So what do you do in SFC3?
The game focuses in on you being a starship captain for your chosen race (The Federation, The Klingons and the Romulans), and progressing through the missions and storylines whilst getting bigger ships as you do. From a third person perspective of your vessel you use the mouse to click where you want your ship to head towards, and assign targets when they appear. Essentially it’s a RTS game in space, where instead of moving lots of units from above, you guide your ship side-on.
Changes?
Where Starfleet Command III (SFC3) differs somewhat to its predecessors is in the timeframe of the Star Trek series. The other two games are based around Captain Kirk’s era, where SFC3 is based in what’s called the TNG era (which comprises the Next Generation, Deep Space 9 and Voyager series). This means more modern looking ships, different races, and different weaponry and tactics.
Apart from the clear graphical makeover, which is pretty lovely it must be said (especially with the awesome lighting effects), Taldren have also spent a lot of time concentrating on sorting out issues from the previous instalments. One big change, that was the initial reason I didn’t like the first games, is that they have tried to make the game more user friendly. The interface used to move and command your ship has been simplified, and very shortly becomes less daunting after going through the well formed tutorial. After half an hour you soon pick up the basics, and from then on things become easier and easier.
For people who are inpatient, and just want to fight rather than learn (like me), all you need is presented straight in front of you on screen, never getting in the way of you observing the action. Everything you need lies within one or two screens, with repairs (a crucial feature during battle) simplified to one small mini-screen being a single click away.
Customising your ship
What’s also different about SFC3, apart from the timeframe the story is set, is that it offers new customization features that allows you to arm your ship to how you want. Everything from weapons, armour, engine speed, manoeuvrability upgrades, scanners etc, can be modified. You can also recruit and assign crew members to work on certain sections to increase performance and lets you perform additional manoeuvres. Although equally a lazy player can just leave them to gain experience by themselves if you want (which is what I did).
Not only does this customization feature add a bit more commitment to your vessels, rather than disposing of ships as soon as a better one pops along, but it also means that when facing even the weakest ship you have to be so careful it doesn’t actually pack a bigger punch. Even the best ships if commanded badly can fall to a weaker opponent whose tactics and skill are more superior. This opens the door up that I’ve wanted to see in most strategy games I’ve played that even the lowest unit can still serve a purpose when used correctly.
What’s even better is each empires ships are noticeably different, again leading to different tactics that you can use and equally ones that can also be exploited against you! It all works perfectly, especially in multiplayer, to make this an excellent strategy game.
Choice of missions
There are many ways to play in SFC3. For the lone single player you a have campaign and skirmish matches, and for people with more social skills you have a thing called ‘Dynaverse 3’ or skirmish matches in multiplayer. The single player campaign is essentially a series of special missions for your selected race that tell the story. SFC3 actually boasts an interesting story in this Star Trek era that doesn’t go too overboard with blatantly coping old storylines from past episodes (like a lot of games do, the original ST: Armada springs to mind). In fact I haven’t been so engrossed in a RTS single player campaign for such a long time it felt a little odd to actually be enjoying going through and exploring the missions, rather than just playing random skirmish matches only.
Once your finished with the story you can engage in ‘Conquest mode’ in the single player campaign, which doesn’t have a storyline and involves you conquering territory on a 2D Hexagon map for your chosen race (adding a 4th race to choose, the Borg), gaining more prestige and therefore getting better ships to fight with.
Dynaverse 3 is essentially the same as this single player conquest mode, but against human players all fighting for their selected empires online.
Data? Or a Klingon Targ?
The A.I. in single player is a mixed affair. Although you do get some pretty bad cringe worthy moments (see next page) other times you can be pleasantly surprised and challenged by the intelligence.
Enemy ships often reinforce sections of shielding exposed to your fire, thus making it harder to cause damage on them, this being a highly efficient method of protecting itself momentarily. If they can’t reinforce their shielding then they will try and turn their stronger side towards you, again being a great realistic tactic to gain yourself more time in a battle situation. Ships with cloaking devices disengage at key times, usually when they are behind you or at another venerable spot extremely well. If you’re shielding drops the enemy does not hesitate to transport marines over to your ship in an added attempt to cause damage and mayhem to your vessel.
It is good because occasionally you do feel like your engaging thinking human opponents using tactics you normally would consider. If only the few A.I. issues listed on the next page weren’t present then I’d say SFC3 done a really fabulous job on this area.
“NERDS!!!”
While the game strives to appeal to wider audiences than the previous instalments at the end of the day Starfleet Command III will be shunned by most players for the fact it’s a Star Trek game. For those who think playing a game evolving Klingons will actually turn you into a pencil necked, spotty geek spouting the translated Klingon word for the toilet at every available opportunity (whilst thinking it's funny) then SFC3 wont even get a look in. Actually, I’ll be surprised you read this far if you aren’t a Trek fan!
It’s a shame because if you donned the same game with, say, Star Wars ships (like Star Destroyers, Rebel vessels etc) and the technology then I’m sure many gamers would be praising the near perfect union of Sci-fi tactical combat and action which SFC3 clearly is.
The game doesn’t have too much technobable or back history of Trek that would also put many non-Trek players off, which means you haven’t had to have seen every episode of the show to appreciate what the hell is going on! Everything you need to understand is all explained perfectly, everything you need to play is laid out before you. Why not give it a try?
