Hello again from the STNH Team,
It’s been a crazy few days since 3.10 was released, as they bring about a lot of changes that are needed within STNH. As you can imagine our mod touches pretty much every element of the base game so that is a lot of files, graphics, and events that need to be reviewed, tested, and updated. However, I can happily say we now have a working version of 3.10 which has now moved into beta test alongside our “Next Generation” update, given how important leaders are to STNH I would anticipate that we need about a week’s worth of dedicated testing, which could always be sped up with more beta testers! (Give any of the team a shout in our discord if you are interested). Good luck to Orion1988 and his beta testers, we’ve given you a lot of work
Warping into the Next Generation
It’s exciting to be able to talk a little bit about our next release and it is something we’ve been working really hard on, because of the sheer number of technical elements that go into making something that was once considered impossible actually happen! I must also admit that I was counted among those who thought that making a different era start would require a whole new mod… however, following a conversation between Shaggo and myself the challenge was set and the team has gone about “making it so” with a level of focus and excitement that has built up and resulted in a release that’s close to being a full refresh of New Horizons. Just wait until you see the new UI, it’s probably the best UI I’ve seen, Cutter is the master! Also don’t get me started on how hyped I am for you all to see the full set of hero leader portraits, it’s no exaggeration to say I’ve kept Zoom and Shaggo busy and they have delivered!
Right… I’m going to try and provide more teasers on each of the main features highlighted in the really cool trailer made by G-Man, which by the way brought back so many happy memories of my personal favourite Star Trek Movie! I do love it when he gets on a creative roll and produces some really awesome things!
Finding the Lost Era…
A number of us in the Dev Team are a little biased, with TNG being the era of Trek we grew up watching (which shows our age) and when it came to picking an era, we had a clear winner. Practically we also have a number of events and late-game mechanics that many players have never really experienced due to late-game lag. This then led us to a choice, do we dive straight into TNG or let players build to it? For us, the choice was simple, the “Lost Era”, as its name suggests, is an era with limited information provided running up to series 1 of TNG – this creates a really cool sandbox in which we can set up and move into the TNG era and we still want to allow players to have creative freedom in building up the galaxy as well as a number of galactic events that we thought would be really fun to play.
So, our starting setup begins from 2300 and while I am not going to spoil exactly how it has been set up there are certain elements & planet setups that would be crazy not to include, so our Federation starts off fully formed with a number of members already included, heroes and ships already to serve. The Alpha-Beta Quadrant is sharing a newfound post-Khitomer Conference Peace, but peace for one is a simmering anger for others, the Dominion are looking to quell the threat from the solids and the Borg are beginning their march across the Delta Quadrant.
We have two exciting new maps which deliver this experience, with the larger map replicating everything, but at the same lore scale that we’ve seen people enjoying!
With secretive “Incidents”, civil wars, massacres, Borg-apocalypse and a quadrant-spanning war all on the horizon we’re rather excited.
Live Long and Prosper
STNH Dev Team