Review by: Pete Hines

Assume the role of one of the four races that inhabit the Zeta Galaxy and use your special skills to fight your way to the top in this real-time strategy game from GT Interactive and Metropolis Digital. In order to survive, you’ll need to make quick decisions, manage resources well, and know when to attack and when to defend. Without ignoring important aspects like graphics and FX, this game really focuses on the strategy aspect of the game. Let us first look at how the game is played.

Star Command Revolution can be played in two modes, “battle” or “campaign.” The objective in the campaign is to lead a group of Terrans against the Ahkun Vek, a nasty bunch who have enslaved the home worlds of all four races. You can either play by yourself or with another player over a network or the Internet. After completing each mission or battle you will move on to the next. Your goal is to destroy the four super-dreadnaughts being constructed and then kill Narvek, the leader of the Ahkun Vek. In the battle mode, up to four human or computer players can participate via network and the Internet. There are 10 games to choose from, each with different “playing fields” and computer AI levels. If you’re not playing with others, click one or more of the other three slots to add computer opponents. You’ll also need to choose which race you will play. Each race, the Computrons, the Nomaeds, the Triumverites, and the Terrans, have special types of units and structures. More on that in a minute.

You’ll begin the game with only a mothership, which is the most important unit you own. Start by building a base, from which you can create lots of other ships and structures. As your mothership increases its experience level, it will discover new technologies that allow you to build the units and structures of the other three races. Build units to explore your world, discover needed materials, find out where your enemy, or enemies, are located, and destroy them. You will also want to build an academy or two, which raise the level of any units located close by and makes them more effective fighting machines.

There are four important components that any ship or structure contains: shield, engine, tech, and control. Each race is strong in one of these four technologies and depending on the type of ship or structure you build, the levels of each of these components will vary. “Shield” protects your ship from being destroyed, “engine” allows your ship to move, “tech” enables the ship or structure to use its technology (i.e., fire a missile), and “control” determines which side or race controls the unit. As these levels are reduced to zero, the ship or structure will suffer performance in that level until it explodes, stops moving, stops firing, or the other side takes over control of that ship or vessel.

Terrans like guided missiles and capturing their opponent’s ships while the Computrons are experts at healing themselves and have weapons that do tech damage. The Triumverites have developed weapons that destroy a ship’s engines and Nomad weapons will do heavy damage to shields. Therefore, if you were playing as the Terrans many of your ships would do damage to enemy ships’ control levels and reduce them to zero until they are either destroyed or come under your control. Thus, a fleet of ships, including Infiltrators and Infiltrator Carriers, could add more ships to your fleet by inflicting control damage on enemy ships, which then become yours and add to your fleet’s size. Not only do ships do damage, but each race also features a ship that can repair specific types of damage (i.e., engine) to your ships. Don’t worry, you can’t accidentally heal any of your enemy’s ships.

In addition to the eight types of ship each race can build, there are also eight available structures. All four races are capable of building some type of training structure or academy, a facility that will produce droids (smaller, quicker, but less powerful units), and some defensive structures. Each race also has the ability to build different, larger weapons of destruction or even powerful repair structures.

In order to produce anything, you need to have resources. There are five types in the game: Solinite, Gaseous Anomaly, Radioactive Asteroid, Plasma, and Crystal. Each race has one specific resource they use to produce their ships and structures (i.e., Terran–Crystal, Computron–Gaseous Anomaly) and all four races need Solinite. Resources can be found scattered randomly throughout the galaxy. When you move your mothership near a resource a shuttle will emerge from your mothership, go pick up a piece of the resource, bring it back to the mothership, and add it to your stockpile. Your mothership will gather any resource it goes near, even if it is one your race does not use at present. Besides, you never know when you’ll discover another race’s technology and need the resources to build those ships and structures. This is one nice feature of the game in that when you destroy an enemy ship, or ships, you are rewarded by being able to mine the engine core, which is left behind when a ship is killed, and use it to produce something of your own.

Your game screen gives you access to a lot of information. There’s a small map that gives you an overview of territory you’ve uncovered (the game uses fog of war) as well as the location of your ships and your enemy’s ships. There’s a tool bar at the bottom of your screen that shows all of the ships and structures you can build. A production meter determines whether or not you can construct something. You can build when it turns green and what you build determines how long it will be until you can build again. Larger structures or ships make the wait longer. There are gauges that keep track of how much you have of each type of resource. When you move your mouse over a ship or structure’s icon, the gauges will show you how much of the two resources (for Terrans, Crystal and Solinite) it will take to build that unit. Four “hot” buttons down the right side of the screen allow you to assign a function key to a unit or group of units, so that you can easily assume control without having to figure out where they are.