[REL Beta] [Shadows] Star Trek - The Picard Era

[SecuransRule]

OMG! Elite: Dangerous looks absolutely gorgeous! Thanks for bringing it to my attention. It's not an MMO is it? That was not clear from the game description. If it's not an MMO, I think that is a big missed opportunity on their part. Also, too bad you can't create a human avatar to leave your ship. That's another thing I really like about STO. I think I spent about an hour on every intricate detail of creating my STO avatar, and it's great using it to interact with other players rather than just having 'talking' ships.

Yes, Kickstarter seems all the rage these days. I'm an avid follower of Spacesector.com and it seems almost every post lately is Kickstarter this and Kickstarter that. I looked up their wiki and it seems they are just a middleman. That is, they don't do any of the marketing (the hard part), all they do is link the client with the amazon.com payments/escrow system. I'm reminded of what Douglas Adams wrote about useless middlemen. [;)] To be fair though, I suppose we wouldn't be seeing games like Elite or Star Drive if not for Kickstarter. Speaking of Star Drive, some have said that one may be the DW killer, and all I can say about that is it remains to be seen.

[Igard]

I think it's a persistent galaxy with thousands of players, but it uses instances (probably around 50 players in each star system). David Braben (The co-creator of Elite) has said the player will have the option of playing solo, with friends only, or with everyone else. I don't know how that will work, but he says the technology is already in place.

Also keeping an eye on Star Citizen from Chris Roberts. It's the next Wing Commander. Made a massive amount of money on kickstarter.

Yeah, kickstarter is great. There was also a successful campaign to save the set of the Enterprise D bridge from TNG. It was in disrepair and was soon to be dismantled, but someone got funding to move it to a museum and restore it. Very cool to know that people can make a difference.

[ehsumrell1]

ORIGINAL: Igard

Yeah, kickstarter is great. There was also a successful campaign to save the set of the Enterprise D bridge from TNG. It was in disrepair and was soon to be dismantled, but someone got funding to move it to a museum and restore it. Very cool to know that people can make a difference.

+1 [:)]

[Bingeling]

Kickstarter is nice, but I am careful.

I have funded Star Citizen, but the massive money grab feeling is a bit of at turn off. I am however happy if I get a decent space combat single player game, and am not afraid that my money will be totally wasted.

My other funding is Project Eternity. I love most of the old infinity engine games, and they got experienced people. They also give a good feeling of progress in the updates.

I don't quite understand the ones spending tons of cash up front, though. But some people like to spend lots...

The first kickstarter I noticed was this one:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/599092525/the-order-of-the-stick-reprint-drive

Considering he asked or money to fund a reprint one of more comic books, 1.25 million is not shabby at all.

[Igard]

Yeah, you have to be careful. I've only pledged to Elite, but only after I saw some progress. At first they had nothing to show us and the campaign had a very slow start as a result. It's a game I've been waiting for for over 15 years, so had to make the pledge.

Just recently, the Wildman kickstarter took a very strange twist as they paid off a bunch of their staff, then pretty much begged the community to keep pledging to fund the project so that they could re-hire them all! I mean, WOW! It's crazy.

I wonder also, what's to stop developers selling their public funded game engine to publishers? They could make alot of money that way, all at our expense. Sure they did the work, but it was funded by people who now have no say in the ownership of the product. I think if any dev were to do that though, they'd be on the recieving end of a backlash and could never count on public funding again. Even so...

[Darkspire]

A question about Elite. Is this the same Elite 4 that has been floating about for years, word was it was near complete, not entirely sure but I think it was to do with a disagreement between the two authors? From what Ive followed of your words in this post it does sound very similar, the single player MMO sounds very much so.

Darkspire

[Igard]

Not sure Darkspire. I think David Braben has planned making this game for a very long time. I read back in 2006/2007 that he planned making 2 seperate games. 1 single player, the other multi, but I don't know if any work was done on that. I think he always had trouble finding a publisher, perhaps he made an alpha that he was trying to sell, but no one would pick it up.

[Darkspire]

The disagreement between Braben and Bell was about Braben wanting to release old versions of Elite, Frontier (It might be the other way round though, my eyes go wonky looking at CIX or BBS these days) from the Frontier website (which I think is now the 'new' Elite Dangerous page)

CIX Transcript

Not the first of a falling out between the two though, just hope the that one of the team can pull it off (bit like McCartney without Lennon, Walters without Gilmour etc)

Ian Bell Interview

And it would appear that it is the same Elite 4 that started being mentioned about twelve 12 years ago, it was also mentioned that there was quite a bit of work done as he was trying to find a publisher but cant find a reference to that anymore.

Elite 4 Early Development

Have many happy memories of Elite back in '85 (well those and wonky eyes due to the Lenslok) If it gets anywhere near as good as X2 I'm in.

Darkspire

[Igard]

Thanks for finding those links Darkspire! All I rememeber is what I've read over the last 10 or more years. It's been a strange experience hearing that the game you're looking forward to is going to be released. Then it isn't. Then it is. Then it isn't Then suddenly kickstarter!

Here's the Frontier Developments youtube page incase anyone wants to see the dev diaries. There's some basic gameplay in there too. - http://www.youtube.com/user/FrontierDevelopments

[Tanaka]

Not sure if this is a game bug or mod bug but for some reason I am finding bunches and bunches of independent colonies and almost all of them are Reman? Shouldn't their be more variety?

By the way the Federation is super strong and blowing me and everyone else out of the water!

[Igard]

Hey Tanaka, thanks for the feedback. [:)]

The game creates clusters of independant colonies, all populated by the same race. I feel the same way. It would be nice to have more variety. I'd love to be able to put pre-space faring, and pre-industrial races into the game. Like the Mintakans.

The Federation has some over-powered characters. This can cause some imbalance, and I need to work on it. However, they are the Federation after all. By the time of Picard, they were the largest faction by a long way in the Alpha quadrant. If you keep out of their way and don't misbehave too much, you should be able to keep up with them. I've had games when they aren't even all that strong.

Distant Worlds has quite a large element of random-ness. I've noticed the Cardassians become the largest empire in the game. I've even seen the Bajorans become pretty big.

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: Igard

Hey Tanaka, thanks for the feedback. [:)]

The game creates clusters of independant colonies, all populated by the same race. I feel the same way. It would be nice to have more variety. I'd love to be able to put pre-space faring, and pre-industrial races into the game. Like the Mintakans.

The Federation has some over-powered characters. This can cause some imbalance, and I need to work on it. However, they are the Federation after all. By the time of Picard, they were the largest faction by a long way in the Alpha quadrant. If you keep out of their way and don't misbehave too much, you should be able to keep up with them. I've had games when they aren't even all that strong.

Distant Worlds has quite a large element of random-ness. I've noticed the Cardassians become the largest empire in the game. I've even seen the Bajorans become pretty big.

Your exactly right I tried teeming independents with another game unmodded and got the same result. Clusters of the same races everywhere. Yeah without variety and them being spread out that kinda ruins the point of independents! Oh well.

Yeah in my game the feds rule and the cards and bajorans are very weak. I wonder what causes the randomness? Thanks for the response!

[rub1B]

Hello,
I would like to download this mod but the file appears to no longer be hosted on Gamefront.com [8|] Any help?

[Igard]

ORIGINAL: rub1B

Hello,
I would like to download this mod but the file appears to no longer be hosted on Gamefront.com [8|] Any help?

Hello rub,

Looks like it's still up. Maybe try again later. If not, we'll try something else. [:)]

[Torgrim]

ORIGINAL: Igard

ORIGINAL: rub1B

Hello,
I would like to download this mod but the file appears to no longer be hosted on Gamefront.com [8|] Any help?

Hello rub,

Looks like it's still up. Maybe try again later. If not, we'll try something else. [:)]

Well it seems the link is broken for the download or something I can't DL it either.

[Igard]

Very odd... It's still downloading fine for me. I wonder if gamefront are having a few problems.

Try these links instead. Please be sure to read the instruction on the front page if you're uncertain what the total conversion mod is. [:)]

Picard Era - http://www.sendspace.com/file/0ugwa4

Total Conversion - http://www.sendspace.com/file/2qrjiv

[Torgrim]

ORIGINAL: Igard

Very odd... It's still downloading fine for me. I wonder if gamefront are having a few problems.

Try these links instead. Please be sure to read the instruction on the front page if you're uncertain what the total conversion mod is. [:)]

Picard Era - http://www.sendspace.com/file/0ugwa4

Total Conversion - http://www.sendspace.com/file/2qrjiv

Thanks for the link Igard.
I really like your mod, I got a new PC a while back so I had to get DW and your mod up and running [:)]

[crazyewok]

Its good work what you have done in all the eras but is there anyway to combibe all the eras?

New to this game so dont know the modding limitation but I would love to leaed the Federation or Klingons from there start to finnish.

[Igard]

Thanks Torgrim, glad you're liking it! [:)]

ORIGINAL: crazyewok

Its good work what you have done in all the eras but is there anyway to combibe all the eras?

New to this game so dont know the modding limitation but I would love to leaed the Federation or Klingons from there start to finnish.

That's my dream mod right there. Would be immensly cool if the game could somehow change to different shipssets and characters after a certain year, keeping up with Trek canon. But I don't think we'll be able to do anything like that. At least not until Distant Worlds 2.

It's entirely possible to put all these races in 1 mod, but I haven't done anything like that yet. You'd need to use different names for some of the duplicate races, like Klingons, Federation would need to become Klingons1, Federation1 etc.

If you're interested, I'd suggest you read the customization guide downloadable here :- http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2972691

[crazyewok]

Is there no way to Unlock new ships later on up the tec tree while locking currently built hulls?

I have been looking for the perfect 4X game engine for a start trek mod for years.

If not is a shame the distant world game designers not tweak the game engine.

Fact is there is no desent official Startrek Statergy game out there and if done right our pefect mod dream could attract a few hundred more customers [8D]