By: Elliott Chin
03/29/00
Design by Brian Mullin
Page 1 of 4
Developer:
Genetic Anomalies
Publisher:
Activision
Target Release Date:
Q2 2000
Genre:
Strategy
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Recently GameSpot traveled to the Activision offices to take a look at the company's newest Star Trek offering, ConQuest Online. This is an online-only strategy game, and it is being developed by Genetic Anomalies, the same developer that created the online collectible-card game, Chron X. In many ways ConQuest Online plays like an online version of other collectible-card games, the most notable being Magic the Gathering. However, the feel, look, and language of the game are very different and distinctly Star Trek.
| This preview was published as part of GameSpot's Star Trek Week. To see that entire feature, click here. |
In Star Trek: ConQuest Online, you play as one of the Q Continuum. You aren't "Q" himself, the same pesky omnipotent being played by John DeLancie, but you are one of his brethren, the all-powerful cosmic beings who fiddle with the universe as though it were a box of Legos. The premise of the game is that you and the other members of the Continuum are using all the races, ships, heroes, and villains of the Star Trek universe as your playing pieces in a grand but simple strategy match for the fates of entire planets.
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The game will be played online, but it won't be massively multiplayer. It will ship with support for head-to-head battle only, although there are plans to enhance later versions of the game to support more players. However, those plans don't call for teamplay, but rather free-for-all battles with multiple Qs all vying to control singular planets.
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Each game is a discrete event, so there is no persistence to the universe aside from stats tracking and the building of permanent decks, or, in ConQuest Online parlance, groups. You'll enter a ConQuest Online lobby, where you can see other players, their win-loss records, and the type of group (or deck) they have. There will be Klingon groups, Borg groups, Federation groups, and so on, and that information should be readily available at the lobby. In addition, you will be able to judge the general skill of a player by his ranking, which will be similar in some ways to the Starcraft Ladder rankings.
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When you find a player you want to play against, you'll enter the game itself. You and your rival Q each start off the game on a planet at opposite ends of the screen. In the middle of the screen is a prize planet or system of planets that you are trying to capture. There are two game modes, basic and advanced, and in both cases, you are trying to conquer the planets to feed your victory. In basic mode, you win by capturing the planet that the enemy Q inhabits (you can't actually harm the enemy Q himself, since Qs are immortal). In advanced mode, you can win that way or by accumulating Q points. We'll discuss the differences in the two game modes later. In either case, planets give you energy that you then use to summon characters and ships, in a manner similar to card games where mana is used to call forth special events and creatures. The more planets you have, the more you can do in a game.
Next: Onto the game
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