A few years ago, it seemed that pretty much any game with "Star Trek" in its title would turn out to be terrible. One of the first games to buck this trend was Starfleet Command, a tactical starship simulator from Interplay and developer Taldren. Based on the Star Fleet Battles board game, it was a modest success among strategy gamers and was well received by Trek fans for its slavish devotion to Trek lore. Today, old Trek seems a distant memory, and the newest installment in the Starfleet Command series is boldly striding into the future with a new publisher, a new setting, and many changes to gameplay.

Power management, like moving power from shields to weapons at opportune times, is easier than ever.

It's clear from the outset that Starfleet Command III is striving for a broader audience. While the first two games were applauded by Star Trek fans and hard-core strategy gamers, they were also maligned for their cumbersome interfaces and complicated gameplay. Taldren has overhauled the Starfleet Command series to appeal to a wider audience, and the changes are immediately noticeable.

The biggest difference from previous editions is a change in setting from classic Star Trek to the Next Generation. The new setting means that all the ships, weapons, and technology are brand new, and the races are significantly changed. The numerous factions of the previous game have been pared down to the four core races of the Next Generation canon--the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, and Borg--which also translates into tighter campaigns and more-focused gameplay.

The single-player game takes place after the U.S.S. Voyager has returned home but prior to the events of the upcoming Star Trek: Nemesis movie. The designers have crafted a more interesting plot to tie together the campaigns, and so you'll play as the Klingons first, then the Romulans, and finally the Federation. Now that relations between the Federation and the Klingons are at an all-time high, the two factions are preparing to construct a joint space station called Unity--on the border of the Romulan Neutral Zone. Of course, the Romulans are dead set against the alliance and the space station, and over the course of the campaigns, they engineer a series of events to imperil both the starbase and the alliance.

The Borg don't have a story-based campaign, but you can play as them in multiplayer and in the conquest campaigns, which are open-ended games without a plot. The victory condition is simply conquest of the galaxy. These campaigns aren't as interesting as the story-based campaigns, since they lack unique missions, but they're ideal for those who just want to amass bigger ships and crush AI empires.

However, the campaign itself is secondary to the game's missions. All the action unfolds in the tactical missions, and it is here that most of the improvements have been made. The interface and gameplay have been streamlined immensely from the previous Starfleet Command games. The interface is less cluttered, though it may still seem a bit overwhelming to more-casual strategy gamers. Thankfully, the game has excellent tutorials to teach you the basics of controls, gameplay, advanced tactics, and the differences between the races. It's too bad the developer didn't add similar tutorials for the game's clunky campaign interface.

The campaign still uses a primitive interface, but it has interesting story-based missions.

Nevertheless, within the tactical mode, things are easier to handle. There are now just two weapon types: primary, which consists of standard phasers and disruptors, and heavy, which consists of torpedoes and specialized beam weapons like the Klingon ion cannon or the Romulan myotronic beam. In addition, managing power between your shields and weapons, which is the key to winning battles, is handled easily with sliders. Starfleet Command III's tactical battles also have streamlined shields and warp-drive travel. The game has four shield facings instead of six, and reinforcing shields is done simply by clicking on the desired shield in the ship schematic at the bottom left of the screen. Unlike in previous games, your ships can also engage their warp drives. Not only does that mean you can shuttle across the levels easier, but the warp drive can also be used tactically, for high-speed strafing runs (you can fire torpedoes while in warp but not primary weapons), for shaking off pursuers, or in other ways.

If your ship gets damaged, repairs are easier to perform, and you no longer have to manually purchase spare parts. Instead, you can use prestige points to customize your ship. You can refit your ships with new shields, weapons, transporters, computers, armor, warp cores, and more. Like in FASA Studio's recent MechWarrior games, you need to make sure you can afford to buy the equipment you want and that your ship has the available mass and power for the modifications.