Star Command: Deluxe is a real time strategy game based on the DOS version called Star Command: Revolution. At first glance Star Command may seem just like another strategy clone but it has a number of interesting and unique features that make this not true.
The focus of the game is around your mothership. You start with only your mothership and it is the only ship capable of collecting resources and building stations. If your mothership is destroyed, then the game is not lost but unless you have enough resources and stations already to finish off the enemy, you have as good as lost.
However you cannot simply hide your mothership away as you will quickly deplete the resources in your starting area. Fortunately the mothership is protected with very strong shields and takes a lot of firepower to destroy. It has no direct weaponry of its own, leaving it dependant on other ships for defence. An interesting tactic often employed by the AI though is to quickly built a turret station for protection when its mothership is attacked!
In Star Command there are four races: the Computrons, the Nomads, the Triumverites and Terrans. Each race has a distinct style of ship and their own abilities. The interesting feature of the game is that you can research and build the ships of all races. This sounds odd for a strategy
game but works very well actually. The race you pick simply determines your starting side.
Starting a game, you will find your mothership in an open area of space. Moving the mothership and your other ships is done in the usual RTS fashion. Click or drag a box around units to select them. Left click issues a move order and right click issues an attack order. Unless playing on a harder difficulty scenario (in which case you must explore a bit) you will find unusual small objects around your mothership: these are resources. After a couple of seconds you will see a small collector-shuttle leave your mothership, pick up a nearby resource particle, and return to the mothership. This is how resources are collected. It is an automatic process, reducing micro-management. Simply move your mothership into a patch of resources. There are 5 types of resources. Each race has its own specific reason for building its ships. For example, Nomands need the red resource. (You'll quickly figure them out). The fifth resource is called Solinite. This is needed by all races and is perhaps the most important resource. It is contained in yellow warp-clouds that cannot be harvested directly. You will need to use a scout ship to attack the warp-cloud to release the Solinite for your mothership to harvest. Only scout ships possess this ability!
In the corner of the screen you will see your energy bar. It starts at 0% and after a short while will become 100%. You can now build your "Base" (e.g. Nomad Base depending which you chose). The energy bar will deplete and you will need to await recharge before building again. Ships and stations don't have build times in other games (they appear more or less instantly) however each thing has a different energy requirement. For example, a base will deplete most of your energy, whereas a small droid only consumes about 20%. You can only build with 100% however. Energy replenishment needs only time, not resources.
After the base, three new things are available. These will differ in name and appearance but have the same function for all races. You will get a scout ship, a university and a defence station i.e. turret. You will need a scout ship to explore the surrounding region and break open and warp-clouds. The university trains ships and conducts research. The mothership must be placed adjacent to the university to research. Unless you place the university near a resource field, this often means you can't collect resources whilst researching new ships. To train ships place them next to the university in a similar fashion. They can train up to level 4. Level 7 can be attained from combat experience only. Increasing level improves the ship's shields, engines etc.
Each ship has four important statistics that form the core of the game: shield, engine, tech and control. As the ship takes "normal" damage, its shield reduces and when it reaches 0, the ship is destroyed. As the ship takes engine damage, it slows. Reducing engine to 0 doesn't strand the ship, but it moves at a snail's pace. The tech is the weapon systems of the ship. Reducing this decreases the rate of fire. Ships with 0 tech can still fire, but it can take several seconds to reload! If the ship's control reaches 0, then it is captured by the enemy!
You cannot choose at random which one to target. Instead each ship targets a specific element. Scout ships and "normal" warships target shield damage. Aside from that each race has a speciality. For example, the Computrons specialise in tech damage. Their turrets, and some of their ships do tech damage to their opponents, thus rendering them defenceless against your other warships. Triumverite ships specialise in engine damage, allowing you to prevent the enemy from retreating (useful vs. motherships) or negating hit and run tactics (which the AI employs often!) The Terrans specialise in control damage, giving them the ability to capture ships. This tactic requires a bit of micro-management though, and only 2 of their ships have the capturing ability, so as to not give them too much of an advantage. The Nomads don't concentrate on a special statistic other than shield. Although most ships from each race damage shield, Nomad ships have the most powerful weapons and use brute-force tactics (but they are somewhat vulnerable to tech damage, as their main warships rely on fast-firing weapons!)
When using specialist weapons, they will first reduce their target statistic, then move onto shields. For example a Computron tech disrupter ship dealing tech damage will not injure enemy shields, only reduce their tech. However once the tech is reduced to 0, it will then deal shield damage. The Computron penetrator warship, however, deals shield damage only, and more so than a tech disruptor. So you have a choice between weakening the enemy weapons first, then destroying them, or going straight for the kill. Or combining both abilities together.
Each race has a repair ship for a particular stat (e.g. Terrans have tech repair ship), and since each race has a specific area of attack you will need to use all races to win the game. Not least so because each race-specific resource is in limited supply and overusing 1 race will result in no resources left. A new race is unlocked once all ships and stations for a current race are researched. You can then build the base for the new race and restart the process. You can build researched ships and stations of any race at any time and mix them together, provided you have resources.
As well as an area of expertise, races have special ability ships too. For example the Nomad bomb droid explodes violently when destroyed (unless its tech is destroyed!) and can be ordered to self-destruct. The Computron teleporter station will instantly teleport any ship to itself. The Terran switcher is a fast moving ship that can instantly swap places with any other of your ships or turrets. Useful for getting slow ships to battle, important ships out of danger, or moving turrets which are otherwise immobile, and there are many more special abilities.
Overall the game offers a different strategy experience, but not so different to leave a mainstream games player confused or lost. The concentration on building ships and fighting and the way resource collection is automated leaves for more action and less micro-management. The graphics are outdated by today's games but they are sufficient. Unfortunately the online multiplayer servers are no longer active but the computer AI is quite competent. Finally some people claim that the game's prequel, Revolution, is better but I have not played this so I cannot comment. If you are looking for a new angle on space RTS then give this or Revolution a try.
