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Moonbase Commander

by James Sterrett

Article Type: Review
Article Date: October 22, 2002

Product Info

Product Name: Moonbase Commander
Category: Strategy
Developer: Humongous Entertainment
Publisher: Inforgrames
Release Date: Released
Sys. Spec: Click Here
Files & Links: Click Here

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Strange But Good

Imagine a conquer-the-map game with resource sites and bases. Now imagine an old-school artillery game where you set the angle and shot power. Now imagine them together, and you have Moonbase Commander. It’s a very strange combination, and also a very good combination. Moonbase Commander was a playtime project for programmers at Humongous Entertainment. After several years of polishing, tweaking, and office playtime, they unleashed it upon an unsuspecting public as an incredibly tuned, balanced, and engaging strategy game.

Example of play 1: an enemy energy farm, with the shield in the wrong direction

The name Humongous Entertainment probably rings a bell, and you probably aren’t sure why. Turns out they are famed for such well-known product lines as Putt-Putt and Freddi Fish. Well-known among aficionados of children’s games, that is. Not the most obvious source for Moonbase Commander, but maybe those childrens' game programmers needed to work their aggressions out, and the main legacy of working on childrens' games is the bold colors in Moonbase Commander’s artwork.

The second homing missile shot roars inward....

Glowing Power Cords

Each player in Moonbase Commander builds a network of base units, all connected by glowing power cords. To add another base component, you fire it out like an artillery projectile from a “Hub” unit: set the compass direction and hold down the mouse button for the shot power, which cycles up to the maximum, then back down to the minimum. If it lands on flat ground, and the power cord doesn’t cross too close to another power cord, then placement is successful. You use the same mechanism to fire various sorts of damaging projectiles at the enemy, but we’ll discuss the combat a little later. If you blow up a hub unit, all the base units it fired out explode as well. Each player begins the game with a single hub, and destroying that hub knocks the player out of the game.

Ka-boom!

At the beginning of every turn, you get seven points of power, plus whatever you chose not to spend last turn, plus whatever your energy collectors bring in. The turn is broken up into “rounds”, in which each player has the opportunity to make a shot. As players run out of energy to spend in a turn, or choose to skip to the next turn, they drop out of the rounds for the remainder of the turn. Obviously, having more than seven points of energy is a Good Thing. If you land an energy collector on open terrain, it will generate an extra point of power per turn for you thereafter. Land it on an energy pool, and it generates 3 points of power per turn. Unfortunately, energy collectors cost 7 points to fire and pack a huge explosion when destroyed. You can certainly pack several energy collectors onto one of the larger energy pools, but if you protect such an energy farm poorly, it might all go up in smoke at once. Having that energy farm might give you the resources to destroy the enemy, though.

Example 2: Initial skirmishing leads to building strong defences for this energy farm

Everything you choose to shoot costs energy. There are three levels of cost (1, 3, and 7) and each level contains six items. The care and tweaking in this game shows up here: not a single item is wasted. The game comes close to apparent duplication on two functions: bombs and intelligence. However, closer examination shows that the different items have important differences. In intelligence, you can send out a “Tower” base component for 1 energy point, or a “Balloon” for 3 points. The tower sees farther, but the cord running to it may screw with your strategy, and it’s easy to kill. The balloon sees less far, but the only reliable way to shoot it down is by using a 3-point homing missile—and, most important of all, it doesn’t interfere with your further deployments.

After several attempts, a balloon survives to provide recon data

Offense and Defense

Moonbase Commander offers quite a panoply of offensive units, and three primary defensive ones. The cheapest defensive unit (at one point) is the “Anti-Air,” which launches a missile to shoot down incoming projectiles—including base units! However, an anti-air unit will go offline for a round after it fires. Decoy it with one shot—or, better still, decoy several with one cluster-bomb shot!—and then go for the kill! Providing more constant protection, but costing seven points, “Shields” simply stop anything that hits them in the air. However, 7-point “Crawlers” will walk under the shield to deliver their massive payload, and an EMP bomb set off near the edge of the shield will disable the shield for a round, along with every other base unit in the EMP’s range of effect. A base protected by both anti-air units and a shield can be pretty tricky to bring down, requiring careful planning to knock down the defenses and then deliver a killing blow to the strategic hub that supports the entire defence.

An Offensive unit is placed for better ranged fire

However, you don’t necessarily need to strike directly at your target. Power cords are normally immune to fire, but the “Spike” bomb will send a power surge along both directions of a cord, and do damage to the base units at either end. If the enemy has an undefended section of cord, you may be able to do quite serious harm. Or, if the bad guys have an undefended remote outpost, you might drop a virus onto it, which will spread through the enemy’s base system, disabling base units for a round. If two viruses meet, they combine to form a new virus, which then spreads out. If you can hit two ends of an enemy base network, you may be able to keep it crippled for a long time. In addition, power cords can’t go across water unless they land on a “Bridge”. You guessed it, bridges are units you fire out; but they are also really weak. Destroy the bridge, and the cord dies, killing the base unit it supported, and any units that unit supported. Defend your bridges well or pay the price!

The air defence is decoyed, then a Crawler is sent in to the enemy's main Hub

Multiplayer

Hitting both ends of an enemy network may be easier with the aid of an ally, and Moonbase Commander allows up to four players, computer and/or human, to compete over a LAN or via Gamespy. If you arrange the teams before the game begins, then the allied players will share fog-of-war information and their anti-air units will not shoot down each other’s projectiles. If all this seems confusing, be comforted that the “Challenge” mode of single player begins with an extensive set of tutorial scenarios that slowly get a new player up to speed from the game’s basic concepts through to all-out war, and the ten different AI opponents range from the incompetent to the moderately deadly. The reward for finishing all 16 challenge missions is to see the game’s credits. Finish them all with Silver ratings to get more entertaining credits, and if you can manage to do them all with Gold the reward is pictures as well. It’s kind of like the game itself: offbeat but fun.

And the Crawler's massive payload puts the enemy's dreams of conquest to bed.

Polished and Tweaked to Perfection

Moonbase Commander sounds like a bizarre concept, and comes to us from an improbable source. But it is also a labor of love, polished and tweaked to perfection by folks who clearly have a deep understanding of what makes a good strategy game, combining real strategic depth with a slight spice of time pressure. The degree of mouse-clicking skill for shot placement is set such that few should find it frustrating, presumably a result of the years of testing and their usual market of games for easily-frustrated children. Moonbase Commander may be bizarre, but it’s an excellent, engaging game. If you enjoy strategy games and games with big explosions, you owe it to yourself to try the demo—and when you do, keep a spare $20 to pick it up.

A Spike lands on an enemy cord as balloons watch from the skies.


Moonbase Commander




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