I have to throw my 2 cents in here, the game is as the above people have said, good game, great concept...but where I diverge from the rest, poor execution. The game wasn't completely play-tested, on the more advanced levels of difficulties, youd best start the Ferengi back a stage (you can start each race at different levels in the game), otherwise, the sheer number of ships that the Ferengi can buy and maintain compared to the rest will wipe the board clean, sure each individual ship is no match for even the lousy Cardassian ships, but when theres a fleet of 63 Ferengi War Cruisers charging you, it doesn't matter if they only have one forced plasma beam or seven. In addition...if you play with Random Events on in the early eras, make sure you turn the Borg off. The Borg in BOTF are the Borg we all know and love (the Pre-Voyager Borg) they can tear apart a fleet of 39 Federation Starships, and unless your really up in the tech tree (Sovies, Gal-Xs) there wont be anything left of your fleet and the Borg ship will keep going. A Friend and I used to play games on a network with the two of us, starting from the very beginning (everyone on Tech Level 1) and the winner, was whoever found the Edo and got them to join your empire as a member. (A glitch prevented the Edo Guardian and a Borg Cube from occupying the same sector, so while the Borg ravaged the rest of the map, the Edo are left untouched) There is an option in the botf.ini file to turn the Borg off while leaving the Random events on. (one such random event we found was rather funny "Negative Planet shift in Sol sector, Sol III is now a barren world") One further thing, large fleet engagments (eg the Ferengi vs anyone) had a tendancy to crash the game unless you let the battle auto-fight, which is never a good idea, ive seen fleets get wiped out by fleets half their size with the auto-fight. Also, when you make first contact with an alien species, unless you KNOW they aren't going to attack, never click "Open Hailing Frequencies" if they do attack, your forces will be destroyed, or forced to retreat, or both.