Star Trek: Birth of the Federation
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| Star Trek: Birth of the Federation {{#if:{{{image|}}}|<tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">{{{image|}}} | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Microprose {{#if:{{{publisher|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Publisher(s)<td>{{{publisher|}}} |
| Release date(s) | June, 1999 |
| Genre(s) | Turn-based strategy |
| Mode(s) | Single player, Multiplayer {{#if:{{{ratings|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Rating(s)<td>{{{ratings|}}} |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows {{#if:{{{media|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Media<td>{{{media|}}} |
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. The entire game is set in The Next Generation Universe, with only starships and races from that series and Deep Space Nine included. There are no ships from the original series due to licensing constraints. Although the title of the game is Birth of the Federation, the player can chose from five political entities:
In addition, many minor races such as the Vulcans or Bajorans can be befriended by the player and can eventually become part of their 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 MSN gaming zone no longer supports the game, however it is playable on the Kali II system, downloadable from kali.net.
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 can be given to ships before the turn button is pressed.
The player can build a wide variety of starships for this task ranging from Oberth class starship scouts to colony ships, and Romulan Warbirds.
The game was well received by Trek fans, however it was not without its bugs. A memory leak causing slowdowns later on in the game was the most reported bug. Two patches were released to fix most of these problems. Microprose Birth of the Federation would ultimately be the last game from the stables of Microprose. Soon after the release of the last official patch for the game Hasbro Interactive filed for administration of Microprose, eventually Atari acquired all of the rights of Microprose and support for the old Microprose and Spectrum Holobyte games was transferred to Atari.
Some fans of the game have created modifications but have complained that this has been difficult due to the way the game was made. Currently there is a project in the works to make a sequel to Birth of the Federation, but it might take some time before we will see the release of this , due to the nature of fan-based games.
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.
Community history
The BOTF Community at the time was served by several sites, the two largest of which (both now defunct) were FedCom and TGA.
The time period of 1998 and 1999 could be classed as a swan song of Trek gaming with the loss of the licenses to Activision and the general decline of Trek after 2000.
There is still a fairly active communit located at the Armada Fleet Command website.