Star Trek: New Worlds

Moby ID: 2251
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Description official descriptions

A Romulan experiment gone wrong has suddenly made multiple planet systems appear out of nowhere in this formerly barren sector. The area is named Tabula Rasa, and the three neighboring races... Federation, Klingon, and Romulan, are ready to exploit the newly found riches... But first they must deal with the natives, who may be friend of foe...

You are in control of a colony for your "empire". You must grow your colony and build defense and offense to secure your goals while mining the resources you came for. Build from the heart of your colony... the colony hub. Build mines to extract minerals from the ground (but they can run out). Build resource processors to get higher efficiency. Build vehicle yards to build better vehicles. Build research facility to get improved technology and better units, and so on and so forth. You must balance energy, growth, exploration, defense, crew, and when you get to it, offense. It is also possible to capture enemy structures.

Each side has a special unit with unique capabilities to make the battle more interesting. Multiplayer is supported over Gamespy. Several tutorial missions are also created.

Spellings

  • 星际迷航:新世界 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

71 People (64 developers, 7 thanks) · View all

Engineering Team
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Design Team
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Package Layout and Design
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Manual Layout and Design
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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 57% (based on 25 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.1 out of 5 (based on 11 ratings with 6 reviews)

Force Commander for Star Trek

The Good
ST: New Worlds is set after Star Trek V. A beautifully rendered introductory movie shows a Romulan weapon test going awry and sucking a new star system into striking distance of the Romulans, Klingons and Federation. Each group has their own motive for exploring/exploiting these new planets, thus setting up the first Star Trek real-time strategy game.

The Romulans, Klingons and Federation each have a fourteen mission campaign dealing with their expansion into the new worlds. In an interested touch, the game's difficulty system is tied into the three factions. Players looking for an easier gaming experience should choose the Klingons, the Federation campaign is the medium difficulty setting and the Romulan campaign is the hard one.

While each of the factions has different motives, the gaming experience is similar for each one. This is a real-time strategy game so your colony must be built up, five different resources must be mined and processed and a technology tree provides paths to different buildings and vehicles.

Personnel management also comes into play. People are needed to staff buildings and operate vehicles, so you'll need to provide food, housing and medical facilities to increase your population. Also senior staff members, such as the Doctor or Chief Engineer, can also be placed in different facilities to increase their efficiency.

The game is playable in an isometric mode, an overhead mode and in a first person camera mode. While the usefulness of these modes are questionable, it may be useful to observe the action from different perspectives. There is also an overhead tricorder mode, which shows where resources are located as well as your buildings and enemy buildings with sight of your units (conventionally, this plays as a radar-view).

The Bad
Sadly, there is little to recommend about this game. While no fog-of-war exists, you cannot "see" enemy structures until your units are upon them. Then, when your units lose the line of site, the structures fade away. Star Trek doesn't have satellites anymore? Also, no good reason is given for not having support from spacecraft. I think any mission could have easily been completed by the Enterprise and a landing team.

Mobygames does not have an AI rating for this game, probably because it is non-existent. If enemy units see your units, then they'll open fire. Enemy patrols might fly through your camp, but they never attack vital structures or run for cover or anything. Some missions require capturing enemy buildings, unfortunately your troops will still attack these structures and you cannot tell them otherwise. It becomes trying, attempting to keep your units close enough to support capturing vehicles without them destroying the building.

You have five resources to mine, but it is often difficult to place mining stations and then they resources need to be converted into usable goods. This feels more like chemistry than gaming. Also, the number of buildings and units is severely limited. From the first mission, it is possible to build everything.

What hampers New Worlds most is the lack of customization. You cannot remap the troublesome camera controls (which rely on the cursor keys) and you cannot adjust the speed of the game. This game plays out very slowly and your space-age hovercrafts literally crawl across the screen. It can take up to five minutes to get to where you want to go. On missions where you need to destroy all enemies, this is painful.

New Worlds also lacks waypoints, unit formations, the ability for all units to travel at the same speed, and easy unit grouping.

While there are three races presented, Klingons, Federation, and Romulans all have the same building types and units available, just under a different skin. There may be some balancing available, but not any I could tell.

Finally, New Worlds does not have in-mission saves. With slow moving units and units that might destroy buildings you need to capture, some missions can last for quite a while. I would not recommending playing New Worlds unless you had a few hours free.

The Bottom Line
I don't see why developers think that the use of a licensed trademark will get players to buy poorly designed games. I wouldn't recommend this game to Star Trek fans or fans of real-time strategy games. I would describe this game as Force Commander for Star Trek.

Windows · by Terrence Bosky (5397) · 2002

Original, but badly developed

The Good
The only thing I liked about this game was the presentation. It’s a fairly original Trek story, and a nice variety in the planet types. The graphics are neat and tidy, with some great looking ships and lighting effects. But........

The Bad
....... It’s nothing compared to past titles like Starcraft. The max number of players in mulitplayer is three; gameplay can be confusing at times, and the 1st person camera angle is a waste. The big problem with this is that it’s just not Trek-ky enough. Sure, you have all the races there to play with, but an RTS Star Trek title is nothing compared to being on the bridge of the Enterprise.

The Bottom Line
It’s an original Trek title that fails to deliver. If you love RTS games, Starcraft is you’re best bet. If you’re a Trek fan, and have the power of a P3, take a stab at one of the Starfleet Command titles.

Windows · by Kartanym (12418) · 2001

Initially promising, but falls quite short of the "enjoyable" mark

The Good
Initially, the complexity of this game and the graphics drew my attention. From the very first mission, it's possible to upgrade your buildings and vehicles to a very high level. There are numerous resources to keep track of (five different types of minerals), and an in-depth technology tree, which was a nice change from other RTS games. The graphics are somewhat simplistic, but lighting effects and explosions are done very well. The optional mission objectives were also a nice touch.

The Bad
The game-breaker for me was when I tried to save my game during a mission - I couldn't. The missions can be quite long, and I simply don't have that many hours to spare. In addition, the ingame instructions are a bit misleading; studying the manual and tech tree is highly recommended before getting started. One more problem was the enemy AI - it appeared to be nonexistant. Enemy ships will fly past your base on occasion, shooting at various buildings. But once they do their first fly-by, they stop, arrange themselves into a nice group, and no longer defend themselves. Finally, while it initially seemed like an intriguing concept, I quickly grew tired of having to manipulate the camera angle. Luckily, it's possible to play from the tricorder tactical view (which really, is much more efficient anyway).

The Bottom Line
If you have a ton of time on your hands, and have the patience to sit through the lengthy missions, it might be a good distraction. Otherwise, the necessity to play a mission from start-to-finish in one sitting, and the need to constantly manipulate the camera angle to see what's happening, can be too frustrating.

Windows · by Dave Schenet (134) · 2001

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Real Developer Mark James (24) Nov 16, 2007

Trivia

Milestones

Star Trek: New Worlds is the first real-time strategy game to use both resource and personnel management.

Tabula Rasa

Tabula Rasa, the name of the new star system, is a Latin phrase meaning "smoothed or erased tablet." This phrase is commonly used to describe something in a pristine, untouched state.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kartanym.

Additional contributors: Kasey Chang, Unicorn Lynx, Alaka.

Game added August 28, 2000. Last modified March 15, 2024.