Star Trek 
Starfleet Command Vol 2: 
Empires At War

DEVELOPER : Taldren
PUBLISHER : Interplay

 

System Requirements (estimated, not available from Interplay) 266 MHz CPU, 64m RAM, approx 500m HD space

Recommended Either 300MHz CPU and 192m RAM or more, or 500MHz CPU with 128m RAM or more, TNT2 or better 3d accelerator

Ratings
Code Issues Graphics: 10 - It would be called pure eye candy, were it not to have a great game underneath it. Dynamic lights, beautiful backgrounds, dynamic ship textures. There's not anything wanting from the list. Audio: 10 - Outstanding background score, dynamic music adds to the atmosphere. Weapon effects distinctive, and full use of sound to assist the player's information flow. Interface: 8 - Many things improved from original, much easier control of allied ships, campaign information/screens need a little work.	Play Issues Solo Gameplay: 10 - Excellent. Didn't fix what wasn't broken, added 2 entirely new races with new strategies and tactics, AI improved 100% without (noticeably) cheating. Replayability: 9 - Much better solo campaign than before, 2 new races add fully 25% more options and increase the tactical depth for each of the original 6. Much more interesting scenarios (one-off and campaign). Multiplay: 8 - Net code much better, still waiting for much-touted persistent online universe. Learning Curve: 4 - (for non-Star Fleet Battles players), 9 (for SFB veterans) - an even closer port of the SFB (paper- and rule-intensive tabletop wargame) rules than SFC1.
Other/Notes Documentation : 7 Beefy manual with full explanations, although the tactical advice seemed somewhat hastily presented. Too bad they didn't see fit to spiral-bind this one (as with the SFC1 manual) - that was very nice for a manual-intensive game. Pros: Outstanding gameplay, completely balanced, good campaign Cons: Complicated. Other: Overall +1.0 for balance, everything fits together perfectly. (Reviewed patched version 2.0.0.3) Overall Rating: 9.4

<-- Back

But any old-time SFBer will tell you that the Mirak (a copyright-safe pseudonym for the Larry Niven-originated Kzinti from the original SFB universe) were an almost critical part of the evolution of SFB and their absence from the first game really left a gaping hole - bridged only by the willing suspension of disbelief - in the technical development of ships, deployments, and weapon systems of the Lyrans, Klingons, and Federation. They are joined to the original SFC1 races with an almost audible sigh of happiness from the fans. Their missile-using ships necessitated great and substantial improvements to the networking code of the original SFC engine, which would stutter over a half dozen missiles in flight at once. With the Mirak, a single vessel and some fighters can easily put 25 or more missiles in flight at once, enough to utterly lock up a netcode that wasn't sufficiently predictive and robust (not to mention enough to empty the bowels of the poor bastard at whom they're targeted) - and SFC2 doesn't even hiccup. Finally there is an explanation of why the Lyrans invented the ESG in the first place! The Mirak-Lyran enmity is the basis for one of the minor campaigns included in SFC2. The other race added was the first of the 'New Races' in SFB, the Interstellar Concordium. A Federation-like coalition of races, the ISC showed up in the Commander's Expansion to SFB on the far side of the Gorn/Romulan end of the galactic map. They were overwhelmingly powerful and found the internecine strife of the General War consuming the civilized galaxy abhorrent and dangerously insane. Their subsequent pacification campaign is the main theme behind the general campaigns playable in SFC2. Flying in well-ordered formations with powerful, balanced ships and the cursed Plasmatic Pulsar Device, the ISC are a strong and determined opponent for every other race in the galaxy.

It's worth noting that these are more significant additions than first it would appear. Many games have offered expansions that add a race here, some ships there, maybe some new missions. But the ISC and the Mirak first offer their own ships to fly and unique weapon systems to use. The ISC PPD is a devastatingly effective weapon at longer ranges than most other weapon system, and, coupled with the ISC penchant for plasma torpedoes facing backward, make neither before nor behind an ISC ship a nice place to be. The Mirak use missiles - not a new weapon in the SFC inventory - but use them in greater numbers than ever before. Coupled with their doubled missile control, a pair of Mirak ships (not including their fighters) can put up a cloud of missiles that will overwhelm any single-ship's defensive systems, guaranteed. In SFC1, the Fed Drone Cruiser was one of the most feared ships in the game - now, an entire fleet of drone cruisers is out there, forcing players to learn to deal with them or die. Of course, the benefits (to gameplay) of these two races extend far beyond simply playing them in their own contexts. They have an impact on every other race - the way the Lyran must deal with an ISC flotilla is far different than the tactics required for anyone else, adding replay value to all the races that one might have (however unlikely) exhausted from SFC1.

The core mechanics of the tactical system - aside from interface issues - have been left essentially alone from SFC1, a good decision as this was the basis for the game's success. Each player commands from one ship up to a small flotilla from a 3rd-person view, maneuvering their ship in a manner that wouldn't be unfamiliar to an 18th Century naval captain. The ships turn ponderously (aside from agile fighters and their larger pseudo-fighter cousins), and the heart of the experience is in keeping one's own strongest shields between one's self and the enemy, while your weapons slowly recharge for another volley. Combat is in two dimensions, a legacy from SFC's boardgame ancestry, but this does not in any way detract from the verisimilitude. Game balance - worked out over a couple of decades in the boardgame - is far more valuable than the dubious advantage of adding one more complicating dimension.

Fortunately, Taldren also recognized that in some cases variety is the spice of life, offering the players of SFC2 more than 600 vessels (the original had about 200, as I recall) with which to wreak havoc across the spacelanes. The Orions (still not a player race) have now a tremendous breadth of variety in their selection, forcing players who encounter them to pay careful attention to their capabilities and not take them as the pushovers from SFC1. Each race is also newly equipped with a full suite of carriers, and at least half-dozen different fighters (the Lyrans, Gorn, and Romulans instead get Fast Patrol Ships (aka Pesudo-Fighters), sub-frigate sized vessels that are used much like 'heavy fighters'. This means that players can fly anything from an ISC Dreadnought to the nimble Hydran Uhlan Carrier, packing 10 fighters into its tiny frame. It was glorious to finally fly a Mirak Strike Cruiser against a Lyran PF Flotilla and tender.

Taldren spent a great deal of time and effort contemplating how the single-player campaign game in SFC could be improved. In the end, they junked it entirely - a decision that commends its makers. The single player game in SFC became repetitive, damnably frustrating (with the retarded ally AI) - and ultimately boring. There were some very clever scripters behind some of the missions, but unfortunately these were rare and unique to each race, making the huge majority of missions drawn up by the 'dynamic campaign', well, a lot less than dynamic. Firstly, there seems to be a much greater breadth of scenarios available in SFC2, a not-unexpected development as coders and fans have now had more than a year to contemplate the abilities and implications of the commendably flexible scenario scripting system. In SFC1 the missions pretty much revolved around the "fight them" or "carry this to there" varieties. In SFC2 there are quite a few more alternatives (such as scientific investigations) as well as welcome variants on the original themes. One such scenario stood out particularly, in which the player not only escorts a vulnerable freighter carrying medical supplies, but must also fend off enemy attacks while remaining within a fixed distance from the freighter or be destroyed! [TIP: If you are having trouble staying close enough to the freighter, remember that you can tractor one target, while freely targeting and shooting another!] However, if the missions themselves were interesting and varied, the only semi-sour note is that if the player wiped out the defending/escorting/patrolling ships, they have in most cases unlimited time to deliver the package/destroy the freighters/invade the planet/whatever. Almost every 'mission' scenario would have been improved with a systemic timer, dumping a random enemy reinforcement onto the map if the player dawdled too long.

That there are no setpiece scenarios was slightly disappointing. The skirmish menu controls are far improved over their SFC1 progenitors, offering players complete control over friendly and enemy loadouts, upgrades, etc. There are also a thorough suite of tutorials, improved as well, to teach new players the myriad of controls and systems.

It's a little disappointing that there is no 'general war' campaign now that we can play the Kzin, er, Mirak. There are basically only 2 campaign variants: either a specific race's variant on a single theme regarding the discovery of an ancient secret, or playing a side in the ISC Pacification of the galaxy. Functionally, though, the difference between either of these and a General War scenario is slight, since the player in any case really controls their actions and the missions that they accept (to a large degree).

Either campaign is played in the new campaign system, and if you were disappointed in the original SFC 'Metaverse' you will be very pleased with the wholesale changes. In SFC2 the 'Dynaverse II' is an entirely different beast. Gone are the asymmetric zones that delineated operational areas, in favor of a hex map not dissimilar to another boardgame progenitor, Federation and Empire (not coincidentally, the grand campaign metagame developed to give context to the tactical events portrayed in SFB). Each race has home areas that span at least several dozen hexes in which the player and his ships can cruise in some safety. More importantly, in most home spaces a friendly base or planet for resupply and repair are rarely more than a hex or two away. Resupply and repair are slightly complicated by the lack of ability to review one's own ship - if you are contemplating the purchase of a new vessel, it would be handy to be able to easily pull up and review your own systems for comparison.

Once the player gathers enough force (and chutzpah) they may venture in the deep space areas - the fringe of the civilized galaxy where space beasts prowl and strange events await investigation. Or, they may decide to carry the war to the enemy and venture into the neutral or enemy-controlled zones, invariably where they will find tougher combats but also the possibility to expand the controlled region of their empire. [TIP: if you are at the end of a mission in a planetary system, more than a single (campaign) hex from a friendly station or planet, and badly damaged: if you can, hold off destroying the freighter or delivering the package or what have you. Most planets can be used as a source of spare parts. Close with the planet and beam up spare parts until you're full - this can save you a hefty 208 prestige points, as well as saving your ship.]

Each hex entered has a chance of offering a mission or two, and some are not optional: forfeiting them will result in a loss of prestige and quite possibly a demotion to a smaller ship. Successful missions produce prestige which is then used to resupply consumables like missiles, mines, and marines. A captain who is able to hoard her prestige can use it to either add ships to her flotilla or jump up to a bigger, better ship. For comparison, Frigates are typically in the 300-prestige-point range, DD's roughly 800, CA's from 1200 up to 2200, DN's 2500 and higher.

The dynaverse is an ambitious undertaking, and it shouldn't be surprising that some rough edges peek through here and there. It's strange that a player cannot simply be 'promoted' into a better ship. Instead the player has to husband enough spare PP's to 'buy' the new ship, and only then is able to sell the former command. Likewise, the PP rewards for missions seemed far too fixed. On the Captain level, every single simple victory in a patrol garnered 300 points, victory with a capture 420. This was whether I'd fought the enemy cruiser with a police boat or a battleship - an algorithm that compared BPV's and proportionately reduced/increased the prestige for fighting over- or undermatched opponents would not seem to have been unreasonably complex.

Likewise, the system of having to 'buy' supplies with prestige (realistically, I admit, but with a negative effect on gameplay) strategically hobbles missile- and fighter-using races and the players who prefer them. By the late stages of the Mirak campaign, the larger Mirak ships are capable of putting out so damn many missiles (and usually need to, since the computer tends to scale opponents to match the player's resources) that the 300 point reward for 'winning' a mission doesn't even fill the racks again, so to speak.

Finally, the campaign system interface still needs some work, and is clearly the thing that Taldren was working on last - navigation of the hexmap is clunky, the news is of dubious utility, and too much real estate is given to help files that nobody is going to look at after the first hour. The campaign SYSTEM is good, the interface gets in the way. One of the strongest complaints about SFC1 was the moronic artificial intelligence. This was very valid, and significantly reduced the fun of the multi-ship aspect of the single player game. Taldren recognized this, and improving the AI (both enemy and friendly helper AI) was one of the key tasks in preparing SFC2. Tangentially, it's worth noting that there are still a lot of games that make up for stupid AI by allowing the computer to break the rules. (Even now, the jury's still out on that for SFC1.) In SFC2 this is not (as far as can be told) an issue. The computer is bound by the same set of rules, restrictions, and limits that constrain the player. Fortunately, the AI now is by and large up to the job. After playing it intensively, it's clear that the artificial intelligence is commensurate with the difficulty level - on 'admiral' (the hardest) it will be very hard for an average player to beat the computer in an equal-ships contest regularly. Klingon ships will frequently - but not always - veer off at about range 8-12 to begin at least the opening stages of the classic 'sabre dance' technique. Romulans will evade and patiently wait to engage until the player's ship has an unfavorable angle to respond before dropping cloak, launching plasma, and returning to cloaked state. Mirak will either launch a wave of missiles and close behind them, or wait until the last moment before alpha-striking and saturating a target's anti-missile systems. The ISC simply kick your ass with the PPD, and then shove a plasma down your throat for good measure. The easiest levels are challenging, but are still beatable for beginners. Expert players - those of us who eat, sleep & breathe SFC2 - will find that, as usual, skilled, determined human play can eventually beat ANY computer opponent.

It's should be noted explicitly and with great relief that the enemy AI doesn't consider transporters a main attack system any more. The original engine would attack in a flurry of transporter bombs and marines, which would be damnably frustrating for a beginner, but ridiculously easy to beat by an experienced player. They still are used, but it's much more obviously a weapon of last resort, or to fend off clouds of fighters. Additionally, boarding actions are far less frequent (although still more likely than they were in SFB, where a down shield was much more obvious for a longer while) as a ship's critical systems are considered to be guarded by the boarding parties still aboard the ship - it's a rare hit & run raid that will work on a cruiser-or-greater level ship with a dozen or more boarding parties remaining.

Finally, some of the hardest lessons learned by SFC's developers were in online play. SFC1's net code was not ready-for-primetime, and there were great tribulations and patches that had to arrive before it was merely adequate. Hosting was done through Mplayer, a service whose lag-inflicting capacity was widely known, and confirmed by comparative play of TCP/IP games via Mplayer compared to direct-IP games. With SFC2, all of this goes out the window. Direct IP to IP play is possible, and different services are already offered out there for player matching. But that rumbling you hear in the distance is the soon-to-be-released online Dynaverse II, a persistent universe run in conjunction with the single player Dynaverse on the player's computer. Using the same interface, hundreds or thousands of players will interact on this service (hosted by Interplay, OR hosted by individual player - kudos to Taldren for including that little option). When you pick up a mission online, you really don't have any way of knowing if the game is going to be played against a human or AI opponent, or with an AI or human ally. Like an online Turing test, the goal is that these will happen invisibly for the player, and the ebb and flow of general war will make for a rich and exciting environment. When this is actually released, we'll review it here - but in any case it's a commendable and exciting goal that should be very interesting to see develop.

All in all, Starfleet Command 1 was an outstanding game, garnering some of the highest scores we've granted here at SGO. It had great graphics, outstanding sound, addictive gameplay, and an interesting if semi-functional campaign system. Starfleet Command 2: Empires at War has improved in every conceivable way from this high benchmark, and justifiably rates even higher scores. The graphics have gotten better with dynamic lighting, better textures, and gorgeous settings. Sounds are of the original high standard with outstanding music. The interface is understandably complex, but most of the obtuse or clumsy issues have been fixed and some have been radically rewritten making whole segments of the game payable where previously they were not. Tactical gameplay is fundamentally the same as before, which is good because that was the best part of the first game and didn't need fixing. It has been improved by the much-heralded inclusion of two races that add distinctively to the game's balance and play - both require entirely different methods of deployment, and deepen the strategic mix for their opponents. Better still, the campaign system has been improved 100% - this is no mere 'expansion' or rehash of ground covered once already. This is everything and a bag of chips. With the soon-to-be added persistent environment, this may be the best new thing in space games that we've seen in a long while.

If you like to comment on this review, please post a message at the forum.
Reviewed by Steve Lieb