Starfleet Command Retrospective 

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.

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 played the hell out of this game back in the day. I wish there was a modern equivalent.

I loved this game. First PC game I ever had before I even had the internet. Was hooked on this and OP.

utterly loved this game... the Akula for the Win

I really enjoyed this as a kid - glad to see someone else is still out there playing it!

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.

SFC 1, 2 & 3 for their day and age are awesome games

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

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.

Feel like everyone always forgets about the superior game, SFC2! lol

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.

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.

This was the golden age of PC gaming....Starlance....MechCommander, Rainbow 6, SFC, MW2/3/4.....god im old lol

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.

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

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!

Fantastic game. Great for those old-school stoner nights…

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. 🤔

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.

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.

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.

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

A new AzorDash vid! 🤩

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.

Anyone else ever go into the lobbies of Gamespy or whatever it was back then to do cordial duels in this game?

friends and i used to Lan SFC3. I miss thoughs times...

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 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 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.

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.

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.

Had a SFC clan backnin the day. Loved the game.

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! 🖖

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.

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.

I play the Skirmish mode for hours as Starfleet and Klingon's over charging the weapons on the first salvo never got old

I just remember how the best thing in theses games was to just get as many missiles as possible.

I had it on PS2. loved this game so much. So want a modern version

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.

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.

You can buy it here cool interplay entrainment

I had no clue I needed this video until I found it, praise the One True Algorithm

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.

Great review. Totally agree with your assessment. Love this game and the third one. Never played the second one however.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 remember SFB, another one I bought but found no one to pay with.

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 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.

I remember printing the manual on an inkjet printer. Boy did that take a while....

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.

SFB as a 'Cadet Edition' this was shipped on the SFC cd.

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.

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.

Does anyone know why you can't find Starfleet Command II anywhere these days? Is it the Kzinti?

Absolutely loved this game - have an updated version that's wonky and tough to get to run well.

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.

starfleet battles lent also into its RPG that came later so you could mix n match

Please, can you also do videos for both SFC2 & SFC3 Thank You.

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.

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.

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 this game on a dial up modem lol

It's on GOG isn't it?

starfleet command got nothing over klingon academy with the tng mod!

despite the patches 2nd one was most fun

Remaster definitely. Still can't play this even with all the patches, tweaks and the like. 😢

The Federations advantage is the Photon torpedo. You clearly do not understand.

YES, I agree, you are totally right. SFC3 is the best of the series

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.

That game didn't work well. After a few mission, it slows down to a halt.

Another Commonwealther commenting on an American game.

Starfleet Battles is an alternate universe due to the fact that Armadillo Design Bureau got their license from Franz Joseph. He wrote the first Star Trek Technical Manual in 1975. After Star Trek The Motion Picture was released Paramount clamped down on the rights for Star Trek, but couldn't do anything about SFB. There is a happy agreement between ADB and whoever owns Star Trek now. This is why the narrative is different between official Trek and SFB.

You don't understand the History of this particular star trek universe. A Devastating 18 year long General war is under way, Making the narrative absolutely correct.