Liberated Minor Races not available in the diplomatic screen?

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?

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.

But there's even better news to everyone who does not want to patch there game themselves, the BotF Patcher will do it for you, and there are many patches already included.