Star Trek: Birth of the Federation
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| Star Trek: Birth of the Federation | |
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| Developer(s) | Microprose |
| Publisher(s) | Hasbro |
| Release date(s) | June, 1999 |
| Genre(s) | Turn-based strategy |
| Mode(s) | Single player, Multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Everyone (E) |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows |
Star Trek: Birth of the Federation is a 4X turn-based computer strategy game, based in the Star Trek fictional universe, that was released in 1999. It was published by Microprose, makers of Master of Orion and Civilization.
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[edit] Game play
The entire game is set in The Next Generation universe, with only starships and races from that series and a few ships from Deep Space Nine included. There are no ships or races from the original series or Star Trek: Voyager unless they appeared on The Next Generation.
Although the title of the game is Birth of the Federation, the player can choose from five political entities:
In addition, many minor races can be befriended by the player and can eventually become part of their empire (either by joining peacefully or by Conquest). There are 30 minor races in the game in total, they are the Acamarians, the Andorians, the Angosians, the Antedeans, the Anticans, the Bajorans, the Bandi, the Benzites, the Betazoids, the Bolians, the Bynars, the Caldonians, the Chalnoth, the Edo, the Ktarians, the Malcorians, the Mintakans, the Mizarians, the Nausicaans, the Pakleds, the Selay, the Sheliak, the Takarans, the Talarians, the Tamarians, the Trill, the Ullians, the Vulcans, the Yridians and the Zakdorn. Each Minor race has its own special building that, when built, gives the player's Empire some benefits. For example, the Bajoran Jalanda Forum improves the player's empire morale. In addition, each minor races has its own political preferences for certain empires, for instance it is quite difficult for the Federation to convince the Chalnoth (a violent warrior race) to join them, however it is far easier for the Klingons to do so. Though because getting minor races to join your empire essentially involves just giving them money, any empire can get any minor races, if it has enough funds (although some races, like the Mizarians, will willingly surrender to the first empire they meet). In addition, if a race joins the empire peacefully, they will retain the option of seceding. This can be used by a rival empire to diplomatically steal systems from others.
Another important part of the game is morale. Each system has a morale rating which depends on many factors, which differ from empire to empire. For example, if the player controls the Federation, a declaration of war will significantly lower the morale. For Klingons, it is the opposite. Federation morale is very difficult to maintain, while Romulan is the easiest. If a system's morale falls too much, the population of the system attempts to rebel. If the rebellion remains unchecked, the system will declare independence. Unlike major and minor races, conquest is the only option for returning an independent system to the empire.
The purpose of the game is to create the most powerful Empire in the galaxy. This is achieved through diplomacy, colonization of new worlds and defeating your rivals. Winning the game in an alliance with a rival Empire is also possible. Multiplayer is available over a LAN, or the Internet.
The game is played on a 2d Galaxy Map which represents solar systems, task forces, empire borders and other space phenomena via the use of icons. It is similar to the one used in Master of Orion. There are also separate screens for empire research, colony management, intelligence and diplomacy which are all accessed from a right click main menu.
Space Battles are also turn based, but are in 3d using software rendering. Tactics such as ram and evade can be given to ships before the turn button is pressed.
The player can build a wide variety of starships for this task ranging from Oberth class starship scouts to colony ships, and Romulan Warbirds. To compensate for the difficulty in maintaining Federation morale, the Federation can build the most powerful controlled warship in the game. The Defiant class starships (called "Heavy Escort" in the game) are equipped with cloaking devices and have enough firepower to destroy a small fleet of enemy ships.
Random events (which can be disabled) include a Borg Cube, the Crystalline Entity, Gomtuu and other powerful craft, most of which take a fleet to destroy. Unfortunately, they may appear at the very beginning of the game and destroy your empire before you even have a chance to start it. Another vehicle appears as a random event that was featured in a previously developed Microprose Star Trek game, The Chodak were a powerful and ancient race that featured prominently in Star Trek: A Final Unity, there they were aggressors against the Federation in numerous confrontations and their dreadnaughts appear randomly on the BOTF galactic battlefield.
Some warp-capable neutral races will have powerful defense ships of their own, but will not attempt to capture other systems.
[edit] Licensing Constraints
A lot of ships, races and vehicles which featured throughout the Star Trek franchise were not present in the Birth of the Federation game, to fans regret. This was due to the way that Paramount distributed its Star Trek gaming license at the time that BOTF was produced. Microprose had received the "The Next Generation" license for game development. This license restricted the game developers to only adding components into the game that were featured in Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series or Movies.
Therefore, a large number of ships and races went missing from the game, most notably the Dominion. This is also the reason that the tech trees for the Federation begin with Oberth and Miranda class vessels, both of these ships from the Star Trek Original Series era appeared more than once as support ships in The Next Generation, whereas expected older ships such as the Constitution Class did not.
This is also the reason that the Trill race image and various other older race portraits use older makeup, these were the only appearances of those particular races during the TNG run.
[edit] Modifications and sequels
Two patches were released to fix a series of problems with the program, including memory leaks. Bugs causing slowdowns later on in the game have not been patched. Due to the closure of Microprose, the game's producer, the remaining bugs are unlikely to be fixed.
The BOTF Community at the time the program was released was served by several sites, the two largest of which (Both now defunct) were FedCom and TGA.
The Armada Fleet Command website is now the main server of the BOTF Community, and is (as of 2006) still fairly active, even though it is seven years since the game was originally released. Several modifications for the game have been released by this Community, as well as tools to make is easier for others to mod their own games.
In late 2004, the community started working on a fan-based sequel to Birth of the Federation, calling it Birth of the Federation 2 (BOTF2). The game is tentatively scheduled for release in 2007, although due to the nature of fan-based games, and the loss of the original programmer to "unknown reasons", it remains to be seen as to whether this deadline can be met. The forums for this game are extremely active, reflecting how strongly the community feels about this project.
In early 2006, another game was released as a college project by a member of the BOTF2 forums. Due to interest in this game, he is now actively rewriting the code and converting it into another BOTF style game, entitled Star Trek: Supremacy. This game is now being collaboratively worked on by the BOTF2 team. It can also be found on the BOTF2 website.
A third game is also being developed by a German team, although there are currently few details about this project. The first alpha release was put online at the forums in September 2006. The forums can be found Here
Another game is being developed by a member of the BOTF2 team, and is titled Star Trek: Allegiance. This game is currently the most completed out of the four, with a public release planned within the next few months. Star Trek: Allegiance is opensource (GPL), and was based off of Solar Empire (PSE). The latest information on STA is available at the BOTF2 website. Currently Star Trek Allegiance is in the Beta 1 stage of development.
[edit] Compatibility
The MSN gaming zone no longer supports the game, however it is playable on the Kali II system.
At first glance, the game does not appear to run under Windows XP. However, this can be rectified by configuring Windows to run the game in Windows 2000 compatibility mode. Note that 1.0.0 BofF-CD won't work without a XP patch, while 1.0.1 BofF-CD will work in compatibility mode.
A more recent 1.0.2 XP compatibility patch is available here
[edit] External links
- Atari.com - Birth of the Federation Troubleshooting & Patches
- Birth of the Federation at the Star Trek Games Wiki
- Star Trek: Birth of the Federation article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki.
- Birth of the Federation Cooperative HowTows Patches Mods Editors Statistics
- GameSpot Review
- Star Trek Gamer's Review, Info and Downloads for BotF
- ArmadaFleetCommand Birth of the Federation Modding resource.
- Birth of the Federation 2 Forums.
- Birth of the Federation 2: The new Beginnings (in development)
- Birth of the Federation 2: Supremacy (Alpha released)
- Birth of the Federation 2: Star Trek - Birth of the Empires (Alpha2 released)
- Star Trek: Allegiance
