You might want to check out http://www.variantbank.org/results/rules/s/startrekdip2.htm before you start.

Wow...that's pretty good...but can we integrate that?

Is that a compatible map (is so, why's no one done a game on here with that variant yet, we have a fair enough population of Trekkers...)

PS: Problem with the Railroad are the rules that handles a "bounce". So wormholes are easy and limiting them to one player should be complex but not impossible.
And if you send me a BW-scan of your hand drawn map I can convert this in a usable map.

What I had in mind, since I'm a terrible drawer but good with Word, was to make a Word file of the arrangement, with the grid and all (since it's mostly squares and rectangles, this being space and thus not really needing specific shapes) and send that as an attachment via an e-mail, like I might send an e-mail to someone I play in a league with...?

Does that work (and out of curiosity, would we be able to get different-looking pictures for the fleeets and armies for the races, ie, Enterprise-E and Benjamin Sisko (I've been thinking and Kirk's just too much of a strethc...maybe he can have his own map if this experiment works someday) for the Federation and a Klingon Bird of Prey and Gowron for the Klingons, etc...? ust asking, as that'd up the awesomeness-level to about the Nth Degree...)

1. What happened to your stupid fucking Dante thread?

2. Are you SUCH a pathetic attention-whore/social outcast that you keep alternate "stupid fucking threads" in an on-deck circle, in case the first one does not get sufficient response?

3. How many times a day do you get beaten up?
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For the rest of you.

Why not ignore this fool, just to see how many times he masturbates with his rantings?

This statement is telling, " I'm not giving up on this project...Diplomacy and star Trek jsut fit so well together, ....blah blah blah "

Holy Fuck, what a loser......

@mapleleaf - Who appointed you as forum cop, you half-witted Canadian lumberjack from Canada (said it twice so you'd catch it, fucktard)? Fuck off, cunt.

@ Draugnar - Your mother did. By the way, why don't you give that bitch a bath. Her pussy fucking stinks.
;0)

<-- Pity's Mapleleaf that the only action he can get is someone's old mother with a fish-odor problem. Pities him even more for broadcasting his situation....

Wow chill out you two!

@Obi: Making a wormhole is incredibly easy - there's no reason places have to be linked on the map for the code to link them.

@Obi - number seven could be the Jem 'Hadar and the Founders.

I don't get that variant ashen_shugar posted. If you're the Borg, what do you do except sit in your own quadrant with 4 units?

@Draugnar - that's the Dominion.

Duh. I'm an idiot.

I think the seventh race should be a race of cloned 7 of 9's. Mmmmm...7 of 9....Yummmm....

Why not some Andorians? Or Orion sex "slaves" (who we all know are the real power behind the Orion pirates).

Number seven vote Breen

of course finding a race who you'd play as complete isolationists would be interesting... may require some serious rules changes, or just some serious distance... so it's not worth going all the way to breen as you'd be leaving your home centers undefended.

Wormhole is easy as figles said, also transwarp conduits for the borg.
I'm sure i don't like the borg, but what the hell. Ferengii were the only alternative borg replacement i could think of, and they're just there cause they were TNG season 1 angagonists who gave way to the borg (kinda like how the cardies gave way to the dominion in DS9, and Kazon gave way to eh, the borg again, and in TOS i'm not sure who was first and gave way to the much cooler other bad guy, but romulans and kligons were both there so i'm sure it was them...)

Still the ferengii were supposed to have fought a war against the klingons in the period between TOS and TNG, and had great weapons which they had bought...

of course the tribbbles were once considered a great threwat to the klingon empire...

6 is way hotter than 7 of 9

Wait..wrong spaceship...

So how would a wormhole code? I don't know a thing about coding, I just asking so I know what to "draw" on word for whoever will/wants to map this.

Breen are part of the Dominion, aren't they? Plus they sound like broken McDonalds's speaker boxes--that'd make communication difficult. ;)

The Andorians are part of the Federation, except in Archer's era, which is far away from the TNG era both in time and quality.

The Ferengi...maybe, they were osrt of silly villains, but they are an option.

Ditto the Khazon.

I just had a thought, no one's mentioned it yet--what about Species 8472? They were kickass enough to blast the Borg ships so badly they needed Federation--Janeway--help, and that episode, "Scorpion Parts I and II," is probably one of the best on Voyager...did they have any more than just those episodes with 8472, would anyone want them as the 7th race? The only trouble would be they're supposed to exist in fluidic space, not regular/our space, yada yada yada, but we coud probably make it work, if everyone likes the idea.

So those races, another if someone thinks of it, how would we make the Wormhole and Borg Trans-Warp Highway work...

Also, planets/stations so far, again, all submitted for your debate/approval:

-Federation: Earth, Vulcan, Alpha Centauri
-Klingon: Qo'noS, Rura Penthe, Boreth
-Romulan: Romulus, Remus, Eden (a not to TOS there...)
-Cardassian: Cardassia Prime, AR-588, Quinor VII
-Borg: P-000001, P-000002, P-000003 (for planet and then number...Borg-ish?)
-Dominion: Founder's Homeworld, Callinon VII, Breen

Neutrals: Bajor, Andoria, Minos Korva, Deep Space Nine (obvious what that's referencing), Khitomer, Ceti Alpha V (how badly DO you want a neutral?), Narendra III, Ty'Gokor, Iconia, Devron...In the Romulan Neutral Zone: Algeron IV, Alpha Onias III, Arloff IX, Draken IV, Koralus III...In the Cardassian Demilitarized Zone: Dorvan V, Ronara Prime, Volan III...Cestus III (where Kirk famously battled the Gorn), Mudd (which was named by Harry-Guess-Who...some good TOS-planets in here.)

And whatever else we think to add-subtract, trying to get to about 50...

Non-Center Neutrals: Space Station K-7 (TOS), Delta Vega (you can decide for yourself if you want that to be for TOS, the new movie, or both), and...I don't know...places?



So, how's that look so far...I have yet to put any Delta Quadrant Planets in, as you might notice, as we don't know if the Khazon/8472 will be joining or will be neutrals or just not there, and we have ideas from the Ferengi to the Gorn to 8472 to the Khazon for a Seventh Race.

Oh, and add Betazed too the Neutrals, forgot that...

There are two different aspects to the system Obi.
1) The logical side. This is just a series of territories and borders. The site doesn't care where these are, all it knows is which ones are linked and which ones aren't. Therefore you can make a link between two places miles apart on the map, and it will calculate them for you.
2) The graphical side. This isn't used in processing, but is what players of your map would see, so they do need some way of knowing where a wormhole is, but this could be as simple as pictures of wormholes and making it clear which ones link up.

No the breen were a non-aligned alpha quadrant species who joined the dominion well into the war. They had been complete isolationists until that point, only being seen in a few episodes (of DS9 particularily) where they wore cooling suits and never showed their faces, or were in dominion prisons...

They joined the war and made the cardassians feel like crap because they became the dominions favourite solids... oh and they kicked ass and attacked Earth, cause they were full of win.

As for coding. Any two territories can connect (so you can move one to the other) so you can connect DS9 to Gamma quadrant 1 (or whatever it is called) and draw the two far far away from each other.

No need to do anything special, the code just says "cldye -> NAO, yes for fleets, no for armies" so it only matters that the drawing is clear... the code doesn't care what territories are touching.

em, yeah, what figles said a little better than me...

I have no idea how to code, but I think I see what you're saying...just make the Wormhole a really big space on the map, and then have a Dominion base/planet at one end and DS9 at the other?

Roughly?

And alright, that'd take away the planet Breen from the Dominion to start, but I guess the Breen could work...



Between Gorn, Breen, Khazon, 8472, and Ferengi (need to add Ferinngar to the planets either way) who would everyone most like to see? I'd be relatively happy with the Breen, 8472, or Gorn myself...the Ferengi and Khazon were just silly (but at least the former redeemed themselves through the awesomeness of Quark.)

So is the size--50 centers plus non-center planets plus space spaces--good for everyone (I figure area sizes, on the whole, would be about the size of the World Diplomacy map, with the already-noted exceptions being the Wormhole and the Borg Trans-Warp System to connect the Gamma and Delta Quadrants to the Beta and Alpha Quadrants), who would you like to see for the Seventh Race, and who knows how to code and/or map after I make the Microsoft Word version?

"I have no idea how to code, but I think I see what you're saying...just make the Wormhole a really big space on the map, and then have a Dominion base/planet at one end and DS9 at the other?"

No, I think it would be better to just have two pictures of wormholes (circlely spiral things) No reason to show they're connected. It will be clear.

no, size doesn't matter. Any territory can be connected to any other territory, you just write a - b yes, yes (where one yes is for the fleet and the other for the army) so con is connected to AEg for fleets but not armies, and gascony is connected to mars for armies but not fleets...

you could equally connect paris to moscow for fleets but not armies - that would be weird in a normal map, but if your map has a picture of a wormhole entrance (and a thick blue line running between the two territories - so it is clear which wormhole connect to which exit) then the two territories which are not beside each other on the map are connected according to the code.

I thought about making a variant with one-way doors, but never quite got round to it.

one-way doors are kinda odd... like you can enter moria, but the watcher breaks the entrance so you have to go through to get out again...

OK, so if I just designate omn my rough draft where the wormholes are and a line to show the connection, you guys can map/code it that way?

Also, any ideas for territories are very welcome, just to flesh this out as much as possible, and then we can always eliminate centers if we have too many...

Also, if the Breen were the Seventh Race, what'd be their other two neutrals?

I think I'll have it so armies can move to adjacent planets as one would normally move an army from Sev-Mos...

Obi, rather than getting *all* the conversion done for you, why don't you draw the map up in an image editor, such as GIMP (GNU Imagine Manipulation Program).
Make each territory a different colour, like in this one for the main game:
http://webdiplomacy.net/variants/Classic/resources/map.png

I tried Gimp...not so good for me, even worse for my computer (I now have a new one...)

Any other programs that'd work? Shame I can't do it with Microsoft Word, it'd be a snap...

Inkscape?
You could do it in word then export the image once finished (most simply you could use printscreen!)
Infact, when Ghost&I put together a map we started off by using a vector program then converted to bitmap last minute.

wait, how would i export an image (and not jsut the document) in word?

Well, as I said, easiest option would be to printscreen it.
Or you could select all the pieces of it, copy and then paste them into another document.
Or you could use a 'print to file' option with a suitable format.

First, my nice bit. You should really be asking the people at oil-dip about these sorts of things, obiwanobiwan. I saw the Civil War variant be set up over there in less than a week. To be fair, it was based off an already existing map, but the members one little thread stirred up a lot of interest with the people who knew how to get the coding done. They're very nice there and have a lot of variants. Some good, many bad.

Now the second part. Do you think this game would be any fun to play? The already existing Star Trek map linked to above looks just awful. The Civil War variant I mentioned about was put together by an individual with just the sort of passion you're showing, but it's an incredibly shitty map to play on. For example, a fleet in Minnesota coming up the Mississippi can reach Lake Superior and the South has all of Latin America as potential neutral centers while the North gets faraway Canadian ones and Western ones it can hardly use.

Your Star Trek variant will probably end up with very similar serious design flaws despite your best intentions. This is hardly your fault since game design is a pretty complicated undertaking. In all honesty, I hope you ask yourself if it will be worth the effort cobbling together this jury-rigged Word plan of yours into a game that will probably never be played even if it ends up being coded.

As a casual Star Trek fan myself I also have a bit of a cautionary warning for you. If you really make the move to make this map you will lose your girl friend if you have one and never get one if you don't. This Diplomacy hobby is something they find very hard to understand to begin with, don't tie in the pussy repellent which is Star Trek. Watch the show on afternoons you're not doing anything. See the new movie when it comes out. Don't make what amounts to fan fiction. Beware.

I am at a complete loss with what obi is trying to do. What is all this Word nonsense? If you aren't a good drawer, just use Paint like the rest of the Internet...

Just use a pencil and paper and scan your map after it's finished.
Than use the tips from this thread: http://forum.webdiplomacy.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=338 to finish your map-pictures (the coding part of the thread is no longer valid).

Sorry, better thread here: http://forum.webdiplomacy.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=432

I'd use a scaner, ab...but we haven't one, long since broken, and we never had a pressing need for one, so it was never replaced...

Before I go any further, though, reading Invictus' comment...do you all think an Aegean Islands-style map would work play-wise (with the islands being the planets and the sea being the space spaces?) I want to make the dream a reality here on WebDip--and with a break coming up for Thanksgiving Holiday I'll have the time again soon--so only fair if others have input, plus...well, as he points out, playability is hard to capture.

Do you like the islands idea, or do you have a better one?

I'd use a scaner, ab...but we haven't one, long since broken, and we never had a pressing need for one, so it was never replaced...

Before I go any further, though, reading Invictus' comment...do you all think an Aegean Islands-style map would work play-wise (with the islands being the planets and the sea being the space spaces?) I want to make the dream a reality here on WebDip--and with a break coming up for Thanksgiving Holiday I'll have the time again soon--so only fair if others have input, plus...well, as he points out, playability is hard to capture.

Do you like the islands idea, or do you have a better one?

If you're still looking for a seventh race, the Ferengi would work?

Breen over Ferengi if you ask me, jsut cause they are cooler, although you could add both...maybe making them unbalanced two center powers...