The feature I specially liked in MoO2 were assigning all the various Planetary Governors to the planets and ship commanders, which added a slight rpg taste to it (wich fit's in perfectly) something I found gravely missing in much of the Cx4, Grand Strategy games (except for the Crusader Kings, of course)...

The tac combat was also really awfull because of the 2D dated graphics which in 1997, when I got the game looked like something from the Space Invaders or something... and the ships had the abbility only to move in a 2D space - what kind of "space" was that?

BotF was the first (and only, imho) ST game which seriously attempted to portray the inside working of the ST (and any other serious sf) world. Although I missed the orbital defense batteries actually making an appearance in tac combats...

Every one of ST games before or since had only the strat or tac combat part, never the two of them combined into a Cx4 game, to which ST is ideally suited. Specially it's "exploring strange new worlds part" and the accent on scientific growth, not on combat/violence as such - which seems to be the case with all the other ST games.

BotF imo is an ST game "for grownups", and with dozens of mods that have been made by the community for it, it continues to live on right to this day.
We won't have as many Cx4 gems as this one that much in the coming days, as the industry is taking over and the general level of intelligence in computer games is being modified for the average, short attention span teenager/early adolescent (just look at the lightning quick combats in unmodded RTW...) even in strategies.

There'll always be mods around and small programmer firms like Stardock, so we're safe, though...