DEVELOPER : Quicksilver and 14 Degrees East
PUBLISHER : Interplay

 

System Requirements Pentium 200 Mhz, 32 MB RAM, 200 MB Hard Drive space

Recommended Pentium II 266MHz, 64+ MB RAM, 8 Megs Video card

Ratings
Code Issues Graphics: 10 - Simply beautiful.  Detailed and well-skinned models.  Weapon effects could be used in the next Trek series without changes.  Each race has distinctly different interface and appearances. Audio: 9 - Compelling, theme-inducing dynamic (event-effected) music; useful AI sounds.  Only thing missing is more use of voiceovers during game. Interface: 7 - Complicated game requires complicated interface.  Buttons get awfully small at 1280 resolution.  Nearly 100% iconic - little English needed to play skirmish.	Play Issues Solo gameplay: 9 - Skirmish mode completely configurable, campaigns for all races dynamic but with some scripted "story" embedded.   Only some AI issues keep it from a perfect score. Length of play/replay value: 9 - 6 races, 30 year campaigns for each, special missions.   Real variety from one race to the next.  Finite campaigns the only complaint (and that's not a bad one). Multiplay quality: 8 TCP/IP,IPX, supported by MPlayer.  Up to 3 ships per player, 6 players max makes for huge battles.  No real cooperative multiplay. Learning curve: 4 for non-SFB players, 9 for SFB gamers Almost a direct port of the boardgame, the conversion to realtime really the only change.   Otherwise a little complex.
Other/Notes Documentation quality: 8 141-page spiral bound docs, ship-recognition poster (which has some small errors).  Certain aspects of game familiar to SFB players (such as Damage Allocation) not explained quite as well as could have been. Pros: Great overall feel – an accurate Civil War game, yet reachable for non-Civil War fans. Cons:  Narrow focus might put off non Civil War fans, no editor. Stability: 5 Stable, but a pretty extensive buglist.   Notably, none of the bugs are game killers and the programming staff are knocking them down pretty quickly. Other comments +1.0 the market has been waiting for so long, through so many bad ST titles, for this game! Overall Rating: 9.3 for non SFB players, 9.8 for SFB fans "This game is a MUST HAVE for anyone at all interested in Star Trek ship combat.  There is no other conclusion."

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Information that is immediately and constantly needed, such as speed, hull integrity, power, target, and target integrity, are all presented constantly at the top and bottom screen margins. A HUD - again, the interfaces including the HUD are very different-looking for each race - shows vital target information such as range, speed and condition right where the user needs to see it. The option is also available to show your last 3 volleys' damage figures, helpful for those who prefer to snipe from range. Oddly, there is no "bearing" information, something that users of most combat sims find critical. Indeed, there is no "north" in space, but it would have been a useful addition when trying to figure out just what the enemy is doing. Variable views - oblique, overhead, free - are available to help follow the action. Post skirmish replays are available but I haven't figured yet how to export or save the better ones.

Almost every function has a hotkey, and the configurations are to some degree user-configurable. Weapons can be grouped into hotkey-accessible groups, as can targets. Some hotkeys were more usable in function than others. I, for example, found it to be a little difficult to change targets in the midst of cluttered actions with my ship, a couple of allies, a half-dozen freighters in the way, and a few enemy ships weaving in & about the freighters. Hotkeys are no doubt the key (no pun intended) to really succeeding at SFC and mastery of them is critical. It's not a first person shooter with 50 key-bindings, certainly. But when you have incoming plasma torpedoes, a DD in your face keeping your phasers working, and you are trying desperately to click the little buttons to deploy a decoy shuttle - well, sometimes the hotkey management can be tough!

The actual play of the game is functionally simple - a goal the designers tried to keep in mind at all times. Certainly employing the various systems gets complex, but simple things like moving, turning, speed management, firing weapons are all simple enough that a player could do them without any manual at all. The functions are all arranged in a complexity tree that starts at the simplest, oft used functions and gets more detailed (and powerful) as you dig into the tree. Want to turn? Simple - click where you want to go on the playing screen and a colored arc appears on the playing surface (down by your shield indicators). Green means you will complete the turn in the next few moments, with yellow and red indicating progressively longer delays to complete the turn. Want to complete more complicated maneuvers? Click on the little helm button (a naval steering wheel) and you are offered more exotic movement commands, from engaging 'erratic maneuvering' (a zigzag arrow button) that makes it harder to hit you, to the oft-needed HET (High-Energy turn - whips you around up to 180 degrees after a short delay and rather voracious energy consumption, but risks breakdown and the immobilization of your ship). Want to fire a weapon? If you have a target, click the "all weapons" button (asterisk on the weapon panel) and if the FIRE button is glowing, you have at least one weapon that is bearing on the target, in range, and charged. Press it to fire. But if you select specific weapons you can charge them up to overload, take them offline, vary their properties (like setting a Photon torp to proximity which does less damage but hits better) or even fire dummy weapons (pseudo-plasma's) meant to let the enemy THINK that your "big guns" have fired!

The solo skirmish mode is really the "proof of concept" for SFC. Playing against the AI, the player can configure just about any battle possible with up to 3 ships on the player's side and 3 for each other opposing race. Unfortunately, pure configuration (actually selecting the specific enemy ships) is NOT possible, as the computer AI selects the enemy ships semi-randomly (you can limit the min and max hull sizes) based on the BPV of the player's ships. More on that later, though. Additionally, all ships begin at weapon state zero, forcing (for play balance sake) most skirmishes to begin on a large enough field that everyone can at least get get their ships charged to a minimally functional state before contact.

This is where most players will fall in love with SFC. As you hit "red alert" the ship comes alive - weapons charge, shields come up. There's a tense moment until the target reticule comes up on the HUD, identifying your opponent. Their ship outline forms on your readout, but void of any internal system detail. You fire off a probe, to try to get a better internal picture of what you are facing. As the probe approaches, sensor info fills your readout showing the enemy's internal systems and giving you a better picture of what kind of fight this will be. Looking at his weapons, you realize it's going to be a knife fight so you overload everything that can be - sacrificing long-range firepower for more alpha-strike damage up close. You jump to the ECM screen and see that the enemy is already starting to jam your fire control, so you counter his jamming while trying to throw in a little jamming of your own. Reinforcing your front shield, you close with the enemy. At about 10,000km range (10 SFB "hexes") his disruptors lance out, knocking your forward shield from three green bars to two sickly yellow. Four glowing blue missiles launch from his rear hull, trailing an arc of blue "smoke" as they hammer your front shields also. Your point-defense phasers lick out, destroying one but the others knock your front shield to a single red line - not much left. Realizing he's closing too fast to veer off, you dump a mine out your rear shuttle bay, it's concentric green rings flaring red as it arms once you're clear. Finally, his phasers ripple - your shield finally buckles and electrical arcs crackle across your ship. Damage control teams race to repair your transporters and shuttle bays which have just winked out on your systems display. He goes over you (there's no ramming in SFB, ergo no ramming in SFC) and you order helm to commit a 180-degree HET. After a moment, your ship lurches around and you are facing his weak rear shield. You knew his race had weak rear shields, didn't you? His fore port shield drops to yellow as your mine goes off when he desperately tries to shear away. You order all photons to fire and the crackling red balls hammer through his rear shield. His ship is leaking plasma and visibly slows as engine hits decrease his energy. His defensive rear phasers fire futilely, scratching your paint. You are in a killer position - enemy ahead, slowed, with a down shield facing you. The growl of transporters rings in your ears and a photon torpedo bank winks out - his commandoes beamed through your down front shield and knocked them out! Damn! You fire all phasers and watch in satisfaction as his ship explodes in an actinic flare. Job well done!

And folks, that was the simple demo scenario, much simplified. This battle - at the default speed - would have taken at least an hour in SFB, from arrival of a friend until the counters were packed up and he left. In SFC it took 6 minutes, 30 seconds. And I never had to sort counters, double check an energy allocation form, or even crack a rulebook. You may have to have played SFB to appreciate that, but I tell you that is near to heaven. Everything about this game is appealing - ships bank as they turn, ships shudder & rock when hit by extremely heavy weapons, and the ponderous battle with your own turn rate and weapon arcs make for a subtle and satisfying "big ship" simulation.

As stated above, each race is distinctly different to play. This is not a matter of essentially the same ship dressed up with different "clothes" from race to race. There are different systems, different weapons, and distinctly different handling that forces the player to change their mindset with each - not incidentally making each of the races' campaigns a distinct and different experience, making this a game certain to stay on your hard drive for a long time.

The Feds are armed mainly with the photon torpedo (hard to hit with, but it's the only weapon whose damage doesn't dissipate over range) and relatively slow turn rates, necessitating hit & run tactics. The Gorn and Romulans - natural enemies - are equipped with plasma torpedoes, the Gorns' number of phasers and firing arcs hopefully making up for horrendous turn rates. The Klingons disrupter-armed ships have race-car handling, but fragile rear shields. The Lyrans likewise have nimble ships and have the mighty ESG, like an aggressive version of a ship's shields. The Hydrans are the only race (in SFC) to have fighters, and are otherwise armed with ultra-close range weapons. The Orions (again, a non-player race) smaller ships are mainly a nuisance value once the player is flying decent capital ships, but their cruisers (sporting an assortment of weaponry) can be surprising.

The designers at 14E also went a long way to ensuring that every nuance of SFB is also still present, such as the "Mizia" attack. Due to the specific way damage was applied in SFB, massive single volleys would quickly blow through the outer hull, damaging weapons but spending most of their energy in destroying deeper structural and power systems. The "Mizia" attack (named after the player that codified it as a tactic), by firing weapons individually would result in separate damage table "rolls, disproportionally affecting weapons and other "surface" systems. You could quickly cripple an enemy, but the price was allowing him the power to run away. This is also present in SFC, as a short delay (1.2 seconds at the default speed) will "reset" the damage table and have the same effect as separate "rolls" in the boardgame.

The change from turn-based to realtime makes it a BETTER game, in my opinion. Using rolling 32-phase turns and letting the computer manage the details of weapon fire frequency, acceleration, and energy transfer rates, SFC has taken the drudgery out of SFB and left all the fun! As the player, you simply run your ship, and let the computer crunch the numbers. That's what they're for, isn't it?

The campaign missions tie the action together into a coherent whole. Usually, the function of a "campaign" is to simply force the player to keep in mind that Pyrrhic victory may not in fact be a victory, and quite commonly is little more than a "random battle generator". Not here, not exactly. Behind the game rests the Dynaverse, a mission generator that takes into account the current diplomatic realities (who your race is allied to, who are your enemies), economic situation (frequency of pirates), your location on the strategic map (vis a vis enemies; if you are on the frontier, that suggests you will have more "investigate the space monster" missions) to generate strategically logical battles. In any case, the missions are typically (note I only say typically, however) configured to the psychology of the race you are playing - Feds investigate a lot, while Klingons are more interested in killing.

Sprinkled into this mélange is a scripted series of missions - different for each race - and the ability to join elite fleet organizations that pursue different (higher risk, higher prestige) goals. The scripted missions are typically notable by their much more complex victory conditions, goals, and ties to missions past and future. Interplay ran short on time, so the Hydran and Gorn missions are not yet available (but will be shortly). I played through the Lyran special campaign and found it immensely enjoyable. The missions really echoed the sense of the TOS missions. I'd enter a system with basic straightforward mission goals, only to find the situation completely confounded the original plan. Or be sent to find out what happened to a "missing" ship, with truly NO IDEA what I was going to find - an enemy? A monster? Or something more subtle? Sometimes nothing was really wrong and it was an easy mission; as Freud said "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" - sometimes I'd find the ship, tractor it back and that was it. I can't really give any secrets away for fear of spoiling it for you, but I can say this: not all missions reward using your guns, not all allies are friends, and sometimes not everything is as it seems. Long live the Red Claw Clan!

In discussing solo play, special reference should be made also of the computer AI - both friendly and enemy. Enemy AI is pretty good - commando ships will try to board, for example - but not spectacular. As is common to most games, once you are a skilled player the computer typically needs to be spotted about 20% in points to fight an even battle. Enemy ships tend to want to charge ALL the time, which is not always the best. The problem is really with the escort AI (managing your own other 2 ships). Headlong charges, firing weapons at ridiculous ranges, and a lack of formation control make this probably the most complained-about aspect of SFC. It can be mitigated by running in slow speed and jumping from ship to ship issuing the commands manually. But that's not really acceptable.

These are all highlighted on the extensive bug list that has been compiled by Interplay. They made an immediate patch available after release to fix a single game-killing bug (evident only after long campaign play) that snuck in the gold version. On the one hand, this reviewer wants to condemn them for releasing a game with so many bugs, some relatively obvious. On the other, given the complexity of the game, the fact that almost none of the bugs makes the program unrunnable, and comparing it to other games released in the market, I'd credit them for being very up front and clearly working to address the bugs as quickly as possible (unlike a few companies who release a game and forget about it). The net result is that I think the enemy AI could be more of a challenge, and the helper AI could use some real work (as well as some more interface work to help the player get his wishes across to the AI).

Of course the solution to AI complaints is to play against HUMAN brains. The game supports multiplay via IPX or TCP/IP. MPlayer support comes on the install disk. Multiplay is bound by the same limits (you plus two ships) as singleplayer skirmish, with up to 6 fleets fighting at once. I've found connections via IP (trading them via ICQ, i.e. not MPlayer) to be far more stable and reliable, although the game doesn't appear to suffer even if someone is pinging over 800. There are a couple of alternative to simple battles - such as Tribbles (don't ask!) and Tug of War where the object is to pull an object back to your starbase. Honestly, though, these alternatives seem like they were last-minute additions to appeal to "non-combat" gamers. They may play well (in fact, I *suck* at Tribbles) and may be fun for some, but in my opinion if you buy a starship COMBAT game, what exactly are you looking for? Maybe I just don't get it or something....in any case, SGO is supporting SFC's multiplayer community by offering a player-matching page for those who just don't enjoy the MPlayer world.

What the SFC universe would be well advised to consider is some sort of Federation and Empire (another board game, this time strategic wars in the Star Trek universe, long used with SFB to create battles) expansion. This would open up a whole 'nother realm of strategic conflict in the game, and might even lead to some sort of online persistent "General War" in play. Wow, would that be cool. One of the points of discussion on the forums is the nigh-inevitable sequel, presumably SFC2. 14E already have a list of very do-able items that are in high demand from players, such as: Orions as a player-race, the Kzinti (possibly under another name; they are already referred to many times in the Lyran campaign as "the great enemy we vanquished, who is returning"), the ISC, and even the Andromedans. In any case, it's evident that not only will SFC be successful, but its sequel has potential, too.

But enough rambling. What interplay has given us is already by far the best Star Trek ship-combat simulator, bar none. Not satisfied with that, they also shipped with a 140-page massive WIRE BOUND (is that cool or what?) manual explaining just about everything in the game and background universe and a ship-identification chart (albeit with some regrettable typos). Still want more? A bonus CD - obtainable ONLY by direct order of the game from Interplay - contains additional race-specific scenarios such as the Kobiyashi Maru (the one Kirk had to cheat to win) and the battle from Wrath of Khan, among others. Further, the bonus CD has tons of art, sounds, and - most importantly - the mission scripting API's. Useable with MS C++, these libraries can be used by ANYONE to freely create more missions of any complexity including campaigns. It's all there. Now, this bonus CD has been the cause for some rancor in the discussion groups, but if you already bought the game or for some reason don't want to order from Interplay, the developers have stated that the additional missions WILL be available for download by Christmas.

I could go on even longer about the things I like. But you've probably gotten my point. Starfleet Command is awesome. This is the only game that's prompted me to play the same scenarios over and over again. And over. The fact that I can fight a small-fleet action in under 10 minutes, figure out what I did wrong, and go back in makes this not only enjoyable, but gratifying. I love this game. This is clearly my leading candidate for "Best Game of 1999": buy it! I can't write any more - I've got to get back to patrolling the frontier.

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Reviewed by Steve Lieb