Star Trek - The Final Frontier (Beta 1.0)

[rjord2021]

I am using photoshop to put well known Star Trek characters in different stories and depending on the throw of the dice and the card that is drawn that character may not follow their path as seen in the Kirk era tv series.

Dr Elizabeth Denner was picked up from Aldebaron III by the Enterprise just prior to the events of the 2nd pilot episode.

With the card selected below the Klingon attack on the colony has changed the timeline and instead of staying on the Enterprise and meeting Gary Mitchell Denner is now heading to the nearest starbase to make her report to Starfleet on the Klingon attack on the colony.

Earlier mission cards have the Enterprise transporting Dr Denner from Earth to the colony while other cards have the Enterprise picking up Denner from the planet.

Other cards about Dr Denner have her fate sealed as per the pilot episode while other cards have a new twist to the pilot's ending.

At the start of the game the character for Dr Elizabeth Denner will be on Aldebaron III but if the character moves to another ship or planet and is no longer on the planet when you see this card, then no distress call was sent by her and no action is required on the card.

Each card comes with descriptions giving the conditions that must exist before a card can be actioned.

As you can see in the card below this was a well established colony with a city.

[rjord2021]

The creation of Nomad MK-15c for the mod......up close for attention to detail

[rjord2021]

Prior to the Enterprise meeting Nomad in the episode "The Changeling" Nomad had just gone through the Malurian system and wiped out all the inhabitants....meaning that we never got to see the Malurians after the Archer era.

The Malurians are a very aggressive race and rather than have them wiped out in the second season of Star Trek TOS I am bringing them back in the mod as a species almost wiped out but with survivors.

The picture below shows one of the Malurian Warriors facing off with Nomad on their homeworld Malur III.

[rjord2021]

The mod will come with new textures for every planet.
Completed the lengthy process of replacing all original planet textures with new textures........

[rjord2021]

Tested the planets in game and flagged a few images that were not that great in the game and will be replaced.

This is an example of what the new planets look like.

[rjord2021]

I am using procedurally generated objects and photoshop to replace moons, planets and asteroids in the mod.
With asteroids alone there are 413 images to be replaced which will take time.

When I am not adding more content to the mod I am following a routine to change the planetary objects and give the mod a new look.

Below is an example of how the new Gas Giants will appear in the mod.

I have researched the difference between how gas giants and frozen gas giants appear visually and I followed my findings when adding the pictures. You will be able to tell the difference between gas giants and frozen gas giants just by their appearance.

[rjord2021]

I have changed the stars in the mod to something like the picture below.

I am in the process of completely removing the corona effect as well (300 files to modify just for the corona ) since the solar flares are just not that fast.

I tested this outside of my mod as I didn't want to break my mod if this did not work.

Will test with the mod tonight when the solar flares are removed. I can only imagine what the Enterprise will look like going past the new Stars at impulse speed.

[rjord2021]

Stars were updated to new graphics... previous post updated.

[rjord2021]

I was not entirely happy with the graphics I had put in to replace the stars so last night I photoshopped a replacement which can be seen with an updated picture 2 posts back.

I have completed removal of the sun corona and updated all 300 corona files.

The star in each system is now smaller and the inner planets closest to the star have a wider space in their orbit of the star.

When the mod is released the new stars as shown above will be released as a separate add-on

[rjord2021]

The Enterprise is heading through the Gamma Vertis system on route to Starbase 15 for much-needed shore leave when they pick up a beacon with a simple message. "Help Us...."

The beacon is from the Elachi homeworld on the 4th planet of this system and claims that hundreds of Elachi children have come down with a rare form of the Larosian Virus which is spreading rapidly.

The Elachi are a race of beings who have raided ships across the quadrant for the purpose of harvesting members of other species for food. They do not communicate by making sound and use a form of ESP which makes communication with them impossible.

Despite the Elachi harvesting other species the Enterprise heads to Gamma Vertis IV as Starfleet protocol dictates that no Starfleet vessel will ignore a distress signal under any circumstances unless they believe it is a trap.

The landing party is assembled wearing full environment suits as the Elachi atmosphere is poison to other species and Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam down with a medical team to the planet surface.


There are 6 different missions with the Elachi including one where Spock and McCoy are abducted from a shuttle and taken to Gamma Vertis IV for harvesting.

[rjord2021]

Planet Tholia... this is not a Class M World and with surface temperatures of over 500 degrees Kelvin this is a Class Y world and one world you will not be able to colonise.

When you arrive at Tholia you will be advised you cannot set up a colony on the planet surface.

The pictures in the Trek Universe of the Tholians are few and far between and in many cases are very grainy.

For this mod I have revamped how the Tholians appear in the mod while keeping to the "Gene Roddenberry" vision.

I have photoshopped the picture below to show the volcanic world of Tholia with a modified version of the Tholians. This picture is of "first Contact" with the Tholians and they do not like intrusions from anyone in their home system.

[rjord2021]

While heading back to the Enterprise after attending a Starfleet medical conference on the newly constructed Yorktown Station, McCoy and Scotty experience electrical issues while passing through the Necro Cloud nebula and need to make an emergency landing on an M-Class world called Altamid III.

While Scotty works on fixing the Galileo' systems McCoy explores the surrounding area and discovers that Altamid III has a mining colony which does not appear on Starfleet charts.


The locations from Star Trek Beyond have been added to Distant Worlds and Altamid III is in the original timeline as a mining colony which it had originally been intended for in Beyond before becoming a homeworld for Krall.

In this RPG story McCoy and Scotty stumble upon the remains of an old Earth starship reported missing years ago.

I created the picture below in photoshop.

Edit... updated the picture to merge McCoy into the background picture.. fix up an anomaly with the scenery to the left of Galileo and add some clouds to the mountains in the distance.

[rjord2021]

The Zeta Leporis system....

Planet : Xarant IV 4th planet ( 3 moons) of a 9 planet system
Planet classified as M-Class Rocky terrain
Homeworld of over 2 billion Xarantines



There is only one picture of the Xarantine race on the Internet so I have used that picture to create a more suitable image for use in the mod.

The Xarantine are about 50 years in tech level behind Earth and their planet is just inside Klingon space but they are strong enough with a large fleet of ships which prevent them being taken over by the Klingon Empire.

Known to have many battles with the Klingons.

[rjord2021]

An M-Class planet called Tesnia in the Soth Tau Sector.

When you explore this area you will find a single planet in the system with 4 moons which is home to the Tesnian race.

The Tesnians were never seen in Star Trek and were mentioned in one episode and one book.
Not that this means they are a race that are not important enough to appear in the mod... their story was just not talked about by Star trek writers.

As they were not seen I have created a version of the race in photoshop based on description of their appearance and what their planet looks like.

When the Federation of Planets was proposed the Tesnians were not part of the founding species but they were firm supporters of the Federation and its policies. When they eventually requested to join the Federation they were immediately voted in.

I have created various scenarios about the Tesnians and their handling of threats by both the Klingon and Romulan Empires.

[rjord2021]

With designing the gameplay for the mod the one issue I am looking at with the map is how many times the map can be played before people get bored if you are playing the official star charts version of the map where nothing changes as far as planet locations.

For example, if Vulcan is always next door and Cardassia is always far away then each time the game is played the Distant Worlds side of the game is pretty much the same every time.... if you head in a south easterly direction from Sol you will find Vulcan.

I am wondering if you guys would prefer the mod to go in the direction of the Civilization games where the maps are more random so you never know where Vulcan is, or the Klingon homeworld or Romulan space.

You start the mod by generating the galaxies randomly as you wish and I populate the worlds with the civilizations and races. One day you will have Klingons next door to you and the next day it will be the Axanarri.

I am thinking that one of the strengths of the Distant Worlds is the unpredictability of where you will find certain races and I am thinking the mod should follow that same path so that you never know where and when you are going to meet specific races.

Today I have designed more screens for the mod role playing cards such as this one below where the crew of the Enterprise meet the USS Ares after picking up a distress signal from the planet.

[rjord2021]

If your feedback shows you would prefer random maps rather than a static map the following picture shows how the mod would explain the change in the timeline where everything has changed in the galaxy.

Another picture I have created shows George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth) from the 2009 movie is the one that went through the Guardian and changed the timeline. Instead of Nero and the Romulans affecting the timeline it was the crew of the USS Kelvin under the command of Captain Richard Robau that discovered the Guardian and inadvertently changed the timeline to the Shatner version.

[rjord2021]

Considering that plotting the exact position of each system and planet in the Star Trek universe could take several months it could be an idea to go the wy of random systems in the mod and then work on adding the "precise locations" map as a separate addon once the mod is released.

With that in mind I have a list of 1408 systems to add to the mod from various sources and I am going through that list to remove duplicates...perhaps 25 to 35% of those on the list are duplicated systems.

[rjord2021]

Removed 250 odd duplicate system names and added 1156 systems to the mod files systems.txt and systemNames.txt

Apart from the systems in the alpha and beta quadrants I have also added :

- Alsuran sector stars and systems‎
- Cardassian stars and systems‎
- Delphic Expanse stars and systems
- Dominion stars and systems
- Federation stars and systems‎
- Federation-Cardassian DMZ stars and systems‎
- Federation-Romulan Neutral Zone stars and systems‎
- Ferengi stars and systems‎
- Gamma Quadrant stars and systems
- Gorn stars and systems‎
- Klingon stars and systems‎
- Kzinti stars and systems‎
- Milky Way Galaxy stars and systems‎
- Orion stars and systems
- Quadrant 0 stars and systems
- Quadrant 1 stars and systems
- Quadrant 2 stars and systems‎
- Romulan stars and systems‎
- Talarian stars and systems

These 19 sub groups of systems have provided more names of systems not included in the general alpha and beta quadrant categories.

[rjord2021]

When you arrive in specific systems out of the 1000 or more systems in the mod you will meet specific characters from the Trek universe.

As seen in the card below there is no mention of throwing a dice and when you get a card like this you roll two dice ( or a 12 sided dice) which will tell you which card to play when you meet that character.

Some of the cards will have Kirk negotiating a trade deal , others cards will have dangerous situations... you may even get cards which say that while the Captain is on the surface the ship may suddenly be leaking antimatter radiation through the dilithium crystal housing.

[rjord2021]

The graphics for this card took me 3 and a half hours to complete and shows Doctor McCoy providing treatment for a high ranking member of the Klingon Empire.

The Klingon is from the Klingon Homeworld which explains why he has the ridged forehead unlike the smooth foreheads of Klingons generally found on ships near the border with the Federation space.

When this card is picked you need to run the procedure in the RPG rules to see if the Doctor successfully saves the patient. Some of the results from the dice throw have complications setting in and subsequent dice rolls are needed to hopefully save the patient.

In the case of this card if the Klingon dies there is a very high chance that McCoy will be blamed and he will be sent to the Klingon prison planet Rura Penthe.

Kirk has a chance to save McCoy from prison and this is determined by the dice roll.

If unsuccessful and McCoy then goes to Rura Penthe the Enterprise can then try to rescue McCoy however this comes with great danger to the ship and Kirk could lose his position as captain of the Enterprise for crossing the Neutral Zone into Klingon space.

The text on the card is just a rough outline of what the card is about and will be changed to the final version of the text before this mod is complete.