Liberated Minor Races not available in the diplomatic screen?

Question

As the Romulans asked it, I took the opportunity to declare war onto the Cardassians. For the most part to get a hold of the Bandi, which were right at my borders. As it's the nature of the Cardassians, they had taken the Bandi by force, so I needed to liberate the system.

So far so good, the Bandi thanked me for taking steps which fit into their future plans...but they are not available anymore as a Minor Race in the diplomatic screen. Their system shows up as not occupied by anyone, they're still there but are not available for diplomatic interactions.

I can remember from a long time ago, that I ran into this problem...do I have to take them by force or did I miss something?

Answer 1

This is a bug in the game (1.02) which never got fixed.

But, one brave modder called 'Spocks-cuddly-tribble' found the erroneous code and provides a way of fixing it, that is, if you're familiar with a hex editor.

Quote from the post of Spocks-cuddly-tribble:

As speculated here, when signing trade treaties, the entry at [systInfo+3Fh] can prevent the first contact with unknown minor races (although by encounter of independent minor-ships it's still possible).

The bugged code hides in sub_46A770 and can be overridden quite easy by removing of the jump statement at 46A7F7:

In trek.exe at 0x69BF7

change:

0F 85 7A 00 00 00

to:

90 90 90 90 90 90

That's all.

According to that forum thread, many mods incoporate that fix and many others.