Anyone remember the first time they played BOTF?

[stardust]

Hmmm ten years gone and there's so many (probably far more useful) things that i've forgotten but i haven't forgotten the first game on BOTF i played.

I was the Federation, T5 medium galaxy.
Notable moments included my first contact with the Ferengi resulting in the loss of a Constellation class cruiser, (freaky) me not really knowing my way around the game (call it being 14 and not botering to look at the manual first ) and the game ending with the Borg rocking up and assimilating everyone, with the Ferengi being declared the winner by virtue of everyone else being turned into Borg

It was the summer holiday too, meaning many a late night playing

[KrazeeXXL]

lol sounds similiar to mine eyperiences.

all Races at TL3, big irregular gal, few minor races, normal difficulty

I played the feds, and the Ferengi didn't liked me really much either. I expanded to 10 systems and had 16 ships, which were totally destroyed by the crystal entity which decided to say hello. I loosed one little and a mid-size system before I killed this damn thing with a mixture of Scouts2, Destroyer2, some Nebulas and an a** full of freaky ramming transports.

After this the Ferengi tried to attack me. 2 Rounds before he arrived, he was attacked by the Borg. I was a little bit shocked as I read the Borg Message at the first time. After some turns the Ferengi offered me a treaty, so I sent my crazy-ramming transports in the battle again to kill the Borg. ("some" save/loadings included LOL)

that was so amazing and really fat also quite cooler than the fights I've ever seen in MoO2 before! I'll never forget this first game.
Sad to say, that I don't have the savegames anymore. During a HDD crash, they were lost forever.

Finally the Ferengi-Fed Alliance ruled. that's all I remember

[Martok]

Oh, I still definitely remember my first game of BOTF: I set it on Simple difficulty, with me (the Feds) set to tech level 3, and everyone else to tech level 1. (Yes, I was a wuss the first couple times I played!) I had it set on Vendetta mode (don't ask me why), with the random events turned off (didn't want to deal with the Borg!).

I started out in the upper left quadrant, and eventually expanded to the point that I owned roughly the "western" third of the map. Among my better minor races were the Edo and Acamarians, as they had very decent-sized systems.

I allied with the Klingons, who found themselves on the losing end of a war with the Romulans (which is strange, since they usually kick the Roms' ass in the vanilla game). Eventually I was dragged into the war as well....and just in time, as the Klingons were down to just one system! I liberated Qo'noS, Khitomer, Evadne, and at least half a dozen other Klingon colonies from Romulan occupation.

Eventually, the Empire rose from the ashes (in no small part due to assistance from moi) and rebuilt their fleet. Over 150 turns after they'd first invaded Klingon territory -- and nearly 100 turns after the Romulans had foolishly declared war on the UFP as well -- a combined Starfleet-Klingon armada appeared over the skies of Romulus & Remus. After a brief but brutal bombardment, Federation troops landed on the planets' surface(s) and formally took control of the government buildings in Ki Baratan.

With the fall of the Romulan Star Empire, the Federation and Klingons together owned 75% of the map and subsequently declared victory. It was -- to coin a phrase -- friggin' sweet.

[jmacatty]

No, I don't remember my first game, but I do know that I played T1, Fed, beginner. I know this because I played that way for at least the first month I played the game. The point of all this is that after a month and probably 30 or so games, maybe 10 of which I finished, I was surprised to actually find Vulcans in the game! He he. To this day, my luck seems to dictate that the Federation will only meet the Vulcans after they are firmly committed to someone else.

[stardust]

well i'm glad (and slightly relieved) i'm not the only one who can remember their first go..

i also remember my first venture into the Vendetta realm, mainly becasue it was my only time... i can't remember who i was but i remember the Klingons wiping out their last enemy literally the turn before i was set to wipe out my last enemy, hence them winning and my annoyance with vendetta

[RSE_Chris]

Oh yes, a decade ago now!

Like you all, I played with Feds first time (I wanted to be a Picard!) and I played on T5 large galaxy.

Ships - all I bought was Dreadnoughts (Picard and the Enterprise-E haha) and I remember trying to chase the computer across a large galaxy in my slow ships lol.

Not long after I took to multiplayer and began to learn the game properly.

[Badbru]

I don't clearly recall my first game. I do know that I played the four Romulan tutorials first to learn the game and thus have a sneaky suspicion my first actual game was as the Romulans. I doubt if I finished any of my first games before moving on to another race. I so wanted to play them all.

[dennycrane]

Hi,

my first time playing this game was also a looong time ago. And, what did you expect?, I took the Federation also. I remember hours of trying to figure out how all that stuff works because I didn't try a tutorial. ;-)

[Thrasy]

I remember it was an illegal copy on what was called a Twillight CD. It was a series of cd's which contained many recent game releases, but shrinked. So I didn't find out that the game actually had music untill I got the full thing years later!! Remember it also took me forever to realize you could actually subjugate a planet apart from just bombing it to hell.

[TurboC]

Started in 2000? with Federation of course. Found the game very frustrating after the freedom of Master of Orion II -- "why do they get mad at EVERYTHING I DO?? I can't freaking INVADE SYSTEMS?? Upgrading structures takes HOW LONG?? Making races like me costs HOW MUCH???" Yeah. I don't think the strategies of MoO2 work very well for Federation. Actually, I hate playing the Federation to this day -- I still find them to be one of the hardest and most frustrating races, because of how hard it is to maintain morale. But now knowing the Colony Ship + Transport Ship = Instant Terraform would make it a lot easier.

Started on Average and found it impossible... then on Easy and found it hard. BotF requires you to exploit a lot of "tricks" and really try to obey your races personality. Oh, I forgot about the random events, which almost always kick you in the face until you bleed. Those really destroyed me at first too, Calamarain destroying my entire fleet etc. I NEVER play with those on now, mainly because of the ridiculous power of the Borg. You COULD face them down in the right circumstances, but likely they will pop up somewhere else, spawn half a dozen cubes using weak systems, hit you off guard (spawning more cubes) and then you are history. Totally unbalanced. I also don't think the races are very balanced...

Federation - Like playing in a straitjacket. Maybe it can be strong if done right, but if you mess up or get screwed on treaties, or screwed on colonizable planets, you're done, because you can't really invade much.

Romulans - Most balanced and easiest race to play IMO, people like everything you do (except losing), cloak is a killer tactical advantage.

Ferengi - Money money money MONEY! LOVE ME through easy trade routes and bribes! Weak on espionage, but I find them to be perhaps the strongest starting race. Combine with my predilection to do the Grand Nagus voice and they might be my favorite.

Klingon - Pretty good, though not flexible (they don't like peace). But I hate how very few ships have cloak. That really doesn't reflect the series at all. I think the standard battle cruisers should have cloak at least, not just the heavy cruisers and scout II.

Cardassian - Almost homogenously bad... no cloak, no money, no empire-wide morale, other races don't like them. Without the instant-terraform trick and scout-invasion trick, they seem very hard to play, and end up as broken as the final episode of DS9.

[cocomoe]

Played it first month it came out, played Federation.

Can't remember much more than that.

[Army40]

It was a decade ago also...remembered how hooked up I was on STTNG: A Final Unity and wanted to play with the Enterprise D.

Also remember how frustrating it was to figure out how to play the game...the first game I got literally attacked by Romulans, Ferengui, Cardassians and Klingons...also I was frustrated with my Pentium 100 and it's 16 megs of ram while waiting turns to process lol....those were the days...10 years later, 3-4 new computers and several upgrades on them..the waiting between turns is almost non existent but the game is still going....it's a first in gaming that a game last 10 years...tks to you all modders....you kept a lot of us dreaming, hoping..first with the new models and then when you broke the Next Frontier....the phaser problem.

You guys really have the true Star Trek spirit...to bodly go where no one has gone before.

Hope this game work for the next 10 years!

[SWJ06]

I remember buying this game from Best Buy about nine years ago and despite how awesome/cool it looked actually reading the entire manual before proceeding to give playing my first game a shot. My first game was with the Federation (How can you not choose Federation first after that inspiring introduction video) anyway I don't recall the details of the game, I was playing on normal though, I never liked to dip below that setting. Vaguely though it seems like someone took it to me pretty well that game, possibly the Romulans, I started on T2 so that didn't help matters on either a small or medium galaxy. Anyway I palyed on and off a few years after that, got back into it recently when I finally got a friend into it and we needed a break from our long Star Wars Rebellion game that was dragging out and becoming tedious. I remember trying to play some on the zone back in the day but not liking it since all anyone wanted to do was play T5 games.

[Astorax]

It was like 2 days ago or so for me. I had actually never heard of it before but someone posted a link to this site and a good recommendation for this game in a thread on www.spaceempires.net.

I have yet to load a mod but the plain vanilla seems pretty cool so far

[Dwyer99]

Hahah, just discovered this game yesterday actually. Can't believe it took me that long. Used to play MOO and MOO2 until my eyes bled. So anyways...

As with 99.9% of new players from what I read, I played the Federation first on a large irregular galaxy, tech level 1 (thinking this would be throwback easy like playing the psilons with prewarp in MOO2 ) on easy difficulty.

I started out rolling (or so I thought), colonized a couple planets after terraforming them all in the system, scouted out as much as I could, eventually brought the andorians, acamarians, betazoids and a couple others into membership. I made a few fleets of destroyer 2's, a fleet of light cruisers and a fleet plus a few extra of galaxies. Soo, getting bored of this whole peace crap, I demanded ridiculous amounts of money over and over from the klingons, then they finally declared war on me. Woohoo! So I quickly took a star system, and began trying to make the klingons happy. Lol, then the fail starts happening (or continuing, still not sure, lol):

I discover this "Train Crew" option on the orders menu for my fleet of 9 Galaxies. ooh, I must have to be at an academy, I thought.... Oooh, I built one on Andor.... sweet! So I started them training several sectors away. Turn, turn turn turn turn turn.... turn turn turn... ( you get the picture) stupid crews take a while to train. Wait, I'm being attacked? 9 fast attack ships and some noncombat at the subjugated system? bah... so they liberate their system, I send my 9 galaxies (with nothing else) to fight their fleet of fast attack, get there, I decide watching them fight would be boring and pointless, so I use the hail button thinking that was auto (not realizing there was an auto button right under the damned button!) And to my utter and complete horror, I lost my entire group of 9 Galaxies to their 9 fast attack ships without destroying a single ship. Ouch! Sooo yeah, guess I'm going home from work today and I'll try out a different empire and possibly never hit that stupid hail button again, hahah.