A
Star Trek game from 1999, made by
Interplay. You get to control a
Federation,
Romulan,
Klingon,
Gorn,
Hydran or
Lyran ship. You can either go on a
campaign, and help defend your empire from the other empires (and from the Orion Pirates), or go on a Skirmish and play a quick
battle scenario. You can play at one of three different difficulty settings,
Captain (easy),
Commodore (medium),
Admiral (difficult).
Although the game is in 3D, the ships only move in 2 dimensions, I think it would've been better to allow for ascent and descent, and allow damage to the ventral and dorsal shields.
In my version of Starfleet Command (The Neutral Zone edition), you can only play as the Federation or the Klingons, so those are the only two races I'll cover.
If you play as the Federation, your ship will be equipped with phasers, photon torpedoes, and missile launchers. If you play as the Klingons, your ship will be equipped with phasers, disrupters, and missile launchers.
Phasers are the standard weapon for every race, they don't do too much damage and ships are armed with many of them. A standard Federation frigate is armed with two aft phasers, one starboard phaser, one port phaser, and one forward phaser.
Photon Torpedoes are the most powerful weapon available to the Federation, (According to Sulu in the tutorial: "Only a handful of weapons are able to blow through shields and break through a ship's hull as effectively as a photon torpedo") They do more damage than phasers or disrupters and can usually knock a frigate's shields offline in one blow. The game also has a feature of "overload" and "proximity" torpedoes. Overload torpedoes take twice as long to charge, but do twice as much damage. Proximity torpedoes explode when they come in proximity to an enemy ship, meaning you get a greater chance to hit at long range. A good strategy is to set your photon torpedoes to overload, wait until they're charged, then come within about 3k km of your opponent and blast through their shields with your torpedoes. In the frigate combat simulation, this technique is usually capable of knocking one of their forward phasers offline immediately.
Missile launchers are only available on a few select vessels. On the campaign, if you refit your ship straight away, your ship will have a missile launcher in place of where your photon torpedoes would be. Different missile launchers can launch different amounts of missiles. Some can launch one at a time, some two, some three. If you do the refit, yours will be able to fire two at a time. It's a good idea to set them to the large warheads in the spacedock. It means your ship will have more powerful missiles, but only be able to have half as many. With the large warheads, your missile launchers will be able to break through the shields of an Orion Pirate frigate and do some damage with ease. The main disadvantage to missiles is you only have a limited stock of them before you run out. Phaser and photon torpedo supplies are infinite.
Klingon disrupters are like very powerful phasers. They're something like three times more powerful and are damn annoying when you're trying to outrun the Klingons.
Starfleet Command also has features which make the game slightly more interesting. Features such as reinforced shielding, electronic counter measures, electronic counter-counter measures, mines, tractor beams, shuttles, boarding parties, the ability to hail, self destruct, erratic maneuvers and sensor probes.
Examples of campaign missions I've encountered:
You've encountered an Orion Pirate ship on long range sensors, destroy it.
Help this convoy get to base station, where you'll inevitably be intercepted by some Orion Pirates
Defend this space station, it's about to be attacked by (you've guessed it) Orion Pirates
Defend this space station where two incoming freighters are firing defensive phasers at each other, find out what's wrong and fix it.
There are four classes of ships in Starfleet Command: Frigate, Light Cruiser, Heavy Cruiser, Dreadnought. I'll give you some info on one of each of these ships:
Improved Frigate
2x Photon Torpedoes
1x Missile Rack G
3x Phaser 1
2x Phaser 3
New Light Cruiser
4x Photon Torpedoes
1x Missile Rack G
6x Phaser 1
Command Cruiser (Heavy Cruiser)
4x Photon Torpedoes
1x Missile Rack G
8x Phaser 1
2x Phaser 3
Dreadnought
6x Photon Torpedoes
1x Missile Rack G
12x Phaser 1
This game has provided me with hours of fun. I didn't know this, but I've just been informed that apparently this game was based on the board game Star Fleet Battles.