Looks fantastic Major and Dark! Thanks for your hard work!

    I realize you all have been working at this for awhile and I might be offering ideas a bit late (I also was too lazy to search all the posts to see if these idea had been said as well).  It would be really cool if you could have specific ships available, like Voyager as a cruiser that you can only buy 1 of.  I understand you are using the Alpha quadrant but the Kazon or the (hunter like race in the Delta Quadrant) would make for good pirates in some future update. 

    Maybe for the tech tree you could unlock different characters, maybe you get Worf who unlocks Data -> Riker -> Picard and you get bonuses to all Galaxy class ships for each of them.  Or for the tech tree (Federation) you could have the different races, so for one you would have Betazoid and with that you could see ships that were jumping into your space, that kind of stuff. 

I remember there was some episode where the Enterprise is involved in war games, so maybe you get a war games research option where you 'learn new tactics' resulting in some power up.  I haven't watchd DS9 in a long time so most of my references are from TNG or VOY.  In the research tree you could have Chief Obrien, who gives some regeneration bonuses to all shields and hulls as well as activates an ability or further improvement on defiant class ships.  For the Klingons you could have an 'A Targ for Every Ship' research option that offers a bump to shield mitigation as Targs were lucky I think.  A

n idea for a super battleship you could only get one of would be the future enterprise from TNG's finale, same with the Klingon future ship, and to get those you would need some research of course.  Maybe on galaxy class ships or only the enterprise or voyager you have an ability called 'Q', and this option can only be used when the ship is in critical health and it randomly either refills the shields or 'jumps' the ship to the exact opposite part of the gravity well.  I think I could go on forever with ideas and I'll post more if I come up with any I can't help but share.  Thanks for reading all this.

i personally fiddled around with the units/reaserch in my version (i.e. Excelsulior/Miranda/Ambassador were the only selectable units with no Pre reaserch stuff) and i say NO to too much reaserching for the ships (except for things like the Venture/Excelsulior Refits. those would kinda make sense)

OK dont want to get stress angry

Time to show off some of the new Romulans. Well they arent new. Just newly imported.

1st is the elite Melak class warbird. The precurser to the DDeridex. Just as the Ambassador is the precurser to the Galaxy class. It is speculated it was this type of warbird that attacked Naranda III destroying the Enterprise C, and participated in the Khitomer massacre. She was seen in the opening cutscene of ST: New Worlds. She looks a lot smaller next to the elite DDeridex, but she is in the correct scale.

Next we have the elite Valdore Warbird, and in formation with her are the V-30 Winged Defender, The T-10 Bright One, and the V-7 Whitewind. Those familiar with FASA will easily recognise the designs, and where the mods influence is coming from.

Last i was going to save for a surprise, but i figured what the hell. The V-11 "Stormbird" battlecruiser in formation with a V-30 Winged Defender. She is a romulan aquired, and re-engineered klingon d-7 battlecruiser. Like the ones seen in TOS the enterprise incident. The V-11 is slightly more advanced, but not near as powerful as a TNG era ship. Her sole purpose now is to rain flaming plasma torpedo death on worlds resisting romulan rule.

and we aint close to done yet!

Very nice looking ships guys. Thanks for all your hard work Stress and Shimmer. Can't wait to take these out for a spin.

Same can be said about the Klingons as well. TPTB used the "One hull fits all" theory in the case of the b'rel, and the Everlasting Ktinga wannabe/D-7/Ktinga. When i saw ENT use a Ktinga model in unexpected, that was all she wrote for me with the show. Yea yea i know it was supposed to be John Eaves D-4, but the model wasnt ready yet yada yada. At least TNG tried to make an effort into giving klinks newer ship designs in the case of the Vorcha, and Negh Var. It is a pity that redresses of other races ships were used for transports, and they used an ancient Promellian battlecruiser as one of Martoks house ships (no that ship will NOT be in the mod).

They tried to push since the rommies re-apeared in TNG that they use the "bigger is better" theory as far as ship design. It didnt work out too well for them in the Dominion War, because the Rommies seem to have been limited by the DDeridex. They lost many during the war. She makes a good capital ship, but not a good jack of all trades ship as they were trying to push it as. Thank god for FASA, and those that Modeled the FASA ships.

I am going to use the ENT era BoP as the rommie colony ship. She is a substitute for the FASA V-1 Starglider. She will have the V-1 specs, but in game she will be called the dragon class (hommage to Redragon the models author).

In defence of the Romulans on this matter, It can be retconned that they are using older ships as they run out of Warbirds.

I think I had already given up on Enterprise by that point (it pretty much just took sitting through Broken Bow to do that) but having looked up the D-4 on Ex-Astris-Scientia.org, it looks nearly identical to the D-7 anyway, yet again demonstrating Enterprise's complete lack of creativity.

Ah. The thing is in the other series it was more about budget than anything else. It costed a ton of money back then to build a new studio model. TOS obviously didnt have any budget. Which is why we got ridgeless klinks. Yes gene said if he had the cash he would have put ridges on em. Maybe used real rocks instead of styrofoam boalders.

TNG had a rocky start too. Encounter at farpoint, and most of the 1st season was following TOS's footsteps on the cheese factor. As time went on it got real good. Only 2 new klingon ships though. and we didnt see the Negh'Var (voodieh variant) till the last episode. That established that the klinks use the same hull designs for centurys. The problem i had with ENT and especially unexpected was they used a KTINGA. Not a Redressed, or kitbashed D-7 plastic model they could have got from any hobby store at the time. They used the same studio model used in all the other series and TMP. Just repainted. We already know it was supposed to be the John Eaves D-4 CGI. They didnt even try to "downgrade" the Ktinga they used. Just change the color, and add some unecessary glowys. I dont buy that the ktinga is 200+ years old. As much as i love that ship i dont see it being 22nd century material. It was just lazyness, and ineptness on the fx dept. The D-4 CGI would have been awesome to see. Sure it looks like a D-7, It is supposed to be the precurser to the D-7/Ktinga. No matter. It wasnt shown on screen therefore non-canon so now its a 24th century ship in the mod

Quick update.. The Federation, Klingons, and Romulans now have full ship lineups. 0.03a is in the final balancing, and testing stages. It is classic TNG faction warfare until we can get the dominion in. Im am working on some of the UI textures now to see if i can improve it a bit, and add some more LCARS menus. No guarentees though, its a tough job. Thanks go to Darkshimmer for the new balancing system, and 0.03 weapon effects

The Dominion, and finished pirates will be in 0.03b. Though i have a full dominion lineup it will take too long to get em all in and balanced before the end of the year.

Well, if you consider that the Bird of Prey's lifespan is identical to that of the Excelsior (they both showed up for the first time in STIII) and that the Vor'Cha and Negh'Var were both introduced in the TNG era, no, I wouldn't say that the Klingons seldom make changes in hull design relative to other races. The K'tinga only showed up again (excluding one episode of TNG where there was an old "sleeper ship") when they needed fodder in DS9's battle scenes and wanted more than three ship types.

Like Stress says, it was laziness on the part of Enterprise to not redo the ship. They've said they ran out of time to finish the model, but c'mon - if it's not ready, don't do that episode yet. They overused the Klingons in Enterprise anyway...in fact, they shouldn't have been using them at all, since first contact with the Klingons was supposed to take place after the formation of the Federation, which in turn took place after the Earth-Romulan War. All they gained by making that change was the ability to re-use an enemy that had already been done to death, and they didn't even do it right by giving them period ships.

IMO, the Tellerite and the Andorion ships looked very good, and didn't look copycatted at all. Infact, both introduced ellements that would be used in later Fed ships (Tellerite: Raised cre area, Andorian: Two section hull)

When you guys finally release this will it be workable with the 1.12 patch?  Nice work by the way this is really the only mod i've been dying to get my hands on can't wait for you guys to release it.