How do I get the Star Trek Mod to work? (new at this)...

[Mahalaki]

Knavery,
I had the same problem:
i.e. Version 1.84 of SEIV and installed the AST complete v.1.6 into the SEIV directory.
When loading the AST mod (either with the mod launcher or manually editing the PATH.TXT file) I got errors on trying to "Quick Start".
However, I noticed that the errors were to do with some of the standard races and not the custom AST ones.
So I looked in the file \Space Empires IV\AST\Data\settings.txt and noticed that the "Quick Start Style" entries were the same as the entries in the default settings.txt file.
So what I did next was to change the "Quick Start Style" entries in \Space Empires IV\AST\Data\settings.txt to the following:

Quick Start Style 1 := Fed
Quick Start Style 2 := Romulan
Quick Start Style 3 := Klingon
Quick Start Style 4 := Cardassian
Quick Start Style 5 := Ferengi
Quick Start Style 6 := Breen
Quick Start Style 7 := 8472
Quick Start Style 8 := Borg
Quick Start Style 9 := Dominion
Quick Start Style 10 :=
Quick Start Style 11 :=
Quick Start Style 12 :=
Quick Start Style 13 :=
Quick Start Style 14 :=
Quick Start Style 15 :=
Quick Start Style 16 :=

This then worked fine for me!

I'm no expert on such modding things (haven't even finished a game as yet) so maybe this isn't the most technically correct answer.

Hope it helps.