Star Trek: Armada II Designer Diary #1

By , GameSpotPosted Sep 21, 2001 7:15 pm PT

Mad Doc CEO Dr. Ian Lane Davis introduces you to his development studio, which is working on the sequel to Armada.

Entry #1 - 09/21/01

By Dr. Ian Lane Davis
CEO, Mad Doc Software

Today, as we feel the very first claws of a New England autumn, Star Trek Armada is rapidly approaching beta status. The team is hard at work putting in the last features, balancing the strengths of the units, and testing, testing, testing.

Mad Doc Software's new offices are located on the fifth floor of a 140-year-old textile mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts. We have exposed brick walls, rock maple floors, and 14-foot-high ceilings. My office is at the south end of our space, and as you go down the development hall, you pass by designers, artists, and programmers, in that order. Going down the other hall brings you to our conference rooms, sound recording area, and testing center. The entire place is running at full steam right now.

Armada II has been a challenge for us. Although our staff is loaded with industry veterans (most of our folks have four, five, six, or more games under their belts), it's our first complete game as a team. Thus, we've been making not just a game, but also a game-making machine.

Borg and Federation forces square off against each other.

When we (and Activision) decided to make Armada II, we needed to do a lot of research. The first game had been a strong sales hit and had quite a following of fans. We needed to figure out which elements attracted fans and what we could add to make the game even more appealing.

We found that people enjoyed the fast-paced combat and that the traditional RTS model of research, build, and attack was a strong selling point. The combination of RTS, Star Trek, and large capital ship combat was really the sweet spot for this license.

At the same time, people wanted more ships. With well more than 600 hours of TV or movie content, the Star Trek universe contains hundreds of ship types, and every fan has a favorite. Players also wanted deeper campaigns. In the first game, we had a short campaign for each race--just a taste, really, of what each race was about. Additionally, many fans wanted the different Star Trek races to play very differently. For the first game, each race had very similar ships and capabilities. Likewise, the resource model and technology tree in the first game just touched the surface of what you could do in a Star Trek RTS. Finally, fans felt that the franchise was ready for 3D gameplay.

So our principle design was quite simple: (1) add lots of ship types, (2) add new races, (3) make each race distinct (with special attention paid to making the Borg and Species 8472 play uniquely), (4) focus on deeper single-player campaigns, (5) deeply expand the economic model, and (6) make the game play well in 3D. The game as it stands now has nearly 100 ship classes (compared to about 40 in the first game), and each of our three campaigns has 10 missions. We chose to forgo a short campaign from each race and focus instead on deep, story-driven campaigns featuring fans' favorite races. In multiplayer and instant action, all six races are playable: Federation, Klingon, Borg, Romulan, Cardassian, and Species 8472. We now have additional resources, which are harvested differently and which are spent differently by each different race.

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1 Comments

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jakeboudville
Posted Sep 14, 2006 5:34 am PT

looks good
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