I just had a brain wave. It is yet to be seen if it is a good one or not, but a brain wave none the less.

I was wondering, if when you're going about adding Minor races to your vast assortment of systems, if is possible that for those of them who can build ships, when you aquire them, you can build their ships too. In some cases it might be irrelevant (since some of them might be less advanced then your galactic power of choice) in some cases, but in other's you could potentially gain an awesome ship ahead of the usual research boundry. I know you used to be able to do that when you gained the minor race, but I mean that you can actually build more of them if you wanted to.

Anywho, just a thought.

Several people have asked about this, but the truth is other than for aesthetic reasons, you probably wouldn't want to; the minor race ships are weaker than those of the Empires. Ignoring the Borg, the ships of a few races, such as the Vulcans, might be able to match a design of equal class or tech, but none will beat them. Obviously that doesn't mean they won't be a threat though.

It would actually be relatively easy to make it possible to do this if the editor works. However, the only way I know how would mean you would be able to build every design in every system, so that wouldn't make sense. A few changes to the editor would be needed for it to work exactly as i'd like, but since Mike is working on a new editor, those changes might already be in place. Fingers crossed.

Anyways, because the game can be modded, even if it doesn't make it into the final release, there will likely be a mod that will allow it. Knowing me, i'll even write a guide on how to do it.

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Actually, one of the minors does have a ship with speed 9, which is unheard of in empires. As for raw power, haven't really checked them closely, but I think I've seen some pretty big ships.

BTW, some minors *do* have their own shipyards (equivalent to fleetyards) (Coridans, Kazon, Tellarites, Axanar); and their own ship designs, those advanced minors do have quite a few.

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I think Sheva is right. First it looks nice when you have a mixed fleet. In the old BOTF i mostly waited till the view races with ships had built some to mix my fleets and they where realy strong with trained crews.
Second it could be of importance if you could gain a species with ships for your empire. I guess the vulcans will have strong ships as well so maybe their ships will be of benefit when you are lacking of powerfull ships at the beginning. Later on sure your empire wil grow much more powerfull and at the end your ships will probably destroy each minor ship but that´s the game.
So i vote for build minor ships when they joined but restricted to their system or systems if they have colonized more then their homeworld.

I never liked the idea of being able to continue building minor race ships for 2 reasons;

First, if there were certain aspects of a minor race's technology which were significantly better than your own it would be a massive deal to your empire. Take the example of the minor race ship with speed 9, if this race joined the Federation and gave all of their technology to Starfleet's ship designers then Starfleet would never be the same again. Initially I guess they would try to modify existing designs to use this technology, if this failed then all future designs would incorporate this type of warp drive.

It would be ridiculous to meet this race during the TOS era and then 100 years later launch something like the Intrepid class which is all about speed, yet is only half as fast. This is the main reason minor race ships have to be slightly inferior in all areas, it's the only way to keep this randomly evolving universe realistic.

Second, we've all been watching Trek for years and a Federation ship looks like a Federation ship, you can recognise a Klingon fleet immediately at a glance. The galaxy would look one hell of a lot different if you could continue to build minor race vessels, and frankly it wouldn't resemble Trek as we know it, Jim. There's nobody saying you must retire all Vulcan ships if the Vulcans join your empire. By the time they join you they might have 20 vessels, that's quite a bit of extra diversity being added to your fleet, especially if those ships are still usable in some capacity decades afterwards.


On a slightly unrelated note, I think it's safe to assume that some Federation members still operate ther own small space programs. If Vulcan has 10 destroyers in the system as a last line of defence, should you the player, the person in charge of Starfleet resources, have any control over them....? Probably too complex to add to any game but an interesting thought.

Actually this is one of those things that doesn't make any sense in the game. So the minors can only build their special structures when they join an empire, and they can only build their special ships until they join an empire?!

In a word, yes.

You know that's an excellent point about the structures, they should already be there. It makes no sense that they need to be built and looking from a fresh perspective the old BoTF system is silly.

This is unless the structure is something that can be built off world of course.

Yep, there's a lot that doesn't make sense. And I totally agree about BotF.

I will be sadly disappointed if a minor race joins whichever empire you choose and you lose the choice of their ships. minor ships may not be as strong, but you can counter that will low build times (because we all know when the borg or another fleet is 2 turns away, you dont choose the dreadnaught which takes 9 turns to build.) or low upkeep, or no upkeep while in system.

Welcome archaic and thanks for the suggestion.
I do hope we can improve on the minor race ships.
While they are not as strong they sure can add a
lot of nice eye candy. After we get some backgrounds
done for the UIs we will turn to the major race
ships. I wish we could do more for the minor races
now but that will have to wait.