Star Trek - The Final Frontier (Beta 1.0)

[rjord2021]

Making good progress on creating a Star Trek version of the components and resources files.

Currently adding in components such as the Structural Integrity Field which needs Liquid Helium to cool down the Integrity Field Generators. When adding the required resources for the Integrity Field I don't specify that the required Resource is Liquid Helium as the correct resource is Helium which is then processed into Liquid Helium.

The components and resources files will be split into 2 requirements.... those needed for ships and bases... and those needed for other purposes.

[rjord2021]

This is the screen I am currently editing and adding more of a Star Trek flavor to the components and resources.

Items such as the Long Range Gun, Mining Engine and Nuclear Devastator are just some of the components that do not fit the Enterprise.

Each component is being replaced by the proper Star Trek component and I am adding them to a spreadsheet down one column with the resources required for that component being added to their own cells along the same row. Then I can look up the Resource Dilithium for example and look at the rows below for that column to see which components need Dilithium to be constructed or to operate.

This might be too much detail for some people but I am foremost building this mod for myself while sharing it with others and I am trying to get this as close to a Star Trek starship simulator as I can.

[rjord2021]

Added a new race name to the mod and I am calling them the Boa'tellans.
Working on the new character that will appear in the mod for the Boa'tellans.

[rjord2021]

I think the worst alien that we never got to see were the Medusans in the episode Is There In Truth No Beauty as they were in a box and if you looked directly at them then you would go mad.

I think there was a lot of potential with this race so instead of an alien confined to a box I have a 6-foot alien who can destroy his enemy just by looking at him.

Below is the picture showing what will most likely be the final picture of my version of the Medusans.

[rjord2021]

Medusans behind a screen to protect their allies when they are on a visual viewscreen link.

The screen they use will depend on whether you are an ally or an enemy.

[rjord2021]

My version of The Lights of Zeta just finished in photoshop.
This is for the race known as the Zetarians.

[rjord2021]

The Xindi-Reptiles and the Xindi-Insectoids have been added to the mod with a new look.

For the last five years these two Xindi species have been at war with each other on Xindus and finally the Xindi Council made up of the other 4 Xindi species unanimously agreed for the Insectoids and Reptiles to take their fight to another planet.

Within 8 months every Xindi reptile and insectoid had left the planet in whatever spaceships they could find.



With these 2 species added there are now only 8 more races to add in to have a full 70 playable races in the mod.

[rjord2021]

The other Xindi race in the mod to be reimagined....... the Xindi-Reptiles.

[wepen007]

On your new resources, will the AI be able to handle them and still play a good game?

[rjord2021]

When you make First Contact with the Tamarians they will be facing a planet ending crisis on their homeworld.

Well at least one of the possible outcomes in the RPG game.

[rjord2021]

ORIGINAL: wepen007

On your new resources, will the AI be able to handle them and still play a good game?

That I will be testing for as the resources are added..... but ... simply the answer is Yes.
There are 70 races that can become AI and at least another 50 -100 on worlds that may form an Empire if you have that option selected.

[rjord2021]

The last of the playable races will be added in the next few hours.

A selection of races are those that appeared in Enterprise, TNG or DS9 and the appearance of these races are modified to show how they appeared one hundred years later or 100 years before they appeared on tv.

None of the characters from Enterprise, TNG or DS9 will appear in this mod except for Guinan who was living in the Kirk era as well.

[rjord2021]

Before your ships can explore the galaxy you will need 2 different types of water as resources:

: Normal Water
: Seawater

Water is essential to keep the ship crew hydrated but is also important for hygiene and cooking amongst other uses. The Vulcans would never be able to prepare the various soups such as Plomeek Soup or even make Relen tea without a good supply of water.

Seawater is an essential resource needed to provide fuel for your warp engines by producing slush-deuterium. Without seawater your ship would not be able to use either your warp engines or your impulse engines and your ship would be dead in the water.

Not every world is going to have a ready supply of water and I am working out the abundance you would expect to find on the various types of planets.


Also looking at the resource file for these settings
- IsFuel: Y/N value indicating whether this is fuel resource used in reactors
' - IsImportantPreWarpResource: Y/N value indicating whether this resource is important to have in home system of prewarp empires

Currently with polywater in distant worlds both of these flags are set to No..... in my mod I believe both should be set to Yes....or at least the second one should be.

If I change the 2nd flag from No to Yes what will that do

That Important Prewarp flag ensures you will have a source of the resource in the home system. Basically this is a way to flag any resource that is vitally important to be able to progress the game.

If you are going to mod in new resources that are essential to build ship components in the pre-warp time period, then this flag should be set to Y. Otherwise you may get stuck unable to build new ships.

Looking into details such as this is just some of what I am doing while developing this mod.

[rjord2021]

The playable races in this mod are not just confined to the all too familiar races you have seen on TV..... I have introduced a number of new races I have developed especially for the mod which range from the sweetest of aliens to terrifying new threats.

Some of the new races I have created are

The Magnosians
The Albinans
The Cortosians
The Lativians
The Deevidian
The Isarian
The Azeron ( Very deadly and aggressive race)
.......and The Moyans


The Lativians and Albinans are ones that I think are really interesting..... almost elvish in appearance but with the technology advanced enough to be a warp capable civilization.

These new races have been designed keeping the concept of The Original Series in mind where the new races are almost human in appearance but with minor or significant differences.

As a developer I am also keeping in mind that Distant Worlds Universe is a game playable by people of all ages so I have added races in that the younger generation may like to choose as a playable race while interesting enough for us older players to enjoy as well.

[rjord2021]

Preview of the 72 races that are playable in the mod.

[rjord2021]

With each of the 787 star systems you will encounter in this mod belonging to either the alpha or beta quadrant I am flagging each one of them with the races you may encounter in those systems .

For example, testing the role play yesterday Kirk took a landing party down to the surface of the 3rd planet of the Gamma Xertia system.

When arriving at the Gamma Xertia system the name was not familiar to me however the 3rd planet of the system turned out to be Benzar—the homeworld of the Benzite civilization.

Depending on the game you may never scan the 3rd planet of the system for any one of a number of reasons. If this happens then you will not make First Contact with the Benzites unless they later form their own Empire.

[rjord2021]

I am doing some final tests on my procedure for creating a whole new range of planets for the mod. Once I have this procedure in place I am planning on creating 10 planets a day for a set number of weeks to give a wide variety of planets in the mod.

The gas giants are easy to do but the M-Class Planets with water are a little more difficult but almost resolved.


The process I use is to create a planet and then set its temperature to 9000 degrees and then wait for the planet to cool down. What this does is the intense heat boils away any oceans and seas and then melts down the rock forming a new looking planet once the planet has cooled down.

I then increase the mass of the planet which then starts raising temperature, creating gasses which form the atmosphere and then I add in the water until I have a nice water world.

Then take the planet and put it through photoshop post processing and then add it into Distant Worlds Universe.

[rjord2021]

More races have been added to the mod including Q himself who somehow did not get added in the first batch.
Working on how Q will appear in the mod as he can normally go anywhere in space or time without a ship.

Included in the new races are two who will spice up the battles in the galaxy. One species will be a challenge as it has never had any dialog in all its appearances....actually I think that is the same with the other as well. So I will need to work out how these two talk to other species in the quadrant.

Testing of the mod has shown there is an error with one of the race configuration files that randomly throws up an error. Will locate and fix it in the next few days.

[rjord2021]

Another new race has been added to the mod based on their arrival in Star Trek : Discovery.

Closer to the time when this mod is released I will review the situation. If Star Trek : Discovery has not been aired yet I will modify the race in a way so it does not give away what is coming in the show.

As Discovery is only 10 years before Kirk's era there is no need to age the characters as they would have looked like this as well in TOS.

This will also be the case for any other races from Discovery which are added to this mod.

[rjord2021]

A lot of work went into the mod in the last 24 hours to change some aspects of gameplay such as adding the new means of unlocking warp drive technology. The prior means of unlocking hyperdrive technology once you had discovered special ruins needed to be changed for this mod and now you discover warp via a specific research process.

The long process of replacing the tech tree with one more suitable to Star Trek is going slowly.
A lot of research is required to complete this.
Currently being done along with research for resources and ship components.

Sounds are being modified in the mod and I am using audicity to create specific sound bytes.
Then Enterprise and other ships in the mod will be firing phasers and photon torpedoes at each other and you will not only see those but you will hear them as well.

The way this mod is designed you are not going to have 30 ships firing phasers at each other making the sound a living nightmare.


Next week I begin creating the dialog for over 75 races featured in the mod.

This will make the mod more realistic as the Klingons and Romulans will sound like Klingons and Romulans and the Borg will not be sayimg the following line:

"We are the Borg.We like the quiet life. And a good game of Todash.How about you?"

I almost fell out of my chair laughing when the Borg said that to me.


Work is still happening with developing realistic planets.
The atmospheres for habitable planets will be created in photoshop.

I originally had more of the races from TNG and DS9 in the mod ...... but I have removed them for the time being with the option of putting them back in before releasing the mod.

There are still a few key races from DS9 and TNG in the mod though they are younger versions of themselves ........