Birth of the Federation

I do not think there is any fix for this. Even Sol gets reused. here is post on subject.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1280&p=6265&hilit=t ... cccc#p6265

thunderchero

Looking forward to what will be another great mod, no doubt! I loved UM4. I'm sure people won't mind some minor glitches. It's expected with BotF.

How's progress going dafedz? I'll admit I've kinda been biding my time dinking around with BOP while waiting for UM5 to come come out.

I'm pretty sure everyone's been biding their time and lurking just waiting for this one to come out. I can't wait!

I loved the original Ultimate Mod when it cam out, so UM5 has some very big shoes to fill.
Saying that, there have been some very good mods from so very talented people over the years which we should not forget.

Hey guys. UM5 is now ready for some beta trials. Here's the link to the download:

"ULTIMATE_MOD_5_Beta2.exe"

-- Thanks first and foremost to Thunderchero for helping me with this mod, answering my questions, suggesting fixes for bugs I encountered - his patience, lol, and ofc creating the installer for this mod. All hail Thunder!

I'm looking for anyone who's interested to try it out and run some test games and provide feedback with regards to errors, bugs, game balance etc. In it's current state it is not 100% 'finished' per se - remaining work is mainly cosmetic. Thanks in advance, and happy hunting...

(I've edited the first post in this thread to contain the same information, so look there for future download updates.)

Current Known Issues:
***************************

• Sometimes ctd at galaxy generation due to preset minor race frequency. Just watch race intro vid for a few secs and galaxy should load.
• UM5's Galaxy sizes are small: 30x22, medium: 35x26, large: 40x30. These can easily be customized using DCER's Ultimate Editor. This mod is configured mostly for the Irregular Galaxy types, and other shapes (spirals, elliptical etc) have default values, and may require further tweaking for those who prefer these shapes.
• Galactic density/ star frequency have caused some problems in that a perfect distribution of stars has been difficult to achieve. Minor race frequency has been set as high as possible to achieve an even spread from left to right across the map, without experiencing crashes at galactic generation, with "readrace.c, Line: 257, 0" error. Players may however find slightly less than the 29 minors on all Irregular galactic maps.
• Some of the random planet animations are 'borrowing' the custom minor race animations for some unknown reason. As a result of this, in places where errant non M-class minor race planet animations are appearing in random systems (which are not all standard sizes) the terraforming overlay graphic will be the wrong size.
• It has been observed that Major Empires might be slow to expand. I've made all the necessary adjustments in trek.exe I'm aware of that cover this mechanic, and with certain settings in UE. But in recent test game some empires have developed at a disappointingly slow rate, which shouldn't be the case, and I'm uncertain how to fix this problem.
• Newly created sound clips in English.snd contain a slight 'noise' artifact at the beginning of the sound clip, and again at the very end. I'm not sure how or where this has arisen, and this might be fixed if I redid them all. But it was a lot of work to get them all done, and to get the whole complex process organized in the first place. I won't be doing them again (unless, for example, I came across a much superior - and free - text > voice program to create much superior sound clips).
• Some buttons/sliders other graphical elements in the new Fed GUI are not yet complete (notably in the tactical combat and diplomacy screens.)

awesome news!
I'm available to test this.

great !!!, downloaded and testing

Cool! I'll check it out when I get home tonight.

Great job guys! I'm looking forward to testing it . gamble gambling....

Amazing job. Seriously...great job! By doing away with the upgrade building nonsense, you have restored the value of native colonies. I also am in sweet sweet love with the new dominion UI. You guys did an amazing job on that. I do have a concern or two about balance over all though.

Economy
Economies ramp up very very quickly in this beta build. It is extraordinarily easy to outstrip the AI by several orders of magnitude. I find myself having to put it on impossible just to kinda keep them on the map. Even then, once I have a colony or ten, they stand no chance whatsoever. It also trivializes the minors a bit. I dont care who they prefer or even who they are members with. Once I find a minor it becomes a trivial matter to pay them off. Seems like there needs to be more money sinks. I think the original upgrade system was supposed to represent that sink. Maybe drastically increasing fleet costs? No idea. you guys are the pros lol

Random events
The randoms may have been nerfed a bit TOO much. As it is I dont think they have enough defenses to stand up to very much at all. I speak in generalities due to the fact that it seems to be an issue across the board with them. Grab 6 early era cruisers and wipe most of them lickity split.

Those are my only two criticisms. Thank you for revitalizing this game for me.

BUGS
- Romulans start without dilithium. Romulus shows dilithium in the planetary window. There are currently 2 dilithium plants on Romulus. Neither function. Removing them does not give you the option to rebuild.

Awesome, downloading right now; Thanks a lot!

leidius wrote:Amazing job. Seriously...great job! By doing away with the upgrade building nonsense, you have restored the value of native colonies. I also am in sweet sweet love with the new dominion UI. You guys did an amazing job on that. I do have a concern or two about balance over all though.

Economy
Economies ramp up very very quickly in this beta build. It is extraordinarily easy to outstrip the AI by several orders of magnitude. I find myself having to put it on impossible just to kinda keep them on the map. Even then, once I have a colony or ten, they stand no chance whatsoever. It also trivializes the minors a bit. I dont care who they prefer or even who they are members with. Once I find a minor it becomes a trivial matter to pay them off. Seems like there needs to be more money sinks. I think the original upgrade system was supposed to represent that sink. Maybe drastically increasing fleet costs? No idea. you guys are the pros lol

Random events
The randoms may have been nerfed a bit TOO much. As it is I dont think they have enough defenses to stand up to very much at all. I speak in generalities due to the fact that it seems to be an issue across the board with them. Grab 6 early era cruisers and wipe most of them lickity split.

Those are my only two criticisms. Thank you for revitalizing this game for me.

BUGS
- Romulans start without dilithium. Romulus shows dilithium in the planetary window. There are currently 2 dilithium plants on Romulus. Neither function. Removing them does not give you the option to rebuild.

Thanks for the feedback! What an incredible thing you found with the Romulan dilithium bug. I can't believe this oversight. Thanks very much for pointing it out.

Setting the game to 'Impossible' mode is to my mind how one plays by default. Tbh I haven't played Botf any other way for years. But I understand what you're saying about balance, which is precisely why I wanted a public beta to test the balancing. I guess I need to figure out how to flatten the economic curve a bit, and to make minors more of a challenge.

Random events? I confess I never tested them, so thanks for this info.

Installed it and checked out the ship list and structure for every race; I promise i will also play it soon.
I saw a few interesting new ship models, a few new buildings for majors, no upgrades, once I'll get some time i'll defiantly try it out.
Thank you for all the work; i begin to see how much dedication it takes. Recently i overhauled the entire ship list on my game and only that took me maybe 10 hours spread over several days. And my eyes are still jumping around from looking at the spread sheet and UE stats fields .
Following Mentat's idea, generating an initially balanced ship list is easy and fast now; but putting the stats into UE is tedious boring dumb work.

P.S. if only someone smart and wise will take pity on us and add an import feature to UE.

I have to say I love the mod!! I only recently started using these mods and your one seems the best out there so far, the only problem I have with the UM5 is the AI seems to be broken, they do everything normal on their home world and then expand to others but on the other worlds they tend to not build anything, I guess is a bug to do with the different system of auto upgrading things and having different names. I found it disappointing how easy it was I would have a huge feet just to find the AI had like 9 worlds with low population and a very small amount of ships and what not.

Can't wait for you guys to get the full non beta version out!! it should make this game sooo much better!! keep up the good work sirs.