Birth of the Federation Info
Microprose says farewell...literally...
In 1999 Microprose were starting to suffer from financial problems. The only
lucrative game license they still held was the TNG license for Star Trek, so
they released a game that is still fondly remembered by a lot of Star Trek
gamers...Birth of the Federation.
Microprose were infamous in there early times as excellent sim game makers,
BOTF took on the sim scene as you tried to build up your empire from the ground
up...
Birth of the Federation allows players to take the role of one the five major
races in the game: Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Ferengi, and Cardassian. Each
of the races has their own ships, technologies, advantages, and playing styles.
The roles fall pretty much in line with the Next Generation series. For
instance, the Federation are explorers and the Klingons are honourable warriors.
The primary galactic map is where you'll spend most of your time expanding
and exploring the boundaries of your empire. This map is somewhat reminiscent of
MOO but uses a boxed grid structure. As your ships move into a new-boxed grid it
will become revealed and depending on the strength of your sensors adjacent
boxed stars/areas will also become visible. One of the good features in the game
is the way territories are clearly marked by colour shading as to which major
race is claiming that chunk of space real estate.
The management of your empire is somewhat more streamlined than MOO, as you
only need to manage the system not each of the planets in the system. Each
system produces energy, food, industry, credits, intelligence, research, morale,
population and possibly dilithium (which is used for starship construction). The
solar system window is where you'll be doing most of your system management
including building structures/ships and assigning the population of your system
to the tasks of farming, industry, energy production, intelligence operations,
and research. This is also where you will manage the distribution of energy
among the structures that require power to be activated.
The flip side to diplomacy is espionage. Here, the total amount of
intelligence points empire-wide is allocated to the shady side of running an
empire. Points can be allocated to total internal security (defence) or divided
up in any portion among the four races in either espionage or sabotage. Several
sub-categories can be chosen from, such as general, military, and economy. The
total number of points allocated to a particular task determines how often the
player will receive updates on the other race's activities or even be given the
opportunity to do a little wrench-throwing.
There are other aspects to the game such as setting up trade routes, which
are only available among friendly races who are not members of your
empire/federation. The amount of trade is determined automatically by the sizes
of the two systems trading. Additional trade routes become available to a system
once it reaches a certain size. Of course, to even trade in the first place
requires the system be a minimum size. Trade is important because credits (cash)
can be used to buy production early (very useful especially in the early game)
and to win favour with other races.
Don't let the warnings and criticisms fool you, the first week or so of
playing Birth of the Federation is as addictive and compelling a game experience
as I've had in eons. Too bad it falls apart from there.
The game though was criticised for the bugs that were inherent, especially
after the turn 120 slow down...just after a patch was released Microprose went
bust and was taken over by Hasbro interactive...this game was Microprose swans
song, but what a way to go...
Birth of the federation cheats
Start the game with a command line with "-Mudd" ("M" is capitalized).
F9 - adds 100% to Overall Research
F10 - gives 10,000 Credits
F11 - reveal Map on/off
To view in-game event screens start the game from a command line with the
following parameter:
-bones - view slides that appear when you form an alliance.
-gorn - view slides that appear when you lose the game.
-kirk - view slides that appear when you destroy a planet.
-picard - view slides that appear when you dominate the galaxy.
For more details....
Birth of the Federation is a VERY old game. With the demise of MicroProse the
official site went down with them.
There are VERY few complete BOTF sites left, this site is now the last site
with the info, files and clans listed for the place and now online play is
impossible with the closure of the BOTF lobby.
Write up by Nikki Venra 29/10/2002
Updated 11/12/2003 - Updated 12/10/2005
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