Star Trek: Birth of the Federation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Star Trek: Birth of the Federation
Image:ST-birth.jpg
Developer(s) Microprose
Publisher(s) Hasbro
Version 1.02
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows
Release date June, 1999
Genre(s) Turn-based strategy
Mode(s) Single player, Multiplayer
Rating(s) ESRB: Everyone (E)
Media CD-ROM
System requirements Pentium 133 or equivalent, 16 MB of memory, 2 MB PCI graphics card, 4X CD-ROM drive, DirectX version 6.0

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.

Contents

[edit] Gameplay

The similarities to Microprose's earlier title Master of Orion become easily noticeable when playing the game for the first time: "Anyone who has played Master of Orion will find Birth of the Federation very familiar."[1].

The entire game is set in The Next Generation era, 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: 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 race 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 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, are given to ships before the turn button is pressed.

The player can build a variety of starships for this task ranging from Oberth class starship scouts to colony ships, and Romulan Warbirds. Cloaking Represents a huge advantage in the game, and cloaking fleets can easily put the outcome of a battle beyond doubt with their strike on the first turn. The non-cloaking races are given powerful fast attack vessels like the Federation Defiant Heavy Escort for example. If set to "evade", these ships can dodge fire and wipe out a large fleet.

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.

At first the BOTF development team was instructed only to use material from the TV show; in fact, early beta screenshots exist showing the Galaxy class in place of the Sovereign class and no Defiant class. The Galaxy class was subsequently demoted to a command cruiser, a category of ship in the game that is unique to the Federation race. The official Web site for BOTF had Macromedia Flash profiles of all the races' top command ships and the Galaxy class featured there instead of the Sovereign class.

Due to the license constraints on material from the ST:TNG TV series and films, 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] Reviews

The few still remaining reviews on greater review sites about this rather old game mostly agree on this general judgement about the game by GameSpot back 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."[2]

[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 Web site is now the main server of the BOTF Community, and is (as of 2006) still fairly active, even though it is eight years since the game was originally released. Several modifications for the game have been released by this Community, as well as tools to make it easier for others to mod their own games.

In early 2006, a member of the BOTF2 forums released a game which initially started as a college project. Due to interest in this game, he is now actively rewriting the code and converting it into a BOTF style game, entitled Star Trek: Supremacy. A working demo can be found on the BOTF2 website.

A second game, called Birth of the Empires, is being developed by a German team and has its English developer and feedback forums hosted at the same site as above. It has now reached its fourth pre-alpha stage, having implemented a working AI, automatic ship and troop combat system, diplomacy, intel and four different playable races with multiplayer functionality. More information, screenshots, links to forums and a detailed wiki are available at the BOTF2 Microsoft Sharepoint site. Due to Star Trek IP concerns, the final release version of Birth of the Empires will not be officially Trek-contented but featuring an original content outside Star Trek or any other copyrighted intellectual property, i.e. a free Trek-mod - most likely be hosted by third-person community members from the BOTF2 forums - will represent the spiritually intended BOTF sequel.

[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 an 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] References

  1. ^ Star Trek: Birth of the Federation Review. Elliott Chin. GameSpot. Retrieved on 2007-12-09.
  2. ^ Star Trek: Birth of the Federation Review. Elliott Chin. GameSpot. Retrieved on 2007-12-09.

[edit] External links