Best Star Trek game of all-time? Or best MOO II clone ever made? I think so, especially with all the mods the fan community has developed over the years. I'm a big fan of the All the Ages Mod which is like an epic crawl throughout each era of Trek history. The Ultimate Dominion Mod is also a great variation on the BOTF theme. I would love to see a proper sequel to this game, or at least a full-on Trek conversion of a more modern 4X game. Anybody else been playing BOTF for 15+ years? Any Trek mods out there for similar games?
Haven't played it in years. I use to play it a lot a few years ago, but not sure now where the disc is for it.
I lost my disc years ago too. You can download the full game and all the mods at this nifty little website. The mods really breathe new life into this ancient piece of software. http://www.armadafleetcommand.com/botf
I noticed that link late last night. Been playing a bit today, instead of STO. Yet to add any mods, but it's fun playing this game again.
I still have all my old Trek game discs even though they're not required anymore thanks to digital distribution. They do hold sentimental value to me, also, they're from a time where they still did actual, beefy manuals, so those are fun to go back to for nostalgia's sake. Great game.
So much potential, but flawed in execution, especially the tech trees. Something civ like would have been great, rather than just linear progression.
The mechanics certainly had their oddities, but I still love the visual aspect of this game. The race-specific guis and music were very nice, and it was quite faithful to canon. I enjoyed it immensely. And yes, I too still have all my old disks. Loved the DS9 artwork on the BotF one, though Starfleet Academy takes the cake with 6 seperate CD's.
I enjoyed playing at as well. A bit buggy at times, especially in large battles where my PC took ages to process the turn! I remember downloading the patch at Uni and havign to disc span across ~22 floppy discs to take home the 20Mb file!!!
I still pay it occasionally. I never used any mods, so I'll try that Should be interesting to rediscover it anew
Has anyone got any tips to avoid going into the red? Or how to get out of it? I seem to be able to build a decent amount of currency - usually up to around 30 - 40K - then I end up having to spend a lot due to wars or random starvations in systems and suddenly I'm making negative 200 a turn and I never seem to recover.
Make sure you set up all your trade routes properly to keep from going into the red. One trade route per planet (you can't have multiple routes to the same planet). Once you've done that, make sure you set up and POWER UP commerce structures like the trade post, to get more cash. After that, either get more planets (or faster population growth) or start raiding trade routes.
BotF is one of those games (alongside the original Sim City) where I was unashamedly cheating my butt off for infinite funds
I never had to cheat in BOTF, although first time I ever played it, I couldn't figure out why I was in negative debt, something about having one solar system and building 12 sovereigns kinda made sense later on. Having said that, quite disappointed to find that if I load up BOTF on my PC these days, I get flickering and constant crashes. I think my video cards are incompatible with the latest multi-installer from the AFC BOTF page, because even UDM doesn't work, pity
I never did that (setting up trade routes is kinda fun, strangely) but I did start myself a few tech levels above my competitors more often than not.
Recently I made a game in a large galaxy where the opponents all had tech level 5, and I had tech level 1, the difficulty was impossible, and I was the Federation. And somehow I still managed to win. Well, not somehow, just proper manipulation of minor races. They sorta break the game. My favorite type of game is a small galaxy, no minors, and everyone starting at tech 1. Well, depending on the race you are. With no minors, the Federation is weaker, and the Cardassians are always weak. As the Klingons, I usually start the cpu at tech 2. Romulans and Ferengi are by far the best or easiest to play in such a game, so those I do the cpu at tech 3. I've been playing it a lot recently. And despite all its bugs and poor AI, it's still fun.