Star Trek 
Starfleet Command Vol 2: 
Empires At War

DEVELOPER : Taldren
PUBLISHER : Interplay

 

System Requirements (estimated, not available from Interplay) 266 MHz CPU, 64m RAM, approx 500m HD space

Recommended Either 300MHz CPU and 192m RAM or more, or 500MHz CPU with 128m RAM or more, TNT2 or better 3d accelerator

Ratings
Code Issues Graphics: 10 - It would be called pure eye candy, were it not to have a great game underneath it. Dynamic lights, beautiful backgrounds, dynamic ship textures. There's not anything wanting from the list. Audio: 10 - Outstanding background score, dynamic music adds to the atmosphere. Weapon effects distinctive, and full use of sound to assist the player's information flow. Interface: 8 - Many things improved from original, much easier control of allied ships, campaign information/screens need a little work.	Play Issues Solo Gameplay: 10 - Excellent. Didn't fix what wasn't broken, added 2 entirely new races with new strategies and tactics, AI improved 100% without (noticeably) cheating. Replayability: 9 - Much better solo campaign than before, 2 new races add fully 25% more options and increase the tactical depth for each of the original 6. Much more interesting scenarios (one-off and campaign). Multiplay: 8 - Net code much better, still waiting for much-touted persistent online universe. Learning Curve: 4 - (for non-Star Fleet Battles players), 9 (for SFB veterans) - an even closer port of the SFB (paper- and rule-intensive tabletop wargame) rules than SFC1.
Other/Notes Documentation : 7 Beefy manual with full explanations, although the tactical advice seemed somewhat hastily presented. Too bad they didn't see fit to spiral-bind this one (as with the SFC1 manual) - that was very nice for a manual-intensive game. Pros: Outstanding gameplay, completely balanced, good campaign Cons: Complicated. Other: Overall +1.0 for balance, everything fits together perfectly. (Reviewed patched version 2.0.0.3) Overall Rating: 9.4

Captain's Log, Stardate: 2000.22.12.2240 - USS MacArthur on her shakedown cruise, Captain Styopa commanding: We have just finished high-warp trials and have returned to impulse for live-fire weapons checks. The crew is delighted with the upgrade; we now have much better control of a number of systems, as well as weapons and equipment such as fighters that were previously technologies only available to other races. Our tests have been cut a bit short at the moment: long-range scanners indicate the unexpected appearance of two other heavy cruisers in the system. Not much is known at this point about them, but energy signatures suggest that they are from two entirely different races than those with which we were familiar. Both are closing with us with weapons and shields fully charging, clear hostile intent. Their intermittent fire at each other indicates they are not allies, either. Are our new systems up to the task? The universe has gotten a great deal more dangerous…

Star Trek Starfleet Command 2: Empires at War is, as might be surmised, the follow-on title to the 1999 hit Starfleet Command. On the spectrum from 'expansion pack' to 'entirely new game' it is far closer to the latter. Much like the highly lauded Talonsoft EF/WF/EF2/RS series, (where each game was basically an evolutionary step forward from the previous title) with SFC2 there is so much refinement and outright improvement, gamers are practically compelled to buy.

When 14o East/Interplay came out with SFC originally in August of 1999, they knew immediately that they had created a classic. The results from SFC1 were gratifying: it was widely hailed as one of the best games of 1999 (garnering our own SGO Editors' Choice award), as well as killing the persistent jinx that had been an albatross for all Star Trek titles up to that point. The clamor from the public for a sequel was immediate and strong. Erik Bethke and the design team knew that - given the constraints typical for a new project - SFC had been hobbled with necessary limits in terms of budget and resources. They were certain that with the deeper pockets and publisher confidence that followed any successful title, they could make the improvements that hadn't made it into the first game.

Since SFC1, they've also matured a little bit. The excitement and clear public favor that the first game engendered even during development was a bit overwhelming, and the design team's public presence on the forum boards - while laudatory - possibly led to their caving to fan pressure and releasing SFC1 a little too early. They took these lessons to heart when they spun off to form Taldren, a company whose raison d'etre was purely to produce SFC2. With a new team of people that included original coders as well as skilled and dedicated fans from the first game, they quickly assembled a talented cadre. Learning from their previous experience, they maintained a firm 'when it's done' answer to the (again recurrent) demands to release the game right away. There was a disciplined list of features that needed to be revamped, added, or otherwise improved that, while open to public suggestion has seemed to be far less blown hither and yon by the fickle whims of public demand. Now finally SFC2 has been released shortly before Christmas.

Starfleet Command (1) was already a beautiful game. Even eighteen months later it still is one of the most graphically stunning games you can put on your monitor. SFC2 has gone even further, and can be almost guaranteed to draw gasps from even the most jaded gamer when running with 3d acceleration on a big monitor. Improvements from the original game are both obvious and subtle - dynamic 3d lighting rendered in real-time makes every missile launch a lightshow as shadows flicker momentarily across your hull from the actinic glare of the missiles' drives. Lightmaps for every ship model mean that the ships cruise through the darkness with the glow from their windows streaming into the night, making them look exactly like the state-of-the-art SFX seen on the TV and movie series. Each ship also has much better texturing, for the 'pristine', 'lightly damaged' and 'heavily damaged' skins all are revamped and beautiful. The graphics are not limited to simple improvements - new systems are given as much care and work as the old. Anti missile/fighter systems (making their first appearance in SFC2) are great - gouts of orange-red fire spew at any fighter unwary enough to approach too near. Likewise, the environments are also worthy of note: if not directly copied from Hubble Space Telescope images, they are credible, breathtaking simulacra.

Of course, anyone who has fried their sound card will tell you that even a great game can be hobbled by crappy sound. Fortunately, with SFC2 there are no worries in that department. Again, SFC1 had outstanding sound, with accompaniment by the same composer that provided the soundtrack for TV and movies. He is back for Starfleet Command 2 with new high-quality, interesting compositions that yet retain the distinctive "Star Trek" atmosphere. SFC2 is equipped with dynamic background music, whose tempo and intensity depends on the action taking place, adding a significantly dramatic atmosphere. Each race also has distinctive and recognizable theme music, alert sounds and voice effects, although the Hydran/British analogue still feels contrived.

Weapons fire likewise is well supported aurally, with unique and distinctive sound effects for each. This cannot be understated - in a game of SFC2, there is a great deal happening at any given moment. The task of running a starship requires a captain to be aware at all times of such things as heading, speed, energy state, weapon and damage status, for him or herself as WELL as for every other ship in (or moving into) their threat radius. This is far too much information to simply present on the screen. Therefore with SFC1 and SFC2, the designers went to great and deliberate lengths to present as much information as possible audibly, allowing a player to keep their attention where it should be: on the action. Using sound cues, this can be done while still allowing a good captain to remain relatively well informed. For example, there is a distinctive sound for transporter activity, either letting the player know his boarding parties have made it onto the enemy's ship, or to be alert for transporter bombs. When fighters or shuttles are retrieved, a unique sound lets the player know that they are back in the bay, reloading for action again. In most cases, any activity which can be sound-associated has been so, greatly relieving the player's visual workload and contributing significantly to the enjoyment of the game. 

One of the critiques of SFC1 was the interface. The Starfleet command games are direct derivatives of the venerable Star Fleet Battle boardgame, and this was paperwork intensive even by the standards of board-wargames. The designers have been able to port just about every function and rule from the game into the computer, but the price of this is complexity. In a board wargame, obviously, you have in most cases a chance to contemplate your next turns' moves carefully - plotting your course, energy allocations, and even weapons fire in great detail based on the gamestate at the end of the previous turn while your opponent goes and gets a coke or more popcorn. In the computer, however, the game is real-time (albeit with a speed slider in single-player games for those of us click-impaired turn-based players…). This means that the scores of weapon, system, sensor, small craft, EW, communication, tractor beam, transporter, and allied ship operating functions have to be available at the touch of a hotkey. Largely, they were so in SFC and are entirely in SFC2. It's still a baffling myriad of controls for the beginner - if you've never played SFB or SFC, don't expect to pick it up right away. Having a scripting function - allowing a player to bind a number of controls to a single keystroke (such as declaring red alert, kicking speed up to 10, firing a probe, reinforcing front shield, weapons to overload, readying an EW shuttle, and cranking ECM to 1) might have been handy, but in thinking about it, it's unclear whether this would have been useful in more than a very narrow set of circumstances - and in the real world where programming resources are finite and release dates press hard on benchmarks, it's easy to see why this wasn't a programming priority.

Several systems have had their functionality (or lack thereof) addressed: shuttles and fighters are much more under the control of the player. Tractors can rotate (no more accidentally catching the crippled enemy RIGHT in front of your down shield!). Shuttles are now more in conformance with original SFB rules, where generic admin shuttles must be converted in-game to serve as scatter-packs, wild-weasel ECM shuttles, suicide, or assault shuttles. This both improves the game's flexibility and forces commanders to keep in mind the utility these shuttles offer in certain situations. Fighters have been given their own interface, and have been distinctly tuned down from the balance-toppling juggernaughts of SFC1 by forcing them (again, more in conformance with the original SFB rules) to return and reload before using their heavy weapons again. Phasers automatically start under 'defensive' status, unless changed, something many commanders will appreciate in the heat of an intense scenario.

One issue was oddly still not addressed. Due to limited space in the control section of the interface, it is common that multiple instances of the same weapon are located on the same 'mount'. There's no problem controlling the weapons - they are able to fire sequentially, simultaneously, etc. However weapon mounts (regardless of individual weapons thereon) are able to be 'shocked', that is, to suffer a temporary loss of function due to damage. This lends considerable weight to the argument that weapons - especially the relatively fragile heavy weapons - should be distributed to as many mounts as possible to both distribute damage, ease repair, and mitigate shock effects. Understandably, the veritable forest of weaponry on a Heavy Cruiser or Dreadnaught would strain just about any interface. But with smaller craft, there is no reason (looking in the configuration file) that these couldn't have been spread out. To give an example, a relatively tiny frigate crippled a much larger vessel (with a single mount of 4 heavy weapons), when the frigate was able to knock down a single shield, and either by luck or hit & run raid stunned the main battery of poorly-distributed heavy weapons - because of one lucky strike, all four weapons were out of commission, however temporarily. Had these weapons been on 4 separate mounts, this would not have been possible.

Allied ship control is much improved - a relief for all those players of SFC1 who wanted to throw their computer out the window when their allegedly 'allied' ship (ostensibly under orders to 'capture' that Heavy Cruiser) swept in and unloaded an alpha strike through a downed enemy shield, blasting the potential capture - and the dozen EXPENSIVE boarding parties you'd beamed aboard - to kingdom come. More than once in this instance, my 'allied' ship likewise disappeared under my own knee-jerk alpha strike, necessitating a quick 'restore from saved game' J. No more - at least, far less likely - in SFC2. The ally controls are totally revamped, giving the player much more precise control (although creditably they didn't go too far and give you 100% control) of weapon status, formations (!) and tactical role. Better still, they still allow you to 'jump over' and take personal command of an allied ship - for those detailed actions that can't be communicated with a few buttons. Fortunately (unlike SFC1) in SFC2 when you leave a ship you've controlled, it does a pretty good job of trying to continue to do what you were just doing. Tractor a crippled ship and start pulling it to safety, then jump to another ship to fight a rearguard action - in SFC1 this was suicide. The tractoring ship, absent your direct involvement, would cut tractor and spin to rejoin the fight, screwing your plan entirely. In SFC2 that tractoring ship keeps chugging away, doing (most of the time) generally what you intended. It's unclear what that ship would do if then attacked, but then again, in real life it's not clear what a human (or Hydran, or Romulan, or Gorn) captain would do in that situation, too. Ally AI is also improved, with escort ships behaving predictably like escorts (if you buy up to a carrier, having a couple of these is critical to making sure your main ship survives while the fighter wings are away!), destroyers make slashing runs at the edges of enemy groups, and cruisers effectively play the role of 'anvil' to the smaller ships' 'hammer'. Coupled with the better control, better interface, and better AI, these improvements alone justify the purchase of SFC2 - they bring into play a whole segment of the first game that was, for many players, broken. Despite the graphics, sound, and interface improvements, most players are buying SFC2 for their addition of two much-needed races into the mix: the Mirak and the ISC. The original designers took a great deal of unjustified flak for including only the Federation, the Klingons, the Gorn, the Romulans, the Lyrans and the Hydrans as playable races. Given the amount of care lavished upon each race's sounds, look, models and interfaces they should have instead been commended for reaching that "little bit further" to include the Hydrans and Gorn - two races originally cut from the lineup but slipped in at the last moment.

Next -->

If you like to comment on this review, please post a message at the forum.
Reviewed by Steve Lieb