Birth of the Federation

[SinStar]

posted on August 24th, 2010, 5:27 pm

Last edited by SinStar on August 24th, 2010, 5:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I thought I'd seperate the topic from the Fleet Ops 3.1.3 forum to maintain forum rules. As I enjoy BotF, and am a current player, I thought I'd post a link anyone interested should visit.

Birth of the Federation mods, downloads, and forums

I recommend the Ultimate Dominion Mod.

posted on August 24th, 2010, 5:44 pm

for a moment there I thought this was going to be about the A2 mod of the same never.

I never checked this game out and actually put off a bit by this bit from the wikipedia article about it:

"Two patches were released to fix a series of problems with the program, including a major memory leak which caused slowdowns later on in the game. Due to the closure of Microprose, the game's producer, this bug is unlikely to be fixed."

Any comment on this?

And this: "GameSpot  said in 1999: "Birth of the Federation is a good game, if you are willing to forgive the interface and the amount of micromanagement required. It definitely has a Star Trek feel to it, right down to the humanoid aliens and confusing technobabble."

[SinStar]

posted on August 24th, 2010, 6:03 pm

Last edited by SinStar on August 24th, 2010, 6:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well as is the case with alot of games, it has a loyal fanbase along, many of whom are modders. As I said I recommend the Ultimate Dominion Mod.

I play BotF, I throughly enjoy it, it has a mod team not unlike the team here and they developed a mod called Ultimate Dominion. Replacing Ferengi with Dominion, completely overhauled the empires and minor races, new ships, modded personalities, and such. I'd highly recommend it to any fan of Trek or 4x strats.

I myself don't follow reviews, preferring to test games myself. The game, and therefore gameplay, isn't much different from Master of Orion. Seeing as it was a competitor.
You start out with a solar system, you queue up structures and ships. You send out your ships to explore the map, finding new systems or even minor races, use colony ships to colonize new systems, diplomacy or aggression to get the minor races on your side. All leading up to confronting the other major empires in the form of Federation, Romulan, Klingon, Ferengi, and Cardassians.

Battle takes place on a different screen involving the ships and or stations in the hex at the time, I forget the max number. You can choose from a variety of tatics for your force, you can chose between assigning a tactics to the fleet as the whole or diversify the tactics per ship . Tactics are available depending on ship size. I'm blanking on specifics but the tactics are more or less effective depending on what tactics your opponent uses.

Dang thing keeps scrolling up as I'm typing, frustrating.

posted on August 24th, 2010, 6:12 pm

BOTF is an Epic game. I really don't see how anyone could complain about the interface. My theory is they are just too lazy to figure it out. 

As far as memory leaks I don't recall ever having one. At one point when playing as the Klingons I had a fleet of about 900 Fast attack and 300 Command ships and the game did not slow down at all.

I highly recommend the game, I consider it the turn based version of Armada.

posted on August 24th, 2010, 7:05 pm

I wouldn't say turn based Armada, It's its own game, it isn't meant to be a ten minute fight but a 2-3 day expand your empire game.

posted on August 24th, 2010, 7:48 pm

iv been watching botf for YEARS but nothing ever came out , has it actually come out of beta yet? or am i thinking of the another game, the website looks a little different.

posted on August 24th, 2010, 8:16 pm

Birth fo the Federation was released in the late nineties, 99 I believe. It was out before armada even. You could be thinking Birth of the Federation 2 or something, a fan build.

posted on August 25th, 2010, 3:50 am

botf is not that good. Master of Orion 2 is still by far better, sorry.

posted on August 25th, 2010, 3:37 pm

Master of Orion 2 is good, also one of my favorites. Personally I like BotF more if only because of the minor races and ST atmosphere. And with the Dominion Mod it is an exponentially better game than vanilla.

posted on August 25th, 2010, 4:31 pm

BotF is an awsome 4X strategy game, theres a lot to learn and most of the major problems have been fixed by the modding community, altho it still seems to have a hard time running on newer hardware, I was running the All the ages mod which took you from the NX era all the way to present (nemesis) era. Very fun but somewhat crash prome, maybe ill have to try the dominion mod. Also there is someone working on a BotF 2 called Star Trek Supremacy, altho work is going slowly. Still a great game after all these years.

posted on August 25th, 2010, 4:38 pm

its funny, some old games work bad on newer comps, like botf and a1.

but then others work perfectly and get all the performance boosts of new machines, such as total annihilation or games using the unreal engine. i wonder if there is a reason, or if such games are just lucky.

posted on August 25th, 2010, 4:52 pm

Im guessing alot of it involves they way the game is coded, if the developers bother to forsee what people might be running for computers down the road. Star Trek Klingon Academy for example is unplayable on most systems post 2003 era. Which is a shame.

posted on August 25th, 2010, 6:21 pm

try setting up virtual maschines.
With help of those i was able to play most old games.

posted on August 25th, 2010, 8:56 pm

My big problem with BoTF (which is probably something I'm doing wrong) is that no matter what I do so far, every other major race will declare war on me in rapid succession and invade.  While I may be able to hold off one or two of them at the same time, and even possibly seize or glass one of their worlds in retaliation, I can't hold off everybody, much less make any headway when attacked from all directions.

Nothing quite as disheartening as seeing 'The Ferengi and Romulans have allied.' followed by 'The Cardassians and Klingons have Allied.' with shortly after that, when I'm hoping they're preparing to brawl with each other, instead, they each demand 4 times my cash reserves and declare war the next turn.

When I'm playing as Romulans, I can hold them longer when it happens, but that's because of the free opening salvo in every battle from cloaking.

posted on August 25th, 2010, 9:00 pm

I got that same problem... AI has that problem.

I also have a problem with sabotage destroying a ship and about 3 buildings at the start of every turn, even on the easiest setting no matter how much focus you put on security.