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Star Trek: Starfleet Command:
Volume II: Empires at War July 3, 2002 Price: $5 (full retail packaging)
Starfleet Command: Volume II: Empires at War (SC2) has a big manual: 230 pages plus appendices. Also included is a two-sided glossy foldout with dozens of charts and tables, not an auspicious sign for those seeking instant gratification from the bargain bin. However, SC2 is one of those games that is strangely more entertaining before you fully know for certain what you are doing. When you can throw the manual away--you might as well throw the game away too--because much of the challenge will be gone unless you have the courage to venture into online arenas with the experts (or against a friend with another copy, as individual CD-Keys are needed). While there has been many space combat games based on the Star Trek license over the years, the most common criticism has been that they are far too action oriented by allowing players to fly giant command cruisers as if they were nimble fighter-craft. All things considered, however, Star Trek is just not a good license to use for strategic space combat to begin with, even if designers do get the movement mechanics "right." Combat in the Trek universe is notorious short in duration; indeed, how many alien ships have the assorted Enterprises over the years accidentally blown up with just one salvo of photon torpedoes meant as a "warning shot?" That same criticism was recently leveled at the more traditional (meaning that "resource gathering" is done) real-time-strategy game Star Trek: Armada 2 where entire fleets could demolish each other in a blink of an eye (making the special strategic abilities of different vessels quite useless) forcing Activision to release a patch to prolong combat to a reasonable length. Authenticity has its limits and when sci-fi purism gets in the way of a satisfying game the license becomes a drawback rather than an asset.
SC2 has a far different pedigree than other Star Trek strategic simulations in that it was not drawn directly from the series but through the intermediary step of being a board game, known as Starfleet Battles--designed not for casual fans of the license but for those who would attend Trek conventions donning Spock ears if they would only dare to leave the safety of their parent's basements (and I say this as a basement dweller myself). But because of its board game roots, SC2 is far more balanced than any other Star Trek PC game to date: in its rules, ship design, and weaponry (all factions have access to phasers as a primary or secondary weapon). Some of these conventions might go against Star Trek lore (or be hopelessly extrapolated from it: one of the primary species in the SC2's Alpha Quadrant, the Gorn, appeared in just one episode of Star Trek) but are in the best interest of a compelling game system. Note that was "game system" and not game. The main campaign is based on a single episode of the original Star Trek series (none of that Next Generation stuff here) where Kirk and Spock were stranded on the planet of Organia trying to warn the local Organians (a stern bunch in brown robes who seemed to make the Amish look technologically advanced) of the imminent Klingon menace. The Klingons arrive and threaten to destroy Kirk and his intrepid crew though the Organians (really a bunch of glowing light balls) stop the hostilities and tell everyone that someday the Federation and the Klingons will be best friends and sends them on their merry way--not exactly Star Trek at its finest.
SC2 continues this plot line by having the Organians decide that peace is not happening fast enough so they call upon an organization known as the Interstellar Concordium (ISC) to achieve peace by declaring war upon everyone, bringing to mind a certain (somewhat crude) Vietnam-era saying, though I suspect that a Tacitus quote about Romans and "peace" and "deserts" might appear more scholarly, but I digress. SC2 allows players to assume the role of the various factions in the Alpha Quadrant against the ISC, or even take on the role of the ISC itself in a war of "pacification." A smaller campaign exists documenting the war between the Mirak and the Lyrans, two species which like the Vulcans and Romulans supposedly have a common ancestor. Available for play are the following factions: The United Federation of Planets All in all, their ships are average though they tend to have the strongest shields. Photon torpedoes are often useless as they tend to miss everything and veer off into empty space--though Federation ships sometimes employ diverse secondary weapons in small numbers, such as standard missiles and plasma weaponry. The Federation also has the advantage of being able to resolve a few campaign missions peacefully when force is the only option for other factions, though these peaceful solutions are rarely apparent or even satisfying from a plot line perspective--as they effectively abandon their allies to the mercy of the Inter Stellar Concordium. More like turning traitor than diplomacy. The Klingon Empire Klingon ships can turn fast, which comes in handy because "disrupters" really suck--missing almost as much as photon torpedoes, though they recharge faster. Their ships are cheap which is fortunate as players will end up replacing them often. The Romulans Romulan ships can cloak where they can still be hit by phasers (but no other weapon) though the damage will be greatly reduced. They rely on plasma torpedoes, great balls of glowing energy that track their target, which are powerful but tend to lose energy the further they travel. Their early era ships are quite underpowered but after stealing technology from the Klingons, their mid and late era ships are a force to be reckoned with. The Gorn Confederation Remember that one episode where Kirk was stuck on a planet and had to fight a slow but impervious lizard-man? The one where he played MacGyver and made a cannon out of a bunch of rocks and some salt-peter? Well, evidently, those lizard-women (actually a matriarchal society) became fast friends of the Federation and allies against the Romulans--so what if The Next Generation forgot about them! Their ships are the best armored though ponderous and employ the same plasma weaponry as their Romulan nemeses. The Hydran Kingdoms Mutant-frog people in space. They have the most unique ships employing both a "Hellbore" cannon that damages all of an opposing ship's shields simultaneously as well as "fusion beams" which are only practical when fired at point blank range--two weapon systems that are not complimentary at all--though their rapid fire phasers are capable of defending them against all manner of incoming missiles and fighter craft. They themselves also can launch swarms of fighters, which while useful, have to be replaced by using up command points after battle and are rarely cost effective when in campaign mode. The Mirak Star League In the Starfleet Battles game, the Mirak were referred to as the "Kzintis." That is because Larry Niven called them the Kzintis in his books and (unlike Interplay) Starfleet Battles was not worried about being caught at plagiarism in their homage to his work (similar to how Battletech at first adopted Robotech mech designs but had to abandon them once the popularity of the game skyrocketed under Microsoft). At any rate, they are mutant cat-people who are the sworn enemies of the Lyrans, employing spindly ships capable of launching frightening barrages of missiles in their genocidal war. The Lyran Star Empire The Lyrans exist only to be the sworn enemies of the Kzintis, erm, Mirak. To counter those frightening barrages of missiles they have developed the "Expanding Sphere Generator" (ESG) an energy shield that expands in a sphere around the ship, destroying any missiles in its path. It also makes a handy battering ram against other vessels. The Interstellar Concordium Like the Federation, they are a number of different species but unlike the Federation, they do not bother to keep the fact that they are actually a fascist police state on the down low. Their ships are technologically advanced and have "plasmatic pulsar devices" (PPDs) that are capable of cutting through enemy shields--though they themselves tend to be susceptible to missile fire and fighter swarms. The campaigns all take place within a localized (on your own PC) version of the "Dynaverse 2," the multiplayer realm, where the galaxy is divided into hexagons that can fall under different jurisdictions depending upon the outcome of player battles, theoretically (serious multiplayer gamers have also found it lacking) making it possible for players to truly fight for their favored factions.
But the Dynaverse 2 setting seems especially impersonal when adapted for single player gaming. There are only about a half dozen different types of random encounters (patrol, ship yard defense, convoy actions, data recovery, and "space monster" incursions) that are seldom exciting and the plot oriented missions of the campaign are sprung on the player at random--meaning that if players have not yet completed enough random missions and gained enough "command points" to purchase bigger and better ships, then failure in the campaign mission is a foregone conclusion. In fact, a player's first encounter might be with a fleet of enemy dreadnaughts--statistically not very likely in the Dynaverse 2, but it happens with enough frequency to be annoying. Fortunately, there is a detailed skirmish mode that allows players to position up to eight teams of three ships into a heavy battle; conditions far more crowded than any of campaign scenarios and all without a hiccup in frame rate. This is how SC2 is meant to be played. While one on one battles are interesting (and at least manageable) for beginners, it is only when things get hairy that the true tactical nature of the game appears, even if it does take place on a 2D field (ships maneuver over or under each other automatically to prevent collisions but there is no 3D movement).
A Hydran captain might "overload" her ship's weapons, toggle on "erratic maneuvers" and put four points of power into electronic countermeasures to protect the ship in a sudden charge to deploy the fusion beams at point blank range while a Gorn might fire pseudo-plasma torpedoes (that contain no real energy) as a bluff to discourage her from closing. If she persists, the Gorn captain will turn to the side, taking the brunt of the assault on one shield, while immediately executing a powered turn to the other side (exposing a fully intact shield) and locking on to the smaller ship with a tractor beam--dragging it through space. The Hydran captain, in desperation, might launch its fighter craft and the Gorn would then have to choose which targets pose more of a threat, and whether dispersing their firepower would be wise. Instead, the Gorn might choose to focus on tearing a hole through the Hydran's shields and beaming over away teams to sabotage their enemy's fusion beams, their only effective short range weapon. As the Gorn ship lowers its shields, the Hydrans beam their own boarding parties over, crippling the tractor beam holding them in place as well as the Gorn's transporters. While they Hydran's short range fire power might now be inferior, the slower Gorn ship has now lost the ability to keep them within their optimum firing arc and decides to disengage, rather than be swarmed by fighter craft. It is this attention to technical detail that makes SC2 a
winner, even in comparison to more cinematic offerings such as
Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars and Star Trek: Bridge Commander.
While SC2 certainly has its faults, especially with regards
to its first generation Trek mythology and impersonal campaign
system (though the newer stand-alone expansion to SC2, Orion
Pirates, is actually worse from that standpoint, making SC2
the better buy for casual gamers), being able to start up a battle
in skirmish mode is an entertaining way to spend five minutes. Whether
or not you have 500mb of hard drive space to dedicate to a fancy version
of Solitaire is an individual affair, but for the price, SC2
really is a compelling game. A third game in the series is nearing
completion, featuring both Next Generation mythology and a
more streamlined interface that is less complex to attract more casual
gamers--but SC2 is certainly good practice in the meantime. by Richard Leader |
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