I have dozens of games to play and I keep buying more of them. PCSX2 makes it easy to pick up and play these games on the spur of the moment, and so I have been dipping into my backlog here and there.
Some of these games take awhile to complete, but I don’t think there’s many games out there that don’t get through the major mechanics in an hour or two.
Luckily, that’s not a problem with Star Trek: Conquest.
ST:C is a 4X game (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate). Set in the time of the Dominion War with the ships and some secondary characters from The Next Generation and Deep Space 9, the player takes on one of the warring factions (Federation, Breen, Cardassian, Romulan, Klingon, et al) and wins by discovering and invading the home worlds of the other factions, as well as cleaning up any fleets they might have left lying around.
I’m playing on Easy mode, so the map is revealed. In normal modes, you won’t be able to see what’s in adjoining systems without building a starbase. In this map, I, playing the Federation, have conquered the Klingon homeworld, while the Klingons have taken the Breen homeworld as well as Deep Space 9.
I’ve currently selected my fleet at Khitomer; the star ranking at the top left of the screen says that this system is resource-poor, so a mining station might not be a great idea. Perhaps a research station? The upper right shows the admiral of the selected fleet, Admiral Bullock. He is rank 3, and can move twice.
Diving into the System view shows the current fleet, if any, the starbase, if any, and a research station or a mining station. This mining station is in a three star system, and is generating a lot of resources. Both starbase and mining station are protected with automated turrets. All these things are expensive, but I can afford it, as this is near the end of a game I am winning.
When forces meet, the game drops into the battle screen. You can resolve battle three ways.
- Instant — the game plays out the battle without your input.
- Simulation — the ships battle it out themselves; you decide when your ships will go offensive, defensive or neutral. The screenshot above is Simulation mode.
- Arcade — you take direct control of one of your fleet and battle it out in real time. Not a big fan, but if you’re good, you can run rings around the AI and win over impossible odds.
I stick to Sim mode. Arcade mode is a twin stick shooter thing; I’m not good at it.
No matter what race you play, you have three Admirals available. A movement admiral that starts with an extra movement step and can expand that to three. An attack admiral that gives a bonus to battles when they are on the attack, and a defense admiral that gives a bonus when defending. As they win battles, they gain experience and level up. One game, I faced a five star Klingon attack admiral. He won every single fight, no matter how damaged I thought he was.
Each faction also has three research projects; the Federation starts with the Genesis Device, that heavily damages everything in a target system; a subspace distortion device that isolates a target system for a turn; and a healing device that instantly heals all ships and structures in a target system. Other factions have virus that weaken target admirals, warps that send a fleet behind enemy lines, and so on.
Research stations create these mega weapons and also work on upgrades; my rule is that every one-star system gets a research station, all others, mining. In the last game I played, I was able to produce a Genesis Device every turn. It was a little OP.
The galactic map can change depending on what factions are in the battle; I think you don’t get DS9, for example, unless you have the Federation, Breen or Dominion in the war. Which is too bad, because with DS9, you get a free starbase. A really good one, too.
There are also other factions around to cause trouble; the Borg, the Xindi, the Ferengi and others are just lurking about in the unaligned systems. They can be real roadblocks to a swift win.
Games are fairly quick, making ST:C one of the few 4X games I feel it’s safe to play when I have something I need to do the next day. Something like Sins of a Solar Empire… well, I’ll be missing for a few days.
This is a game I’ll keep playing.
