Birth of the Federation discussion

[Martok]

(Rather than further derail W8taminute's StarDrive thread, I figured it would probably be better to simply split off BOTF onto its own thread.) 

To date, only Birth of the Federation has had good alien races.

Wasn't there some freeware re-release of it?  Or was that just a mod?

I tried playing that again, within the last few years, but the damnable memory leaks just buggged the piss out of me.  I always got sick of having to restart all the time whenever the game started slowing down and responsive got sluggish.  Didn't seem to take very long each time I started playing, either.. just a couple minutes.   >:(  Ragequit! 

I think it was more pronounced with newer hardware and OSes than the older stuff, too.  It worked better on Win98 long ago in the far far away.  If some mod or rebuilt version of BotF has pretty much eliminated this issue, then it's on! 

I actually had a couple little 4-player LAN games of BotF back in '99.  They were a lot of fun.  The long string of nasty obscenities one of my buddies flung at me, after I annihilated his whole Ferengi war fleet, still makes me smile.  ;D  One of those LAN games froze up near the end, however.  The game was notoriously buggy in multiplayer, IIRC.  I really want to play this again if it works better than last time I tried.

If you've not already done so, Nefaro, you may want to try downloading & installing the "Multi-installer" version of BOTF (you can get it here). 

In addition to allowing you to install multiple mods (without having to reinstall the base game every time), the Multi-installer version also incorporates several user-created patches (courtesy of the game's small but hard-working modding community) that reduce some of the game's technical glitches and improve stability, including for MP.  It still doesn't fix the major problems unfortunately -- you'll still suffer occasional crashes and that damnable turn lag -- but it does seem to mitigate them somewhat.  In any case, BOTF players (including the handful who still do MP) generally agree the game is a noticeably better experience with the Multi-installer version. 


That being said, the modding community is working on a few different projects (one of which is already being beta-tested) that should significantly enhance -- and perhaps even revolutionize -- this flawed (but still fun!) 4x game.  I won't say much about them for now, however, if only because I don't want to raise expectations (including my own) -- that, plus it's going to easily be at least a year (probably longer) before most of these projects begin to bear fruit, so unfortunately we're likely to be waiting a good long while yet. 

[Martok]

The new Birth of the Federation.. is this the place you get it? >

http://www.armadafleetcommand.com/botf/

Yes.  Sort of. 

It's not "new" per se.  However, as I mentioned in my previous post, it's been -- spruced up, I guess you could say? -- a bit in the last few years. 

[Nefaro]

The new Birth of the Federation.. is this the place you get it? >

http://www.armadafleetcommand.com/botf/

Yes.  Sort of. 

It's not "new" per se.  However, as I mentioned in my previous post, it's been -- spruced up, I guess you could say? -- a bit in the last few years.

Ahh!  Thanks for the info.

I'll have to register at that site and get the latest one, then.

[Martok]

I also strongly recommend picking up one or more of the mods as well, particularly if you're wanting to get back into LAN/MP action at all, as most of the mods balance out the game better than the vanilla version. 


While you probably know my personal favorite is the Balance of Power (BOP) mod, there's at least a few others worth mentioning:  Easily the most popular one is the Ultimate Dominion Mod III (UDM3), probably because of the improved ship graphics and larger fleets (which together allow for some truly stunning -- if occasionally laggy -- battles). 

The other prominent mods are:

All the Ages mod (AAM)
Uncivil Wars mod (UCW)
Ultimate Mod IV (UM4)
Error Correction mod  (This one is essentially a large "patch" that fixes/addresses various gameplay issues.) 
Galaxies mod  (This last one is still in beta, but it's quite playable and pretty fun; it's just not balanced for MP yet.) 


Happily, all the mods I just listed have a version compatible with the Multi-installer. 

[LongBlade]

Do you need the original game? Where can I get it?

[W8taminute]

Posting here for future quick reference.



I will say that Birth of the Federation, together with Star Wars Rebellion, sparked my interest in space 4X games.  These two gems are my personal benchmarks for the genre. 

[solops]

Do you need the original game? Where can I get it?

I'd like to know, too. I cannot find it on GOG.

[Nefaro]

Do you need the original game? Where can I get it?

I'd like to know, too. I cannot find it on GOG.

I think the link above is for the full installer that has some user fixes and mod swapper or something in it too.

[Martok]

Do you need the original game? Where can I get it?

I'd like to know, too. I cannot find it on GOG.

Link


A quick word of warning:  Some folks have had issues running BOTF on Windows 7 (although I myself and a couple of my friends have had no problem running the game on our machines), and it appears Windows 8 has a difficult time running it at all.  There are solutions & workarounds, however (including that project that's currently being beta-tested). 

Posting here for future quick reference.



I will say that Birth of the Federation, together with Star Wars Rebellion, sparked my interest in space 4X games.  These two gems are my personal benchmarks for the genre. 

Birth of the Federation was the game that got me into space strategy titles as well.  (My love affair with the genre was cemented a year later with Imperium Galactica II: Alliances.)  As a huge fan of both Star Trek and grand strategy games, BOTF became an instant classic for me -- to say nothing of a years-long addiction! 

Do you need the original game? Where can I get it?

I'd like to know, too. I cannot find it on GOG.

I think the link above is for the full installer that has some user fixes and mod swapper or something in it too.

Correct.  It installs not just the base game with additional user-created patches (one of them in particular makes the game run better on modern PC's), but also allows you to install multiple mods parallel to each other.  It's a pretty neat program. 

[Nefaro]

A quick word of warning:  Some folks have had issues running BOTF on Windows 7 (although I myself and one of my friends have had no problem running the game on our machine), and it appears Windows 8 has a difficult time running it at all.  There are solutions & workarounds, however (including that project that's currently being beta-tested). 

I certainly can't run BOTF on my Win7.  The menu flickers and flashes dark, doesn't show some gfx, etc. 

Is that Direct 3D installation option the one you were referring to as being in beta??

[LongBlade]

Thanks, Martok. I downloaded and installed it. It appears to work fine on my Win 8 machine. It's just that now I don't know what I'm doing.

[Darkspire]

Thanks, Martok. I downloaded and installed it. It appears to work fine on my Win 8 machine. It's just that now I don't know what I'm doing.

This might help  :)

http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.4712

Darkspire

[bbmike]

A quick word of warning:  Some folks have had issues running BOTF on Windows 7 (although I myself and one of my friends have had no problem running the game on our machine), and it appears Windows 8 has a difficult time running it at all.  There are solutions & workarounds, however (including that project that's currently being beta-tested). 

I certainly can't run BOTF on my Win7.  The menu flickers and flashes dark, doesn't show some gfx, etc. 

Is that Direct 3D installation option the one you were referring to as being in beta??

Make sure you run it in Comparability Mode (I think Windows 98) and run as Administrator. Also, in your botf.ini make sure you set 3D=DIRECT3D

[Martok]

Is that Direct 3D installation option the one you were referring to as being in beta??

No, although apparently it's helped some folks get BOTF to run. 

What I was referring to is Flocke's MPR++ project.  It's already allowed a number of people to run the game in both Win7 and Win8 (when they couldn't get the game to run before), so you may want to check it out.  If you post in the thread that you're interested in trying it out, Flock (the project's creator) or Thunderchero (site admin) will probably send you a download link for it. 

Thanks, Martok. I downloaded and installed it. It appears to work fine on my Win 8 machine. It's just that now I don't know what I'm doing.

Heh, welcome to my world.  ;) 


If you wish to read/skim the manual at all, just click the link provided by Darkspire.  (By the way, muchas gracias!)  Some of it's helpful -- more so the earlier parts -- some of it not.  (One of the areas where the game tends to dinged is mediocre documentation.) 


In general, though, you use the right mouse button a lot in BOTF:  Doing so brings up the "marker window", which contains the buttons to access (among other things) your research, diplomacy, and intel screens.  You obviously still spend a lot of time on the main galactic map as well, but the right mouse button is what the player mainly uses to switch back & forth between the various different screens. 


A few suggestions regarding setup options for your first couple games (in no particular order): 

1.)  Set Random Events to off.
2.)  Set the difficulty no higher than Normal.  (Otherwise the AI is absurdly aggressive.) 
3.)  Choose either the Spiral or Elliptical galaxy map. 
4.)  Choose the Large map size (if you're playing vanilla BOTF), as this will give you a little space to dink around in before you run into the other four major powers. 


Anything else you wanna know, I'm more than happy to ramble spout off help.  ;) 

A quick word of warning:  Some folks have had issues running BOTF on Windows 7 (although I myself and one of my friends have had no problem running the game on our machine), and it appears Windows 8 has a difficult time running it at all.  There are solutions & workarounds, however (including that project that's currently being beta-tested). 

I certainly can't run BOTF on my Win7.  The menu flickers and flashes dark, doesn't show some gfx, etc. 

Is that Direct 3D installation option the one you were referring to as being in beta??

Make sure you run it in Comparability Mode (I think Windows 98) and run as Administrator. Also, in your botf.ini make sure you set 3D=DIRECT3D

A couple very good tips there.  Thanks bbmike! 

[bbmike]

Birth of the Federation was the game that got me into space strategy titles as well.  (My love affair with the genre was cemented a year later with Imperium Galactica II: Alliances.)  As a huge fan of both Star Trek and grand strategy games, BOTF became an instant classic for me -- to say nothing of a years-long addiction! 

I never played Imperium Galactica II. At that time I refused anything that had RTS in the description. I guess I kinda still do.  ::)