Star Trek:New Horizons Is The Best Trek Game Since BotF

Games
1

I was going to call it the best 4X since Birth of the Federation, but since it’s the only 4X since BotF, that doesn’t mean very much.

It’s a Total Conversion for Stellaris, so you do have to own the base game, but it is free (for now). I suspect that sooner or later (probably sooner) the owners of the rights to Trek will figure out that there’s gold-plated latinum in them thar hills, and it will be pulled and/or monetized, so grab it while you can (it can be found on the Workshop page.)

Feature list (in progress):

[quote] 5 unique static galaxy maps, including several built for low-end PCs
50+ pre-scripted Star Trek canon races with animated portraits
Full ship sets for United Earth, Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire, Cardassian Union, The Dominion, Vulcan High Command, Andorian Empire, Tellarite Technocracy, Ferengi Alliance, Gorn Hegemony, Kazon Sects, Tholian Assembly, Breen Confederacy, Xindi Council, Undine and Borg Collective
Pirate and Space-Aliens with generic shipsets
More than 250 unique shipmodels
Unique era mechanic including ENT, TOS, TMP and TNG eras for FED, ROM, KDF
New Weapons, Shields and special effects
Custom ship behavior
Improved AI
Innovative new ship designer with tons of possible variations
300+ Race specific weapons
200+ new components
Entirely new techtree containing more than 700 technologies
Many Star Trek anomalies and events
UI rework
Sounds, Music and Voice-Overs rework
Non-playable Borg faction conquering the Delta Quadrant
New Borg assimilating mechanic and Borg-AI
Rebalanced
New Ethos
New policies
New Space-Animations
50 +unique planets and terraforming mechanics including gfx for tilesets and planet surfaces
New city environment graphic for Tholian, Cardassian, Vulcans and Klingons
Completely overhauled utility system
6 unique new shipclasses
Cloneable Jem’Hadar and Vorta for the Dominion
Federation Council mechanic
Romulan Tal Shiar Committee mechanic
Obsidian Order mechanic
Klingon Civil War events
Federation Story
Klingon Story
Romulan Story
Cardassian Story
Xindi Crisis
Soul of Alar Crisis
Species 8472 Crisis[/quote]

I haven’t run into any bugs or performance issues on my less-than-state-of-art system has been excellent. I do have a couple of minor quibbles:

  1. With their boost to research, Vulcans seem a bit overpowered.

  2. Event chains taken from the series and movies can be anachronistic. Even though I’m still in the Enterprise era, I’ve played through several from both the original series and Next Generation. That could be a bug or it may just be random and that’s how they fell. Also, if you’re familiar with the source material, and follow the “script”, they can be overpowering, since they award your captains a lot of experience.

  3. The Borg isn’t a playable faction - yet.

2

I don’t get it, aren’t those victory conditions already in the base game?

3

Maybe. It’s been so long since I played the base game I didn’t remember them.

Then agin, I’m getting older and more feeble minded daily.

4

I just checked and they were added in the 1.3 Heinlein update, so its pretty recent and wasnt at launch.

5

I played this mod much of the weekend. It still is a work in progress with some technology description (and possibly effects) missing; and other things. But i am really enjoying it. I like how the ships change based on the era you are in (TOS > the movies > Next Gen >? not there yet); the clothes in the pictures of your ship captains change based on era. My ships have just entered Next Gen but the clothes are still movie era in my game.
I was able to form the Federation with the Vulcans, Tellarites, and Andorans (me as Earth). The Bolians and Benzenites formed their own alliance and were attacked by the Romulans who vassaled the Benzenites, eventually absorbing them.
The Breen have been my constant rival. The Cardassians became associate members when the Breen and Tholians kept attacking them. They pushed for offensive wars which I declined so they left and now hate us for rejecting their aggression. We spent a lot of diplomatic effort to get the Ferengi to join the Federation successfully. The Klingon and the Gorn keep fighting each other, while the Romulans keep vassal/annex their neighbors and are somewhat friendly with us.
The Dominion is fairly small but controls its two large neighbors (as would be expected). The Borg are large and fighting three of their neighbors but the borders do not seem to change so i do not knwo how that is going.

6

I think I’ll grab this tonight and mess with it on my trip this week. So it works ok?

7

Seems to.

8

Too bad it’s not an RPG. :(

9

Considering it’s a mod for Stellaris, I’m not quite sure why you’d expect anything different? If you want an RPG, why not check out Star Trek Online. It isn’t very good (in my opinion), but it entertains and will give you the RPG fix you might be looking for.

10

I meant a good RPG.