Anyone still play BOTF?

[SilentP]

I liked the option when making planetary assaults of occupied systems about liberating minor races from major empires rather than just conquering them for your own purposes. They usually love you so much for it, they voluntarily join you anyway, PR FTW!

This has probably been fixed by a patch, but did anyone find that cloaked ships couldn't assist in planetary invasions? Made it impossible as Romulans to invade anywhere

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

Yeah you had to arrive, then decloak, end your turn and then you could invade. I found though, that Warbirds are horrible when it comes to planetary bombardment. I preferred using heavy cruisers for that.

 

[Chimpy Chompy]

I played this once, years ago. I found it difficult as the federation - conquering worlds caused rampant unhappiness. But... in 4x games, conquering worlds is what's supposed to happen...

 

[SilentP]

I played this once, years ago. I found it difficult as the federation - conquering worlds caused rampant unhappiness. But... in 4x games, conquering worlds is what's supposed to happen...

When it comes to minor races, you're meant to negotiate with them and convince them to join you. As for major races, that's kind of the Federation's stick about being the nice democratic race. Besides there's always the diplomatic victory, if I remember my victory conditions correctly.

If you're set on conquering worlds as the Federation, you just have to get used to the morale problems, and learn how to manipulate situations for PR value. One tip I remember was to never declare war, but do so much to annoy the Computer powers, that they instead declare war on you and you get a morale bonus from your people's indignation.

 

[nx1701g]

^ Which is what I'd always do.

But I hated it when you'd played for a long time. I once had reached so many turns it took 15 minutes to go to the next one on a then cutting edge processor.

 

[Peter the Younger]

The only problem I had playing the Federation was that it was almost impossible to defeat an enemy empire without having the populace whine and protest. Sure, you could defeat the enemy fleet, but you couldn't invade the planet itself or public opinion would start turn against you. That wouldn't be too bad if you could blockade the planet, but even that wasn't possible; this was especially annoying when you had Romulans building cloaked ships right under your nose, which could then vanish and attack some other system. Sort of reminded me of the old anedcote from the Korean War, when the U.N. told McArthur, "Well, you can blow up half the bridge."

 

[EmperorTiberius]

Yeah you had to arrive, then decloak, end your turn and then you could invade. I found though, that Warbirds are horrible when it comes to planetary bombardment. I preferred using heavy cruisers for that.

You don't have to do that either.

All you have to do is decloak and then select just one warbird. Then add other decloaked ships to this warbird in the redeployment screen. This way, you can attack the same turn as when you arrive.

 

[Kegg]

Evil thread necro! Bwahahaha. I recently reinstalled this and Starfleet Commamnd out of nostalgia, and I'm having a pretty good game as the Ferengi (who were my preferred race because I just like buying things and throwing around a lot of money. For some reason.) I've missed this game and it's aged slightly better then I thought it would have.

I might get that Dominion mod, but eh. It lacks a certain Ferengi quality, you might say.

 

[Lor'Vela]

Awesome game. One of the best Star Trek games I've played and still do. Many thanks to the armadafleetcommand community who have helped improve gameplay by putting in countless hours of research and mod packs.

 

[Biggshow]

Coming up soon on The Ugly Couch Show (www.uglycouchshow.com), I annoy the hell out of the guy that sold me his copy of BOTF. He hates that I still play it (although ST:O may kick it out of its dominant position) so I brought it on just to see his reaction.

I've beat the game on numerous occasions, mostly by futzing with the starting levels at first but then I developed a good all purpose strategy for getting started and have even learned how to handle the Crystalline Entity and the Borg pretty well. One thing for the Borg, get a bunch of cloaked ships, either Romulan or Klingon. I've taken out a cube with two 9-ship fleets of birds-of-prey on a fairly regular basis.

I'm going to have to try this Dominion War Mod now. Who needs to sleep...or work?

 

[CumeX]

Im interested...but im new to this so will need a little help!!

 

[Itisnotlogical]

The idea of an open-ended strategy game with more than two or three factions sounds pretty appealing to me. Might have to try it out

 

[PlainSimpleJoel]

Haven't played BOTF in over a year. Installed it on the laptop, a few weeks after I got it. Don't think it worked. I'm running under Vista.

Also a few months ago I brought Gal Civ 2 (and got the first expansion), but haven't installed any mods. Might play it over the weekend.