Crossover with Star Trek: Fleet Command · 3:37am Sep 18th, 2019
“Captain Sparkle!” Weapons Officer Dash pointed out the viewscreen at a hulking starship that was closing on the space station. “There’s a target, and it looks hostile!”
“Looks more like a pimento,” mused Twilight, peering between the two slices of bread at the contents of her sandwich. She took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. “It’s good, though.”
“It’s opening fire!” shouted Dash as beams of green light played over the space station’s shield in a spray of sparks. “Shall I sound red alert and engage?”
“Over a sandwich?” Twilight took another bite with a contemplative look. “Yeah, I’d go to war for this sandwich. I may just replicate another one and to heck with the diet.”
On the viewscreen, bolts of plasma finished chewing down the space station’s shield and started blasting away chunks of hull while the space station returned fire. Tiny blobs of yellow phaser fire splattered ineffectually at the attacking ship’s shields, looking a little like fireflies going into a bug zapper.
“Shouldn’t we engage the hostile?” asked Dash, her hoof hovering over the weapons system console. “Between us and Captain Kirk on the Vahklas docked on the other platform, we have them overpowered by at least 2:1.”
“What is Mister Overpriced doing, anyway?” Twilight checked the computer on her own captain’s chair. “Ah, he’s listed as ‘Recreating’ today. Must be breaking in a new ensign. Probably safer for the old geezer. Too much phaser fire and he could have a heart attack right there on the bridge.”
More chunks of space station hull floated by as the attacking starship blew one of the defensive phaser installations into plasma, then a second.
“I suppose I could start the paperwork,” sighed Twilight as she pulled up her console. “Type of attacking ship?”
“Heavy survey ship,” said Dash, reading off her own computer since Twilight was not going to be troubled with the effort. “Mining lasers and light photon torpedo launchers. And there goes the last defense installation,” she added morosely.
“They’re just amped up phaser rifles on a couple of industrial dollies,” mused Twilight as she worked her way down the checklist. “They can’t even dent the hull on a modern starship. So they blow up, big deal.”
“And the survey ship is beaming up cargo from the space station,” said Dash. “Looks like a few days of tritium, a week’s worth of dilithium, and about a million parasteel.”
“I have three pages left on the checklist, Dash,” chided Twilight, holding a stylus in her teeth. “Hmm… Wasn’t the peace shield supposed to be up for another ten minutes or so? They’re not supposed to be able to attack the space station when that shield is up.”
Dash watched a few thrashing bodies float past the viewscreen and surreptitiously used a tractor beam to deflect them into a nearby personnel lock. “Timer says you’re correct, Captain. Obviously, this is just a figment of our imagination.”
“Don’t get snippy with me,” snapped Twilight, “or I’ll swap your bridge position with that Vulcan scientist.” She gave off a low sigh. “He can pon my farr anytime.”
“And the attacker is gone,” said Dash as the mining vessel turned into a streak of light and vanished. “I didn’t even get a shot in.”
“And we didn’t scuff our brand new paint job,” said Twilight, dragging her ‘Permission to Attack Aggressor Vessel Form 7853 slash 4A’ to the recycle bin on her screen. “Guess I have time to finish that sandwich now. Ah, come to me, you sweet temptress.”
“Shouldn’t we tell somebody?” asked Dash, jabbing a hoof at the viewscreen where bodies and scraps of parasteel armor floated around in a fog. “The station’s shields are down, their weapons are dead, and they’ve lost a good deal of their supplies.”
“And my sandwich is getting soggy,” said Twilight, taking another bite. “Nothing’s going to happen, so just relax. Replicate yourself one of these sandwiches.”
“Hmmm… You have a point.” Dash got up from her battle station and walked over to the replicator. In a few minutes, she was seated again with her rear hooves up on the console, eating on her own sandwich. “This is good, Captain,” she managed through the lettuce. “Oh, and here comes another attacker.”
“Just let them go by, Dash.” Twilight got up from her chair and walked back to the replicator. “I’m going to get another one of those fantastic sandwiches.”
If you haven’t guessed, Star Trek: Fleet Command seems to have a little bug where the end of your peace shield still lets attackers through, and just having ships docked at your space station means they have a good view of the carnage when another player attacks to raid your resources. Sigh. I’m fine. I’m going to my happy place now.
I preferred Starfleet Command 2: Empires at War (bonus points for the pirate DLC, there were some awesome ship designs in that.)
P.S. To those who played it solo, did anyone NOT cheat and edit ship stats?
I recall Star Trek variant loop from MLP Time Loop where Rainbow was a captain of the Fleet and Sweetie sang an iconic song. (Star treaking, I hope that we won't crash. On the Starship Enterprise under Captain Dash.)
5122817
I haven't cheated, unless you count stalling out at level 14 cheating.
I got annoyed with getting blown to bits every time I tried to mine, so I haven't played for about a month or so. Maybe I'll pick it up again someday.
5122817 Hey, I'm old school. I still have my 3-ring notebook with the Star Fleet Battles rules and SSDs. Someday I hope to disprove the theory that four Federation cruisers using Positron Flywheel in retrograde cannot be defeated by any race's ships using X build points (forgot the exact number) I had a Klingon D-5 template with Ubitron Interface Module and DERFCS (Disrupter Extended Range Fire Control System) using narrow salvos that I *think* would be able to break the Feds like a twig. I just haven't play tested it. (and SFB would take about a week to run that with so many ships).
Picard, she is not.
i get a bunch of ads for that thing.
5122828
Level 14? Mining?
You sir, have the wrong game.
5122862
)
Ah, indeed I do. My apologies.
(This is why one should not comment when running on 3 hours of sleep.
5122914
It's all good, we're all been there.
5122817
Solo EAW player. Never bothered cheating. Seemed like "effort".
Although I didn't really care for the scripted campaign all that much, and swapped it out for the conquest map.
Can't say I was anything special gameplay wise, and I had an irrational love of the K-D6D in all its one-trick-pony janky-ness.
Shields to attack standard! Weapons preheat! #drumbeats
AKA, when Twilight's personality gets swapped with Zapp Brannigan.
5122999
I was more a Hydran or Mirak captain... Although I did have an irrational love of my klingon battle frigates, going as far as to play the entire campaign with them.
As Hydran there's nothing like saying "hey, you know that shield you lost in the first exchange? You'll never see it again" plus phaser G's
But the Mirak.... The missiles. Dear god the missiles... so many lost due to control limits (scatterpack AND the multi-missiles? good luck unless you're lyran)
5123309
Hydran ships are really fun to fly. And Phaser Gs are possibly the best strike weapon in the game - 4x phaser 3s, in one mount, and all of them can fire in one turn. Yes please.
Possibly the most well rounded ship in the game (imo) is the F-NCE.
A Miranda loaded with missile racks and phaser Gs. Shame it's a really late model and hardly sees action because you've moved on to bigger things by then.
Not even the ESG will keep missiles out. The impacts will overwhelm it eventually. Or after only a few hits if those missiles are type 4s.
Basically, never use type 1 missiles. They don't hit as hard, and have less armour so they're easier to shoot down.
Also, that's a lot of missiles to lose control while flying Mirak/Kzinti, as they have double control limits for all thier ships. So, good effort!
5123583
I'll take the... I think it's the Bismark class battlecruiser. The missile carrier on the Excelsior frame. Not as good in a longer fight but between the extra power you gain from not having a third heavy energy weapon hardpoint and the point defence I found that it generally performed a lot better in shorter engagements.
5123603
That's a p. good call tbh. The Federation had an awful lot of really mediocre ships, but some absolutely stellar ones. And that's one of them.
Didn't one of the other Excelsior varaints have plasma launchers on it but not quite enough power to use them properly? Was it BCF?
I kind of liked the Gorn ships. Eventually. Although it took me ages to get my head around just not being able to zoom about everywhere and do something useful. Playing as an anchor is really weird if you're used to being able to dictate positioning.
At least they have weapons pointing everywhere, with really wide overlapping arcs.
I never had the patience to really fully take advantage of the Romulan's gimmick though. Especially during the early game where your ship is basically a fragile plasma launcher with the minimum possible engines bolted to it, and a cloak.
But one of the best things ever is firing off a pseudo-torp and watching your target launch a decoy. And then a few seconds later when the effect wears off and thier shuttle bay is still on cooldown you can say "guess what? it's a faaaaaakkke!" and throw the real one into thier stationary face.
5123687
Yeah, that plasma launcher variant was trash. I never got the hang of plasma except with the romulan early cruiser with the R... but that thing was also enough to basically guarentee anything that size or smaller regret life pretty quick.
5123858
The "early warbird". It's one of those ships that either absolutely eats everything, or just fails to do anything useful at all. With no middle ground.
Most of the "early" Romulan stuff is like that, and it can make a game really frustrating because you're so dependant on the RNG giving you favourable missions/enemies.
Plasma torps in general are one of the more involved weapons to use, because of the huge power drain you have to plan your fight around charging the things. And that means sacrificing something else. Which depending on your ship may put you in a bad place.
They're more of a hassle than most other weapons, which are just point and shoot.
But you can do fun stuff with them, like overload them so they hit all sides at once (bad against shields, very very good against hull), or shotgunning them so you don't overkill one target, but damage/kill several. Plus the previously mentioned 'fake' torpedo.
I think only the photon torps come close to that kind of versatility.
P. much the only weapon I actively dislike is the ISC plasma pulser. That thing is just so underwhelming. And a lot of the time it doesn't even connect.
5124066
I like the concept but hate it in practice
5124081
Did you ever play SFC3 at all?
5124111
Never got around to it... but I also heard they simplified it a lot and bumped it into TNG era.
5124112
It was a lot more polished, as far as games go. The move to TNG was good imo, as it opened up fun things. Like the Borg, which were quite neat to play.
And you could customise the loadout of your ship, and put different weapons in each of the arcs. Or strip everything out and put huge engines in etc. You could also do warp jumps in battle, which in turn allowed maps to be much larger.
But a lot of stuff just got straight up removed: No missiles. No fighters. No alternate fire modes. Just cooldown timers.
Only playables were Fed, Klingons, Roms and Borg.
Federation got a few Mirak ships, which were trash because no missiles.
Klingons got some Breen ships.
Romulans didn't get anything remarkable aside from the D'Deridex in all its gorgeous glory, and few 'classic' ie; old ships.
Borg were just shapes and a few assimilated ships, but had tractor beams you could use as weapons.
The multiplayer was tons easier to use as well.
But everyone just ended up making super-fast torpedo boats over and over again.
A mixed bag. I went back to EAW after a bit because missiles are too fun.