Star Command

Star Command is a sci-fi role-playing game set in a vast fictional universe
and featuring tactical space and squad-level combat, similar to SSI’s Pool of
Radiance released the same year and other games of the Gold Box series. The
game has nothing to do with Star Command Deluxe or Star Command: Revolution.

The game plays in a distant future. Earth is a distant memory, having been
destroyed long ago. The small human population is concentrated in a small
portion of the galaxy, called “The Triangle” due to its form, and threatened
from its neighbors: The Alpha border is plagued by pirates, recently united
under a certain “Blackbeard”, the Beta border is frequently ambushed by an
intelligent insect-like alien race who is thought to plan an all-out war. The
third border leads to largely unknown territory with space-faring robots of
unclear origin. The only hope for mankind is the Star Command, the headquarter
of military forces. You control a spaceship crew, trying to secure peace by
completing missions issued by Star Command.

The game starts at Startport Luna, where you first will have to assemble and
equip your crew and buy a starship before rushing out saving humanity.
Assembling the crew, i.e. character generation, is quite detailed and done by
first recruiting and then training characters. Each character has seven basic
stats like Strength and Intelligence. If the stats look okay, you select one
of four classes (Pilots for flying ships and communicating with aliens,
Marines for espionage, Soldiers for fighting, and finally Espers with strange
psi powers). The character now has to be trained for eight years; each year,
you select a skill to be trained, and, if you’re lucky, the character
increases his skill — he may also learn nothing. Skills can be trained more
than once, increasing the effective skill level. All in all, there are 18
skills, with a different set available for each class. Some trainings does not
improve skills, but basic stats — Special Forces, for example, increases
speed and accuracy.

Character usually start out as Privates, but they the rank can be increased by
going to Officer’s school. There are 13 ranks up to Grand Admiral, with
increasing pay — money is sparse, so this may be a good choice. Then again,
it may be not. Later in the game, with enough funds, you can create clones of
your character to replace him when he dies. Character also age during play.

After you have created your crew, it’s time to spend your money. First of all,
you need a spaceship — there are nine different ships, with different
attributes like armor or fuel capacity. The ship may be upgraded by several
systems, including from engines, guns, shields, drop ships, computers, etc.
Finally, you have to equip your crew, again choosing among a vast selection of
armor, weapons and miscellaneous items. Having a fully equipped crew at your
disposal, you’re now ready to get some mission from the Space Command and
launch your ship.

While in space, you are shown a view of the environment, with commands at the
bottom and the crew or ship status on the right. The galaxy is quite big,
consisting of 32×32 sectors, each containing several systems, with each one
having up to 10 planets. You can select the view, changing from Galaxy Scan
(showing the whole galaxy) to Long Range Scan (showing 8×8 sectors) to Sector
Scan (all systems and starports of a sector) to System Scan (the star and its
planets) to Visual Scan (direct view of a planet, starport or space station
with its statistics).

While travelling through space, you may encounter ships. The game then
switches to turn-based tactical combat — but that may include peaceful
interaction. In each turn, you first have a selection of communication
strategies — bargain, plead, ask, demand, even impersonate a deity are
possible. Then you can move and rotate your ship, and finally, you can fire.
Some situations, for example when you’re boarding an enemy ship or while
travelling on land, you can engage in squad combat, which closely resembles
spaceship combat, but is influenced gravity, atmosphere and terrain.

One some missions, you will have to explore underground complexes, which may
contains traps and other specials events. There are 17 missions all in all,
but they have no time limit, so you can do other things — and you should,
like trying to get some cash. Additionally, some missions are randomly
generated, so each game differs somewhat. Character get training after each
completed mission, but they can also pay for it, which is very expensive.