Dominion Wars - Add on for UDMIII3.0.0

Post by **Mentat** » Tue May 05, 2009 12:20 pm

With Thundercheros permission I will release a package of files in this thread, that allows you to play in a preset Alpha/Beta Quadrant setting (a big 40x30 Map) that has all systems and minors placed according to official Star Trek Maps.

Since this work mainly builds on Thundercheros great UDMIII mod, this can only be seen as a scenario or add on for UDMIII.

Thus at this point I really want to say "Thank You" to Thunder and all his predecessors. You made UDM possible!
And "Thank You" to all those masters of BotF decoding, who made so much possible lately.

Features:

Map
~150 Starsystems with correct names and number of colonizable planets.
29 Minor powers are placed where located on ST Maps
4 of the 5 Major powers are located in the alpha and beta quadrant respectively to ST Maps
The Dominion is located in a small portion of the Gamma Quadrant that is connected to the alpha quadrant via a wormhole

Wormholes and Nebulae
The Bajoran/Idran wormhole
The Barzan wormhole
The known nebulae and spacial phenomenons have been placed accordingly.: E.g. Bassen Rift, Briar Patch, Black Cluster, Azure Nebula, Badlands, etc.
Don't trust in what you may see on the map, it might still be deadly for your ships!

Major powers:
There is a starting savefile for every major power!

Minor powers
The Maquis is replaced by the Bajorans
Some Minor race demanours towards the Major races have been changed

Ships
I have made a new set of shipstats, reflecting ST more realistically in my eyes.
Starbases and Minorrace ships are a bit stronger now!
Some names for shiptypes and descriptions have also been changed.

Planets
A cosmetic change of Planetsizes
Names have been changed: e.g. You will find Ch'Havran, Praxis etc. and even the rocky IC-371.
Gas Giants and Dilithium have been placed strategically.
Major races systems have been altered slighly.: No badlands in Cardassia system, no wormhole in Bajor system. Those phenomenons neighbour the respective systems now.

Buildings
A few buildings have been slightly changed in regards of building requirements.

And the nice outcome so far
All games that I tested lately have produced quite accurate borders between the major empires.

The Neutral Zone

The Klingon Romulan Border

A powerful Cardassian Union

A portion of the Gamma Quadrant, showing the lumbering Giant.

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Ok, I will release an early beta of the Dominion Wars Scenario, though I still have some major problems to solve, but maybe you can help me to do so. For now its only reasonable to play the Romulan Star Empire(the map was build from a Romulan gamesave)! The other Empires are stuck with their AI settings and are no fun to play this way, nor would the Romulans have any AI if you don't play them. If anybody has an idea how to solve this, don't hesitate to post it in the thread!

Download the files here and have a look at the readme file.
Dominion_Wars_V1 files only work on version UDM 3.0.0
Dominion_Wars_V1.rar

Bottom of the line though:
Is there enough interest in the community for this Dominion Wars scenario?

Cheers

Mentat

Post by **stardust** » Tue May 05, 2009 12:28 pm

You can count me in Mentat

Post by **Gh0st** » Tue May 05, 2009 12:46 pm

There enough interest in the community!

I personally like the ds9 serie and like to play on a canon map. The idea to create some scenarios sounds good. In my point of view UDM III has a little weakness of balance between the ship. Also the latest nerf for the minor ships was a bit disappointing for me. Specially since the breaktrough with buildable minors after a membership.

One short question for the map...

Am I right in assuming that there is still one map where all empires are in?! You just shift of positions and conect "gamma" with "alpha"... or is there a insuperable blocker between the quadrants? Maybe alot of annomalis?!

Isn't the Barzan wormhole conectet with the delta quadrant? I alway play with the thoughts of a borg minor wish will never accept treties & produce slowly cubes or spheres and are nativ on a system named unimatrix 01 (maybe replace the edos?) & edit the planets into borg-barren. hihi

Hope to see more informations of your scernario ... pictures are always a good thing

Bye

Post by **carcher** » Tue May 05, 2009 12:50 pm

this sounds really interessting Mentat

great idea

Post by **GeorgiaBoy** » Tue May 05, 2009 1:04 pm

Oh man...yet another distraction to keep me from 'honeydos'.

Post by **captaindusk** » Tue May 05, 2009 1:55 pm

Damn that sounds promising. I'd love to play that.

Post by **KrazeeXXL** » Tue May 05, 2009 2:28 pm

I wished for something like that for a very long time. Maybe as long as I play BotF or even longer. Awesome that you work on an idea like that.

Count me in as interested & fascinated and if you need someone for testing.

btw I guess if you're successful your project will find a home on many computers of BotF-Players.

Post by **Mentat** » Wed May 06, 2009 12:14 pm

Thanks for the anticipation.
I have just released an early beta of the Scenario, though be warned there are still some major problems to be solved.

For now only the Romulan Star Empire is a reasonable joice in any test!
Anyway, have fun testing!

Post by **GeorgiaBoy** » Wed May 06, 2009 1:24 pm

OMG it looks great! Mentat, how did you edit the map?

EDIT: Duh, with UE. But the quadrant lines as well?

Post by **Mentat** » Thu May 07, 2009 9:21 am

Gh0st wrote: One short question for the map...

Am I right in assuming that there is still one map where all empires are in?! You just shift of positions and conect "gamma" with "alpha"... or is there a insuperable blocker between the quadrants? Maybe alot of annomalis?!

Isn't the Barzan wormhole conectet with the delta quadrant? I alway play with the thoughts of a borg minor wish will never accept treties & produce slowly cubes or spheres and are nativ on a system named unimatrix 01 (maybe replace the edos?) & edit the planets into borg-barren. hihi

Well, the Dominion portion of the gamma quadrant is set in the upper left corner of the map, with a good distance to the alpha beta quadrant. but since the Dominion doesn't always make effort to move through the wormhole, I have also set up a chain of systems connecing this part of the galaxy with the rest. So its also possible to take the long route via Breen space to threaten the alpha and beta quadrant powers.

The Barzan wormhole leads nowhere in the scenario, and all ships entering are lost. That is connected with its unreliabilty, leaving ships stranded all over the galaxy. I am considering to make it a one way wormhole to some place in the upper beta quadrant section. Maybe as a specific chance for the Federation to settle in that part of the galaxy, .... and getting into contact with the Zakdorn for example.

GeorgiaBoy wrote: OMG it looks great! Mentat, how did you edit the map?
EDIT: Duh, with UE. But the quadrant lines as well?

Sure with UE, it has strongly improved in stability and possibilties regarding changing names, planets and system positions.
The quadrant lines, as your refer to it, are not my work. Its simply the biggest map available for the standard UDM3.0.0 scenario.

And now a general statement:
1.) Please test and post problems, inconsistencies aswell as any idea how to balance the map better.
2.) As it looks now I might have to build a seperate map for each Major Empire to start. So stay tuned, the other empires will become playable soon.
3.) If anyone happens to have a Dominion voice for the Bajoran Race intro, I would gladly use it for the Mod. I just sucessfully added the Bajoran intro back for all major races, but the ferengi voiceset for the Dominion is not quite sweet.

Post by **heifi** » Fri May 08, 2009 9:22 am

thats what was all the time missing for botf! i really like the game but i hate the fact that i can just play random maps. i played a while with the roms and it was more trekish than ever before.

i tried to change the ai files a bit, to solve the problem with the other races, but it doesnt work in any way. i always got a crash. it seems at the moment that bulding seperate maps for each majore empire is the only way... i am really looking forward to play the dominion in the gamma quadrant :-)

Post by **severenth** » Sat May 09, 2009 5:17 am

wel im sorry to say, I think this mod has been well and truley released prematurley

After playing the Federation save game of the ' mod ', I quickley realised that, I had absolutely no control at all over the game, at no point do YOU ( the player ) actually control anything

treaties, ships, production, it all does it itself, ( rather more the AI )

At this point, I am very disappointed, but will try the other 4 in a moment

**edit**

All the races are bugged, I am sorry to say that at this point, this mod should not of been released for play

Klingons, Cardassians and Federation ( so presumably Domnionon and Romulans ) are unplayable

Post by **eber3** » Sat May 09, 2009 5:35 am

severenth wrote:wel im sorry to say, I think this mod has been well and truley released prematurley

After playing the Federation save game of the ' mod ', I quickley realised that, I had absolutely no control at all over the game

Actually he said that you can only play as the Romulans. That is because he modified a saved Romulan game map, therefore you can't play as any other major.

Post by **GeorgiaBoy** » Sat May 09, 2009 8:08 pm

eber3 wrote:
severenth wrote:wel im sorry to say, I think this mod has been well and truley released prematurley

After playing the Federation save game of the ' mod ', I quickley realised that, I had absolutely no control at all over the game
Actually he said that you can only play as the Romulans. That is because he modified a saved Romulan game map, therefore you can't play as any other major.

Mentat came up with a great idea. I am satisified playing as the Romulans myself. The problem is that it is a very time consuming task to do all five factions. If I am correct, it is essentially doing the same thing five times.

In any event, thank you very much for your efforts, Mentat.

GB

Post by **KrazeeXXL** » Sat May 09, 2009 11:10 pm

Hm... savegames. We all know that in multiplayer saves it is easily possible to switch between the empires.

Maybe a comparing of single and multiplayer saves would help. At least it would save many time and efforts than creating 5 times exactly the same map.

I looked at the savegame files many years ago as I tried to load a mp player game in sp mode but wasn't able to at the end.

But a possible transformation from mp saves to sp saves would be interesting. It seems that it is like a little safety for mp games that they aren't compatible to sp ones.

I never understood why BotF doesn't have such an option included like it used to be in Civilization. Even if the world map wasn't very precisely I had a lot of fun to play it. Maybe they didn't because of the rights or something. I allways wondered how they were able to get the Defiant for BotF in fact that they "only" had the TNG licence available for this game.