By Lakaj
1 July 2003
Authors: Rou'Taran & Alpha
Category: Mod
Year Published: Summer 2001
Available From: TrekReal Website
Score
Style: 5
Substance: 5
Synopsis
"The closest BOTF has ever gotten to Star Trek and takes game balance to a new level."
Many of the ideas in this mod come from DS9 where we first saw fleet action in Star
Trek. This is where we see how ships were distributed in the various fleets. A
handful of large ships that co-ordinate the battle and provide heavy fire support
while large numbers of smaller ships get up close and personal with the enemy.
This is also very similar to what goes on in the real world navy.
I'll try and outline the changes made by Alpha and Rou'Taran. I'll prolly miss a
bunch because there's a lot of "behind the scene" changes they made which improve
game play significantly like Shield recharge rates, hull repair rates, moral
effects of signing and breaking treaties etc.
Lets start with...
The Ships
All the destroyers (smaller ships such as the Miranda class, basically anything
that's a Fast Attack) have had their production and maintenance costs reduced
significantly. This encourages the computer to produce the smaller ships in large
quantity. To offset this, the number of beam weapons has also been reduced and no
destroyer has more than 2 or 3 torpedo tubes. This was the major problem with the
original game and many of the other mods. Battle time was reduced too much because
ships fired too many torpedoes at too few targets. Torpedo accuracy is another
issue that was resolved. At the higher tech levels, you were almost guaranteed
successful hits from torpedoes which did a lot of damage. The overall accuracy of
torpedoes was reduced thus alleviating this problem to a certain extent. So now we
have a few torpedoes with decent accuracy as opposed to lots of torpedoes with
great accuracy. Destroyer class ships also have very limited shielding. This is
because they carry a comparatively weaker warp core. This also resulted in them
being slow in moving across the map. The thing that makes them powerful is their
performance at impulse power. They are fast and maneuverable. This was reflected
in the game by altering their evasive ability making them harder to hit.
So your basic destroyer type ship is cheap to make, cheap to maintain, has light to
average armament, light to average shielding, low warp rating and excellent evasive
ability. On the flip side, you have your cruisers. These ships cost significantly
more than destroyers to build and cost. Around 7 to 10 times as much! But these
ships also carry a huge array of weapons. These ships are pretty much the complete
opposite of destroyers. Expensive, very well armed and shielded, high warp rating,
average evasive ability. Another stat worth mentioning is targeting. Cruisers carry
better computers than destroyers thus they have slightly improved targeting ability.
So while you will be able to build only a few of these ships they will prove to be
indispensable to your fleets. You will need a healthy mix of the two types of ships
in order to be successful.
Another thing I enjoyed was the random events, especially the Borg. Finally we can
have a battle with them that will last more than 2 turns! Borg cubes have an
enormous amount of shielding and hull as well as very high shield recharge and hull
repair rates making them very hard to destroy. But they no longer have hundreds of
weapon ports so you can hang in a firefight longer and actually try out different
tactics instead of Assault and Charge.
The Technology Tree
The different techs are also tied to the ships and the various buildings you can
construction on your home system and colonies. For example, quoted from the
TrekReal boards, "The Defiant Class. It's got one of the biggest guns in the
Federation, so its weapon tech reqs will be high but since it does not have a high
warp rating, its propulsion requirements will not be high. While the intrepid class
has a great propulsion system, high propulsion tech, but the weapon systems are
inferior compared to a nebula class starship so the tech requirements will be low
in that department." Between propulsion level 1 and level 2 you don't see an
increase in warp speed. To differentiate between the two there is a minor increase
in the ships evasive ability to reflect improvement in impulse engines. There's
things like that for basically every tech.
The Major Races
Each major race has its own unique characteristics, strengths and weakness. This is
mainly reflected by how productive the race is in the 5 major buildings each system
can build. Food, Industry, Energy, Intel. and Science. Here's how each race breaks
down.
Food:
1) Ferengi
2) Federation
3) Romulan, Cardassian, Klingon
Industry:
1) Klingon
2) Cardassian
3) Federation, Ferengi, Romulan
Energy:
1) Romulan
2) Federation
3) Klingon, Cardassian, Ferengi
Intel:
1) Cardassian
2) Romulan
3) Federation, Ferengi, Klingon
Science:
1) Federation
2) Romulan
3) Klingon, Cardassian, Ferengi
In the original, there were 5 different values for each category, thus you had a
strongest race in one category and a weakest in another. This is a very big reason
why you rarely saw the Cardassians become a power under computer control if the you
played a level 1 game. Since they had the weakest science they could NEVER keep up
with anyone thus always get eliminated. By making the last 3 have virtually the
same output at the same tech level, all the races are able to compete with each
other. This fixed a major game play issue.
Other characteristics include ship and morale:
Ship characteristics
Federation ships have the best shields and very good accuracy.
Klingon ships have the best beam weapons and have the best evasive abilities but
come with weak hulls and slightly below average accuracy.
Romulan ships have the strongest torpedoes, good beam accuracy but very weak hulls.
Cardassian ship have the strongest hulls and excellent beam weapons but come with
weak shielding and overall lower warp rating.
The Ferengi are pretty much average on everything.
Moral characteristics
Federation: People hate going to war and absolutely will not tolerate breaking
treaties. But once war is declared, they will go along with it. Conquering planets
does not give you a moral bonus but it does not reduce it either.
Klingon: As long as you don't break any treaties, or reduce the number of enemies
to fight by signing treaties, your people will get a moral bonus from anything you do.
Romulans: They like peace and to be left alone. They don't like breaking treaties
and take a moral hit but if they are on the winning side they will gain enough
bonus to make up for it.
Cardassians: They too like peace but breaking treaties is pretty much acceptable.
There are no moral penalties when you break treaties.
Structures
Each race has its own unique structures, including the minor races. There are a few
new minors in the game that have featured prominently in the TV shows with their
own unique building and in a few cases their own ship class. As stated in the
previous section, each major race has strengths and weaknesses in the 5 major
types. The difference between the best and worst is not as polarized as it was in
the original but enough to ensure that each race has a minor advantage over the
others in the relevant department. There are also a few new structures that can be
built only on subjugated planets which improve moral. This was done primarily to
encourage players to play more aggressive. Upgrading structures is also made easier.
In the original it would take you a very long time to upgrade to a higher level
once the tech was discovered making new colonies virtually useless until very late
into the game. Cheaper upgrades help speed up the game and keep the gamer in the
thick of things because if he/she does not pay attention to the colonies, they can
get into a lot of trouble.
Conclusion
There is still a lot more balancing stuff that Rou'Taran had talked about on the
Trek Real message boards but I didn't know where the values were so I couldn't see
exactly what he had done. Also Alpha had mentioned many times that all the stats
were part of a formula the two of them developed to keep each race/ship distinct
yet maintain balance between them. Every stat in the mod is related to the others
in one way or the other. The game was designed with a Tech Level 1 start in mind
but it works just as good if you are looking for a quick Tech Level 5 game. This
is one of the things that makes this mod much better than then rest. No matter
which tech level you choose to play, the mod is playable.
I think that this is the best BOTF mod to date simply because it improves the game
play by about a 100 times. For example, Klingon Scout II's and K'Vort class
cruisers will no longer win the game regardless of what the enemy does. You will
have to actually think about where and when to attack. You actually have a
realistic chance of winning the game when you play against your friends with the
Romulans or Cardassians on a level 1 start. In the original, it was either the
Federation (ONLY if they get a good start) or Klingons.
The only thing lacking in this mod are the 3D models. I wish someone would take
this mod and put 3D models into them but that is no where nearly as important as
making the game playable. I would have quit BOTF a long time ago if it wasn't for
the game play fixes Trek Real implemented into the game.
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