@@chronosschiron I remember playing it at the time and being shocked most of the resource management stuff was gone, they went for single player arcade over skilled online multiplayer which killed the game.
Starfleet Command is a great digital implementation of my favorite Star Trek themed board game: Star Fleet Battles. SFB is extremely complex and technical, IF one uses all the races/ships/options, and can feel like filling out a spreadsheet to manage all the power & systems a ship uses. SFC took all that complexity and put it in a video game that automatically does the spreadsheet for you. Which is awesome. We need more video games like this, even beyond the Star Trek IP. I miss this game.
I still remember reenacting famous scenes from "Wrath of Kahn" in this game. Starfleet Command is still one of the most detailed Star Trek Ship Command game to this day.
Favourite Mission: Two Cargo Ships having a disagreement with phasers, and it's up to you how to resolve it. Personally, I lowered my phaser power, took down a shield arc on the agitator's ship, and beamed over a Security Team to seize control of the vessel.
This brings back ALOT of memories, i ran a SFCII online campaign server for a few years with a buddy, 100's of hours fighting back the Feddies with my Klingon brothers in the Black Fleet, good times
See, I was precisely the opposite. SFC: OP was my favorite, and SFC3 was where it lost the thread totally. My chief complaint about the third one was that the combat decisions were virtually unimportant. Instead of turning to bring a fresh shield or weapon to bear, everything had such wide arcs maneuver didn’t really matter, and the only real decision was what range you wanted, but with far less data to make that choice. Note that in the Star Fleet Battles universe, which is legally separate from the IP, Klingons emphasized military professionalism instead of being lawful stupid about honor. They would rather win, so an attack on freighters bringing you replacement parts is much better than a glorious frontal assault on a starbase. The games had a vibrant modding community for a long time. I used to have mods which even enabled you to build your own missions, even creating your own campaign, within limits. I greatly miss it.
I think those that have memories of Star Fleet Battles definitely preferred SFC1. Which I understand... for me I was a big TNG fan so the TNG vibes from SFC3 was what helped to make it fun for me. I do remember the mods... when I was producing this video, I did come across a few archived sites with some of them. Probably one of the first moddable mainstream Star Trek games from memory.
@@azordash_games I haven’t had a computer which runs these in ten years, but I still have many of the files I intended to use for my own version, in which the ships you start with in the campaign were pre-TOS, early era was TOS, middle TMP and late era was TNG, for all of the races. It required a lot of compromise, I never finished balancing the ship stats between era, ship presented and game requirements. Some are gone. A suitable file to convert P2 sounds to original series sounds, a file to change the fusion cannon to a pulse phaser, and of course the files which allowed me to build my own scenarios to drop into the campaign. Still, maybe someday…
Best Strat in SFC3, Shields fowards to full, drive backwards, fire everything. SFC3 is like teaching your fans with a PHD from SFC1 that actually you're all NERRRDS, shut up and enjoy the flashing lights! It would have been so easy to add a harder mode of play that was in fact the original style of game play. Hay Voyager beamed a torpedo on to a ship, SFC series already had those kids of options, what gives? Officers unlocking better abilitys in SFC3 is the only thing I am envouis of, but I'm not sure if it is compatible with the earlier SFC series, as firing multble shots is an option, not a feature to unlock with a grind set.
It was a very small dev team of just a small handful of people. Very small community of devs and fans. I think these days there are indie dev teams much bigger than the team that worked on Starfleet Cmd and I remember them answering a lot of my questions around game development work while we were all waiting for Star Trek New Worlds to come out. They ended up sending me a free copy of Starfleet Command for doing Star Trek Trivia.
I played the bejeezus out of these games. Having a refitted Dragoon and getting into knife-fighting range after a volley of hellbores was fun. Even better with a Ranger. But the best ship was a C7. The one thing that annoyed me was the federation ai fielded drone cruisers far more than it should have - to the extent that a regular federation heavy cruiser was an exceedingly rare beast by mid campaign.
Soundtrack isn't 'just OK I guess', it is phenomenal. (many of it coming from Starfleet Academy, I'll grant you that) but it is written by the famously renown Ron Jones from some TNG episodes. His themes rock. Fans didn't like SFC III that much if I recall. Music is not as good, gameplay is a little too easy and there are less races to play. Granted it is set in the 24th Century, that is good. In that regard Starfleet Armada was regarded as one of the best Star Trek games EVER. The big brother of SFC is also Star Trek Bridge Commander which take things up to a new level, you are litterally ON THE BRIDGE of your ship, ordering your officers around.
Interesting history on the music, I didn't realize that, I just wish the loops were longer or stitched together more. For me it was the setting of SFC3 that was what helped me enjoy it & I agree Armada was a lot of fun and I want to cover that in the future. Bridge Commander was also a very fun game, I remember spending a lot of time in the skirmish mode of that after finishing the excellent campaign. The voice acting was excellent also.
After reading these comments... I need to go back to it... I think in my head my memory of it may be fussy with the Orion Pirates expansion pack of SF1.
@@azordash_games I never played the original until years later. 2 was my first, as well as its campaign of the war against with the ISC. That's what I think of when I think of the SFC series. But 2 had the orion pirates expansion iirc. I didn't have it growing up, just the standard sfc 2. The story was still kind of limited in sfc2, but the War of Pacification hooked me into playing to find out the end of the journey. I've never beaten it, I always got distracted capturing enemy empire hexs and popping up starbases everywhere lol. Current mods, imo, make sfc2 plaayable again. It still looks like shit, but when that menu music hits im taken back to my childhood all over again. Seriously need a remaster or remake of these fine games. ..besides a particular connie variant crashing the game on me, we just ignore that ship from now on lmao Super hot take with SCFIII, its usually regarded as the death knell of the series. I did like a lot of what it had to offer, and even play it occasionally still. But I am a TMP fanboy, so nothing beats SFC2 and Klingon Academy for me. Best trek games ever, imo.
@@azordash_games SFC2 improved over it's predecessor on many subtle ways without sacrificing the core gameplay like SFC3 did. Also regarding your complaint about text size, I believe that is a modern age problem - back in 1999 the text would be written out over a decent part of the screen.
Great review; two things I'd add: 1: The soundtrack is, as far as I can tell, taken directly from the game Starfleet Academy, composed by Ron Jones. I do not know why. 2: Photon torpedoes, at least with Starfleet ships, are virtually guaranteed not to hit unless you are literally clipping into the enemy. Thanks for keeping this old gem alive!
I’m glad I finally found someone who agrees with me on photon torpedos… I was literally going to add a skit counter to this video of photons that missed their target… hence the reason I load up on missiles 🚀
It isn’t. Ron Jones scored Starfleet Academy with a mix of orchestra and synth while on Starfleet Command his budget was synth only. Each race got their own themes and style of music that weren’t in Starfleet Academy.
Both the first StarFleet Command and the second game have a problem that I ALWAYS found ridiculous, which is the accuracy of the Photon Torpedo.... When I was learning how to play, it was frustrating to allocate energy to fire, and see several red balls miserably missing the target.... Later, when I learned about ECM/ECCM Systems, in addition to having to fire the Photons at close range, I still thought the game's concept was wrong in relation to what we saw in the TV series. Later, I ended up creating a MOD for Starfleet Command 2, changing the accuracy of the Photon Torpedo to 50% at a distance of up to 16. And adjusting some other weapons from other Races to compensate, it became much more interesting. These games always bring back good memories for me.
Yo i just found this channel last night and left the tab open to watch this while making breakfast. New subscriber, so thanks! I've put some time into those SOASE mods Starfleet Command III and Ages of the Federation, I've always been interested in the older Trek games.
Cheers for subscribing! I’m working on a video for the rather interesting Star Trek Dominion Wars which should be releasing in the next month (one other video releasing before it). Hopefully you can enjoy that too :)
This is one of my all time favorite games, and I continue to replay it now and again. As others have said, SFC2 is the better version of the game, but isn't available on GoG like the first game. I would note that while you can get it running in modern Windows, I find it's a better experience to create a Windows XP virtual machine capable of DirectX 3d acceleration (the free VMWare player can do this) and install the game there.
Hey thanks for the comment, I'm just wondering why it's a better experience running it under a VM? I didn't have any issues once I fixed the mouse config file issue, but keen to know if there's something else I'm missing out on. I want to eventually cover all of the games in the series as well as the Armada games which I think definitely took some inspiration from SFC.
@@azordash_games It’s not any critical gameplay issue, but I still see a lot of display and game stability issues when running SFC in Windows 10, especially while multi-tasking. For example, any time you alt-tab out of the game or some background alert pops-up you have a good chance that the game will either crash completely or leave you with a munged up color palette in the game, in Windows, or both. The other big thing for me is multiple monitors, which SFC does not play nice with. The old DirectX apps could be pretty jealous of the display driver, so starting the game in your primary display can result in all kinds of resolution and color depth issues with other apps running in the background. I’ve also had issues running some mods in Win10 that work without issue in Windows XP. Running this era of games in an XP VM allows the game to fully control the virtual machine, without being interfered with (or interfering with) anything else running on your host OS. With a VM, you can set it to run in a single display, and if you need to minimize, you just minimize the whole VM rather than deal with DirectX having a tantrum. You can back up the entire VM whenever you want to create clean configurations as needed (although this does start eating drive space pretty quickly, lol). Modern machines are powerful enough that you won’t see a performance issue with games from the late 90’s and early 2000’s, and it will require fewer workarounds to get them working on XP than it would in post-Vista Windows. For SFC in particular, you do have to set the game executable to launch in compatibility mode in XP, but it otherwise requires no other mods or tweaks to work from the original install media.
I remember this being one of the earliest computer games in my family. I played it quite a bit, but what I remember the most was how repetitious the missions were, especially against a pirate starbase. It took forever to destroy it. I also remember running into missions latter in the game where they seemed simply unwinable.
Thanks for this trip down memory lane. Back in the day (~2000) i discovered the game in some supermarket ad as a 10 € version and as Star Trek fan, i begged my mum to drive me to two different towns to finally find a supermarket that had it on stock. The feeling of commanding the ships was great. I remember being able to board other ships with marines, the tractor beam, etc. I spent so much time with this game, i can almost feel the clunky keyboard and hear my CRT screen buzzing. The story wasn't a problem back then - due to the lack of sufficient English skills, i just enjoyed being in the commander's seat and figured out the missions by trial and error and with a dictionary.
It's possible the more miltaristic tone of the Federation in the narrative is drawn from the SFB canon. It's a fascinating alternate canon that (for obvious gameplay reasons) is much more focused on pretty constant warfare. As i understand it only had the TOS license so the company exapanded the universe based on that.
They have a perpetual (i.e. never expires) license that allows TOS, the animated series (which is where the Kzinti came from), and I believe some of the novels.
That’s an interesting point, certainly could be related. Although that does put the tutorial segments by Sulu at ends with the overall theme but perhaps they were worked on independently.
This game was genuinely amazing when it released, and both its sequels are awesome as well. I'm honestly kind of surprised this specific sub-genre never took off outside of just these three games. The closest spiritual successors I can think of are Battlefleet Gothic and BSG Deadlocked but even those have quite a few differences. I do have to say the music of the this game and SFC2 are actually huge highlights of the games for me. They were composed by Ron Jones himself, who did the music for the first few seasons of TNG. You can actually hear some of the same melodies from this game in the first two seasons of TNG.
Cheers for the comment. I’ve never heard of Battlefield Gothic… I will need to check it out. With regards to the music, I should have explained better; my main issue was the short loop lengths not the “actual” music itself.
@@azordash_games Ahh I misunderstood what you meant by the music, my bad. I also need to make a correction on what I said. I double checked and apparently Ron Jones did not do the soundtrack for SFC1 and 2. He did the music for Starfleet Academy, and SFC1 features some of his music re-orchestrated from that game.
Oh all good. I’ve actually never completed Starfleet Academy. I remember hiring it (yes during that time where you could hire PC games lol) but being a bit confused by it. Perhaps I was too young at the time. Is it worth checking out?
@@azordash_games I personally think Starfleet Command is far better than Academy. The Klingon Academy sequel is also lightyears better than the original SFA. It's worth checking out if you are a fan of Star Trek just as a piece of history though. It's also really nice to see a few of the original actors in the FMV scenes.
I remember playing this game often and liking it. Then I went through the directory and found a folder that had the Star Fleet Battles demo and I thought wow what is this!? I slowly started getting into that world and then picked up Federation Commander (SFB light) and have loved it ever since. I owe a lot to SFC
That was interesting. In a way this reminds me of that X-Wing tabletop game (granted I haven’t really looked too deeply into either so this could be a superficial comparison). It would be nice if they could bring back this series and combine the best elements from all the games. I doubt I’d play it, but it would make me happy to see others have fun with it. For whatever reason I prefer Star Wars over Star Trek. I like both, but one more than the other. They each have a different appeal with some degree of overlap.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Star Wars more than Star Trek, however, as a bit of a sci-fi fanatic I of course enjoy Star Trek. And you know, pretty much anything that involves space!
Makes sense. Sometimes the two will swap in terms of which I like more. Like you I also really enjoy things that have to do with space. I think that stems from when I was little and my parents bought me this pack of DVDs talking about space and that captivated me. A bunch of the other things I really liked were space/sci-fi settings and that further cemented by love for the genre.
Heya @shreksnow1918, I'd say I /have/ looked too deeply, having played all 3 (x-wing, Starfleet Battles, and Starfleet Command). The biggest difference between SFB and SFC is that SFC is actually playable :D The following might be of more value to people considering tabletop spaceship combat games, but here's my long-winded story/comparison... Approximately 3.1 million years ago I was gifted a huge pile of SFB by a neighbour whose brother "is a nerd like you, maybe you'll like this" and had left it in the parent's junk room for decades - and as a star trek tragic, I loved it. I even managed to dragoon my 40k buddy into playing it with me. My take is that it's been designed more as a simulation than a game - and even using just the most basic rules it's horribly clunky and slow. We weren't fluent, but I think we managed to get a 1v1 ship duel down to about 6 hours or so. If you enjoy optimizing Excel spreadsheets you might like it but it's only a pretty compelling game that'll convince me to spend even 3 hours on a game so it's not for me now that Real Life is something I'm concerned with. Handing off all the book-keeping to the computer makes it way more fun - leaving the player to spend their efforts on tactics and out-playing the opponent, rather than digging through 100+ pages of rules for a chart to tell you which of the 32 turn phases you're in - just to determine if you're moving, shooting, neither, both... Suffice to say game design has come a LONG way since the 70s. On that note I'm pretty sure the folks who made the original SFB have released a much more modern and playable version in the last 15-20 years, but I never played it. X-Wing is fast and fun, easy to learn and teach, quick to play, and has really nice pre-painted models at a reasonable price. There was a Star Trek game built on the same engine too, but the models were pretty average - nowhere near being scaled to one another, cast from a rubbery material, and with fairly poor pre-painting - all of which put me completely off buying into it, even though I lean Trek-ward generally. For the Star Wars fans, I believe the X-Wing game is still in production, and possibly their "big ships" game Armada too. Folks wanting quick and fun but with modelling and painting miniatures might try FTL by OnePageRules, DropFleet Commander by Andy Chambers (and team), or Gaslands' writer Mike Hutchinson's "A Billion Suns". The only TT game I play with that centres on the ol' pew-pew these days is the long-defunct spaceship/age-of-sail game Battlefleet Gothic set in the Warhammer 40k setting. I should sell those X-Wing models...
Thanks for this. I bought this in the 90s on a whim and really enjoyed it. I was not sure what i was going to get. The fact that it was based on an established boardgame meant the gameplay had already been developed well and the computer working out all the calculations made it really fast and easy to play. I also remember that he play station portable Hand held psp had his game on its catalog
I flipped out when I saw this game was getting released soon in a Star Trek magazine back in '99. Even dabbled in the modelling side of things for a while, mostly retextures and conversions. My favorite retexture was a Texas Class OCL hospital ship, second would be a type 5 shuttle, very proud with how both came out.
I loved this game! I played SFB, so I was familiar with power management and combat arcs. STO did a decent job of replicating the feel of the space combat, though it is not the same. STO power management is super simplified and officer abilities are paramount.
@@azordash_games For an MMORPG, the individual play is very robust. I don't think I ever intentionally worked with another player, though there are some open space battles where other players can show up. I find the ground combat kind of jenky and annoying, but do enjoy the space battles. If you're used to Starfleet Battles or Starfleet Command, it is dumbed down quite a bit. Power management is done through a set of sliders for Weapons, Shields, Engines, and Auxiliary. Officer abilities become important, so you can load your ship in almost infinite combinations. Understanding firing arcs and shield facing will make you much, much more effective than others just starting out. I don't play as often as I used to, but still log in to jump into a recurring space mission or one of the open space battles to blow things up. Micro-transactions are definitely a thing, but I've never spent a cent on the game and enjoyed it.
I think the reason for the lack of dialog and storylines is because the campaign/single player mode when this game was still *alive* was just a bonus sideshow. This game was primarily intended for it's online multiplayer experience, you could compete against 1000's of players and even join alliances, scores and ranking of which were handled by a third party website. The single player mode of this game only represents 1% of the games potential, to experience it fully you really need a time machine to competitively play against real players, that is something you just can't replicate today.
Oh yeah I get that… oh to be playing multiplayer when this was released. A shame we are unlikely to get any type of follow on from this series but we can hope!
@@azordash_games It was pretty incredible, two team fleets battling each other with your own team discussing tactics over 3rd party voice chat. Or 1v1 against a equally competent player which would sometimes go right down to the wire. I remember one particular 1v1 battle when I was down to my last ship and had lost all my weapons. My opponent asked me to surrender and give him the points. I disabled the camera lock and made a run for the Sun and he chased me. As we got closer the Sun the radiation started to inflict damage on both our shields, my ship being smaller and some fancy shield power management and evasive manoeuvring my ship took a lot less damage but he went up in a fireball. It was gameplay like that which was like something out of a TNG episode, great times for sure.
I love this game. I grew up playing Starfleet Battles with dad and his buddies so I have tons of fond memories of it. The Hydrans are easily my favorite race to play as though when playing Starfleet Battles I first played as a Lyran ship then a three ship Klingon fleet before trying the Hydrans myself. That second game threw the established lore out the window though because it was a three ship Klingon Fleet allied with a seven ship Hydran fleet )commanded by my dad because I drew the Hydran fleet but he talked me into swapping) facing a dozen Federation ships commanded by dad's oldest friend. In the lore the Klingons and Hydrans hate each other. The Klingons and their Lyran allies had all but conquered the Hydrans at one point only missing a few colonies they didn't discover, and they again conquered most of Hydran territory during the biggest war of the setting while the Hydrans and Federation never fought because they don't share a border and in the wars both factions were part of they were always on the same side. Edit: Out of curiosity why didn't you mention the Fusion Beam among the Hydran advantages. The Hydrans tend to develop new Heavy Weapons more often then most races. Some race mix heavy weapons like Klingons and Kzinti/Mirak (not present in Starfleet Command I) using mixes of Disruptors and drones/missiles with the Klingons focusing on Disruptors and the KzintiMirak focusing on drones/missiles. But the Hydrans have full sets of ships focused on both weapon types with different models of larger ship types having different combinations of both. The Fusion Beams were developed while they were in hiding to replace the Heavy weapons they used when they were conquered while the Hellbores came later. Edit 2: The thing about things not making sense is differences between the early material and later stuff. The creators of Starfleet Battles only had the license for races and material from the original TV series and the 70s animated series so the idea of Klingons as a culture focused on honor and courage beyond all else hadn't been established yet.
Family memories are always the best. I always remembered when I first played it (long before I knew about the Starfleet Battles connection) I wondered why certain factions hated each others. After reading your comment I now understand. Oh I do remember the fusion Beams, but honestly I just loved sending out fighters when playing as the Hydrans, I don't know why but that just blew my teenage mind. The same with scatter pack shuttles :D Interesting call out on the things not making sense... I guess I will let that Klingon off the hook for running then :D
A battle that size would have taken at least a weekend to play out. I never had the opportunity to play a battle that size. Unless memory is steering me wrong, the fed fleet actually exceeds command limits, even with a dreadnought as flagship.
@@brucesim2003 I thought command limits only applied to Federation and Empire the grand strategy game. I don't remember anyone ever mentioning them when playing Starfleet Battles until now. The battle lasted until around 10 PM and got finished the next day (My family was spending the night because it was below freezing and our power was out). But by day one's end my ships were destroyed or too wrecked to do anything but occasionally fire a lone Phaser or Disruptor due to their power systems being smashed and almost all of their weapons being gone.
@@roguerifter9724 Remember that F&E derived most of it's rules from SFB and I'm pretty sure command limits are one of them. IIRC, the command limit is that of the flagship, plus one scout ship. I'd have to dig out my rules to confirm, but most ships have
What a great video! Very much enjoyed all the information as a huge gamer and trekkie! I think I'd like to try and get my hands on this and give it a go - great video again! 🖖
God I loved this game so fucking much. I remember realizing you could raise shields and power on phasers while maintaining a yellow alert (until you fire or bring torpedoes online,) and hoping that since I wasn't coming in at full combat alert I could just fly past some Romulan scout ships lol. It didn't, it didn't matter. There was a fight.
Star Fleet Battles is still a great table top game. Star Fleet Command is probably the best way to implement an incredibly complex turn-based strategy game into a real-time combat simulator. The Taldren boards were very lively with discussion of how to balance implementing weapons and systems. For example, TOS episode "Balance of Terror" was based upon "The Enemy Below", a submarine hunt movie. Star Fleet Command only dims the image of the cloaked ship, making it too easy for the hunter to pinpoint the cloaked ship. Similarly, the exact timing needed for an ESG picket could be challenging in real-time. In the end, though, it was a superb implementation of the Star Fleet Battles. I'm sorry that licensing and bade editorial decisions excluded the novel races of SFB from mainstream Star Trek Cannon. I would have loved to have seen a Plasmatic Pulsar Device or an ESG on the big screen. The look of the Lyran Golden Fleet would have been a feast for any art director. "Hunt for food and kill for hate." Old Lyran proverb.
Cheers for the kind words! I recall playing the second at a friends place, but never owned it myself, it might be something that I revisit in the future. I played way too much of the third one that I am comfortable to admit :D
Oh I absolutely loved the game! I couldn’t get into the campaign though, mainly skirmishes & modding it to add more models. But when SFC 2 & OP came out I quickly moved to them. I still have my original copy of OP. I still try to play them every now & again.
the reason this game felt so good to play is that the sfb running it was deep, well tested, and balanced. could be re-released for streaming, co-op, teams, tournaments... could be very popular on twitch if well handled. 🤔
Great video really loved the trip down memory lane I used to love playing as a Romulan on multiplayer in a league I wish they would remaster or come out with a name game I liked sfc three but I lacked a certain something.
I bought this game in a set of four star trek games (starfleet command, elite force, star trek armada and there was some other game (away team? ) included)... This is the one i preferred most of them all...
I remember playing this with my roommate back then. There was another game called Klingon Academy in the 2001-2002 time frame. Great game with actual cut scenes from Christopher Plummer as General Chang.
I bounced off SFC, though I think that's because it felt a bit aimless and my connection to TOS wasn't that strong, mirrored in SFC2 - SFC3 however? I was a bit older and I was connected to TNG and beyond a lot more - so I loved it, still do.
I found it an interesting mix of RTS without the turn based ruleset. With other ground based games like Command and Conquer finding success - this seemed a natural progression of development.
I ADORED this game in the 90's. I never played the third game, I was disappointed that they had dropped the TOS movie era and moved on to the TNG era. Nothing wrong with TNG, love it, but I never liked the ship designs nearly as much. But I played the first two constantly for years. I even got the Nintendo DS version of the game. Nothing to write home about, but it scratched that itch on the go. I agree with the commenters saying this needs to come back. I miss the methodical gameplay. If I recall, you could even adjust the speed to your taste. I always thought dropping the speed to realtime drove up the tension and made it more of a thinking game. I was a weird kid, I suppose. I miss the slower, more deliberate space battles in the shows and movies, too. I hate seeing the big ships flying around like they're jet fighters.
I agree with you…. As much as I like new Trek, I did prefer the slower movement speed of the capital ships. Alas perhaps it’s what I just grew up with. The DS version actually looks pretty good for a DS title!
@@azordash_games If you're a fan of Starfleet command, I can definitely recommend it. It's like a simplified version of the game with the mouse buttons on the touch pad. I think it had its own unique story, too, but i don't remember much about it.
I had actually completely forgotten about Tactical Assault. I think it was on the PSP also from memory. I never had a chance to play it but it looked interesting.
That’s a good point, I’m not 100% sure to be honest however from my memory in 1999 I remember it being hard to see (or maybe I just wasn’t great at reading…) I will try and do some extra testing when I get some time but you could very well be onto something!
Nice video :)The universe of Starfleet Battles is an alternate timeline, the Federation is much more militaristic, and Klingon ships are known for their maneuverability and skirmishing attacks. Of the series I'd argue that the standalone expansion pack for Starfleet Command II, Orion Pirates, is the best of the bunch as it offers the least buggy experience, though you lose the ability to refit ships like in SFCI and crew skills, though the empire mechanics in my opinion make up for that. Throwing OrionPirates+ mod on top and you have a game that looks like it could have released recently with a ton of depth. SFCIII simplified the game too much in my opinion. Sadly, it can be difficult to find copies of SFCII.
I have been considering pulling the trigger on a Starfleet Battles set I found on eBay… if nothing other then to learn a bit more about the universe… I actually never considered it might be a different timezone, so thanks for sharing. I do want to eventually review all 3 mainline, so I’ll have to hunt down a copy of 2. Ironically I still have a boxed copy of 3 :)
@@azordash_games The license SFB has with Paramount, and how they ended up working with Interplay for SFC is a complex story. SFB started off being licensed based on 1975's quasi-canon Star Fleet Technical Manual, rather than off of the show itself. There was a lot licensing drama through the 80's and 90's, but at the end the designers (Amarillo Design Bureau) were allowed to continue under a special restricted license where they could use races, ships and artwork from the technical manual, but couldn't mention the characters or particular ships from the actual show (Kirk, Spock and the Enterprise are not mentioned at all in the game, and none of the movies or later series are coverd). They have somehow managed to maintain this license to the present day. This limited in-game universe diverged wildly from later screen canon, and huge areas of the lore were left explicitly vague (like, for instance, what century the game is set in, with a generic “year zero” timeline used). As mentioned, the Federation is much more militaristic and capitalistic, being closer to the “space America” of TOS than what we would see in later series. Being a wargame, the entire focus is on a series of massive wars fought over several decades: the General War (sort of covered in Starfleet Command 1), the ISC Pacification (the plot of Starfleet Command 2) and the Andromedan Invasion (which didn’t get covered in the games). This entire timeline would have given Roddenberry a stroke, but for whatever reason he was never able to kill the license. In the late 90’s, Interplay had the official paramount license for all Star Trek video games, and when they decided to use the SFB IP to create Starfleet Command, they did a weird half-assed melding of the Movie era artwork and assets they were using for other big games at the time (the heavily FMV based Starfleet and Klingon Academies) while doing essentially nothing to modify the setting and scenarios from SFBs. Thus, you get the weird tonal dissonance with very modern trek looks, with very non-modern dialog and setting. This collaboration with Interplay apparently didn’t go very well for ADB, who have since soured on the whole concept of computer adaptations of the tabletop game aside from play aids. So sadly we’ll never get an official remake, even if some development studio thought there was money in it.
Wow that's really insightful, I had no idea they didn't actually have a proper license, but it does make sense. I did wonder about things like 'Missiles' although for my recent playthrough in my head I just told myself it was from the Kelvin universe :D
"Drones" in the SFB jargon. They started out being Kzinti exclusive and rolled out to the other races as the timeline progressed. Same with Hydrans and fighters. The Kzinti are another interesting licensing aspect, as I think ADB licensed them separately with Larry Niven, who created them for his Known Space universe and borrowed them for the Trek animated series episode he wrote "The Slaver Weapon" (based on one of his Known Space short stories). Interplay didn't have this licensing arrangement, so in SFC the Kzinti are the Mirak. I think all the other races were either covered in the existing ADB license or were creations of ADB themselves so could be used.
@@CaptainMojo IIRC the Starfleet Battles "historical scenarios" feature a Captain Robert April who has many Kirk-like adventures. Robert April was one of the names suggested for the captain character early on in the creation of the tv show, and "Robert April" is now a featured character IIRC in "Star Trek: New Worlds"
sadly hard to get it running thoose days. i got 1 and 2 along with OP still around. ive seen the demo for this on a mag cd and loved it from first sight. Klingon Academy was also fantastic for its time.
I absolutely want to do a video on Klingon Academy… I loved it as a kid. The challenge is despite having the 6 odd cd’s I don’t have an easy way to mount them unless I play it on my retro rig and then I have capture issues… alas I’ll find a way :D
on of the best games i know. i use a hotas to play it that works well. only problem i have is my bluetooth dongle from my headset withat that one pluged in it whont start the game.
The narrative dissonance is probably because it's based on Star Fleet Battles, which is explicitly based off TOS, which is distinctly more military-oriented.
Starfleet Command is a good game. I do like it a lot, but... Well, you'd expect that a game based on SFB would 'scratch the itch'. Give you the experience of playing SFB without getting someone else over, getting out the right counters, setting up the impulse chart and rolling lots of dice on damage allocation. And it's a very faithful conversion of SFB to a real time format. Which is also where it falls down. Despite a lot of good cues, there's a lot that gets hidden and passed over in the transition to the new format. But, it is _so close_ to SFB I end any game of Starfleet Command with a deep hunger to play SFB. It reminds me of how good that game is, but can't quite deliver on the play of it. Oh, and yes, Star Fleet Battles is a board game. It doesn't take a lot to convert it over to a miniatures game, but it is definitely a board wargame. It also hasn't gone through nearly as many changes as Warhammer, with four major editions. There's been a lot expansions over the years, but the last time the rules really changed was 1990.
Good summary! I am a table top game fan so I am slightly curious… I’ve been watching a new old stock version of the game on ebay… might have to think about pulling the trigger on it. Although the last thing I need is more things/games in my backlog 🫠
Man, i remember playing SFC 1,2, and 3 for ages back then. I just wish they would make games like this again today. Not STO, which consists mostly of mindless action and flashing FX that makes one vomit, lol. I just want less action, more thinking and the feel of actually commanding a Star Trek vessel.
I hear you…. Sadly the level of risk for a developer in building this type of game today as opposed to the tried and tested STO formula makes it unlikely :( but we can still hope!
@@azordash_games Indeed. I'm not an expert (not even by a strech), but i could imagine that even an independent game developer or one person alone could create a similar game (without the Star Trek license, of course). I might be the only one, but to me graphics have never been very important, i would be happy with 2000s graphics or older (i'd be happy with a 2D universe, lol), as long as the game has the right feel and give us enough freedom so the player can pursue various different approaches to play (play as a miner, smuggler, military or (of course) explorer). I would be GLAD if there was a game like the old Starflight, just with a bigger universe and more freedom, which should be not a big problem given current computer power.
10:30 - The part about the Klingon escaping, I don't necessarily agree. Even in universe, he's taunting you to see if you'll take the bait or not. This is pretty exactly also how it happens in the Star Trek Online TOS storyline where one Klingon ship takes a run and you follow. Now granted that was a cutscene but it ends with you being ambushed by surprise, cloaked Klingon ships. So if anything, that mission really should have had more Klingon ships enter the fray if he reached cords x/y to engage you. That'd make the player pretty much hit the emergency turn and hightail out of there. Likewise the other example you gave about needing to leave the mission area, that makes perfect sense to me. 14:46 - Ouf, hard disagree. Starfleet Command III is so disappointing it feels like it was rushed. Some ships have room to place redundancies but it won't allow you to, so what's the point with having two computer slots if you can only ever place one? The Crew level up system is, kinda too good and really shouldn't been a thing in my opinion. The amount of ships is woefully undercooked. No the best one is Starfleet Command II Orion Pirates, especially with the Orion Pirates+ mod that adds a ton of ships. But that's just SFC games, then we have the spin-off more modern SFC game I'd say, which is the NDS/PSP Tactical Assault which streamlines it even further. There's soo many Trek games. But that's just my opinion, SFC3 is disappointing and undercooked.
SFC and SFC2 were excellent games! I played hundereds maybe even thousands of hours of both titles...and nothing since has scratched the same itch. 10/10 for SFC.
@@azordash_games Well, when I get into a game I get into it. Space Engineers has to be my favourite “game” of all time (it’s a sandbox). I currently have 12333 hrs played on Steam (1.4 years to you and me Russ). 👍
Star Fleet Battles was more militaristic than Star Trek. And had a US military Rah Rah Rah (F-18 fighter shuttles for example.) element not seen in the TV versions before Discovery naming its ship classes after obscure UDAF pilots.
Is the game narratively inconsistent? I'd say or it is just going for the militaristic vibe of Star Trek 2 and 6. Haven't played it in 24 years so I might be misremembering.
Couldn't fully get into this one, found the combat janky & frustrating with the amount of times torpedoes missed. (Even when a target wasn't using counter-measures.) Quit the campaign at a mission where you face an exact clone of your own ship. As I was in a Proxima class dreadnought, neither could do enough damage to the other to win.
Ah yes, that was my experience with torpedos… although there is a comment somewhere here where apparently I was firing them wrong. Although to that I say the game was not intuitive enough as I only followed what the tutorial told me to 🫥
I played SFB in the 80's/early 90's, and was a massive fan of Starfleet Command 2:Empires at War, still playing my modded version (TOS/SFB ship models) as late as 2006. Most enjoyable computer game I've ever played, period. I have to disagree with you about SFCIII though. SFCII was exactly what I wanted; SFB for the pc (before that was a thing). SFCIII took out all put the three vanilla races, and introduced the Borg, who I've never liked, and who made zero sense in the setting. A massive slide downhill, imo.
I can defintely understand how you would feel if you were an SFB fan! I didn’t have any nostalgia for SFB so for me the shift to a setting I really enjoyed (TNG) made sense.
Oh I understand the photon torpedo well… my issue was that the hit rate was maybe 50% at best…? Where as virtually every other weapon in the hand is hitscan. Am I missing something as to how to improve accuracy?
I dont beieve the Klingons get cloaks in the base game. SFB ignored that ST3 nonsense introduced because the Romulans were supposed to be the baddies in their cloaked Romulan ship the Bird of Prey, which is also not present in SFB.
Sfc3 was really “dumbed down” in my opinion, a lot of the power management and little intricacies was removed. The best of the series was Orion pirates
@@azordash_games its graphics way better then 3 and game play is fricking cool ,now i know it worked on windows 7 /10 and ya had to get this direct x c patch ( they put 32 of them into one ...ya it was amess to fix originally) but it had even more races and a addon for orion pirates wish gog would do it but alas my bet is that patch issue
I agree that the base campaigns are pretty bland but I always thought the special black ops campaigns for the big three (Federation, Klingon and Romulon) were very good.
When I can get Klingon Academy working on my modern capture PC I am going to cover it. Or I’ll just play it on my retro rig with external video capture…. Either way it’s probably my number 1 or 2 best Star Trek game so I’m definitely looking forward to revisiting it!
Good game but a bit buggy. I played through all six races to their final missions and three of the final missions were bugged and I could not complete them. The thing that makes this game good is the ship to ship combat, spiced up a little bit with various scenarios,
SFC2 is where it's at. It's because of these games from Talderin studios that I feel most of the fleet/warship vehicle Sim games are absolute trash in comparison. SFC games allowed a lot of creativity when playing as a vessel's capt and even as a Command of a whole wing. In comparison, you've got games like Warthunder, World of Warships and others which just by far, lack any sense of flexibility, creativity or nuance in gameplay whatsoever. SFC was a Lightning in a bottle sort of series and happened in the right time and right age of gaming. Around the same time, ST: Dominion Wars came out which offered a far more arcade like but still, far better ship command experiance than modern ship vehicle Sims do. And also ST: Armada series came out, allowing for that Fleet/Empire building feel in the form of an RTS. Also Interplay was doing well with releasing titles like Starfleet Academy and Klingon Academy, which both allowed an even more immersed experience in sitting in the captains chair. It was glorious hearing every voice command voice acted with authority and urgency. It was like they took the best of the Wing Command and Free Space series wingman controls and made an entire game outve those controls to allow you to feel like a capt. There where so many good games back then for Star Trek that really pushed the limits. Hell, for a time? Even ST: New Worlds, was a fascinating delight - seeing ST movie era combat on the ground where each side is using tanks and artillery to fight, and your base building involves the raw harvesting of minerals you tend to only hear about in lore/shows. It was a golden era. But for me, SCF2 was where it was at. The graphics back then were actually top notch for the modeling and textures. Ships looked great and made great model pieces for piloting around. They also introduced standardized class types in design that to this day, I admire. The Federations Battleship design is massive and brutish, the Carrier is a huge whale but slick as ever and the Dreadnought and Frigate designs look amazing and fit their roles handsomely. Many of these 3D models are reused across other Interplay games like the Academy series, with the SFC Fed BB type being the same model from say Klingon Academy's Yamato class Battleship. Man those were the day. The cherry on top was the music and score. The composer was brilliant and the game utilized early forms of reactive OST ambience, where the music tracks were diced up and could be 'composed on the fly' by the game engine to reflect your situation. It didn't always work, but when it did, it felt like your own high budget episode or Movie era scenes were playing out, fully orchestrated.
this is a game series that needs to be brought back or at least remastered.
PS the gold edition is availble on steam too as well as GoG.
Too bad sfc2 is not gilded
itsnot 2nd game 1st and 3rd suck compared to it
@@chronosschiron The 3rd game they went all arcade and destroyed it, shame as the graphics were more polished.
@@uberdude2555 i found graphics more cartooney but game was more polished ya take 2's fun and races and add bord and all 3s bits of fixes
@@chronosschiron I remember playing it at the time and being shocked most of the resource management stuff was gone, they went for single player arcade over skilled online multiplayer which killed the game.
Starfleet Command is a great digital implementation of my favorite Star Trek themed board game: Star Fleet Battles. SFB is extremely complex and technical, IF one uses all the races/ships/options, and can feel like filling out a spreadsheet to manage all the power & systems a ship uses. SFC took all that complexity and put it in a video game that automatically does the spreadsheet for you. Which is awesome. We need more video games like this, even beyond the Star Trek IP. I miss this game.
I still remember reenacting famous scenes from "Wrath of Kahn" in this game. Starfleet Command is still one of the most detailed Star Trek Ship Command game to this day.
I played the hell out of this game back in the day. I wish there was a modern equivalent.
I really enjoyed this as a kid - glad to see someone else is still out there playing it!
I loved this game. First PC game I ever had before I even had the internet. Was hooked on this and OP.
Favourite Mission: Two Cargo Ships having a disagreement with phasers, and it's up to you how to resolve it.
Personally, I lowered my phaser power, took down a shield arc on the agitator's ship, and beamed over a Security Team to seize control of the vessel.
Yeah look I’m not going to lie…. The first time I did that mission I “accidentally” destroyed the aggressor. 🤫
This brings back ALOT of memories, i ran a SFCII online campaign server for a few years with a buddy, 100's of hours fighting back the Feddies with my Klingon brothers in the Black Fleet, good times
It was certainly a simpler time too!
See, I was precisely the opposite. SFC: OP was my favorite, and SFC3 was where it lost the thread totally. My chief complaint about the third one was that the combat decisions were virtually unimportant. Instead of turning to bring a fresh shield or weapon to bear, everything had such wide arcs maneuver didn’t really matter, and the only real decision was what range you wanted, but with far less data to make that choice.
Note that in the Star Fleet Battles universe, which is legally separate from the IP, Klingons emphasized military professionalism instead of being lawful stupid about honor. They would rather win, so an attack on freighters bringing you replacement parts is much better than a glorious frontal assault on a starbase.
The games had a vibrant modding community for a long time. I used to have mods which even enabled you to build your own missions, even creating your own campaign, within limits.
I greatly miss it.
I think those that have memories of Star Fleet Battles definitely preferred SFC1. Which I understand... for me I was a big TNG fan so the TNG vibes from SFC3 was what helped to make it fun for me.
I do remember the mods... when I was producing this video, I did come across a few archived sites with some of them. Probably one of the first moddable mainstream Star Trek games from memory.
@@azordash_games I haven’t had a computer which runs these in ten years, but I still have many of the files I intended to use for my own version, in which the ships you start with in the campaign were pre-TOS, early era was TOS, middle TMP and late era was TNG, for all of the races. It required a lot of compromise, I never finished balancing the ship stats between era, ship presented and game requirements. Some are gone. A suitable file to convert P2 sounds to original series sounds, a file to change the fusion cannon to a pulse phaser, and of course the files which allowed me to build my own scenarios to drop into the campaign. Still, maybe someday…
Best Strat in SFC3, Shields fowards to full, drive backwards, fire everything.
SFC3 is like teaching your fans with a PHD from SFC1 that actually you're all NERRRDS, shut up and enjoy the flashing lights!
It would have been so easy to add a harder mode of play that was in fact the original style of game play.
Hay Voyager beamed a torpedo on to a ship, SFC series already had those kids of options, what gives?
Officers unlocking better abilitys in SFC3 is the only thing I am envouis of, but I'm not sure if it is compatible with the earlier SFC series, as firing multble shots is an option, not a feature to unlock with a grind set.
I agree. I hated the third game. Totally divorced from its board game roots.
SFC 1, 2 & 3 for their day and age are awesome games
It was a very small dev team of just a small handful of people. Very small community of devs and fans. I think these days there are indie dev teams much bigger than the team that worked on Starfleet Cmd and I remember them answering a lot of my questions around game development work while we were all waiting for Star Trek New Worlds to come out. They ended up sending me a free copy of Starfleet Command for doing Star Trek Trivia.
I played the bejeezus out of these games. Having a refitted Dragoon and getting into knife-fighting range after a volley of hellbores was fun. Even better with a Ranger. But the best ship was a C7.
The one thing that annoyed me was the federation ai fielded drone cruisers far more than it should have - to the extent that a regular federation heavy cruiser was an exceedingly rare beast by mid campaign.
Soundtrack isn't 'just OK I guess', it is phenomenal. (many of it coming from Starfleet Academy, I'll grant you that) but it is written by the famously renown Ron Jones from some TNG episodes.
His themes rock.
Fans didn't like SFC III that much if I recall. Music is not as good, gameplay is a little too easy and there are less races to play. Granted it is set in the 24th Century, that is good. In that regard Starfleet Armada was regarded as one of the best Star Trek games EVER. The big brother of SFC is also Star Trek Bridge Commander which take things up to a new level, you are litterally ON THE BRIDGE of your ship, ordering your officers around.
Interesting history on the music, I didn't realize that, I just wish the loops were longer or stitched together more.
For me it was the setting of SFC3 that was what helped me enjoy it & I agree Armada was a lot of fun and I want to cover that in the future.
Bridge Commander was also a very fun game, I remember spending a lot of time in the skirmish mode of that after finishing the excellent campaign. The voice acting was excellent also.
Feel like everyone always forgets about the superior game, SFC2! lol
After reading these comments... I need to go back to it... I think in my head my memory of it may be fussy with the Orion Pirates expansion pack of SF1.
@@azordash_games I never played the original until years later. 2 was my first, as well as its campaign of the war against with the ISC. That's what I think of when I think of the SFC series. But 2 had the orion pirates expansion iirc. I didn't have it growing up, just the standard sfc 2.
The story was still kind of limited in sfc2, but the War of Pacification hooked me into playing to find out the end of the journey. I've never beaten it, I always got distracted capturing enemy empire hexs and popping up starbases everywhere lol. Current mods, imo, make sfc2 plaayable again. It still looks like shit, but when that menu music hits im taken back to my childhood all over again. Seriously need a remaster or remake of these fine games.
..besides a particular connie variant crashing the game on me, we just ignore that ship from now on lmao
Super hot take with SCFIII, its usually regarded as the death knell of the series. I did like a lot of what it had to offer, and even play it occasionally still. But I am a TMP fanboy, so nothing beats SFC2 and Klingon Academy for me. Best trek games ever, imo.
This opened the door for many ideas. Remember 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars'?
@@terrylandess6072 I've got a video on that ;)
@@azordash_games SFC2 improved over it's predecessor on many subtle ways without sacrificing the core gameplay like SFC3 did.
Also regarding your complaint about text size, I believe that is a modern age problem - back in 1999 the text would be written out over a decent part of the screen.
utterly loved this game... the Akula for the Win
As soon as I saw the thumbnail, the music just popped into my head and refused to leave me alone. Not that I mind, though :P
Great review; two things I'd add:
1: The soundtrack is, as far as I can tell, taken directly from the game Starfleet Academy, composed by Ron Jones. I do not know why.
2: Photon torpedoes, at least with Starfleet ships, are virtually guaranteed not to hit unless you are literally clipping into the enemy.
Thanks for keeping this old gem alive!
I’m glad I finally found someone who agrees with me on photon torpedos… I was literally going to add a skit counter to this video of photons that missed their target… hence the reason I load up on missiles 🚀
It isn’t. Ron Jones scored Starfleet Academy with a mix of orchestra and synth while on Starfleet Command his budget was synth only. Each race got their own themes and style of music that weren’t in Starfleet Academy.
Both the first StarFleet Command and the second game have a problem that I ALWAYS found ridiculous, which is the accuracy of the Photon Torpedo....
When I was learning how to play, it was frustrating to allocate energy to fire, and see several red balls miserably missing the target....
Later, when I learned about ECM/ECCM Systems, in addition to having to fire the Photons at close range, I still thought the game's concept was wrong in relation to what we saw in the TV series.
Later, I ended up creating a MOD for Starfleet Command 2, changing the accuracy of the Photon Torpedo to 50% at a distance of up to 16. And adjusting some other weapons from other Races to compensate, it became much more interesting.
These games always bring back good memories for me.
This is my favorite game from my childhood. I still play SFC2 CE to this day!
Fantastic game. Great for those old-school stoner nights…
Please, can you also do videos for both SFC2 & SFC3 Thank You.
That’s the plan :)
Yo i just found this channel last night and left the tab open to watch this while making breakfast. New subscriber, so thanks! I've put some time into those SOASE mods Starfleet Command III and Ages of the Federation, I've always been interested in the older Trek games.
Cheers for subscribing! I’m working on a video for the rather interesting Star Trek Dominion Wars which should be releasing in the next month (one other video releasing before it). Hopefully you can enjoy that too :)
This is one of my all time favorite games, and I continue to replay it now and again. As others have said, SFC2 is the better version of the game, but isn't available on GoG like the first game. I would note that while you can get it running in modern Windows, I find it's a better experience to create a Windows XP virtual machine capable of DirectX 3d acceleration (the free VMWare player can do this) and install the game there.
Hey thanks for the comment, I'm just wondering why it's a better experience running it under a VM? I didn't have any issues once I fixed the mouse config file issue, but keen to know if there's something else I'm missing out on. I want to eventually cover all of the games in the series as well as the Armada games which I think definitely took some inspiration from SFC.
@@azordash_games It’s not any critical gameplay issue, but I still see a lot of display and game stability issues when running SFC in Windows 10, especially while multi-tasking. For example, any time you alt-tab out of the game or some background alert pops-up you have a good chance that the game will either crash completely or leave you with a munged up color palette in the game, in Windows, or both.
The other big thing for me is multiple monitors, which SFC does not play nice with. The old DirectX apps could be pretty jealous of the display driver, so starting the game in your primary display can result in all kinds of resolution and color depth issues with other apps running in the background. I’ve also had issues running some mods in Win10 that work without issue in Windows XP.
Running this era of games in an XP VM allows the game to fully control the virtual machine, without being interfered with (or interfering with) anything else running on your host OS. With a VM, you can set it to run in a single display, and if you need to minimize, you just minimize the whole VM rather than deal with DirectX having a tantrum. You can back up the entire VM whenever you want to create clean configurations as needed (although this does start eating drive space pretty quickly, lol).
Modern machines are powerful enough that you won’t see a performance issue with games from the late 90’s and early 2000’s, and it will require fewer workarounds to get them working on XP than it would in post-Vista Windows. For SFC in particular, you do have to set the game executable to launch in compatibility mode in XP, but it otherwise requires no other mods or tweaks to work from the original install media.
I remember this being one of the earliest computer games in my family. I played it quite a bit, but what I remember the most was how repetitious the missions were, especially against a pirate starbase. It took forever to destroy it. I also remember running into missions latter in the game where they seemed simply unwinable.
Thanks for this trip down memory lane. Back in the day (~2000) i discovered the game in some supermarket ad as a 10 € version and as Star Trek fan, i begged my mum to drive me to two different towns to finally find a supermarket that had it on stock. The feeling of commanding the ships was great. I remember being able to board other ships with marines, the tractor beam, etc.
I spent so much time with this game, i can almost feel the clunky keyboard and hear my CRT screen buzzing.
The story wasn't a problem back then - due to the lack of sufficient English skills, i just enjoyed being in the commander's seat and figured out the missions by trial and error and with a dictionary.
Ahhh the good old buzz of a CRT screen. Sounds like your Mum was awesome to take you hunting around for it!
It's possible the more miltaristic tone of the Federation in the narrative is drawn from the SFB canon. It's a fascinating alternate canon that (for obvious gameplay reasons) is much more focused on pretty constant warfare. As i understand it only had the TOS license so the company exapanded the universe based on that.
They have a perpetual (i.e. never expires) license that allows TOS, the animated series (which is where the Kzinti came from), and I believe some of the novels.
That’s an interesting point, certainly could be related. Although that does put the tutorial segments by Sulu at ends with the overall theme but perhaps they were worked on independently.
This game was genuinely amazing when it released, and both its sequels are awesome as well. I'm honestly kind of surprised this specific sub-genre never took off outside of just these three games. The closest spiritual successors I can think of are Battlefleet Gothic and BSG Deadlocked but even those have quite a few differences.
I do have to say the music of the this game and SFC2 are actually huge highlights of the games for me. They were composed by Ron Jones himself, who did the music for the first few seasons of TNG. You can actually hear some of the same melodies from this game in the first two seasons of TNG.
Cheers for the comment. I’ve never heard of Battlefield Gothic… I will need to check it out.
With regards to the music, I should have explained better; my main issue was the short loop lengths not the “actual” music itself.
@@azordash_games Ahh I misunderstood what you meant by the music, my bad. I also need to make a correction on what I said. I double checked and apparently Ron Jones did not do the soundtrack for SFC1 and 2. He did the music for Starfleet Academy, and SFC1 features some of his music re-orchestrated from that game.
Oh all good. I’ve actually never completed Starfleet Academy. I remember hiring it (yes during that time where you could hire PC games lol) but being a bit confused by it. Perhaps I was too young at the time. Is it worth checking out?
@@azordash_games I personally think Starfleet Command is far better than Academy. The Klingon Academy sequel is also lightyears better than the original SFA. It's worth checking out if you are a fan of Star Trek just as a piece of history though. It's also really nice to see a few of the original actors in the FMV scenes.
@UndyingNephalim got it. I loved Klingon Academy. All 6 or so CD’s of it!
I remember playing this game often and liking it. Then I went through the directory and found a folder that had the Star Fleet Battles demo and I thought wow what is this!? I slowly started getting into that world and then picked up Federation Commander (SFB light) and have loved it ever since. I owe a lot to SFC
That was interesting. In a way this reminds me of that X-Wing tabletop game (granted I haven’t really looked too deeply into either so this could be a superficial comparison). It would be nice if they could bring back this series and combine the best elements from all the games. I doubt I’d play it, but it would make me happy to see others have fun with it.
For whatever reason I prefer Star Wars over Star Trek. I like both, but one more than the other. They each have a different appeal with some degree of overlap.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Star Wars more than Star Trek, however, as a bit of a sci-fi fanatic I of course enjoy Star Trek. And you know, pretty much anything that involves space!
Makes sense. Sometimes the two will swap in terms of which I like more. Like you I also really enjoy things that have to do with space. I think that stems from when I was little and my parents bought me this pack of DVDs talking about space and that captivated me. A bunch of the other things I really liked were space/sci-fi settings and that further cemented by love for the genre.
Heya @shreksnow1918, I'd say I /have/ looked too deeply, having played all 3 (x-wing, Starfleet Battles, and Starfleet Command). The biggest difference between SFB and SFC is that SFC is actually playable :D
The following might be of more value to people considering tabletop spaceship combat games, but here's my long-winded story/comparison...
Approximately 3.1 million years ago I was gifted a huge pile of SFB by a neighbour whose brother "is a nerd like you, maybe you'll like this" and had left it in the parent's junk room for decades - and as a star trek tragic, I loved it. I even managed to dragoon my 40k buddy into playing it with me. My take is that it's been designed more as a simulation than a game - and even using just the most basic rules it's horribly clunky and slow. We weren't fluent, but I think we managed to get a 1v1 ship duel down to about 6 hours or so. If you enjoy optimizing Excel spreadsheets you might like it but it's only a pretty compelling game that'll convince me to spend even 3 hours on a game so it's not for me now that Real Life is something I'm concerned with.
Handing off all the book-keeping to the computer makes it way more fun - leaving the player to spend their efforts on tactics and out-playing the opponent, rather than digging through 100+ pages of rules for a chart to tell you which of the 32 turn phases you're in - just to determine if you're moving, shooting, neither, both...
Suffice to say game design has come a LONG way since the 70s. On that note I'm pretty sure the folks who made the original SFB have released a much more modern and playable version in the last 15-20 years, but I never played it.
X-Wing is fast and fun, easy to learn and teach, quick to play, and has really nice pre-painted models at a reasonable price.
There was a Star Trek game built on the same engine too, but the models were pretty average - nowhere near being scaled to one another, cast from a rubbery material, and with fairly poor pre-painting - all of which put me completely off buying into it, even though I lean Trek-ward generally.
For the Star Wars fans, I believe the X-Wing game is still in production, and possibly their "big ships" game Armada too.
Folks wanting quick and fun but with modelling and painting miniatures might try FTL by OnePageRules, DropFleet Commander by Andy Chambers (and team), or Gaslands' writer Mike Hutchinson's "A Billion Suns".
The only TT game I play with that centres on the ol' pew-pew these days is the long-defunct spaceship/age-of-sail game Battlefleet Gothic set in the Warhammer 40k setting.
I should sell those X-Wing models...
Thanks for this. I bought this in the 90s on a whim and really enjoyed it. I was not sure what i was going to get. The fact that it was based on an established boardgame meant the gameplay had already been developed well and the computer working out all the calculations made it really fast and easy to play. I also remember that he play station portable Hand held psp had his game on its catalog
I flipped out when I saw this game was getting released soon in a Star Trek magazine back in '99. Even dabbled in the modelling side of things for a while, mostly retextures and conversions. My favorite retexture was a Texas Class OCL hospital ship, second would be a type 5 shuttle, very proud with how both came out.
Definitely put hundreds of hours into the multiplayer for this game when I was a teenager.
I loved this game! I played SFB, so I was familiar with power management and combat arcs.
STO did a decent job of replicating the feel of the space combat, though it is not the same. STO power management is super simplified and officer abilities are paramount.
I need to try STO…. Never got around to trying it as MMORPG’s generally are not my thing, but for the ST license I’m prepared to give it a go I think.
@@azordash_games For an MMORPG, the individual play is very robust. I don't think I ever intentionally worked with another player, though there are some open space battles where other players can show up.
I find the ground combat kind of jenky and annoying, but do enjoy the space battles. If you're used to Starfleet Battles or Starfleet Command, it is dumbed down quite a bit. Power management is done through a set of sliders for Weapons, Shields, Engines, and Auxiliary. Officer abilities become important, so you can load your ship in almost infinite combinations. Understanding firing arcs and shield facing will make you much, much more effective than others just starting out.
I don't play as often as I used to, but still log in to jump into a recurring space mission or one of the open space battles to blow things up. Micro-transactions are definitely a thing, but I've never spent a cent on the game and enjoyed it.
I think the reason for the lack of dialog and storylines is because the campaign/single player mode when this game was still *alive* was just a bonus sideshow. This game was primarily intended for it's online multiplayer experience, you could compete against 1000's of players and even join alliances, scores and ranking of which were handled by a third party website. The single player mode of this game only represents 1% of the games potential, to experience it fully you really need a time machine to competitively play against real players, that is something you just can't replicate today.
Oh yeah I get that… oh to be playing multiplayer when this was released. A shame we are unlikely to get any type of follow on from this series but we can hope!
@@azordash_games It was pretty incredible, two team fleets battling each other with your own team discussing tactics over 3rd party voice chat. Or 1v1 against a equally competent player which would sometimes go right down to the wire. I remember one particular 1v1 battle when I was down to my last ship and had lost all my weapons. My opponent asked me to surrender and give him the points. I disabled the camera lock and made a run for the Sun and he chased me. As we got closer the Sun the radiation started to inflict damage on both our shields, my ship being smaller and some fancy shield power management and evasive manoeuvring my ship took a lot less damage but he went up in a fireball. It was gameplay like that which was like something out of a TNG episode, great times for sure.
I love this game. I grew up playing Starfleet Battles with dad and his buddies so I have tons of fond memories of it. The Hydrans are easily my favorite race to play as though when playing Starfleet Battles I first played as a Lyran ship then a three ship Klingon fleet before trying the Hydrans myself. That second game threw the established lore out the window though because it was a three ship Klingon Fleet allied with a seven ship Hydran fleet )commanded by my dad because I drew the Hydran fleet but he talked me into swapping) facing a dozen Federation ships commanded by dad's oldest friend.
In the lore the Klingons and Hydrans hate each other. The Klingons and their Lyran allies had all but conquered the Hydrans at one point only missing a few colonies they didn't discover, and they again conquered most of Hydran territory during the biggest war of the setting while the Hydrans and Federation never fought because they don't share a border and in the wars both factions were part of they were always on the same side.
Edit: Out of curiosity why didn't you mention the Fusion Beam among the Hydran advantages. The Hydrans tend to develop new Heavy Weapons more often then most races. Some race mix heavy weapons like Klingons and Kzinti/Mirak (not present in Starfleet Command I) using mixes of Disruptors and drones/missiles with the Klingons focusing on Disruptors and the KzintiMirak focusing on drones/missiles. But the Hydrans have full sets of ships focused on both weapon types with different models of larger ship types having different combinations of both. The Fusion Beams were developed while they were in hiding to replace the Heavy weapons they used when they were conquered while the Hellbores came later.
Edit 2: The thing about things not making sense is differences between the early material and later stuff. The creators of Starfleet Battles only had the license for races and material from the original TV series and the 70s animated series so the idea of Klingons as a culture focused on honor and courage beyond all else hadn't been established yet.
Family memories are always the best. I always remembered when I first played it (long before I knew about the Starfleet Battles connection) I wondered why certain factions hated each others. After reading your comment I now understand. Oh I do remember the fusion Beams, but honestly I just loved sending out fighters when playing as the Hydrans, I don't know why but that just blew my teenage mind. The same with scatter pack shuttles :D
Interesting call out on the things not making sense... I guess I will let that Klingon off the hook for running then :D
A battle that size would have taken at least a weekend to play out. I never had the opportunity to play a battle that size. Unless memory is steering me wrong, the fed fleet actually exceeds command limits, even with a dreadnought as flagship.
@@brucesim2003 I thought command limits only applied to Federation and Empire the grand strategy game. I don't remember anyone ever mentioning them when playing Starfleet Battles until now. The battle lasted until around 10 PM and got finished the next day (My family was spending the night because it was below freezing and our power was out). But by day one's end my ships were destroyed or too wrecked to do anything but occasionally fire a lone Phaser or Disruptor due to their power systems being smashed and almost all of their weapons being gone.
@@roguerifter9724 Remember that F&E derived most of it's rules from SFB and I'm pretty sure command limits are one of them. IIRC, the command limit is that of the flagship, plus one scout ship.
I'd have to dig out my rules to confirm, but most ships have
What a great video! Very much enjoyed all the information as a huge gamer and trekkie! I think I'd like to try and get my hands on this and give it a go - great video again! 🖖
Cheers for the kind words! It’s definitely a must play if you are any kind of Trekkie!
A new AzorDash vid! 🤩
Starfleet Battles may have come with cardboard chips for ship counters but there was a line of mini's you could buy and use.
God I loved this game so fucking much. I remember realizing you could raise shields and power on phasers while maintaining a yellow alert (until you fire or bring torpedoes online,) and hoping that since I wasn't coming in at full combat alert I could just fly past some Romulan scout ships lol.
It didn't, it didn't matter. There was a fight.
Ha ha, I never found a practical use for Yellow Alert apart from hearing the sound effect :D
@@azordash_games I think the only use is "make you feel slightly better on 'routine patrol' missions lol
Ahhh the routine patrol haha!
Star Fleet Battles is still a great table top game.
Star Fleet Command is probably the best way to implement an incredibly complex turn-based strategy game into a real-time combat simulator. The Taldren boards were very lively with discussion of how to balance implementing weapons and systems. For example, TOS episode "Balance of Terror" was based upon "The Enemy Below", a submarine hunt movie. Star Fleet Command only dims the image of the cloaked ship, making it too easy for the hunter to pinpoint the cloaked ship. Similarly, the exact timing needed for an ESG picket could be challenging in real-time. In the end, though, it was a superb implementation of the Star Fleet Battles.
I'm sorry that licensing and bade editorial decisions excluded the novel races of SFB from mainstream Star Trek Cannon. I would have loved to have seen a Plasmatic Pulsar Device or an ESG on the big screen. The look of the Lyran Golden Fleet would have been a feast for any art director.
"Hunt for food and kill for hate." Old Lyran proverb.
Great review. Totally agree with your assessment. Love this game and the third one. Never played the second one however.
Cheers for the kind words!
I recall playing the second at a friends place, but never owned it myself, it might be something that I revisit in the future. I played way too much of the third one that I am comfortable to admit :D
Oh I absolutely loved the game! I couldn’t get into the campaign though, mainly skirmishes & modding it to add more models. But when SFC 2 & OP came out I quickly moved to them. I still have my original copy of OP.
I still try to play them every now & again.
It's on GOG isn't it?
Correct - The Gold Edition with patch 1.3 already included.
the reason this game felt so good to play is that the sfb running it was deep, well tested, and balanced. could be re-released for streaming, co-op, teams, tournaments... could be very popular on twitch if well handled. 🤔
Great video really loved the trip down memory lane I used to love playing as a Romulan on multiplayer in a league I wish they would remaster or come out with a name game I liked sfc three but I lacked a certain something.
Cheers for the kind words! I agree Romulan was very fun to play as!
@@azordash_games Yea I loved how there power levels could be a real hindrance ! I hope you will do more Star trek or SFC type videos!
@carfaxabbycemeterygoth7937 I certainly will be…. I have a Star Wars video releasing next and then after that, Star Trek Dominion Wars.
@@azordash_games I'm looking for to checking that out
I remember SFB, another one I bought but found no one to pay with.
Oh no. From what I was reading it looked extremely complex... like there were a lot of things happening in each turn!
I bought this game in a set of four star trek games (starfleet command, elite force, star trek armada and there was some other game (away team? ) included)...
This is the one i preferred most of them all...
This was the golden age of PC gaming....Starlance....MechCommander, Rainbow 6, SFC, MW2/3/4.....god im old lol
Cue that epic Rainbow 6 menu music… 🎵
You can buy it here cool interplay entrainment
I LOVED this game growing up
I remember playing this with my roommate back then. There was another game called Klingon Academy in the 2001-2002 time frame. Great game with actual cut scenes from Christopher Plummer as General Chang.
I will definitely be covering this game in the near future! I loved this game & I remember being blown away by the cutscenes!
Had a SFC clan backnin the day. Loved the game.
I can tell this would have been a lot of fun back in the golden age of multiplayer!
YES, I agree, you are totally right. SFC3 is the best of the series
I bounced off SFC, though I think that's because it felt a bit aimless and my connection to TOS wasn't that strong, mirrored in SFC2 - SFC3 however? I was a bit older and I was connected to TNG and beyond a lot more - so I loved it, still do.
I can relate to that... SF3 and it's TNG links are very well done. Likewise with the Armada series.
If you’re playing the game at its original resolution the text size is fine, that’s just an issue with running at modern resolution
I was at the army that time and played it at my bunk like crazy.
I found it an interesting mix of RTS without the turn based ruleset. With other ground based games like Command and Conquer finding success - this seemed a natural progression of development.
I ADORED this game in the 90's. I never played the third game, I was disappointed that they had dropped the TOS movie era and moved on to the TNG era. Nothing wrong with TNG, love it, but I never liked the ship designs nearly as much. But I played the first two constantly for years. I even got the Nintendo DS version of the game. Nothing to write home about, but it scratched that itch on the go. I agree with the commenters saying this needs to come back. I miss the methodical gameplay. If I recall, you could even adjust the speed to your taste. I always thought dropping the speed to realtime drove up the tension and made it more of a thinking game. I was a weird kid, I suppose. I miss the slower, more deliberate space battles in the shows and movies, too. I hate seeing the big ships flying around like they're jet fighters.
I agree with you…. As much as I like new Trek, I did prefer the slower movement speed of the capital ships. Alas perhaps it’s what I just grew up with. The DS version actually looks pretty good for a DS title!
@@azordash_games If you're a fan of Starfleet command, I can definitely recommend it. It's like a simplified version of the game with the mouse buttons on the touch pad. I think it had its own unique story, too, but i don't remember much about it.
Anyone else ever go into the lobbies of Gamespy or whatever it was back then to do cordial duels in this game?
I had a lot of fun with Star Trek Tactical Assault on the Nintendo DS which was a sort of cut down version of SFC.
I had actually completely forgotten about Tactical Assault. I think it was on the PSP also from memory. I never had a chance to play it but it looked interesting.
With the text size, isn't this an artefact of the hd resolution - the text size & UI on the much lower resolution 1999 computers was appropriate
That’s a good point, I’m not 100% sure to be honest however from my memory in 1999 I remember it being hard to see (or maybe I just wasn’t great at reading…) I will try and do some extra testing when I get some time but you could very well be onto something!
I had it on PS2. loved this game so much. So want a modern version
I had no clue I needed this video until I found it, praise the One True Algorithm
Glad to know you found it :D
Stay tuned for my Dominion Wars retrospective coming later this month.
Nice video :)The universe of Starfleet Battles is an alternate timeline, the Federation is much more militaristic, and Klingon ships are known for their maneuverability and skirmishing attacks. Of the series I'd argue that the standalone expansion pack for Starfleet Command II, Orion Pirates, is the best of the bunch as it offers the least buggy experience, though you lose the ability to refit ships like in SFCI and crew skills, though the empire mechanics in my opinion make up for that. Throwing OrionPirates+ mod on top and you have a game that looks like it could have released recently with a ton of depth. SFCIII simplified the game too much in my opinion.
Sadly, it can be difficult to find copies of SFCII.
I have been considering pulling the trigger on a Starfleet Battles set I found on eBay… if nothing other then to learn a bit more about the universe… I actually never considered it might be a different timezone, so thanks for sharing.
I do want to eventually review all 3 mainline, so I’ll have to hunt down a copy of 2. Ironically I still have a boxed copy of 3 :)
@@azordash_games The license SFB has with Paramount, and how they ended up working with Interplay for SFC is a complex story.
SFB started off being licensed based on 1975's quasi-canon Star Fleet Technical Manual, rather than off of the show itself. There was a lot licensing drama through the 80's and 90's, but at the end the designers (Amarillo Design Bureau) were allowed to continue under a special restricted license where they could use races, ships and artwork from the technical manual, but couldn't mention the characters or particular ships from the actual show (Kirk, Spock and the Enterprise are not mentioned at all in the game, and none of the movies or later series are coverd). They have somehow managed to maintain this license to the present day.
This limited in-game universe diverged wildly from later screen canon, and huge areas of the lore were left explicitly vague (like, for instance, what century the game is set in, with a generic “year zero” timeline used). As mentioned, the Federation is much more militaristic and capitalistic, being closer to the “space America” of TOS than what we would see in later series. Being a wargame, the entire focus is on a series of massive wars fought over several decades: the General War (sort of covered in Starfleet Command 1), the ISC Pacification (the plot of Starfleet Command 2) and the Andromedan Invasion (which didn’t get covered in the games). This entire timeline would have given Roddenberry a stroke, but for whatever reason he was never able to kill the license.
In the late 90’s, Interplay had the official paramount license for all Star Trek video games, and when they decided to use the SFB IP to create Starfleet Command, they did a weird half-assed melding of the Movie era artwork and assets they were using for other big games at the time (the heavily FMV based Starfleet and Klingon Academies) while doing essentially nothing to modify the setting and scenarios from SFBs. Thus, you get the weird tonal dissonance with very modern trek looks, with very non-modern dialog and setting.
This collaboration with Interplay apparently didn’t go very well for ADB, who have since soured on the whole concept of computer adaptations of the tabletop game aside from play aids. So sadly we’ll never get an official remake, even if some development studio thought there was money in it.
Wow that's really insightful, I had no idea they didn't actually have a proper license, but it does make sense. I did wonder about things like 'Missiles' although for my recent playthrough in my head I just told myself it was from the Kelvin universe :D
"Drones" in the SFB jargon. They started out being Kzinti exclusive and rolled out to the other races as the timeline progressed. Same with Hydrans and fighters. The Kzinti are another interesting licensing aspect, as I think ADB licensed them separately with Larry Niven, who created them for his Known Space universe and borrowed them for the Trek animated series episode he wrote "The Slaver Weapon" (based on one of his Known Space short stories). Interplay didn't have this licensing arrangement, so in SFC the Kzinti are the Mirak. I think all the other races were either covered in the existing ADB license or were creations of ADB themselves so could be used.
@@CaptainMojo IIRC the Starfleet Battles "historical scenarios" feature a Captain Robert April who has many Kirk-like adventures.
Robert April was one of the names suggested for the captain character early on in the creation of the tv show, and "Robert April" is now a featured character IIRC in "Star Trek: New Worlds"
IIRC, Starfleet Battles had a much more militaristic tone than normal Star Trek. Some Admiral saying "keep your sword polished" would fit in there.
friends and i used to Lan SFC3. I miss thoughs times...
I play the Skirmish mode for hours as Starfleet and Klingon's over charging the weapons on the first salvo never got old
sadly hard to get it running thoose days. i got 1 and 2 along with OP still around. ive seen the demo for this on a mag cd and loved it from first sight. Klingon Academy was also fantastic for its time.
I absolutely want to do a video on Klingon Academy… I loved it as a kid. The challenge is despite having the 6 odd cd’s I don’t have an easy way to mount them unless I play it on my retro rig and then I have capture issues… alas I’ll find a way :D
on of the best games i know. i use a hotas to play it that works well. only problem i have is my bluetooth dongle from my headset withat that one pluged in it whont start the game.
The narrative dissonance is probably because it's based on Star Fleet Battles, which is explicitly based off TOS, which is distinctly more military-oriented.
I just remember how the best thing in theses games was to just get as many missiles as possible.
Literally my number 1 strategy.
Remember SFC II and SFC and SFC Orion Pirates
a great series of games, not perfect but great fun. especially the Great Tribble Hunt mission
Starfleet Command is a good game. I do like it a lot, but...
Well, you'd expect that a game based on SFB would 'scratch the itch'. Give you the experience of playing SFB without getting someone else over, getting out the right counters, setting up the impulse chart and rolling lots of dice on damage allocation.
And it's a very faithful conversion of SFB to a real time format. Which is also where it falls down. Despite a lot of good cues, there's a lot that gets hidden and passed over in the transition to the new format. But, it is _so close_ to SFB I end any game of Starfleet Command with a deep hunger to play SFB. It reminds me of how good that game is, but can't quite deliver on the play of it.
Oh, and yes, Star Fleet Battles is a board game. It doesn't take a lot to convert it over to a miniatures game, but it is definitely a board wargame. It also hasn't gone through nearly as many changes as Warhammer, with four major editions. There's been a lot expansions over the years, but the last time the rules really changed was 1990.
Good summary! I am a table top game fan so I am slightly curious… I’ve been watching a new old stock version of the game on ebay… might have to think about pulling the trigger on it. Although the last thing I need is more things/games in my backlog 🫠
Does anyone know why you can't find Starfleet Command II anywhere these days? Is it the Kzinti?
SFB as a 'Cadet Edition' this was shipped on the SFC cd.
Man I could do serious damage with some scatter pack shuttles.
I got it when it came out as a kid. Then was promptly stolen by my dad. I'd wake up at 3 am to photon torpedos and phasers. He still playing it. XD
Haha no prizes for guessing which faction he was playing as then :D
@@azordash_games It got so many mods done to it now I don't know anymore. He got everything in it. Even added a Star Destroyer for a joke.
@@StarUnionPrime I could actually see that working not too bad! Just need a few Corvettes.
Used to rock the hell out of this games. Yeah it could do with a remaster. The old ones still fun to play if you can sort it all out.
Absolutely loved this game - have an updated version that's wonky and tough to get to run well.
My best advice is to try and use the mouse fix (link in the description) and run it under compatibility mode. Oh and make sure you have patch 1.3.
@@azordash_games working on it - never gets past an aborted start up. May just restore everything and start fresh LOL
@someoldguyinhawaii4960 oh damn… good luck!
I remember printing the manual on an inkjet printer. Boy did that take a while....
That’s one expensive manual copy 💰
Man, i remember playing SFC 1,2, and 3 for ages back then.
I just wish they would make games like this again today. Not STO, which consists mostly of mindless action and flashing FX that makes one vomit, lol.
I just want less action, more thinking and the feel of actually commanding a Star Trek vessel.
I hear you…. Sadly the level of risk for a developer in building this type of game today as opposed to the tried and tested STO formula makes it unlikely :( but we can still hope!
@@azordash_games Indeed.
I'm not an expert (not even by a strech), but i could imagine that even an independent game developer or one person alone could create a similar game (without the Star Trek license, of course).
I might be the only one, but to me graphics have never been very important, i would be happy with 2000s graphics or older (i'd be happy with a 2D universe, lol), as long as the game has the right feel and give us enough freedom so the player can pursue various different approaches to play (play as a miner, smuggler, military or (of course) explorer).
I would be GLAD if there was a game like the old Starflight, just with a bigger universe and more freedom, which should be not a big problem given current computer power.
10:30 - The part about the Klingon escaping, I don't necessarily agree. Even in universe, he's taunting you to see if you'll take the bait or not. This is pretty exactly also how it happens in the Star Trek Online TOS storyline where one Klingon ship takes a run and you follow. Now granted that was a cutscene but it ends with you being ambushed by surprise, cloaked Klingon ships. So if anything, that mission really should have had more Klingon ships enter the fray if he reached cords x/y to engage you. That'd make the player pretty much hit the emergency turn and hightail out of there.
Likewise the other example you gave about needing to leave the mission area, that makes perfect sense to me.
14:46 - Ouf, hard disagree.
Starfleet Command III is so disappointing it feels like it was rushed. Some ships have room to place redundancies but it won't allow you to, so what's the point with having two computer slots if you can only ever place one? The Crew level up system is, kinda too good and really shouldn't been a thing in my opinion. The amount of ships is woefully undercooked. No the best one is Starfleet Command II Orion Pirates, especially with the Orion Pirates+ mod that adds a ton of ships.
But that's just SFC games, then we have the spin-off more modern SFC game I'd say, which is the NDS/PSP Tactical Assault which streamlines it even further.
There's soo many Trek games.
But that's just my opinion, SFC3 is disappointing and undercooked.
This game is what Star Trek: Online wishes it was.
SFC and SFC2 were excellent games! I played hundereds maybe even thousands of hours of both titles...and nothing since has scratched the same itch. 10/10 for SFC.
That’s quite the commitment for sure!
@@azordash_games Well, when I get into a game I get into it. Space Engineers has to be my favourite “game” of all time (it’s a sandbox). I currently have 12333 hrs played on Steam (1.4 years to you and me Russ). 👍
Star Fleet Battles was more militaristic than Star Trek. And had a US military Rah Rah Rah (F-18 fighter shuttles for example.) element not seen in the TV versions before Discovery naming its ship classes after obscure UDAF pilots.
starfleet battles lent also into its RPG that came later so you could mix n match
Is the game narratively inconsistent? I'd say or it is just going for the militaristic vibe of Star Trek 2 and 6. Haven't played it in 24 years so I might be misremembering.
Couldn't fully get into this one, found the combat janky & frustrating with the amount of times torpedoes missed. (Even when a target wasn't using counter-measures.) Quit the campaign at a mission where you face an exact clone of your own ship. As I was in a Proxima class dreadnought, neither could do enough damage to the other to win.
Ah yes, that was my experience with torpedos… although there is a comment somewhere here where apparently I was firing them wrong. Although to that I say the game was not intuitive enough as I only followed what the tutorial told me to 🫥
I played SFB in the 80's/early 90's, and was a massive fan of Starfleet Command 2:Empires at War, still playing my modded version (TOS/SFB ship models) as late as 2006. Most enjoyable computer game I've ever played, period. I have to disagree with you about SFCIII though. SFCII was exactly what I wanted; SFB for the pc (before that was a thing). SFCIII took out all put the three vanilla races, and introduced the Borg, who I've never liked, and who made zero sense in the setting. A massive slide downhill, imo.
I can defintely understand how you would feel if you were an SFB fan!
I didn’t have any nostalgia for SFB so for me the shift to a setting I really enjoyed (TNG) made sense.
The Federations advantage is the Photon torpedo.
You clearly do not understand.
Oh I understand the photon torpedo well… my issue was that the hit rate was maybe 50% at best…? Where as virtually every other weapon in the hand is hitscan. Am I missing something as to how to improve accuracy?
You have to be close in@azordash_games
I dont beieve the Klingons get cloaks in the base game. SFB ignored that ST3 nonsense introduced because the Romulans were supposed to be the baddies in their cloaked Romulan ship the Bird of Prey, which is also not present in SFB.
Klingons definitely have cloaks in the version of the base game I have (v1.3). Not sure about the day 1 unpatched version... but I would assume so.
@@azordash_games Oh ok, misremembered. Even the D7?
Sfc3 was really “dumbed down” in my opinion, a lot of the power management and little intricacies was removed. The best of the series was Orion pirates
i played but never completed Orion Pirates... after watching DIS I'm probably due to go back to it!
despite the patches 2nd one was most fun
and its not on gog cause of the patches required
I never actually owned number 2. I need to try and track it down for my collection at some stage. A lot of people seem to say it was the best!
@@azordash_games
its graphics way better then 3 and game play is fricking cool
,now i know it worked on windows 7 /10
and ya had to get this direct x c patch ( they put 32 of them into one ...ya it was amess to fix originally)
but it had even more races and a addon for orion pirates
wish gog would do it but alas my bet is that patch issue
and you could add and edit files to make it customized a lot too
it did not have borg however
@chronosschiron cool I’ll have to check it out…. If I can get Dominion Wars to run on Windows 11… I can get SF2 to run 😆
I played this game on a dial up modem lol
That is dedicated... I recall trying to play Birth of the Federation on dial up (that didn't go well...)
I was lucky I was near a substation so I had good connection@@azordash_games
I agree that the base campaigns are pretty bland but I always thought the special black ops campaigns for the big three (Federation, Klingon and Romulon) were very good.
starfleet command got nothing over klingon academy with the tng mod!
When I can get Klingon Academy working on my modern capture PC I am going to cover it. Or I’ll just play it on my retro rig with external video capture…. Either way it’s probably my number 1 or 2 best Star Trek game so I’m definitely looking forward to revisiting it!
I have a question about star trek Starfleet command, do you only get to control a single ship? Or can you control an entire fleet?@@azordash_games
Good game but a bit buggy. I played through all six races to their final missions and three of the final missions were bugged and I could not complete them. The thing that makes this game good is the ship to ship combat, spiced up a little bit with various scenarios,
Remaster definitely. Still can't play this even with all the patches, tweaks and the like. 😢
Oh damn… just not launching? Tried Windows compatibility mode and the configuration file change?
Yet you use a ship from sfc 2 for thumb nail
SFC2 is where it's at.
It's because of these games from Talderin studios that I feel most of the fleet/warship vehicle Sim games are absolute trash in comparison.
SFC games allowed a lot of creativity when playing as a vessel's capt and even as a Command of a whole wing.
In comparison, you've got games like Warthunder, World of Warships and others which just by far, lack any sense of flexibility, creativity or nuance in gameplay whatsoever.
SFC was a Lightning in a bottle sort of series and happened in the right time and right age of gaming. Around the same time, ST: Dominion Wars came out which offered a far more arcade like but still, far better ship command experiance than modern ship vehicle Sims do. And also ST: Armada series came out, allowing for that Fleet/Empire building feel in the form of an RTS.
Also Interplay was doing well with releasing titles like Starfleet Academy and Klingon Academy, which both allowed an even more immersed experience in sitting in the captains chair. It was glorious hearing every voice command voice acted with authority and urgency. It was like they took the best of the Wing Command and Free Space series wingman controls and made an entire game outve those controls to allow you to feel like a capt.
There where so many good games back then for Star Trek that really pushed the limits.
Hell, for a time? Even ST: New Worlds, was a fascinating delight - seeing ST movie era combat on the ground where each side is using tanks and artillery to fight, and your base building involves the raw harvesting of minerals you tend to only hear about in lore/shows.
It was a golden era.
But for me, SCF2 was where it was at.
The graphics back then were actually top notch for the modeling and textures. Ships looked great and made great model pieces for piloting around. They also introduced standardized class types in design that to this day, I admire. The Federations Battleship design is massive and brutish, the Carrier is a huge whale but slick as ever and the Dreadnought and Frigate designs look amazing and fit their roles handsomely. Many of these 3D models are reused across other Interplay games like the Academy series, with the SFC Fed BB type being the same model from say Klingon Academy's Yamato class Battleship.
Man those were the day.
The cherry on top was the music and score. The composer was brilliant and the game utilized early forms of reactive OST ambience, where the music tracks were diced up and could be 'composed on the fly' by the game engine to reflect your situation. It didn't always work, but when it did, it felt like your own high budget episode or Movie era scenes were playing out, fully orchestrated.