Supremacy picks up from the classic Microprose title Star Trek Birth of the Federation, a.k.a. Star Trek: BOTF. Supremacy’s intention is to be a BOTF’s rightful successor. Sometimes Supremacy is also known in the community as Star Trek Birth of Federation 2 (BOTF2).

Star Trek Supremacy is in Alpha stage and a playable release can be downloaded here.

Alpha Pre-release Impressions

You can play with the Humans, Cardassians, Klingon, Romulans and Dominian.

Star Trek Supremacy: Game Setup

In this pre-release you are allowed to manipulate some variables to customize your map like Size, Star Density, Tech Level, Minor Races abundance, Planet density and galaxy shape.  After the choice of race and map variables are set the game is launched.

Galaxy Map and System Management

The Galaxy Map is very similar in style to the original BOTF, gridded and showing the star systems with “fog of war”. You control systems and not individual planets, some which may have special bonuses like more energy output, more suitable for farming, etc.

Star Trek Supremacy: Galaxy Map and System Details

You allocate production, research, intelligence and farming from a labor pool. Each set of 10 population represent one labor unit that can be allocated into production. There are many aspects that you need to control like the energy output, food consumption, industry output, research and intelligence being generated in the system. One interesting aspect is that you need not only to allocate labor but you also need to guarantee that your structures keep powered in order for them to keep working.

Star Trek Supremacy: System Management

In addition to production you also need to control the amount of resources being mined in the system. These resources are: Dilithium, Deuterium, Raw materials and Personal. All this resources will be essential to operate, build and crew your vessels later on.

Spaceships and Combat

Federation Cruiser, Surveyor and Scout (from left to right)

There is no Ship design in Star Trek Supremacy. The vessels are the ones of the Star Trek Universe: Federation Cruisers, Scout ships, Heavy Destroyers, Klingon Battle Cruisers, Federation Heavy Cruisers, etc.. Combat is not yet implemented in this release but you can have a look into the video bellow to have a feeling of how spaceship combat will be like (although these may be old, so may be already substantially improved by now).

Research

You can allocate the research points produced by your universities between 6 different areas or fields: Biotech, Energy, Computers, Propulsion, Construction and Weapons.

Star Trek Supremacy: Research

You manipulate how much research points you would like to spend over these 6 fields. As far as I could tell all races share the same tech tree.

Diplomacy

The Diplomacy screens of Supreme are very clean and stick to the point. There is an overview screen that gives a nice glimpse of communications between all your partners in a who-is-connected-with-who kind of feel. You can make denounces, commend, make threats, make proposals and declare war.

Star Trek Supremacy: Diplomacy

In your proposals (at least when playing with the Federation) you can state demands (for tribute for instance), treaties like free trade, affiliation (free ship passage) and membership (ask the race if they want to join the Federation).

Wrap-up

The Alpha release I had access to (0.4.3427.36588) is very stable for the 65 turns or such that I played at least. There are lots of missing information, content and many UI enhancements yet to be implemented for sure but albeit all of that I enjoyed playing.

Star Trek Supremacy is a very interesting project where many things are already in a very good shape and feel quite right. I want to congratulate Mike and all his team for the extraordinary work they made so far. The music for instance is very good. The User Interface although based on the Star Trek theme and on the original BOTF, is very streamlined, easy to navigate and clean.

After constructing my first Dilithium mine and built my first Scout vessel I did some exploration in the vacinity where I found two Minor Races. One of which accepted to become part of the Federation. During this time I really felt like I was wandering around in the Star Trek Universe.

You can find more information about Star Trek Supremacy in the BOTF2 forums.