Star Trek: Armada II
	Developer Mad Doc Publisher Activision Version v1.1 (patched) Reviewed by Christopher Lipski [Feedback] [Author Bio] Review Date April 5, 2002

Rating (out of 5.0) 3.0 out of 5.0*

Judge for yourself

Strengths Beautifully rendered Extensive tutorials Ships support each other well You get to play with the ships from Star Trek Weaknesses Finding tiny ships in the blackness of space Sometimes the AI is a bit flakey The campaign story GameSpy for multiplayer

Screenshots MORE SCREENSHOTS

* Notes Gaming Voice ratings are based on the technical and/or gameplay merits of a given product as well as the developer's choice of features and delivery of same. Our rating is not an endorsement of the thematic content of a given title. Gamers and parents are cautioned to determine if such content conflicts or coincides with their values and beliefs.

This is one that I keep coming back to play.

Like most RTS games, you collect resources, build up your forces, and try to defeat your opponent. In Armada II you are collecting dilithium from moons, metal ore from planets, and latinum from nebulae while attempting to increase the number of your crew. The exceptions to these resources are the Borg, who ignore latinum, and Species 8472 who eat everything and convert it to biomatter and don't worry about crewmembers.

Species 8472 is one of the additional races included with STA2. While they were featured in a couple of episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, the race does not seem interesting enough for inclusion here. They are an advanced biological life form, but while larvae mutating into other creatures seemed innovative in StarCraft, it is nothing exciting here.

There are a number of options that you can change in the game, such as lowering weapon damage or preventing high-speed turns. You can restrict or increase resources, available tech, and officers (which limit the maximum number of ships and bases you may have).

At the end of the game you can review everyone's forces throughout the game, and the battles they participated in via the Admiral's Log. You can also save these as text files to peruse through later if you wish.

One of the problems with STA2 is the ability/requirement to quickly build, send out, and have ships destroyed. Imagine the Voyager as a throwaway ship. Defiant? Destroyed in its first battle. The good thing is that starbase defenses are strong, so it tends to discourage such things as a Voyager rush.

Ships can either self-repair over time if they have sufficient crew, allow repair vessels to tend to them, or go to a shipyard to repair and re-crew. One of the commands available to a ship is priority repair. This sends the ship straightaway to the nearest shipyard while you can give fleet commands to the rest of the ships, and that ship will follow the next command after leaving the shipyard.

You can set ships to function autonomously, allowing them to use their weapons and special abilities as best they can, give chase to enemies, or just explore. No longer is there a need to quick click between explorers, defense, and buildings. Unfortunately, the starbases didn't always want to fire at long range, making it necessary to babysit them to some degree. Ships tend to support each other well: warping nearby to attack an enemy or taking their place in formation. The only thing that is missing is an automatic priority repair and a resumption of previous orders. A ship that is ordered to guard a shipyard will orbit it, and may suffer some serious damage and attrition to its crew, but it won't actually visit it for repairs – even during a lull in battle -- unless you tell it to.

It can be difficult to quickly pick out the right ship to build at a shipyard because of the large number that you are able to build. Each side has an explorer type (which can be upgraded to detect cloaked vessels), destroyers and advanced destroyers, colony ships, and artillery. The artillery pieces seem especially out of place in the Star Trek universe.

Ultimately, RTS games tend to come down to the story and Star Trek has an extensive history. While the campaign tells a story, it isn't a particularly good one. You learn the game with the first part, the Federation vs. the Borg, and since things are pared down a bit, neither side is able to research and build everything, and the Borg come out looking wimpy. From the shows, the Borg are a large and frightening force, and a good potential protagonist. Here they are merely a learning tool.

The second part of the campaign features the Klingons vs. the Cardassians. While that may seem lop-sided, the Cardassians able to crank out fleets to deal with the Klingons. In addition, finding some of the smaller, dark Klingon ships against the blackness of space seems to be one of the real challenges in STA2. At least the Federation painted their non-combat ships a silvery-gray.

The last part features the Borg vs. Species 8472. Since the Borg are wimpy, they decided against trying to assimilate the Federation and temporarily ally with them in a rewrite of a Voyager episode.

In addition to the single-player, linear campaign, there are instant action and multi-player modes. In these you can choose maps or generate a random one for the game. There is even a beta map editor that on the disk. With the extensive fan base of the first game, I am sure that there will be plenty of maps and modified ships available online.

While Star Trek: Armada II has some flaws, it does have some nice innovations and a good look to it. This is one that I keep coming back to play.