If the designers had made sure that the gameplay worked well throughout, if they had tried to actually design a new game system instead of copying what had been done before, and if they had tried to make sure that the AI handled situations in a realistic fashion, this would be a must-own title. As it is, Birth of the Federation is nothing more than a frustrating copy of earlier turn based strategy games that doesn't work like it's supposed to. My recommendation is to leave this one on the shelf. This is where the game shines. Although the combat animations are pretty nice, all of the other visuals in the game are either simple or grainy.
Sound effects are straight from the show as well.
Here's where everything falls apart. There's nothing in the gameplay that you haven't seen before, but that's not really the big problem. Well, they did include multiplayer play, but unfortunately, it too suffers from the slowdown that plagues the single player game. You're not a geek anymore.