As part of our GRAND OPENING of intensive SFC2 coverage, we were able to score a great interview with Senior Designer Joshua “Jinxx” Morris, in which we’re able to pick his brain on some of the upcoming features of SFC2, and how it will differ from SFC1:

Josh: Make a good game first. Starfleet Battles was a great framework to work with as the board game has been in release for over 20 years. We chose not to rely on the Star Trek license to sell games our games but rather sell us more games. We have 3 sets of fans: The Starfleet Battles crowd, The Hardcore gamer, and Star Trek fans. I think we gave them all the right mix and made a great game.

SGO: As I recall, the game was released in August - how long was it before you realized what a major success you had, and at what point was a sequel firmly decided upon?

Josh: After the many stores ran out of their first orders in a week! As for the sequel we have been working on it since October.

SGO: Pretty early in the beta, it was clear that there was a strong impetus to add other races into the game that were omitted originally. Obviously, you had some tough choices to make, but you settled on the ISC and the Kzi...(ahem)... Mirak. Why those two? Granted, the Mirak are one of the core races to SFB and were probably the odds-on favorite during the beta and after release, but why the ISC instead of say, the Tholians or Andromedans? Will there be code 'hooks' for these to be added later on, or will we have to wait for SFC3 (I agree with your opinion about add-on packs, generally speaking.)?

Josh: Yes you are right we had to make a choice. The Mirak were and obvious choice to round out the major races of Starfleet battles. As for the decision to add the ISC, We thought that we could recreate a great chapter in Starfleet battles history that involved the ISC trying to save the galaxy from itself by force! As for other races we haven't given up on them. They include, as you mention, the Andromedains and Tholains. Fans also have suggested Playable Orion Pirates, forces of the Wyn Starcluster, The Lyran Democratic League, and Jindarians. The future is bright for the Starfleet Command franchise but I think we must concentrate on the game at hand before looking towards the future.

SGO: SFC1 had it's strong and weak points, fortunately far more of the former - if you don't mind, I'd like to first address some of the latter and ask what is being done (if anything) to address some of these issues:

a) AI: the AI routines of SFC1 were ok, but seemed to fixate on a "Alpha Strike up the gut" without a great deal of recognition of their own weapon's strengths (ie. trying to keep at certain more effective ranges rather than closing to point-blank range), nor a recognition of the kind of ship the player was flying (certain races should simply not be overrun, for example), nor even a rudimentary attention to the player's firing pattern (ie. it's generally safe to close after the player fires everything). Are any of these things going to be improved upon in SFC2?

Josh: The AI in Empires at War should benefit greatly from the inclusion of a defensive officer. Mike Todorovic has made great strides to make new portion of the AI include improvements to areas that you mentioned.

b) teamplay: SFC1 broke some new ground in terms of cooperative multiplay, but there were definite difficulties in controlling NPC friendlies, as well as pretty severe limits on numbers of ships.

Josh: We have made big improvements in this area. We will have a fleet control panel that will easily allow players to give order to fleet mates. This panel will slide in from the bottom of the screen and will therefore not interfere with other personal ship controls.

c) online play: Jinxx and I had some conversations about MPlayer back in September '99 I think, in which we basically agreed to disagree. Of course MPlayer remains handy for finding opponents but there are persistent claims of excessive lag that is not present in direct TCP/IP games between the same opponents. In this light there are two questions: first, some are claiming this is a "ground-up" rewrite of the game; does this mean there's a possibility of moving to a client-server architecture (regarded by some as generally more stable, and certainly successful for packet-intesive FPS online games) instead of peer-peer? Second, is there going to be some tweaking of the network code to either smooth it out on MPlayer or use a standalone "game finder" client ala many online games out there now?

Josh: I remember that conversation. I agree that Mplayer.com is still a great way of finding opponents online. There have been some complaints that hopefully Mplayer.com can solve. The network code has changed to a client-server model and should it increase performance. We don't have current plans for a stand alone server. Won.net will also be offering servers for our Metaverse Online campaign so we will have more options for our players. The Metaverse will be offered for free directly from within our game so there should be no need for additional 3rd party software outside the people that already enjoy playing on Mplayer.com

d) the dynaverse: while the Dynaverse offered a unique ability to generate a number of different missions, many players found that the missions generated either didn't make sense, or didn't seem to have any effect on the game universe. Is there an improvement planned here? What's going to change?

Josh: We agree with you and our fans that this area needs improvement. To that end we have decided to use the Metaverse for online as well as stand alone play. The main difference will be that online you can interact with thousands of other players. In the stand alone game the computer will simulate other players.

e) fighters: I think just about everyone would agree that the Hydrans fighters are way overpowered (practically PF's) in terms of balance, with their speed, hit points, and repeat-firing fusions and hellbores. First, will other races get fighters? Second, will the fighters be toned down to the level of efficacy more like SFB?