Star Fleet Command
Star Fleet Battles Finally Makes It to a PC
By Terry Coleman

Star Fleet Command
Genre: Real-Time Sci-Fi
Release Date: Q2 '99
Developer: Quicksilver
Publisher: Interplay
www.interplay.com

Nearly 20 years ago, an enterprising engineer licensed the Star Trek Technical Manual as source data for a science-fiction tactical starship-combat board game he was developing. Word quickly got around that Star Fleet Battles (SFB) was as close as you were likely to get to being Captain Kirk - or Captain Kang of the Klingon Empire or a secretive Romulan commander. As time went on, however, the board game added so many complex rules that it nearly collapsed under its own weight. Luckily for Trekkers, Interplay's Star Fleet Command brings the classic SFB to the PC, replacing the often tedious impulse system of the board game with a thoughtfully paced real-time movement.

This is no space sim, Vulcan-boy: You maneuver your fleet of starships via mouse and hotkeys through a panoramic view very much like that of Star Trek: Wrath of Khan. Those who wish to go phaser-happy may find themselves on the short end of a photon torpedo, because this is one game that actually models energy use (you have to recharge weapons), critical hits, damage control, and crew quality.

Since we last wrote about Star Fleet (CGW #166), new races from the board game - Lyrans and Hydrans, among others - have been added to the official Star Trek universe with Paramount Pictures' permission, which means more races and cool sci-fi weaponry to play with. More than 100 different ship hulls of various races are planned for the game, so that you can cruise near the Neutral Zone with a souped-up Romulan War Eagle, take on diplomatic missions in an Enterprise-class Federation Heavy Cruiser, or hide in a nearby nebula in your sporty new Orion Pirate Raider.

Star Fleet now fully supports Direct3D, and it's possible that there will be a software-only solution as well (after all, you'll want to make the galaxy safe for Klingons even on your laptop), but Interplay isn't guaranteeing this yet. The AI is still being tweaked as we go to press, but the multiplayer mode already works. Plans are to have SFB support up to four gamers by LAN and IPX.

The only concern I currently have is how well the Dynaverse (dynamic universe) campaign will turn out. It's certainly ambitious to let gamers pursue their own careers in an open-ended game, and if Quicksilver and Interplay can pull it off, we could have the Star Trek computer combat game we've always wanted - even if we did have to wait two decades.

Next: Braveheart