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October 28, 2002

Gamespot has posted a detailed preview of the highly anticipated Starfleet Command III. Here's a snippet:

The Starfleet Command series has been around for some time, and to spawn a third incarnation, it has to be doing something right. But the series has been plagued since its inception by controls and an interface that made the game unmanageable for most, difficult to learn, and difficult to play and that overwhelmed many potential players with an information overload. But that was then. Starfleet Command III is now, and it's looking to be the biggest overhaul the Starfleet Command series has ever seen--and the biggest improvement. With Starfleet Command III, the interface is streamlined to a degree that it's nearly intuitive, information is easily accessible and manageable, and for the first time, Starfleet Command is easy to learn and easy to play, and it doesn't drown in its own complexity.

[...]

When you first begin Starfleet Command III, you'll immediately notice the new interface. Stacked along the left side of the screen are most of the controls you'll need, neatly organized into three main sections. Each section has multiple tabs or overlays, but all items in each section are related. For example, the bottom area shows a schematic diagram of your ship. By selecting the various tabs, you can see the arcs your weapons can fire in (each has a specific range of fire), with their readiness and their recharge position, or see the various types of weapons and systems, or you can select the repair tab, which lets you repair the ship systems. All of the represented systems and weapons are shown with small icons--these icons change depending on the tab selected, but the layout remains the same. The result is that there's only one screen to navigate and learn, but much information can be toggled and seen, overlaying the one diagram.

New helm controls allow a degree of momentary automation to ship movement if you need to focus your efforts elsewhere.

Other new interface and control improvements abound. Though ships potentially have many different weapons, each facing in its own direction with its own firing arcs, you can now fire all available types of the weapon with just one button. Next to the button is an easy-to-understand status indicator. The status indicator is a color-coded representation that shows whether you're close to the arc of an available weapon and whether or not it's ready to fire. Power allocation and management is another key concept in starship command, and now it's very easily accomplished with three interdependent sliders. You decide where to allocate the available power between shields or the primary and heavy weapons. A green indicator shows the minimum power needed for the system to function properly, and red indicates the maximum. In this manner, you can divert power from any system to another to strategically manage your available resources. The power management tab is only one of the many tabs together in the middle section of the interface stack.

To read more, click on the link below:

http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories/previews/0,10869,2895822,00.html

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