General Information

• Starfleet Command 3 has been in development for a little less than a year.
• SFC3 has a planned release for the Holiday Season 2002.
• The game takes place in the post-Voyager, pre-Nemesis, TNG universe.
• The main "villain" of the story line campaigns will be the Romulan Empire, not the Borg.
• Patrick Stewart will be doing voice-overs as Capt. Picard.
• The game mode we will be shipping with are as follows:
  • Single Player Story Campaign Mode (Dynaverse 3 setting, with story missions and limited random encounter missions thrown in)
    • Each campaign is roughly 15 story missions long. (although the player may end up doing twice as many missions in a campaign due to random mission assignments)
    • The Klingon campaign is an exploration of honor, family and the price one pays for adhering to both of those.
    • The Romulan campaign is about intrigue, deception, plotting and subterfuge.
  • Single Player "Career" Campaign Mode (D3 setting, no story missions, where you can play as Romulan, Borg, Fed or Klingon in random missions until your eyes bleed)
    • A Borg campaign is available in this mode of campaign play.
  • Single Player Skirmish Mode (Instant-Action style skirmishes, including Free For All, Team Assault, Base Assault, Battlefest and Battlefest Lite) All games are you plus whatever combination of AI you choose.
  • Multi-Player Skirmish Mode (same as Single Player, just with the addition of humans)
  • Multi-Player Campaign Mode (Dynaverse 3)
• Although there are only three playable campaigns, in skirmish, multiplayer and D3, there are four playable races:
  • Federation
  • Klingon
  • Romulan
  • Borg
• The officers are back from SFC1:
  • They now have multiple skills.
  • They can now be injured, or die.
  • They can still increase their abilities over time, but the can also learn new skills.
  • They still effect the efficiency of your ships systems, such as weapons accuracy, damage control, etc.
• Prestige is  the currency of the game. You can use it to buy new ships, purchase upgrades as well as drafting new officers at star bases.
• The total number of playable ships appear to rank somewhere near 24, divided between the four playable races. The models in game are:
  • Federation:
    • Akira
    • Defiant
    • Galaxy
    • Intrepid
    • Nebula
    • Sovereign
    • Plus 3 more
  • Romulan:
    • Warbird
    • Plus 4 original designs
  • Klingon:
    • Negh'Var
    • K'T'Inga
    • Bird Of Prey
    • Vorcha
    • Fek`lhr from Armada
    • Possibly one or two others
  • Borg
    • Cube
    • Sphere
    • Diamond
    • Plus two originals
• In addition to the above models, each race will have a shuttle, a few star base configurations and a freighter.
• Non-playable ships include various ship docks and a neutral star base. Plus ships for the a yet unnamed non playable race that is being added, and:
  • Cardassian:
    • Galor
    • Kedon
  • Feringi
    • Marauder
  • Pirate
    • Light Cruiser
    • Frigate
  • Some environments are in 3D. For example:
    • Nebulas appear in patches of various sizes.
    • Asteroids can be above or below you.
• Each key system has a control panel.
• Some of the Weapons, Shields, sensors, repair, shuttle, transporters, tractor beams systems will have always on power, and will be available for use as long as they aren't destroyed. They will, however, have charge times and other limiters, so you don't see a ship spit out 20 or 30 shuttles in a second.
• Repairs will be handled by repair crew.
  • Your engineering officer will have a repair capacity, that represents his or her ability to manage simultaneous repairs of systems. "In the show, when something goes down, a crewman usually jumps in and starts fixing things, but often the engineering officer is called in to either manage it or do it him or herself." So, their repair rating will make available repair crews, which can tackle repairs on your ship. If you've got two repair crews and you get smacked hard and lose three systems, you can repair two at a time. Once one gets done being repaired, it's available to take on the other system.
  • There may be a short pause between successful repairs of one system to the next.
  • Larger ships will have a larger default repair crew.
• The Federation will have more than two dozen types of phasers, approximately six separate classes of heavy weapons, five shield strengths, around 3 transporter types, 3 or so warp core classes, 5 impulse engine classes, thrusters, a bunch of sensor classes and armor.
• Planets will now have atmospheres.
• You will not have identical level of control of all three of the ships in your fleet.
• You are the captain of YOUR ship. You have control over YOUR ship.
• You WILL, however, have other ships in your fleet, that you can control via a very intuitive menu system. They act like wingmen in an sense, and you can give them a very diverse range of orders.
• There will be a number of hulls available to a race. The individual captains will be able to buy a fully functional ship, within each class, and then customize it to his liking.
• Changes will be limited by a maximum mass number for each vessel type, so a frigate won't be able to hold 20 photons and 50 phasers.
• Speed, acceleration, and turn rate will all be calculated by the size, mass engine quality and current damage level of your ship.
• High Stress maneuvers are now calculated on the fly as well, taking mass, hull integrity and officer skill into account.
• Starships can move backwards.
• There is a warp button that will allow ship to warp within sector. In this mode of movement, Primary weapons are offline, as well as shields, until you slow back down to sub light speeds.
• Warp power is separate for impulse "engines". Impulse engines now take a degree of power from the warp core to move your ship.
• The Federation is said to have around 3 warp core classes, 5 impulse engine classes, and thrusters. No information is available about the other races at this time.
• Power allocation consists of setting priority for
  • Primary Weapons
  • Heavy Weapons
  • Shields

Multiplayer Information;

• The Dynaverse has been completely rebuilt from the ground up.
• Players may now link up with other players and form "fleets". This will guarantee that players will be able to join a mission together.
• Players now have "goals" assigned to them that may span mulitple missions instead of getting random missions. In example:
  • Link up with the convoy at Sector X and escort it to the Starbase in Sector Y.  You may get attacked several times along the way. 
  • Travel to Sector X to recieve your next mission.
• Convoys are now an asset and it makes a difference whether or not it gets to its destination.
• Map locations are now related to the missions
• The Dynaverse still operates on a hex map.
• Players now have the ability to select their target before they enter a mission, meaning players can select an enemy player to attack in the same sector, guaranteeing a player vs. player mission instead of player vs. AI.
• Multiplayer has 5 different modes:
  • Free For All
  • Team Assault
  • Base Assault
  • Battlefest
  • Battlefest Lite