BOTF
The first of my bite-size reviews is done. Ok, it’s slightly less bite-size than I originally intended, but BOTF is a big game. Enjoy.
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Birth of the Federation
Let’s say that you manage to get Birth of the Federation up and running. Now imagine that you’re playing as the United Federation of Planets. A Ferengi scout ship ventures into your space, hails one of your command cruisers and, with the uniquely charming tone of voice that all Ferengi share, says “Greetings from the Ferengi Alliance! We are very pleased to meet your people, and look forward to a long and profitable future of trade and commerce with you.” What do you do?
You might instinctively decide to wage war on the big-eared scourge, and I wouldn’t normally advise against that decision; but the Federation have certain limitations (as do the remaining three playable galactic powers – The Klingon Empire, The Romulan Star Empire and The Cardassian Union), one of which is a populace who generally disapprove of their military being used as a tool for conquest.
Instead, you might consider diplomacy: the Federation’s forte. Navigate your way to the diplomatic screen (by way of a delightful radial menu) and you’ll find a list of all the races you’ve encountered – both minor and major – with an approval indicator corresponding to each one. Most peacemaking consists of sustained gift giving and establishing trade relations, until there are enough bars in the approval indicator to propose a new deal. Simplistic fare; but no more so than the diplomacy in Civilization IV.
System management is also all about allocating points into bars. In this case, the point pool represents population, and you place points into the four production bars: food (for growth), industry (for building stuff), research (for upgrading ships and buildings and learning how to build new ones) and intelligence (for spying and the like). The closest approximation to Civ’s trusty worker is the colony ship, which can either terraform planets (providing room for population growth) or colonize systems.
Espionage (the province of the Romulans and the Cardassians) is controlled from the intelligence screen. You’re allocated one hundred points to spread over internal security (counter-intelligence), espionage (gathering information) and sabotage (bang). If you power up more intelligence centres in your systems, your points will carry more weight, and you’ll start to receive pleasing reports of successful operations carried out by your agents, such as bombings and hijackings, or staged diplomatic embarassments.
There are six avenues of research to pursue – biotech, energy, computer, propulsion, production and weapons – that you divide research points over, thereby accelerating or decelerating technological progress in particular areas. Each avenue contains ten tech levels; and every building or ship that you can construct has a number of prerequisite levels. There’s not as much room for research strategy in BOTF as there is with Civ IV’s more organic system (where all techs are lumped together and inter-related), but it’s sufficiently stimulating.
All of those features aside, it’s a scientific fact that a Star Trek game without massive spaceships exchanging phaser fire, blitzing each other with disruptor volleys and letting loose with full spreads of photon torpedos, is doomed to failure.
Thankfully, BOTF handles war well for a turn based strategy game. There’s a good variety of ships for each side. They can gain experience through battle with the enemy or training at a starbase. And there’s the battle screen – a fairly satisfying tactical mode with a rock/paper/scissors structure – that you can switch to whenever fleets clash, as in the Total War series.
BOTF holds its ground with valiant tenacity against its younger, fresher competitors. Granted, Civ IV is a substantial leap forward in a lot of ways. It’s consistently polished, more user friendly and almost entirely free of bugs. BOTF is hostile to first time players (lacking an equivalent to the Civilopedia) and a tech support fiasco on modern PCs.
But it has a subtle allure about it for a Star Trek fan like myself. The playable powers, though nowhere near as numerous as the civilizations in Civ IV, are far more detailed and distinctive. And minor races – that can either be persuaded to become your vassals or simply conquered – breathe life into the galaxy map and bring new strategic meaning to securing territory.
BOTF 2 is currently in the hands of third party modders, with a number of projects, some shaping up better than others, in varying stages of development. If and when one of these projects reaches completion, I’ll be sure to write about it. But for now, BOTF remains highly recommendable if you’re a Star Trek devotee who wants a change from Civ. Just be prepared for a little troubleshooting and problem solving to get it to work.
✓ It’s Star Trek
✓ Minor races are a great idea
✓ Generally very solid gameplay
✓ Good for a war
✗ Bugged to hell
✗ User unfriendly
82%
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- Chris
