command2

Starfleet Command 2

~Empires at War~

Apart from having the longest game title in Star Trek history, this game is a sequel to Starfleet Command, a game which I did not like.

Here's a review by someone who does appreciate it:

The original Starfleet Command was loved for its faithful adaptation of the immense and detailed pen & paper strategy game Starfleet Battles. While the developers kept the rules on the mark, they focused their attention on the interface and playability of the PC adaptation to give the game a speed and momentum unavailable in the original tabletop game. This time around, developer Taldren is focusing even more on the single player game to make sure that the battles are bigger, smarter, and more in-depth than ever. That doesn't mean simpler, however. While other series seem bent on delivering more "mainstream" versions of their series with every new version, Starfleet Command is a hardcore game for hardcore gamers, and that's even among Star Trek fans.

Most apparent upon first glance is the graphic update, something the team is working hard on. The interface is even more fine-tuned, and the ships themselves hold more detail than ever before. Luminosity mapping, coloured light sources, and damage textures will give your eyes more to enjoy while your fingers are busy buzzing over hotkeys and mouse commands.

Two new races have been added to original six: Federation, Romulan, Klingon, Gorn, Lyran and Hydran empires are now joined (if you can use that phrase) by the Interstellar Concordium and the Mirak Star League. The Mirak Star League is the archenemy of the Lyran empire, and feature some hefty missiles as a convenient and physical part of their military philosophy. The Insterstellar Concordium, while Federation-like in its grayness, is devoted to "saving the galaxy from itself." More importantly the ISC, as they are also known, also happen to wield a nasty Plasmatic Pulsar Device to help enforce their philosophy. Convenient that.

And as anyone who's been to a ST convention knows, when it comes to Star Trek, you can never have enough detail when it comes to recreating the ST universe...or enough polyester when it comes to crafting your Scottish traditional ensign uniform. How exactly are you supposed to wrangle all these ships in big time battles? Using the new, beautiful fleet command interface of course. You'll be able to control formations, as well as the weapons and energy settings of all your ships through this new menu system, which means that you'll have no problems putting your fighters into a tidy Echelon or Wedge pattern in order to womp some Romulan or Klingon butt. "We're giving people more control over the energy allocation, just like in Starfleet Battles," Josh explained. "And we tried to do that throughout the entirety of SFC2...we just wanted to give players more choices and more individual control over their ships."

Speaking of womp-type gaming, don't think that the team has forgotten about the multiplayer experience. Flipside will provide matching services to ensure that being able to jump online for some human-to-human battling is a snap. It's a good thing -- the strength of the tabletop game is obviously interaction with other human gamers, and it looks as if the new multiplayer setup will be as easy as calling up a few friends for a Friday night RPG session.

In addition to the graphical and interface improvements as well as the two new playable races, here are some more of the new additions straight from the press preview we received this week:

New Weapon Systems: Plasma I’s, (rear firing defensive plasma) Plasma D’s, (small plasma held in stasis containers) and AMD (Anti Missile Defense) system have rounded out the list of new weapons available in SFC1.

New Music: SFC2 will feature a brand new score of music by Inon Zur for all 8 Races. There are 41 new tracks of music for SFC2 player’s enjoyment. The Salt Lake City Orchestra has brought the movie quality music to life.

New Sounds: Many new sounds will be created for SFC2. In addition many sounds from SFC1 will be improved.

New Voice Talent: In addition to George Takei returning to do the voice over for the tutorials and the introduction movie we have hired additional talent. Professional voice actors will take the roles of bridge officers, marines, and pilots in the game. We have provided each action with multiple voice responses to reduce the receptiveness of voice feedback. Player should feel like they are part of the action with the addition of voices but may turn off or limit the voices if they prefer a quieter game.

Dynamic Lighting: The stars shine true lights so that planets and ships have dark sides and planets cast shadows that ships may fly into. Weapons and other effects now cast coloured lights on ships.

Damage Texturing: Damage texturing has been added to make the combat visuals more visceral and immersive. These are progressive textures added to the ship as the ship takes more and more damage.

Luminosity Maps: Luminosity maps have been added to ships and planets. The engines glow, floodlights shine and the hundreds of windows of the starship cast light. Even the lava on the night side of the fire planet glows.

Carriers and Fighters: Added for the Federation, Mirak, Klingons, Orions, and ISC. Fast Patrol Ships have been added for the Lyrans, Romulans and Gorn. The Hydrans were the only race to have Fighters in the original.

All New Campaigns: Two new campaigns featuring the new races. These campaigns are played from multiple perspectives adding to replayablity.

Higher Resolution: Play in resolutions up to 1600 x 1200.

Improved Game Balance: We have continued to balance all of the races in the first game paying attention to balance issues. SFC2 players should find the game more finely tuned.

Improved AI: The AI has been beefed up to challenge even the most grizzled veterans. We continue to have 3 levels of AI so new players will still be able to compete finding a AI appropriate to their skill level.

The nice thing about these new updates is that a lot of them came directly from fans of the original Starfleet Command. Throughout the entire development process, the members of Taldren really listened to the online community. "We just want to let people know we're there and we listen to their suggestions, and we're going to support our product," Josh told us.

We just got a build of the game on Wednesday, so we haven't had a chance to play much of the beta yet. But look forward to a much more in-depth look at the second installment of the Starfleet Command series as soon as we have.

Interplay Announces Sequel to the Highly Acclaimed Star Trek: Starfleet Command
Star Trek: Starfleet Command Volume II - Empires at War Coming Soon!

Degrees East, a division of Interplay Entertainment Corp. (Nasdaq: IPLY), is pleased announce the sequel to the highly acclaimed Star Trek: Starfleet Command®. Star Trek: Starfleet Command® Volume II - Empires at War adds significant new features to the original Starfleet Command and will use a matching service technology to create the most compelling form of multiplayer gaming. Starfleet Command Volume II - Empires at War is currently in development at Taldren, a newly formed developer containing members from the original Starfleet Command team, and is scheduled for release this Winter.

The campaign game in Starfleet Command has been redesigned for Starfleet Command Volume II from the ground up to provide for a richer solo gaming experience and will have a totally redesigned fleet control interface. Starfleet Command Volume II will allow the player to experience new races such as the Mirak Star League and the Interstellar Concordium. Along with these new races come their new weapon systems. The Interstellar Concordium have a powerful Plasmatic Pulsar Device to enforce peace on the known powers. The Mirak specialize in missile combat and have the most fearsome missile cruisers ever seen in the Star Trek universe. The Mirak have also upped the ante of fighter combat and the known powers must respond.

Join the United Federation of Planets, the Romulan Star Empire, the Klingon Empire, the Gorn Confederation, the Lyran Star Empire, the Hydran Kingdom, the Interstellar Concordium or the Mirak Star League in Starfleet Command Volume II and vie for control of the galaxy. Every battle will be tracked to determine the political allegiance of hundreds of sectors of territory. Players will gain prestige and rating points to command bigger ships or join task forces to amplify your battle plans!

Preview
Space combat simulator		Reviewers: Dave Finn and Tim Chown
		Expected: December 2000 Version: E3 demo Developer: Taldren

Starring George Takei as Captain Hikaru Sulu.

With increasing frequency the line between movies and computer games is blurring. Movies sometime seem more like a showcase for computer technology than a story played out by actors. Then there are those times that computer games become (or at least try to become) epic stories with huge production ambitions (like Wing Commander or Command and Conquer). Other times some try to do both (e.g. Wing Commander, Mario Brothers, Street Fighter) but none have really succeeded to date.

The battles in Star Fleet Command looked good, but weren't really of movie quality. Interplay is the publisher lucky enough to have the Star Trek license to produce the computer version of the old Star Fleet Battles board game, and it's now working on an SFC sequel, one which should both look and play a lot better. While at E3 we spent some time with Star Fleet Command 2: Empires at War, and from what we saw the game looks to be coming along very nicely. Taldren, the developer, is refining the best elements of the original design and, most importantly, overhauling the few areas that needed improvement. Some parts are being completely rewritten, but the most exciting addition is the persistent multiplayer universe -- but more on that later.

Starfleet Command sold a lot better than Interplay probably ever expected, with some 240,000 units ending up in gamers' hands. Unfortunately there were a few bugs in the initial release, caused by some late code changes and some problems with the save file size, but patches have redressed the problems. The game is no insignificant project; it boasts over 2,000,000 lines of code. The patches also tweaked game balance, with most notably reductions in shield power giving heavy weapons more bite. Demand for all things SFC has led to the production of an SFC: Gold game. This has been completed but at the time of writing has yet to be released. Given that imitation is said to the best form of flattery, it's also interesting to see "rivals" emerging in the shape of Activision's Bridge Commander and Simon and Schuster's Deep Space Nine.

Some of the changes are cosmetic; designer Erik Bethke was keen to point out the improvements to the visuals, things like dynamic lighting effects on ships and planets, and improved damage modeling. While these will no doubt make the game experience that bit more cinematic in quality, SFC is already an attractive game, so the key question is what changes are planned for the core game elements. Well, it seems the combat model will remain the same, as will the fundamental game rules - that also means there's still no save-game option in a mission, Erik wants players to respect their ship and the 100 men that might be on board. However, there are a good few gameplay changes too.

Despite being a very successful game, one of the major complaints leveled against SFC was the shortcomings of the control scheme and AI. Empires at War has gone through a complete overhaul in this area. Empires at War has new fleet controls that allows players to assign formations and spacings to ships. A new menu bar will allow you to switch command between ships much more effectively. The interface will allow players to control as little, or as much, of their fleet as they want. You have the option to turn off weapons and targeting on allied ships or you can take control directly yourself. The new interface design is a big step up, and while Taldren has not locked down the maximum number of ships that a player can control yet, the current design can handle up to 18 ships.

Empires at War also offers the comfort of much stronger AI design. It was not uncommon in the original game for a friendly AI ship to kill a ship you were required to capture; the AI would recognise that the enemy ship had got back some of its shield strength, but fire ALL weapons to bring them back down, often resulting in an aborted capture mission (all the more frustrating with no in-mission save!). According to the folks at Taldren that will be the case no more.

Empires at War introduces two new races to the mix on top of the six races that are already a part of SFC. One is the Interstellar Concordium, a familiar race to veterans of the Star Fleet Battles universe. The other is the Mirak Star League, a dog-like race who specialize in missiles and fighters. Sounds awfully like the Kzinti (also from SFB), doesn't it? The Interplay guys went through great pains to emphasize that we said that, they didn't…Fine we say it, get ready, here come the Kzinti! Another influence of the Kizinti…erm…uh… Mirak Star League in Empires at War is that each race has a new ship type, the carrier (players can look forward to 250 new ships in the game). Each race also has fighters, at least 2 types are anticipated for each race. Players will also have a lot more control over these fighters, as well as shuttles.

Another major refinement of the design is that the strategic overlay has been redone completely. The dynaverse was unique, and had potential, but it also took a lot of criticism for having a lack of significant impact on play. That's been thrown out altogether. The new strategic overlay is now called the metaverse, to emphasize a significant rework. The players actions (and random events) now have a significant impact on a sector. Player's actions can result in new starbases being built or even gaining control of sectors for your empire. The new game will feature 100 new missions.

The metaverse, which should be ready for showing during the Summer, will include hundreds of sectors, in a hex-based format. Planets will have both economic and victory values. Battles will lead to players winning presteige points, which can be used to buy bases or ships. While this may be fun solo, it should be a real blast multiplayer on the persistent WON.Net server. Here, players will represent races in large strategic campaigns (currently Taldren reckon on up to 40 players per campaign), with active commanders being pitched into battles depending on positions of fleets and planets. Borders will shift as battles are resolved. Offline players will be repositioned to a safe starbase if they would otherwise re-enter behind enemy lines when returning to the game. You'll be limited to one fleet per campaign, but that shouldn't dampen the enjoyment too much.

It's also worthy of note that while it was not a focus of the design, Taldren did recognize the impact of player mods, and where possible they'll make it less problematic for players to create new mods in this sequel - the old scripting engine has been thrown out and renewed.

Empires at War should be a highly anticipated sequel to the Star Fleet Command title. It looks to be a refinement of a design to one of the few Star Trek games to avoid the Trek curse (as the saying goes, "SFC, yes, that's the Trek game that doesn't suck!"). It also helps that the game will support "massive multiplayer" environments where players can be part of epic campaigns. While the full game isn't due until Christmas-time, Taldren is planning to release an early Federation and Klingon solo version for $14.99 through outlets such as Walmart, with a $10 rebate on the full game (i.e. in effect you get a demo for $5). An interesting idea, but it looks like the real meat will be in the full release and its online campaigns. For that, the wait till winter will be a long one...

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