Birth of the Federation

Greetings, all. I've got a pair of questions that I was wondering if they've been modded somehow, and / or how easy they would be to create. I tried to search the forums for these answers before posting this, but as can be expected, there's a LOT of information here for a new member to process, and I'm sure that veterans of the board would know these answers off-hand.

The first question would be regarding how the AI races simply don't build certain classes of ships - the K'vort and Defiant come to mind here. I was wondering if there was a simple mod that would allow the AI to build all types of ships, with them possibly even prioritizing the ships that we human players know as good ones. I have no doubt that a couple of the larger race-altering mods do this, but I'd be looking for a fix to the basic game - "vanilla" BotF, just with a slightly smarter AI fleet captain

Secondly, I (like many players, it seems) love the inclusion of the various space creatures that exist with the random events setting turned on, but (again, like many players) can't stand the actual random events themselves, as they are (for the most part) 99% bad with the 1% good being largely worthless. I was wondering if there is a mod that lets these random creatures spawn, but doesn't have the random plagues / comets / red giant explosions that come with random events turned on.

Any leads or ideas regarding these two would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Hi MordainThade,

first of all, basic knowledge of hex-editing is base for any conversation about BotF modding.


@ 1.) see: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=78&p=595&hilit=AI+F ... f69c1#p595 (how it works)

http://www.members.aon.at/zelli/ships.htm (file mechanics)

viewtopic.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1328 -> #2

On this occasion you might test if there are any issues using ship ID X +/-(2+) as upgrade for ship ID X (it's absolutely ridiculous that no-one tested this properly as yet, AFAIK at least).


@ 2.) see: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1493

F3 -> "how to turn off whole groups of events" (ASM addresses must be converted to hex)

Alternatively, see #1.4 to increase divisor for event frequencies, as a rule of a thumb doubling value halves the event frequency.


All links taken from this index: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1284

SCT: Thanks for the links in question; I figured that someone would know what I was talking about, and would be able to point me in the right direction.

Sadly, I've never worked in hex-editing before; my only experience in coding / modding anything came with Supreme Commander and lua files. Creating these modifications myself would likely be extraordinarily painful due to inexperience, but (from what I can tell, given my noobish nature) they seem relatively simple to an advanced coder. I'm gonna have to guess that there are no mods of these natures already out there as well, or you probably would have linked them . However, I've been reading over (and liking) Gowron's BoP mod, which seems to fix the AI's ship building stupidity (after a fashion), and I guess that as I've gotten used to just playing with random events off, I'll just have to live without the various extra creatures to blow up.

On an unrelated note, the link in your sig seems to be broken... and I was looking forward to relaxing tribble sounds, too.

@ SCT wayback when I tested the shiplist by setting ship in order of technology required so scout I, destroyer I ..... Dreadnaught II and did this for each race so upgrades were always more than > +2 (higher ID lower down the list) and can report that i had no problems with upgradeing. However, I never tested > -2 (lower ID higher up the list) upgrades. But I had the impression the only requirement was for upgrades to have hgher ID's than their prequel.