(Download) ST:BotF Galaxies MOD v0.4.0

[Tethys]

what about the harmonic defender from ST A2?
i know its an unconventional Borg ship, but it has it's own perfection

Ive never played A2, can you provide a link?

[MrD]

DITL again *sigh*.
The size for the standard Borg cube is marked in yellow, which means it has an actual basis in the realm of Trek.
The Tacitcal Cube size is white, which means it is something he just made up, just like the beam firepower index etc.

"Yellow text : Anything written in yellow is canon information taken from a movie or episode. This stuff is as close to gospel as I could make it. Each of these items will be referenced to the episode the information came from"

"White Text : Anything in white is my own invention. Sometimes this is just extrapolation - I guesstimated that the Nebula class has eight phaser arrays compared to the Galaxy classes twelve, for example, because the Nebula class is slightly smaller so probably slightly less powerful. But here and there I have gone into invention meltdown, inventing entire histories for ships about which we know little. Now and again I have even made up new backgrounds to known events just to make them sound a bit more dramatic. So be warned, if it's in white you can take it or leave it!"

Have you ever wondered why DITL has so much more "information" than, say Ex-Astris?
Is this guy smarter than everyone else?
Does he have a special information pipeline to the Trek universe?
Nope it's all fan-fiction.
It's great to read, but it is a dubious source at times.

You could try this site for some information on Armada 2 ships:

http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Star_ ... Borg_ships

I always thought the Harmonic Defender looked like my CPU Cooler.

[Mentat]

Compared to Memory Beta, DITL is a prime joice of stats MrD, no arguing even allowed about that.
When we come to canonizity, Memory "Alpha" comes first, closly followed by DITL, as long it is yellow and/or reasonable. Everything else, by all means is either stupid or superstition.

Edit: Oh wait, with all other sources, I would want PROOF!!!

[Tethys]

This is my thoughts as well, for me it comes down to:

Memory Alpha
DITL
Ex Astris Scientia
Memory Beta
Memory Gamma (Last resort when no other info available)
ACTD http://techspecs.startrek.acalltoduty.com/
Trekmania/JOAT/ASDB (extreme emergency)

Sry now gtg lol wife wants me

[MrD]

I agree on Memory Alpha and Ex-Astris as excellent sources without the shadow of a doubt.
Some of the others I'd have to check more to say the same.
Memory Beta is plagued by the problem of combining all those licensed AND canon sources, which is impossible because one company does not care what the others did before.

DITL however is somewhat difficult to handle because of the colour code, which seems to confuse people at times or people simply accept it as reasonable without checking themselves.
It's like a minefield to filter out which white lines are usable and which ones are better left out.
A good example is the ridicilous number of Phaser Banks on the Miranda compared to the Constitution refit, you wont find that many weapons emplacements on any Miranda model.
I also dislike the fact that he rewrote some aspects of Trek "to make them sound more dramatic"
Call me too strict in this matter if you want, but the speculation/stubstance ratio is somewhat hard to digest at times.
I prefer the Ex-Astris articles where they compare the conflicting information and draw some conclusions, like in the size issue articles, over DITL's, "I think it should be this and it is therefore written in my database like i knew what I was talking about"

*EDIT:

As you can see on this image

http://www.starshipdatalink.net/art/images/dbtc-3.jpg

it appears to be quite the opposite, the Tactical Cube seems to be a tyical cube placed into an armored shell, so realistically it shoul be a few meters bigger than the normal cube.
I think the actual design notes for this thing support that as well:

http://www.starshipdatalink.net/art/tacube.html

To clarify: I don't want to ruin anybody's enthousiasm about DITL, nor do I dislike DITL per sé, however the internet is full of strange stuff on Star Trek, so I tend to read everything extra careful and somethimes that might come over as picky or hypercritical, I hope you guys understand.*

[Tethys]

Oh and another one which is worth a look at times in Drex Files http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/

[MrD]

Don't forget Eavesdropping with Johnny

http://johneaves.wordpress.com/

[Tethys]

I never even knew about that one, but there seems to be less Trek content than on Doug's site... I did see the E-E concept art there very nice too.

EDIT:

Also MrD, about the Canon issue: There is no such thing as a completely canon video game. There will always be inconsistencies, just as there are in the TV shows. Balance would be a major issue in BotF.

On another note, who is to say that the Romulans, Klingons, Borg, and Dominion didn't have more ships than we just saw on screen? It's a known fact that Romulans and Klingons have cloaking capability, so their ships were always cloaked or patrolling the interior of their empires... (I'll give it to the Borg though, as we only saw about 6 out of 7 seasons of them on ST:V. )

As for the Dominion, who knows what massive and powerful ships were coming through that wormhole before the Prophets eliminated them all? We will never know, unless another followup series starts (please God )

So while I am also strict on canon, it would only apply to actual Trek events, such as a new series or movie (ST:XI) which contradicts all traditional canon (only thing I would consider canon would be Nero's ship since it came from the original timeline), not video games, novels, or anything other than what was seen on screen in the 5 series or the 11 movies (although i was reluctant to accept Enterprise as canon for quite some time, up until just recently)

[Tethys]

Also I will see what I can do about getting some more A1 ships into the Mod... I really did like the Assimilator and the Detector, but A2 took it too far with the Disk thing? And that cooling tower thing as you called it lol.

[MrD]

There's a little destinction between licensed and canon, which means it's...licensed but that's about it, you'r absolutely right about that.
I also believe there are a lot of ships we have never seen from the other races, especially the Romulans and the Klingons.
The producers simply prefer to spend their money on new Federation ships so all the others get is "refits" like the red beams for the K'tinga.
There are some ships from the licensed products that I personally feel would fit into the modern Trek universe, like the D10 from FASA or the Fek'lhr from Star Trek Armada

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/memor ... armada.jpg

while some of the licensed ships are terrible, like the 600m Klingon Battleship from Klingon Academy

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p202 ... hless2.gif

But that is something everyone has to decide for him/herself.
I am retty sure everyone has a favourite ship in each of these games.

It would also not surprise me to find out the Romulans are using their old D7s for anti piracy patrol in some secure sectors.
I am pretty sure if the Klingons can refit those old ships, so can the Romulans.

Oh and there is indeed a lot of Trek content on that page from John Eaves, only in recent times there has been very little update fro the realm of Trek.
This should be a good example:
http://johneaves.wordpress.com/2009/09/ ... re-o-rama/

http://johneaves.wordpress.com/2009/09/ ... mish-mash/

And on a personal note on the new movie, I'd like to say that I liked the Kelvin, which was as it turns out built before the timeline was modified, so she'd also be canon.
However I agree with Ex-Astris on the size that this thing should not be as massive as official sources state, but somewhere in the 250m area.
I wrote a few lines of fan fiction when I designed a conversion of that ship for the old Babylon 5 tabletop and I think the ship as it is in the movie fits into the "normal" Trek timeline as well.

As for games and books and stuff, I do like to use it as creative input, however the final balance, either in a tabletop or in a game like BOTF lies with the one who does the actual work, in this case you.
Especially converting some kind of ship from one game to another is always filled with compromises, I learned that when I started to convert ships from the newer Babylon 5 tabletop game to the old one.
The trick is to keep the flavour.
And when I look at your shiplist I think you did.
So I look forward to this mod!

[Tethys]

Wow that is excellent feedback MrD. I highly value this and praise you in turn for your praise of me.

I am also very pleased that you think so highly of Galaxies Mod, and I can only hope that it lives up to yours and everyone's expectations.

On that note, any additional feedback would be appreciated.

Also: The Romulans in GM do use the Klingon K'tinga's/D7's, which are also used by the Klingons (though you wont see traditional Romulan symbols, as this would change the pallete count and use a ship slot) so its just a little icing before the cake

[Tethys]

Here is a quick update... I never did like the fact that Romulans and Ferengi used different shades of the same color, it was (for me) extremely hard to differentiate the two...

[eber3]

Here is a quick update... I never did like the fact that Romulans and Ferengi used different shades of the same color, it was (for me) extremely hard to differentiate the two...

Romulans have green, Ferengi sort of a light brown. Maybe you mean Klingons? They have a red color, those two are hard to tell apart on large map view.

[Tethys]

Nope it was definitely Ferengi.. im color shade intolerant

[MrD]

Thinkg about it, the Klngons have red as coulour in the strategic map, the Romulans have green.
The Borg ships have a green glow and their symbol is red, so either colour would work for them but then again there would be the old issue to properly destinguish their territitory from the other's.
I have no clue regarding modding of the BOTF interface and therefore I don't know is this would be possible, but what about some kind of grey for Borg occupied space?
Though technically not a real colour it would be so different from the others it should be easy enough to distinguish from the others.
And their ships and the average drone are also somewhat grey, so it would not be too far off right?