I’ve been working on something else since the last UM release. In fact, Ultimate Mod has probably reached its final form. My energies have been focused on this new project, and it’s not a mod.
Way back when (circa 2001), I was involved with the first fan-made BOTF sequel attempt: Universal Evolution. That dissolved before it amounted to very much. Various other projects came along. None got off the ground until 'BOTF 2' under Mike Strobel, which ultimately became Supremacy. I was also involved with that in the beginning. I accumulated a large database of material that became the game’s structural and architectural blueprint, containing hundreds of files, images, lists, charts, tables, voice scripts and so on. Mike eventually dropped out. The game took a different direction. I wished Supremacy all the best and went my own way. For many years, that database sat gathering dust on my hard drive.
Until the beginning of this year. I decided to tackle what I didn’t have the nerve – or the time – to tackle before. Make a sequel to BOTF the way I always envisioned it, and using my old blueprint.
I’m calling it Rebirth of the Federation.
I believe that BoTE once went by that name, but it's fair use now and I’m sticking with it.
"Rebirth" here implies a certain context:
a renaissance; a revival
a second or new birth; reincarnation
That's exactly what this new game is. A spiritual successor to the original.
This is a "Unity 6 URP" project written in C#. Coding not being my strong suit it’s being assisted by Claude – which is just a tool, same as Unity, the engine I'm using, is just a tool. An invaluable tool to be sure. But the game is my own. My own design, my own creation. This is not 'just another BOTF clone'. It aims to look, feel, and play like BOTF, sure, but with lots of new features, and I think, improvements, including (I hope) things never seen before.
I’m still in the development phase, so there is no demo to try just yet. This will probably launch initially as an Alpha to a group of volunteer testers. 3D ship combat will ship with that Alpha. I’m aiming for end ’26, early ’27 for that release.
The design, structure, and current state of the game:
Galaxy & Map
• Square-based tilemap for the galaxy grid, with full pan/zoom navigation (in 4 zoom steps)
• Supports up to twelve planets per system, and eleven planet classes in five sizes (excluding Gas Giants)
• Three map sizes: Large (64x32), Medium (44x22), Small (32×16)
• Various map configuration options, including starting spawn location (choose from six quadrants) for your chosen empire, or randomize, and custom seeds for reproducible/shareable maps
• Fog of War system that mirrors BOTF, plus neutral zones / contested territory
• Right-click context menu fully interactive (art-asset borrowed from UDM with Thunder’s permission)
• Each map spawns special star systems called Bounty Systems, which contain high max populations and abundant resources. They are rare - spawning once in fifty systems. AI will war over these (and so will you).
• A dynamic game-resource library entailing multiple types. Resources are used for ship building. In BOTF, ship production was limited to how many Dilithium sources you had. To build four ships in four systems simultaneously you required +4 Dilithium empire wide. In ROTF, Dilithium Refineries, built in systems where Dilithium is present, now return 1 Dilithium per turn to an accumulating Empire Stockpile. Further ship-building resources include Deuterium, Titanium, Tritanium, Duranium and Duratanium (all Trek canon materials), the latter being required for advanced, late game ship types. Amount required per ship build scales with Tech (e.g. a Cruiser IV requires more materials than a Cruiser I)
• Astronomical anomalies in place – not yet fully functional though. They include black holes, pulsars, nebulas, spatial distortions, omega-particle clouds etc (there are many more than BOTF). Anomaly objects (when system complete) will have a distinct purpose beyond casting passive damage. In BOTF, you had science vessels performing map exploration. A new ship-type: SCOUTS perform this task in ROTF. Science Vessels are distinctly separate. You deploy them to investigate these procedurally generated anomalies. Some objects are static (e.g. black holes), others appear/disappear and can move around. Arrive in a sector with an anomaly. Select ‘Scan’ from the Ship orders menu to scan it. The scan can take multiple turns. Duration is based on the complexity and rarity of the object type. Objects types also scale with your Tech progression (the more basic objects appear earlier in the game). Once the Scan is complete, earn Research Points from the gathered data. Rarer objects return more points. Objects of the same type can only be scanned once. Any ship type can Scan an anomaly, but ‘Scan Strength' is controlled by a modifier. Anomaly scanning works best with Science Vessels (specialist) and Command ships. Using other ship-types (Strike Cruisers, Destroyers, etc) to Scan objects will return fewer research points.
Large Map (64x32) with FogOfWar turned off
Right-click pie wheel
Colony & Empire Management
• Full player-facing Colony Screen layout (as per BOTF) with dynamic scrollable Ship List. (Left panel in screenshot below) has interactive menu with shuffle filters. Sort by System name (A to Z), Morale (high/low), Shipyard (present/absent), and Industry (high/low).
• Tooltip readouts for colony resources: morale, credits, food, industry, energy, research, and intelligence output.
• Each colony has two separate, independently-managed build queues for structures and for ships (for the Ship Build Queue a shipyard must be present and powered)
• Structure system as per BOTF with tiered upgrade chains, unlocked by tech progression, and "One Per System" special structures (Trade Centers, Shipyards, and other unique empire buildings) with their own bonus effects
• Dynamic population growth and decline based on food output, morale, and empire-specific growth rates. Further, Growth Rate can now be manipulated/boosted with certain special structures (but only on certain planet types)
• Morale system with tiered thresholds, containing a full library of empire-wide morale event definitions (colonization, combat, diplomacy, disasters – (partially complete as Diplomacy system still in development)
• Colonization and terraforming flow via dedicated Colony Ships, including planet habitability and terraform-cost calculations
• Outpost/Starbase station system - stations built by Transport ships over multiple turns
Tech & Research
• Nine-field Tech Tree (Biotech, Computers, Construction, Energy, Propulsion, Weapons, Sociology, Economics, Planetary Science), each with its own images, descriptions, levelling thresholds and research-point accumulation
• Research screen with allocation sliders in each field, works same as BOTF
• Structure and ship unlocks gated by tech-field requirements, integrated with Structure/Ship database. Includes interactable 3D Ship viewer.
Ships & Fleet
• Taskforce-based fleet management as per BOTF. Unified orders system (Attack, Engage, Colonize, Build Outpost, Terraform, Scrap, etc.) via orders panel that dynamically caters to relevant ship type (e.g. Transports don’t see ‘Terraform’).
• Taskforce size capped at 24 ships
• Ship movement via pathfinding with a visual route/movement-order system (currently bugged on Large map, working on it)
• Taskforce Info Panel, where you can inspect the breakdown of a selected Taskforce’s strength
• Federation have 32 Ship models in game. Rendering smoothly in the Ship Viewer (Tech screen). Outpost and Starbase models also added. The Taskforce Context panel renders a 3D preview of any station that is clicked: Cardassian, Klingon, and Romulan (as well as Federation - your own). Outposts and Starbases are the only AI Empire models in game currently.
• Flagship creation and designation. Flagship status grants the chosen ship with bonuses in several tactical areas. A further bonus is applied taskforce-wide when your Flagship is a member of a taskforce. Certain ship-types make better flagships than others, so choose wisely! Flagship losses also incur morale penalties.
• Full ship roster with per-ship state: hull, shields, crew XP, scan power, current orders, and station-specific fields (station number, pending scrap). Viewable/trackable on a dedicated Ship Info Screen (not built yet) – every ship you’ve ever built, where they’re located, what they’re doing, every stat and particular, it also lists lost ships (and how and where they were lost).
Diplomacy (Work in progress)
• First Contact / awareness system in place. Empires you haven’t met render as "Unknown" until contact is made. Race-specific portraits, dialogue boxes and voice lines complete. For now, this only supports Empires, not Minor races.
• Minor Races total 72. There are two types of Minor Races. Minor Race Type A (20), and Minor Race Type B (52). Type A’s are the more valuable type (e.g. Vulcans, Bajorans, Ferengi, Breen etc), they often have ships (1-3), powerful structures (2-5 kinds) and strong system bonuses. Type B’s are more common and less powerful (Baku, Chalnoth, Ktarians etc), they may have at most 1 ship type (or no ships), and sometimes only 1 special structure.
• Befriending a Minor Race will not be achieved by simply throwing bribes at it, but by Trade Treaties. This replaces the old Friendship → Affiliation → Membership proposal system from BOTF -- and Trade Routes, in a single stroke. Trade Routes are now "Trade Treaties", and they are set on the Diplomacy panel. Different Trade Treaties net different results. Different items you choose to trade with also have different results. When you propose a Trade Agreement to a Minor, you’re presented with a dropdown list of items - resources from your empire stockpile (Dilithium, Titanium, etc), Food (from empire surplus), and Research Tech arranged by field. These you can offer to Minor Races to increase their sympathy rating towards you. When you offer Research, points are deducted from your GRP pool. Success-rate is determined by the value/desirability of the offered goods. The best choice of wares to offer a Minor Race can be inferred by the Race type and the Race description/stats. Their planetary system itself could hold a clue (example: do they have ships? If yes, do they have dilithium in their system? If you no, do you have dilithium in your stockpile to spare? How grateful will they be if you stock them with dilithium for twenty turns?) It will require you to think, plan, and strategize. This is the general diplomacy system for ROTF, and it’s still being fleshed out. Eventually it will support an active, live, and completely dynamic galaxy-wide Economy system.
The AI
• This may be controversial: ROTF has four Empires only. Federation, Cardassians, Klingons, and Romulans. Dominion and Ferengi are omitted (Ferengi still feature, but as a Minor). This was an early design choice: confine game to the Alpha/Beta Quadrants. It was also in my mind that building a game around four empires was clearly easier to accomplish than five.
• For now and for quite some time moving forward the only playable Empire is the Federation. Cardassians, Klingons, and Romulans will be playable by the time the Beta comes along.
• AI colony management is in place. Dynamic structure-build prioritization adapts to colony size, role (Industrial/Balanced/Research/Intel), and Ship Production quotas.
• AI expansion logic in place. Colony ships, scouts, and transports each running independent turn-by-turn decision loops for exploration, settlement, and station placement
• AI station building and upgrading. Supports detection of rival territory for strategic station location
• AI economy fully modeled - credits, morale, and resource stockpiles (Dilithium, Deuterium, Titanium, Tritanium, Duranium, Duratanium) simulated per empire, using the same core formulas as the player's own economy
• Adjustable game Difficulty on game config screen. This setting scales AI build costs, industry requirements, resource generation and more.
Save/Load
• Full game state serialization to JSON.
• Saving a game works differently to BOTF. To save a game in BOTF, you exited the game and entered the Save Screen. There, you clicked an empty slot to save the game. In ROTF, you simply right-click the main galaxy screen to call the pie wheel context menu. Click the center of the wheel and the Save Game dialogue box opens. Several fields are already included in the save name but you can over-write with your own description. Loading a game happens on the Load Screen (similar to BOTF). Each entry slot has an icon that when clicked calls a stats panel. The panel contains a metadata preview of that save game (turn number, credits, colony/ship counts, galaxy settings etc. )
Game Config Screen
Empire Select (only Federation playable for now)
Save a game
Load a game - with game stats preview
UI/Sound
• The UI is vaguely neutral on purpose (having gentle reminders of BOTF/LCARS). I designed it this way to make it easily reconfigurable for the other Empires when the time comes. In other words, I would simply recolour it rather than creating 3 new UIs from scratch.
• Game has no music yet. Unsure how to proceed on creating that music (i'm not a musician) beyond using AI tools, but I haven't investigated this yet. I may just re-use the legacy BOTF soundtrack. I have however created an original voice track (with AI) for various game events. The voices are spectacular (the Klingons are hilarious). That list of game events continues to grow.
Latest update / what I’ve been working on lately.
I've overcome many bugs and problems and design hurdles, but many more remain. Specifically with regards to the AI, which has proven very challenging. But I have recently completed:
AI expansion system, built as a static class (no bootstrap), all structures and ship build decisions are fully dynamic.
AI Ships
Fleet targets per agenda, per Empire (different for each empire personality). There are Six agenda phases:
Expansion → default from turn 1
Consolidation → owned systems >= 6 and no immediate military threat
Cold War → any rival empire military strength equal of ours
Defensive War → at war, any rival empire military strength > 130% of ours
Offensive War → at war, any rival empire military strength < 90% of ours
No Hope → at war, on the ropes, any rival empire military strength > 200% of ours
In very basic terms when a ship queue slot opens:
1. Evaluate current agenda
2. For each ship category in priority order:
- Count existing ships of that category (owned + under construction)
- Compare against fleet target for current agenda
- If below target AND tech unlocked AND can afford materials → queue it
3. If nothing needed → idle (no ship queued)
Priority order within Expansion agenda:
Colony Ship > Scout > Transport > Science > Destroyer
Priority order within War agenda:
Cruiser > Destroyer > Capital > Transport > Scout
Utility ships are need-driven regardless of agenda. Warships just escalate in tier as agenda escalates.
Shipyard Improvements:
Dynamic structure upgrading, including shipyards to accommodate superior ship types, i.e. for Klingons: Basic Shipyard (all Empires share this structure at Tech 0) →to Imperial Shipyard Mk I →Imperial Shipyard Mk II. etc). First upgrade fires when colony has 50 energy surplus // Ensures system extraction structures are in place (e.g Deuterium Plant, Dilithium Refinery etc, are queued/built as soon as available, and fully powered). All ship builds also correctly deduct materials from Empire stockpile. AI follows and obeys upgrade chain. Added Guard prevents AI from building obsolete ships/structures.
Empire AI fully wired with:
colony data, worker/labour assignment (by priority), energy consuming structures, build queue, growth, Trade Goods (default structure), and dynamic decision-making as pertains to colony function, based on colony properties. This includes system resources/bonuses (if present). AI makes intelligent use of these. Decision making also accommodates colonization behaviour -- valuable systems (e.g Bounty Systems) are colonized as a priority. A 'priority' system also includes key location (strategic); if it meets population ceiling (300+) = designate as ship-building system. War-footing scenarios are considered (AI agenda-phase is tied to relationships with other empires), plus many more.
Stations (Player and AI):
Each Empire has six station types. System is similar to BOTF: built with Transports. Upgrade chain: Outpost I → II → III → Starbase I → II → III.
• Each completed station claims sector + 8 surrounding sectors for owning empire
• Acts as ship range extension
• Combat capable with offence/defence stats
• Map icons added for all empires
• Icons added to TaskForce View panel when sector selected (that contains a station)
• Selected Station displays in TaskForce context panel (covers planet strip) when selected. Rotating 3D model added to Station preview + upgrade requirements, tactical stats, and scrap function.
Ignore Scrap/Upgrade dialogue for an AI station (bug) - this should be player-facing only
Sensor system completed
• uses additive stacking (mirrors BOTF, using sensor strength from structures and ships), real-time sector mouse-hover readout in Red/Yellow/Green at top of UI, clears on mouse leave // runs twice per turn (before AI decisions, after movement). A couple of bugs remain that need ironing out.
AI Research system completed
• Compound 10% free RP bonus added to mirror player
• correctly advances tech fields
• Worker assignment fills research structures first during early phases - although that's the goal. Unfortunately, this is still bugged, I haven't tracked the source just yet - AI food/factory preference is still too strongly weighted. This has been extremely difficult to get right, I've gone through multiple iterations. I started with a pre-authored bootstrap sequence to control colony expansion/base structures, but this proved impossible to balance because every star system is different - different bonuses, different planet types, and most of all, different populations. It also had to weigh food/energy deficit protection; these needed their own routines. In the end,I created such a code spaghetti nightmare that I had to abandon the whole system and start again with a tier system:
Tier 1: Survival (energy/food deficit)
Tier 2: Core Needs (food/industry)
Tier 3: Upgrades (catch-all for ALL upgrade chains including shipyard)
Tier 4: New Colony Shipyard (if pop criteria met)
Tier 5: Resource Extraction (Dilithium Refinery, Titanium Mine, Deuterium Plant - intially)
Tier 6: Strategic overflow (research/intel)
Tier 7: Mature/specialist
It is working much better now, but it's still pretty sketchy. Example: system has high food bonus, so colony has excess food, but AI overmans the farms anyway due to food deficit over-sensitivity, producing shortages elsewhere. In other cases, it will produce an absolute power house system, with huge industry due to large resources and high population -- and complete duds at the same time due to low populations; it doesn't know what to do with these, and often these systems starve. I'm working on it!
Fog of War
I went through three different systems to represent fog of war. I started with procedural animated fog that shifts across the screen. I got it working correctly, but couldn't get it looking good.
Attempt 1
Attempt 2
In the end, I switched to the BOTF system of using a second tilemap with its own texture layered on top of the galaxy map. I discovered limitations with this system too, which does stifle image quality at higher zoom levels, but I decided to live with it.
Created First Contact pathing. When Empire ships encounter each other on the map they now become aware of each other. This is the very first slice of the burgeoning Diplomacy system. Contact state is tracked by a persistent per-empire boolean condition. "Unknown Ship" and "Unknown Station" code and icons have also been added for pre-contact map interactions.
AI agenda phases begin after contact is made. Dynamic building choices also fire via frontier detection, e.g. an Empire may build a station on the edge of a rival's territory as a strategic defence asset. Respecting rival sector claims is half done (no building a station in another empire's territory).
I've just recently added Neutral Zones (contested sectors) to this flow. It's currently bugged, see screenshot of a Federation station successfully built in a neutral zone. Again, I'm working on it!
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In summary, this is a genuine new Birth of the Federation game I'm developing, and most of the core structure is done. Progress continues at a steady pace. It's still pre-release (and by several months) but when the time comes, I’ll need some testers. I could also use the 3D modellers – and texture creators. Apply here if this is in your skillset.
All comments and feedback welcome.
Thanks for reading!
