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The purpose of this thread is general discussion pertaining to all active sims. I thought it would be nice to have a place to toss around ideas, chat, joke, and so forth without hogging up the game chat (granted, its OOC but still......I get emails everytime something is posted, and thats ALOT of emails).

I was playing one of my old Star Trek video games last night, as the NX class Enterprise, and was thinking that an Enterprise era SIM would be cool. I mean, it would be in an alternate universe so anything goes. Would the UFP form? Would the Vulcan's become an Empire? Would the Andorians wage total war on the Vulcans? Will the Orions try to enslave the Tellerites?

I just thought it would be a cool concept with a more primitive galaxy. We have a general idea how things would SUPPOSED to turn out, it only takes one different choice to send things off in a totally different direction.

I would LOVE an ENT era sim. Major powers like Earth, Vulcan, Andoria, Teller Prime, Tholia, Qo'Nos and maybe the Suliban or Xindi.

It would be interesting from the standpoint of of not already having most of the map divvied up and having some wiggle room.

Plus, the Federation hinged on the formation of the main races. That could be stopped in its tracks.

I'll be honest with you, the Federation is just one big blue buffer zone right in the middle of the map. Someone with the industrial and technological edge to just swamp the rest of us in ships if we get too uppity.

Thats why I find the entire situation very frustrating. In the Alpha sim, I had intended to get the 313 system. The whole issue with my joining the coalition, the empires formation, the collapses of government etc was because of my being complete and totally incapable of contesting the Federation's control of that system.

It's Trek so you just have to accept it and deal with it but you don't have much of an option really. You either deal with the non-confrontational, peace, love, and Akira's Federation and its moderating influence. Or you watch a beligerant Federation eat everyone up slowly. The only solution would be to either drastically shrink the Fed or inflate the other powers to bring them to a similar level.

Reliant121 wrote:Thats why I find the entire situation very frustrating. In the Alpha sim, I had intended to get the 313 system. The whole issue with my joining the coalition, the empires formation, the collapses of government etc was because of my being complete and totally incapable of contesting the Federation's control of that system.

That is the thing though. Its not a game of equals and was never designed to be. Each power has its unique challenges based on its position. The Federation does not exactly have it cozy being bordered by everyone and getting sucked into almost every problem.

That frustration is a built in part of reality.

Why did the Cardassians partner with the Dominion? Because they were frustrated with being the 4th power in the region. It was a stupid, short-sighted and dangerous decisions. Frustration is part of the life of being a smaller power. Its not that much sunnier on the other side of the equation either as the big powers, Federation, Romulan, Klingon ect, have a lot more problems to deal with that the other powers as well.

This would be the case in anything but a very artificial game that was basically setup to be equal. Say we were running a WWII era game? You would have all the same issues, even worse in many cases. Its just the reality of the beast.

I understand all of this, but that doesn't stop me complaining and/or pining for a free time!

Besides, it's entirely possible that if all of the smaller powers attack the Federation at once, the Fed would fall apart. It has a large fleet, but can't be everyplace at once.

Reliant121 wrote:Plus, the Federation hinged on the formation of the main races. That could be stopped in its tracks.

You have the Humans, with their rapid tech advancement and resources.
You have the Klingons, with their warships.
You have the Vulcans with their powerful ships and tech, but hard to get along with and suffering from internal stife.
You have the Andorians who are the closest match to the Vulcans, but not nessessariy up to the challange.
You have the Romulans, who have moderately impressive ships, but not really strong enough to conquer everyone.

I preemptively call Andorians.

I get the Fed has its issues, but what are the odds of all the smaller powers setting aside their differences to attack the Fed, not much.

Ultimately, we'd need a mod. And I don't know anyone else who has the time to take on the countless responsibilities of the spreadsheet or ability. I have time enough, ability...not so much.

I could handle the spreadsheets, and frankly I'm itching to tear them open and look at the guts.

The time is a completely different matter.

The thing is....

The Klingons are plenty close to as powerful and are certainly an existential threat to the Federation by themselves.

The Romulans could have been but for some early mistakes and ship-building lethargy. Fundamentally nothing stopped the Romulans from being as powerful as the Klingons, if not more so as they had a better tech starting point in many respects.

The rest of the powers are beholden to one of the big 2 for the most part because they never took a chance early to expand and get bigger. If you are small at some point you have to roll the dice to get bigger if you want to compete with the really big boys. Hell, study what Bismark did to create Germany for a blue-print.

If the CU really wanted to challenge the Federation they never should have allied with them and should have devoted all their energy to going after the Breen. And vice versa. Combine those two groups and you have a power the equal of the Klingons or Romulans.

Same deal really with the Shelliak and Tueri. They exist basically to give you a peer enemy close by. Absorbing the other power would make you able to take on say the Breen and work your way up the food chain. Instead they are allied.