Birth of the Federation

[Gaius Octavius]

Anybody else remember Star Trek: Birth of the Federation? It's sort of a Civ-in-space game set in the Star Trek universe. You can take control of one of five empires: the Cardassians, Ferengi, Klingons, Romulans, and of course the Federation. As you expand into the galaxy you meet minor races (like the Vulcans) that you can persuade to join your empire. There are wormholes, dilithium mines, M-class planets, and the occasional Borg incursion (who could get along without that? ).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_of_the_federation

It had a number of bugs, especially in multiplayer I'm told, but otherwise it was a reasonable game. A group of people planned to make an unofficial sequel to it but I don't know if an alpha's been released yet.

I've seen several posts on this site by avid fans of the game, but all date from more than five years ago. I was curious as to whether this game has been lost to history, and would like to know what became of the much-anticipated sequel.

 

[Maniacal]

I rmeember a thread about this last fall or sometime like that. Sounds like an interesting game.

 

[Janusi]

Yeah, I was a fan of the game too.

And there are two unofficial sequels being made that I know off. You can find a lot more information and a playable alpha version here: http://botfii.armadafleetcommand.com/index.php

 

[Kan' Sharuminar]

Still have it, though I haven't played it recently. I use the Ultimate Mod 3 as well, giving a lot more ships and minor species to play around with.

It is a good game, but it does have it's shortcomings. It severely lacks in diplomacy, in which if you don't continuously give money to the major powers they will quickly hate you and wage war. That said, I love how you can battle the enemy without officially declaring war (you can engage fleets, but not conquer planets) - I find that by taking out a couple of their frontier starbases, they're quite willing to offer a non-aggression pact.

Not the Klingons though, they seem quite happy to be provoked and reply in kind

 

[Thrawn]

I'm not sure where my copy is. But it was kinda a fun game.

 

[Till]

I liked the inclusion of minor races, but the lack of custom races and ship designs (if i remember correctly) drove me straight back to Master of Orion 2.
It's probably a great game, if you are into Star Trek, though! Especially since there isn't exactly a great selection of ST turn based strategy games.

 

[Kan' Sharuminar]

Given that it's based of a franchise custom races would have been pointless to include, though IIRC the vanilla game didn't actually have that many standard races, considering the vast amount on the series.

Custom ships - or at least modifying existing classes - would have been grand though.

 

[Synobun]

Birth of the Federation is a great game, I have a copy some where around here... The Borg are really annoying, it takes 12 Romulan Warbirds (Cloaked) to destroy it in 1 blow. I really dislike it when i'm about to win, and then 2 Borg Cubes appear from everywhere -_-'.

 

[Till]

Given that it's based of a franchise custom races would have been pointless to include, though IIRC the vanilla game didn't actually have that many standard races, considering the vast amount on the series.

Custom ships - or at least modifying existing classes - would have been grand though.

Pointless from a Star Trek point of view maybe (even though new races keep getting added to the Star Trek universe, too), but it would have made the gameplay more interesting!

 

[jefftest]

I still fire BOTF up once in a while, it's OK but could have been a real classic It's in the rotation with other near-misses like Star Wars-Rebellion and Chaos Overlords.

The worst part of the Borg is actually the effect on the AI - if the Borg hits them too early, they're doomed and it ruins the game, so I always play with Borg off.

There's still a core of dedicated players, at least one of the sites is still prettty active: http://www.armadafleetcommand.com/botf/index.php . Hmm, been a while since I looked in there, some of the mods look interesting. I'm getting tempted to fire it up to play as the Assimilated Federation

 

[Wolfe Tone]

I loved that game. It was a lot of fun. I was a member of the the boards for Birth of the Federation Series II, a mod sequel type thing some people planned to make years ago but it fell apart. It sounded great. though. One thing that annoyed me about the original game was the colouring of the Defiant class ships, far too green.

 

[Gaius Octavius]

I wish the multiplayer system worked better. I'd love to play against other people since the AI gets kind of predictable after a while and makes silly moves.

Is the sequel project dead or just "Abe Vigoda"?

 

[Kan' Sharuminar]

Given how long it's been going on (I even think there's been different 'branches' of the sequel project all attempting to do their own one), I think we can consider it dead.

Hopefully the upcoming film will signal a revival of Star Trek and the games - in particular one along the same lines of BotF, but I wouldn't hold your breath

 

[Gaius Octavius]

You mean the film that is a poor take-off on old ideas with new stars because the writers are no longer creative?

 

[Kan' Sharuminar]

Aye, so a standard Star Trek film/episode, then

 

[Gaius Octavius]

I think you win the thread.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

I have this game and have always loved it. Pity there most likely won't be an official sequel.

 

[Kan' Sharuminar]

Just installed this rather addictive game again. Curse you Octavius!

My new gripe is the bloody Ferengi. Not only are they totally undeserving of major power status, but they're almost always the best of the AI players. They're Ferengi, they're more likely to sell you their old starships then fight you with them