To boldly go where no gaming app has gone before sorry, I couldn’t resist! It took me a while to download Star Trek Fleet Command but after seeing LeVar Burton, Brett Spiner, and some of my all-time favorite Starfleet officers posing in Captain’s chairs, in a clever and obviously effective marketing campaign for the game That I realized; “Resistance is futile!”
Star Trek Fleet command is a team-based real time strategy that puts players in control of their own fleet a Star Trek Ships and Space Station.
An Expansive Galaxy to Explore
The first thing I want to point out about Star Trek Fleet Command is that it has taken me nearly 3 weeks to write this review because it is a massive game! The game has been out for nearly 3 years and just this last month celebrated that anniversary. My recommendation for those would be Starfleet Captains is to exercise patience in learning all of the nuances of the game!
Embarking on Your Mission to the Stars
When you first start you’re given a starter ship and a space station. The space station holds all of the production resources that are needed to advance buildings in the game. In order to construct buildings the player must collect different resources like Parasteel, titanium, and the warehouses to store it. All building in Star Trek Fleet command takes time. When building the first few levels the time needed to complete construction can be anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes. Any time under five minutes can be sped up for free. Players can collect speed up bonuses of different increments, anywhere from one minute all the way up to 24 hours, by defeating enemies and collecting combat boxes or by unlocking boxes in the daily crates that are available in different time based increments as rewards for actively playing the game. These rewards are given for every 10 minutes in game, four hours, and 24 hours of activity. If players can complete all of the daily challenges in the daily activities they are given a special token. When seven of these tokens are collected they can open up a special “week box” rthat has a greater payout and rewards.
The player receives one construction queue and one research queue for free. The research queue is used to improve some the stats of different aspects of your ships, resource production, damage dealt, damage given, etc. Players must also research the blue prints of the ships that they want to build. All of these actions take different amounts of time.
In order to unlock more queues the player has to pay real world money to the sum of $19.99. I thought that this was kind of a letdown to only allow certain aspects of the game to only be available for real world money. This kind of practice, in my opinion, does create an unfair advantage to players who have the means to pay out extra money for this game. The same goes for unlocking a third ship slot, which can also only be unlocked for real world money as well. This allows a player to gather resources or engage I combat a lot quicker and more efficiently than players who don’t pay.
Character Options
There is a wide selection of Star Trek characters for players to unlock and advance in rank. Advancing individual commanders and promoting them in rank increases their abilities and stats. Pairing commanders with their fellow officers from their respective genres gives them a command crew bonuses; for instance: Riker with Data and Jordy Leforge or “the other time”, i.e. the most recent JJ Abrams re-imagining; Kirk with Spock and Scotty gives the ship that they command a synergy bonus.
Ship Selection is Critical
There are different classifications of ship in the game: Battleships, explorers, mining, and interceptors. Each ship comes with its base stats of damage and health and those stats are increased by the synergy that the crew has. Each ship has its strengths and weaknesses against other classes of ship. When going into battle the player has to keep in mind the types of enemies that they will be fighting and take the appropriate ship for that encounter.
A Galaxy to Match Your Level
Galaxies are broken up into levels as well as types of enemies a player will encounter, which can be seen next to the name of the galaxy. Players can avoid going into a galaxy that is too high of level for them or if they want to look at what’s going on inside of the Galaxy they can view it as long as they have previously discovered the galaxy before. The player has to upgrade their ships components like the warp drive, laser turrets, torpedo, armor and cargo bays. Each upgrade has a particular effect on the ships performance and abilities. For instance, by upgrading the cargo bay the player increases the amount of protected cargo that they can carry. This is known in game as UPC, for under protection cargo. This is cargo that cannot be taken from the player when they are attacked and defeated by another player in PvP (player vs. player) combat. The player only loses the over protected cargo or OPE that they are carrying. This is important to note and can be seen by scanning an opposing player who is mining resources before you launch your surprise attack.
What is combat like in StarRek Fleet Command?
Most servers in Star Trek Fleet Command follow a certain set of rules of engagement or ROE. These are rules that players follow to keep a sense of order and players keep themselves accountable to those rules in a players “Gentleman’s agreement”. If a player attacks another player who has no OPE there is no advantage for either player and they are looked at as committing an act of war. Players will often direct message you if you violate the RoE and repeated offenses can get you a talking to from the admiral of your alliance. This ROE only applies to mining vessels, all other classifications of ships are fair game and open season!
Alliances are groups of players in the game Who have come together to help each other out in quests and missions. Alliances Admirals can form armadas to take on larger PVP battles with warring alliances. Alliances can also make allegiances with other alliances for protection and strength. I haven’t been able to level my character up to this level of engagement yet.
How do players travel in Star Trek Fleet Command?
Players have to warp from Galaxy to Galaxy but are limited in the distance that they travel by both the limits of their warp engines and any major warring galaxies that might be in their path. Players have to plot a course to their final destination and must travel along that set path. The starship travels to the point automatically and Comes to a rest once the waypoint is reached. The player can stop the ship mis traveling and the ship will come to a rest at the nearest galaxy on it’s plotted course. This can be a precarious situation for the casual player, I found, so make sure you are aware of where you are coming to a rest. Your ship is vulnerable to enemy attack by players while you’re in open space. You’re unable to attack players until you reach level 10, so you can forget about any kind of retaliation in the early stages. Having an alliance to back you up in PvP combat and aiding in construction is beneficial. Alliance members can “send help” to other players construction queues which reduces the total amount of time needed to finish a research or construction project.
When building a Star Fleet ship the player has to collect enough parts as well as the appropriate amounts of elements to improve that particular ship. All ships have several major components that need to be improved like the cargo bay, the warp engine, and gun turrets. Ships can be leveled up in five level increments and once the fifth level is reached the ship can be tiered up to a higher level. When leveling up a ship to the next tier, the timer puts the ship and its crew out of commission for the time needed to raise that ships level. Almost every ship in Star Trek Fleet command can be unlocked by playing the game, however, to unlock some of the larger ships will take a lot of time. Star Trek Fleet Command offers a wide array of microtransactions for players to purchase which would give them the ships that they want immediately without having to grind out the time it takes to earn the ship. This can be frustrating for lower-level players who encounter other equal level players who have purchased ships because they are going to be completely overpowered. It’s inconvenient but not game breaking as there are so many galaxies to choose from, if a low-level player is dominating one particular galaxy a player can simply move to another and be relatively left alone. If players find a galaxy that they enjoy fighting in, they can add it to their bookmark list for a quick reference.
The user interface can be a little overwhelming, especially on a mobile device. It’s very busy as well as slightly intimidating at first but once you get familiar with the game all of the buttons and icons begin to make sense. The mission menus and construction cues can be minimized to free up space on the screen and help the GUI look less cluttered. However, if you are still wanting a bigger screen experience you can download and play the same game on your PC! Yes, you can be at work and look busy while you’re exploring the Star Trek Galaxy, use caution! Make sure you use the same e-mail you use for the mobile version when signing up for the game on your PC in order to link your accounts together and save your progress. If you do this properly you will be able to switch back and forth between your device and PC with no issues.
I have enjoyed playing Star Trek Fleet Command although it’s taken a long time to get going in the game. I’ve learned that nearly every server has one long time player that is the go to resource for information like a wise space mage and most players in the game are very helpful and accommodating when answering questions. I recommend this game but again warn players to exercise patience unless they want to drop a few hundred dollars in a mobile app game. I feel at a little bit of a disadvantage for not spending money in the game and because it feels like it’s almost obligatory to do so in order to play the game at its full potential, it makes me not want to give any money to the game. I think I’ll continue to play because of its fun factor combined with my love of the Star Trek Franchise and I’m sure I’ll eventually cave and unlock that second queue.
