowered versus most fleets that the only way to take out a Borg fleet is by the combined efforts of all other players in the game. Regardless of planning, I highly doubt you'll see many multiplayer matches with that level of cooperation.



Bottomline is: NO BORG!!!

That is all. // DT

The devs could never afford to pay to take the Star Trek game design license away from Bethesda Softworks.

To my knowledge the Star Trek license is owned by CBS/Paramount, and at current there are no Trek games in production. By Bethsoft or anyone else. Due to the failure that is called Legacy, i'm not even sure if Bethsoft still has the license to make Trek games. In any case, our Total Conversion for Sins of a Solar Empire will do nicely.

I so wish SD/ IC would try to get a license for ST, B5 and BSG franchises. Given the success of Sins the time to try to acquire any or all of them would be going into Summer. Anyone one of those franchises would be a mint if a game was done right. Hell B5 still has never had a "real" game released.

I would have listed SW but LA has its own thing going on and would likely tell small companies like SD/IC the force simply is not with you.

Cloaking is possible, hell its in Sins (Vasari Scout) as well as the Phase Outer Hull ability, i am sure these can be tweeked to fit as needed. The follow the same rules you cant fire while cloaked and that is a must (Dont give me the "fire while cloaked BOP" from the last STar Trek TOS Movie crap, it was a prototype and broke Roddenberry's Rules). It would be an advantage, you send a scout, you see a Vor'cha, and accouple of v-9 crusers, you send your fleet in and 20 BOPs decloak inbetween your fleet and the Vor'cha. Sounds about right to me

Lets let the Borg Issue die, atleast untill the end where i COULD be added if its been figured out. The Borg should NOT be comparable to the playable races, I agree. An Uber powered single Borg Cube (would they really send more than one BEFOUR Voyager pissed them off?) should and could kick anyone one players ass (unless late game with a large fleet them maybe you could do it on your own - first contact). This is game breaking. "Everyone Allying against the Borg" sounds right, but you cant plan on it, and as it stands it dosent seem like something they can force the players to do. They will only do the Borg if it can be done right, and from what i hear it cant be done properly atleast right now. And I agree... I understand the Borg fans out there, but they should NEVER have been made into a balanced group (previous games, movies, fan fiction). They should be held in "similar" regard as the "Q". Mortal and scietific, but still representing that Be all end all "Boogyman under the bead" for the Alpha Quadtrent not just the Feds.

The Borg balancing question is a difficult one. What if you modified the TEC's Uprising tech so that once a top-level tech is unlocked by any player, a side-effect would be that everyone becomes a target for the Borg? (Warning: may cause nausea, headache, loss of appetite, Borg invasion.) That way you can be certain that by the time a Borg invasion is possible, everyone's going to have at least 100 ships in play - enough to conceivably stop a single Wolf 359-type cube. And the way the Uprising tech seems to work, you could set it to be very random and infrequent, so they won't necessarily attack at all. It also makes sense that The Borg should be attracted to a technologically advanced culture, and this might give players pause before unlocking that last, powerful tech.

Just throwin' it out there. Of course, this could be something you add in in version 1.5 of the mod to keep things interesting.

The Borg should always hit hard with even a single cube and take up atleast half of the example 100 ships. In MP and SP if anyone were to loose half their fleet to a third party it will throw off the games balance. If the bounty system could be used to make them destroy X amount of every single players ships.. them MAYBE... but the point stands... they have nothing to do with the Dominion War.