This mod excites me. Hope it works out
I'm still hesitant to call it a "mod". If everyone contributes it'll be more of a collection page where people can go and get links to or download information for or just knowledge of the race and factions mods that exist all in one place.
The that person can go down the list and add all the factions from their favorite shows that they want. Maybe someone only wants a few of the Star Trek races and not all of them. Maybe they only want their favorite few from Stargate and Atlantis, or their favorites from Masters of Orion or Mass Effect.
Then they can go down the list and "I'll take this one, and this one, I don't want this one, never heard of that one, ooh I need this one" to create their own custom game and universe with them.
Mostly it's to draw on our strengths as a group. For instance many of us like Star Trek, so how many of us will make our own version of a Galaxy Class ship? Probably a lot of us. If the best looking Galaxy Ship is already available, and in fact the entire Federation roster is, then they just saved themselves a lot of work by finding someone's Federation mod. To retain balance though I want us to stay away from massively boosting the races and factions we favor.
While I've never played Birth of the Federation, I'd say that the Star Trek shows provide a reasonable amount of circumstantial evidence for the conclusion that the Federation is a loose union more like the European Union than like a state similar to the United States of America.
- Most of the major shipyards for Starfleet seem to be either in the Sol system or at human colonies, from what I can recall from the shows; this is somewhat unexpected given that the four founding members of the UFP all had space navies at the time of the founding of the Federation.
- Starfleet appears to be predominantly human, especially in the upper ranks, and by a rather significant margin. Again, a bit unexpected when all three other founding members had colonial empires and space navies, especially when those colonial empires and space navies probably predate human superluminal spaceflight and perhaps also human spaceflight in general.
- Vulcan, Tellarite, Andorian, and human ships all have visually distinct design aesthetics as seen in Star Trek: Enterprise; the Vulcan aesthetic is also established in The Next Generation in First Contact (which also provides some evidence for the early human design aesthetic which predates the airing of Star Trek: Enterprise). If the ships of Starfleet are descended from all four design lineages (as would be expected for a UFP which is united in the same manner as the USA), it would be expected that the ships would be in some way a blending of these design aesthetics (as well as those of any other states which join the Federation). Instead, every Starfleet vessel that I can think of appears to belong solely to the human design lineage, with no features which can readily be traced back to any of the other design aesthetics. This suggests that, by and large, the member states have kept their shipbuilding traditions largely isolated from one another, suggesting in turn that the Federation's military model is more like that of the EU or NATO than like that of a single state.
- The only Starfleet Academy that I can recall being mentioned in the shows is the one on Earth, and more or less every Starfleet officer seems to have gone through there. A little odd for there not to at least be mentions of similar facilities on other major worlds; the only similar facility I recall being mentioned is the Vulcan Science Academy, but that seems to be primarily associated with a separate organization and seems to have its own ships.
Taken collectively, this suggests that Starfleet is the contribution of the human colonies (or possibly just Earth and any colonies which haven't become independent of the Earth government), with other member states maintaining their own militaries or contributing to the common defense in some other way (say, by funding the human space navy in much the way that many of the members of the Delian League funded the Athenian navy in lieu of contributing ships and crews).
I also vaguely recall there being indications that the various member states exchange embassies with one another, which would be unusual if the UFP is more similar to the United States of America than to the European Union.
However, I will say again that this is all circumstantial evidence rather than direct evidence for the UFP being more of a NATO or EU style alliance than a state similar to the USA. Futhermore, it's been quite some time since I've seen the shows, and I know I haven't seen all of them, so I could be misremembering or missing some pertinent evidence on the matter.
All quite true. I've always seen them more as the space version of the UN. The Federation's flag is also almost a copy of the UN's, or at least pretty damn close.
Here are some other ideas of popular ones people might well make:
Aliens
Dr Who
Dune
Farscape
Wingcommander
Firefly
I am guessing some of the factions in these could be minors if you wanted the full package of major/minors, to help really flesh out the mod
Browncoats minors for example would be awesome from firefly.
All good choices. Wingcommander was one I had in mind as well and had forgotten about. Thanks for reminding me. The important part for majors really IMO is that they have enough of a compliment of ship designs to flesh out what they'll need, especially when being played by the AI and making sure the AI uses the right ships for the right roles. Getting created opponents to use the right ship set was the hardest part for me to get working in GC2, being as limited in my coding skill as I am.
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Please everyone keep the list of your favorites and races you'd like to see in your game coming. Soon we should also discuss who wants to work on what ship set for what race.
If no-one has guessed, that model in my OP is a unskinned outline of a Wraith Hive Ship from Stargate Atlantis. It's hard to tell without the skin and texture from the loaded game but the general outline should be recognizable once you know that's what you're looking at.
