Wrongly underrated game with minor defects

Star Trek: Birth of the Federation is one of the first Star Trek strategy games that came on the market in 1999. At that time it was usually rated by the press rather bad. And you have to admit: Yes, the game has its shortcomings and weaknesses. But Nevertheless, BotF provides hours of entertainment and is generally quite varied.
The aim of the game is to colonize new worlds and achieve supremacy in the galaxy. Here you can practice diplomacy and perform with other great powers wars. In order to obtain new technologies and ships, you have to do research. Sabotage and agents bring another interesting factor into play.

In my opinion, there's something for every Star Trek fan who is strategy thrilled recommended. I think BotF, despite various shortcomings one of the most underrated games is Star Trek.

With the unofficial Windows XP patch and possibly the compatibility mode, the game under Windows 7 (64bit) is still playable. While it can occasionally lead to crashes, but these are rare.

Pro:

+ Research, diplomacy, spies and agents, colonization of worlds wars
+ 3D space battles
+ All major TNG races are playable (Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, Ferengi)
+ Wide range of small (non-playable) Besides races
+ Individual buildings for each race
+ Each race has individual Before & disadvantages
+ Large Ship selection of all races (but: not got Excelsior-class in the Federation)
+ For that time, pretty neat ship graphics (except Cardassian Galor & Keldon class [today of course outdated video]
+ Morale of the planet's population plays a role
+ Unlimited number of random cards
+ High replay value and very varied
+ Long Motivation
+ Perfect "Star Trek feel"

Cons:

- Nations not properly balanced (especially Ferengi are too aggressive and possess much too much space ships)
- Torpedoes aimed too high total damage (hence are space battles, unfortunately, far too short, since a ship after 2 torpedo hits is most directly broken)
- Only Negative random events
- The maximum galaxy size is way too small for my taste. There is no one more card size, which is about twice as large as the current largest card
- Colony construction takes partly too long (is annoying that you eg Level 1 building can not upgrade directly to step 5 as soon as was explored level 5, but you need to upgrade, etc. only to Level 2,3,4, until the best level can build)
- Some random maps have too much "space" without planets
- Various bugs (eg stuttering mouse, after 200+ rounds, memory leak)
- No map editor
- Weapons and explosive colors are not canonical, but breed specific
- Galor- and Keldon class Cardassian see not faithfully from
- Excelsior-class Federation starship missing an important