Star Fleet Command by Garra "Gman" Cornish
	For all my fellow Trekkers who have been anxiously awaiting a game that lives up to the Star Trek name, your wait is over. I have been playing an early beta of Starfleet Command and if the finished product is as good as this early code, it is sure to right all the previous wrongs of Star Trek computer games. Starfleet Command does this by removing much of the exploration and scientific trappings that have polluted Trek games of the past and focusing on real time starship combat. AI in Action In Starfleet Command's campaigns you can command at least four classes of vessels from seven different races. Four new races are complementing the familiar Federation, Klingons, and Romulans including the Hydran, Lyran, Gorn, and Orian Pirates. Each of these races starships has different strengths and weaknesses. The Romulans and Klingons use short ranged weapons and cloaking tactics while the Federation uses more balanced ships. The new races use a mix of short and long range weapons with some of them favoring speed while others use the slow and steady approach. The system for combat is very straightforward and covers all the starships systems. The player controls long and short-range sensors, electronic countermeasures, engineering functions, weapons, tractor beams, shields, shuttlecraft, and transporters. Combat in Starfleet Command is just complex enough to satisfy most simulation players. You maneuver your ship by using the mouse to point the ship in the desired direction on the playing grid. All other functions are controlled by a point-click interface similar to a helm display as seen on a Star Trek starship from the television series, and most of these functions have accompanying hotkeys. Fed Cruiser takes a hit. The usual complement of phasers and photon torpedoes will be familiar to most players, but there are many new weapons to employ. Enemy starships can be destroyed using direct fire, but mines and transporter bombs are just as satisfying as tactics to employ. I have even put a tractor beam on a pesky Klingon Dreadnought and deposited it in a black hole- See Ya! Energy management is probably the hardest part of the combat system to master, as you can do little but accept a pounding while waiting for your weapons to charge if you deplete your energy stocks by firing too much or boosting your shields. Sometimes the mission is to capture enemy starships, and transporting marine boarding parties to the target ship once it has been disabled accomplishes this. Click to continue		Klingon Selection Screen The sreenshots show the plane upon which the game is played. Notice that it is only two dimensional, just like the Starfleet Battles board game. Modeling three dimensional combat would be far too difficult for our twentieth century minds to comprehend, so Interplay has gone with a 2d only playing field. No "Z minus ten thousand meters" tactics as those employed by good old Captain Kirk in The Wrath of Khan. The graphics in Starfleet Command are 3d accelerated, but they certainly aren't going to win any groundbreaking awards. The strength of the graphics engine used in Starfleet Command is the special effects. Phasers and photon torpedoes are quite well done, as are the explosions from damaged and destroyed ships. The starship models themselves are only adequate, while the background and playing grid score top marks in the bland department. A Lyran Frigate Multiplayer capabilities are not activated in the beta I have, but will be included in the finished product, allowing up to 6 players to duke it out on a LAN or over the internet. This will be the make or break feature of the game. If Interplay nails the online code, this game will be a sure winner. Starfleet Command doesn't have as steep a learning curve as a complex flight sim such as Falcon 4.0, but it offers more action than a real time strategy game and gives the player a feeling of being in command of a large starship. It will sit comfortably in the middle ground between a real time strategy game and a flight simulation, a recipe for a very successful online game. I will update this information when I get an updated beta. From what I have seen so far though, it should be said that Starfleet Command is set to go where no Star Trek game has gone before. Join a discussion forum on this article by clicking   HERE.
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