BOTF Redux?

[Hydro]

Remember Birth of the Federation, which was heralded as the ‘Next MOO2!”? I kind of liked the game since it had a MOO flavor with a Star Trek background. But, while that enhanced the flavor, it couldn’t get over its limitations. First, its interface was pretty horrible. But most important it had five fixed races that had benefits that, depending on which tech level you were playing, were pretty unbalancing.

Why am I musing over a 2 year old game that wasn’t wildly successful? Answer - because I am worried about what I understand are fixed races in MOO3. One of the joys of the MOO games was the design-your-own-race to get a flavor you liked, and to enhance your own play style. I didn’t do much more than dabble in MOO2 (although I played it a lot), but friends of mine were powergamers and stretched MOO2 to its limits, and their universal opinion is that the design-your-own race was key to making the game long lived and a ‘classic’.

I’ll get the game when it comes out, and I hope they can enhance the long-term playability after reportedly getting rid of this key feature. Time will tell.

Hydro

[Stormhound]

We put up a race picks dump some time back, so you really should drop by the Delphi board and take some time to get your facts straight.

[Hydro]

Stormhound,

I didn't mean to offend anyone. I was just posing a concern.

At your suggestion I re-checked the Official site through the Delphi boards and navigated to what I think were the data dumps you mentioned. I found that the description and rationale for the races were the same as the last time I checked: 16 pre-configured races. So, what facts are there to get straight? My question on customizing races still stands.

Hydro

[Sammual]

Hydro, I can't find the Race Data Dump on the board anymore.

If I can remember what I read, you can take one of the base races and customize it. Some races can not take some race picks and some race picks can only be taken by one race.

Not all “Human” (As in Earth type human not “real human at keyboard” type human) races will be the same.

Sammual

P.S. Stormhound – Breathe in calmness, breathe out tension. Better? I am a network engineer that programs in his spare time. I hate the Delphi boards, I can never find anything. Hydro and I just fit into the “Delphi-Clueless” category.

[Sencho]

Originally posted by Hydro
Stormhound,

I didn't mean to offend anyone. I was just posing a concern.

At your suggestion I re-checked the Official site through the Delphi boards and navigated to what I think were the data dumps you mentioned. I found that the description and rationale for the races were the same as the last time I checked: 16 pre-configured races. So, what facts are there to get straight? My question on customizing races still stands.

Hydro

Well, from the race pick data dump thread there is this quote:

Players my select from an existing (pre-made) race or select species and create a custom race based on that species. Either selection will take them to the Picks Screen where they may spend their available Pick Points (PPs) to enhance their races’ ability (or degrade their race’s abilities in exchange for a Victory Point multiplier).

I hope that answers your question. The thread goes into a lot more detail than this, the opening paragraph.

[Hydro]

Thank you Sencho for the link. I clearly did find the data dump Stormhound mentioned, and the threads from your link that I plowed through were illuminating. I was misinformed but didn't know it because I was...misinformed.

Thanks again.

Hydro

[Sencho]

You're welcome. Glad I cleared that up.