Windows

Star Trek: Starfleet Command - Orion Pirates

Star Trek: Starfleet Command - Orion Pirates fills the role of expansion pack nicely. It has basically the same graphics engine and gameplay as the original, with some welcome additions like pirate cartels, new ships, and missions that fit requirements of most expansion packs. Unfortunately, it also has long load times and a few bugs that can make it difficult to play. Even with these issues, if you’re a fan of the Starfleet Command series you should enjoy this one too.

Starfleet Command: Orion Pirates is a great game. Sure, it's a wee bit difficult, and pirates aside, the game offers little that is different from its predecessor, but for series aficionados, or those looking to become series aficionados, this is a solid piece of work.

With its fully realized multi-player world, this is as close as any of us 21st century dwellers will ever get to attend the Starfleet Academy. If you are a big fan of the Star Trek universe and revel in the details and strategy involved in knowing the many races and ships and how to use them in battle, then Orion Pirates is the game for you.

As a stand-alone expansion, Orion Pirates has plenty to offer. The game has all of the features of Starfleet Command Volume II--such as the full single-player campaign, skirmish, and tutorial modes--and it adds new skirmishes and playable pirate factions. More importantly, Dynaverse II works fine right out of the box and adds a great amount of replay value to the game. But, if you've played plenty of Starfleet Command Volume II, then you may want to avoid Orion Pirates--the graphical quality is the same; music tracks for the pirate factions have been added, but all others are the same; and the gameplay still relies on micromanagement of various ship systems. As such, while Orion Pirates might not be completely satisfying for fans of Starfleet Command Volume II, it's clearly better overall, and a great opportunity to get into this engaging strategy series for those who passed on the previous installment because of its shortcomings.

So it seems a lot like just an expansion at first glance, but it's really more of a stand-alone mission pack with a few new features added. You don't need anything else to run it (well, a computer) and at $30 it's not at all unreasonable provided that you get a kick out of this sort of thing to begin with. It may seem as if that goes without saying but I really enjoyed this game just as a 3D, real-time version of Starfleet Battles. While the extra stuff in the game has a lot of potential, the real meat of this game is the tactical combat model. Luckily there's enough going on outside of that to give you a sense of continuity. Hopefully future versions of the game will bring that a little farther.

However, a convincing enough reason to improve it did not exist until recently, with MOO3 now in development. Ultimately, Starfleet Command's biggest competitor may be Star Trek itself, with the impending Bridge Commander being lauded as finally 'getting Star Trek down right', something Trek gamers constantly relish.

Interstellar mercenaries vie for their piece of the SFC galaxy.

So richtig freibeuterisch fühle ich mich als Mitglied der Orion-Piraten nicht. Das liegt hauptsächlich an den sehr zähen Schlachten. Die Schiffe führen die Befehle nur sehr langsam aus, und es dauert endlos lange, einen Gegner in Weltraumschrott zu verwandeln. Andererseits fängt das Spiel die Star-Trek-Atmosphäre trotz altbackener Grafik recht gut ein. Wer schon Starfleet Command 2 mochte, dem gefällt auch Orion Pirates.