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But I'm a Starfleet Command fan. I am undaunted. I run through
a few missions fighting the Gorn.
For those of you unfamiliar with Star Trek, the Gorn are
a race of people who wear lizard costumes. My Gorn encounters
raise some concerns about the AI not using its Plasma Torpedoes
wisely. For those of you unfamiliar with Star Trek,
Plasma Torpedoes are torpedoes made of plasma.
In a typical mission, as my Gorn opponent and I make a
head-on pass, he fires his torpedo way too early.
It dissipates and splats against my number one shield like
a spoonful of mashed potatoes.
But I do it the right way: I wait until we get right up
to each other, I open his shields with my phasers, and then I
neatly loose my torpedo through the hole.
In a starbase defense mission, three
enemy ships approach a starbase one at a time while I hang back.
The starbase destroys them all in turn and I win the mission
without firing a shot. I
am glad, however, to see the AI doing shrewd things with maneuvering
and transporter bombs. In one battle, I see an AI controlled ship
using his transporters to do Hit and Run raids. As in the first game, there are
scripted missions with unique objectives.
In a mission called "Peace in Our Time", I have
to use my transporters to beam a diplomat down onto a planet. Of course, there are enemy ships around, so
I make a beeline straight for the planet at full speed. This being the world of Starfleet Command,
in which ships automatically fly through
each other rather than into
each other, I have no idea that you can't fly through planets
until my ship explodes on impact.
I later discover this bit of helpful information on page
49 of the manual: "A collision with [a planet] will put a
quick end to even the most promising of careers". Of course, I know from experience that this
isn't true, since you just lose prestige when your ship is destroyed. But next time I meet a planet, I will give
it the right of way. You Only Live Three Times Fortunately, I have the opportunity
to try twice more, since this mission seems hard-coded to come
up early in all the campaigns.
The second time it comes up, Starfleet Command II anticipates
that I might fly directly into the planet and crashes my computer
instead of loading the mission. Ha ha. Very
funny. In yet another campaign, I get a
third opportunity to try it.
I drop off the diplomat and exposition starts scrolling
along the right side of my screen -- something about an alien
entity bringing a new race in to teach someone a lesson about
war. I don't really understand what's going on,
but since there are suddenly about a half dozen ships flying around
and only one of them is labled "allied" and it's not
even a ship but a glowing ball of light, I decide to run away.
When I notice no one is chasing me, I stop. It seems these ships aren't interested in me because they're busy
fighting each other. I
can't tell who's fighting whom.
All I know was that the little ball of light is my friend.
He's like Navi in Zelda 64, but he doesn't shout "hey!"
at me every thirty seconds. A reference to a Nintendo 64 game is probably wasted
on your average Starfleet Command player, but I've got nothing
else to think about while these ships pound the snot out of each
other. Eventually, some of the ships blow each other up
and I win the mission, again without ever having fired a shot.
Quakers and Gandhi could play Starfleet Command II.
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