Star Trek: New Worlds

The Good
Interesting subject, as ground ops is a part of Star Trek seldom seen, 3 sides have different units and different tactics, not to mention the "natives", officers can gain experience and affect efficiency of various departments, decent backstory that actually manages to flow together a bit

The Bad
Too complex to be fun, as you can't build anything useful until you're half-way up the tech tree. Scouts and APC's are essentially unarmed, and it's not until the phaser shuttles (i.e. "tanks") and photon artillery units that you have offensive capabilities. Building powerplants and crew quarters is BORING, too many raw materials to juggle. There are three major raw materials, which are refined into 3 useful materials, which are then used to build things! As the ores can run out, you must have a high efficiency processing in order to get the most out of your mines, and that's micromanagement. Actual combat is mainly mob-attack, few tactics are involved except for stuff like indirect fire, cloaked raids, and so on. Units on ground move so slowly they don't feel like hovercrafts at all.

The Bottom Line
Star Trek: New Worlds is an RTS with a Star Trek MOD. The 3 sides have virtually identical units (unarmed fast scout, APC, "tank", artillery) except for one special unique unit. The structures are virtually identical on all three sides and all have identical tech trees. Most of the "growth" is in growing the "colony hub" to level 4 by building the pre-requisites so you can build combat units in addition to the defenses. Since you can't do any offense before then, the game then becomes who can click the fastest (and get the most building done!). As a result, the game has severe pacing problems.

To "mine" resources, you drop mines (and later, advanced mines) in the middle of a resource concentration. Then the building gets built. You will need some workbees to run between buildings, but that's almost automatic, you just need to make sure you have enough of them.

The game itself looks fine. Terrain features are nicely displayed, structures look nice, sky looks good, units bob and weave on their anti-gravs , etc. Even the minimap is actually useful in telling you where enemies can be seen as well as remaining minerals in the ground (tha tyou can mine). Even the sounds are quite appropriate. The problem is in gameplay.

The officer aspect of crew management can be completely ignored and wouldn't affect the game much. Assigning officers to certain specialties (like tactical officer to armory, science officer to research, and so on) is supposed to enhance productivity, but I've never really noticed any notable difference. Perhaps that's the problem of RTS... The different between 4 seconds vs. 5 seconds by feel alone is minimal, even though it's technically a 20% improvement.

All in all, Star Trek: New Worlds proves that complexity in an RTS game and the known franchise name does NOT guarantee good sales. The wrong pacing decisions in the game tech tree design along with added complexity does not make for a more interesting game.

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.

The Good
The story was half good, if not a bit silly. Planets appearing out of nowhere because of some weapons test seems a bit far fetched to me, even for Star Trek. The disk can be used as a coaster or other fun toy.

The Bad
First, after I completed the first 3 missions, there was only about two military units!!! Things took a long time to move around. It also seems to ignore most Star Trek Technological advances. Like most RTS games, there is a "fog of war". But in Star Trek, it still has the fog of war!!! If you watch a Star Trek episode, they always scan planets and can magnify the planet on the viewscreen etc. But in this game, they've apparently never heard of satellites or scanners!! This wouldn't be so bad if resource collecting was simple. You have to build a mining station to get resources. The only difference is that you have to be in some kind of special map mode to see resources. The resources have ridiculous names so it's anyone's guess as to what they do. There also a bunch of them, all with a different color on the map. Back to "combat". You have an array of nearly 3 different units to choose from and you build "Phaser Tanks". Click them to go somewhere and wait. You will see that they will get "snagged" on cliffs and other terrain, if that makes sense. You can play as Federation, Klingon, or Romulan, but all units and buildings are the same except for voices and skins.

The Bottom Line
I can't really say much about this game. It has so little substance. . If you see it, set phasers to kill....