Is Anyone still playing Birth of the Federation?

[craig keith]

I still have a windows xp laptop and the only reason i have kept it is to play birth of the federation It really really is the best trek game ever made and way ahead of its time in my opinion. If you havnt got it you still still download it from amarda fleet command x

 

[SimpleLogic]

I remember coming across that game at Best Buy for $5 in like 2002 maybe. So I bought it and played it. I never really got into it heavily but I did make it through a few times once I realized to turn off those 'random events' otherwise the Borg showed up and cleaned my clock.

 

[SilentP]

I only ever had the Borg turn up twice in my games, and the first time I managed to defeat them by the skin of my teeth in Earth orbit (and subsequently the galaxy decided they loved me and let me win the game) and the second time I forgot how many ships I needed and lost

It was a very fun game, though the glitch that happened at 100+ turns that slowed everything down was a nightmare.

 

[Neumann]

Is there any way to play themgamemin MP? I neber found outmhow tomdo it withmmodern computers, the game seemed unresponsive

 

[Deks]

I still play BOTF.
Granted I use Ultimate Dominion Mod for it which has new ship models, some modification to the Galaxy map size, etc.
Multiplayer runs fine if the other party has the same mod of course.

If you want to use vanilla game though (no mods), then I suggest you find and download the latest patch for the game.

This is the website that has the patch, the game as well, plus the mods:
http://www.armadafleetcommand.com/botf/

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I always felt that it was a pity that you had to play on a randomly generated map. At least one map that placed the races in sensible starting positions (though this game preceded Geoffrey Mandel's star charts) would have been cool. Did anyone every work out how to create a map editor for BotF?

 

[R. Star]

I always felt that it was a pity that you had to play on a randomly generated map. At least one map that placed the races in sensible starting positions (though this game preceded Geoffrey Mandel's star charts) would have been cool. Did anyone every work out how to create a map editor for BotF?

I always liked to play in the ring style galaxy and would keep reloading until I was placed in that bit in the center. A map editor would have been awesome though. Someone could have placed all the planets roughly where they should've been.

 

[Ryan8bit]

There was a map editor, but it was kinda buggy. I tried doing one once where Romulus was put in a corner behind a nebula, and the computer was at a much higher tech level. The computer would always pass through the nebula to get to Romulus, but my cloaked fleet would always decimate their huge fleets, despite that I was outmatched and outgunned. The game could have stood to have scenario maps like that.

 

[daedalus5]

Is it straightforward to install on Win 7 - may go back to it....

 

[Ryan8bit]

It's not super straightforward. You'll need to download a patch from the armadafleetcommand website linked above. And even still you might run into some weird crashes.

 

[R. Star]

Well BotF was always buggy and crash prone. On the bright side it did autosave your game every turn so that wasn't utterly catostrophic.

 

[REDrake]

I play every once in a while but always with All the Ages mod. Allows the player to start with NX age ships and move on until Sovereign. I changed my version a little to include Centaur, Vesta and Luna class ships.
And on a Large map it takes a very long time to finish a game.

 

[R. Star]

I'd love a mod where the map is WAAAY bigger.

 

[Deks]

I'd love a mod where the map is WAAAY bigger.

The Large Ultimate Dominion Mod perhaps?

Its far larger than the vanilla 'large'.

 

[REDrake]

Or All the Ages mod. It has 2 distinct versions. In one of them small map is actually vanilla large. As one can guess, medium and large are simply gigantic. However, you do need a lot of RAM for the game to work good later on. When the map is agglomerated with colonies and bases is getting hard to even scroll it.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

I used to play this every year during the summer when I was off from school, but I haven't played it in a couple of years now.

I do agree it's the best game Star Trek ever had. I spent countless hours with all the civilizations. I even endured the slow down bug that appears after a while.

 

[Igard]

An absolutely great game. My brother was still playing it as recently as last year, but I haven't for quite a few years now.

If you're a fan of 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) space games, why not try Distant Worlds? Only draw back is it's quite expensive and no demo sadly. However, it is worth it. I make Trek mods for it.

 

[mic of orion]

Still got that game in my star trek collection, among many other star trek games

 

[blueshirt]

I love the game and still play it occasionally when I have the chance.
A few years back I compiled a few dozen pages of ideas for a sequel, with the Dominion as a sixth empire, minor aliens from every series and new structures and planet types.
Sadly, we'll never see a sequel, with or without any of those ideas.

 

[ALF]

I moved on to Starfleet Command when they got the combat right.