Star Fleet Command III

[Hale]

Anybody got it?

I can't really recommend it as its buggy as hell right now, but if anyone has a copy, I wouldn't mind teaming up for some Dynaverse destruction. I'm partial to the Borg. Resistance is Futile!

[[AK]Rocks]

I got it, Ready when you are

[Hale]

You on any D3 servers? They go up and down like a teeter totter, so I've probably registered on most of them. The GFL and SFC3.net servers aren't bad, but the SFC3.net server has been down a lot recently and I think it reset as well. GFL is a good server is there's room, if you haven't registered yet.

Before the reset on SFC3.net I had a Sphere Prime (Borg) which I warped right into the side of an asteriod pursuing a fleeing freighter.

[Hale]

I'm spending most of my time on the GFL server. I should be on tonight and parts of the weekend.

If you want to fly together, please make sure you have DirectX 9.0. There are apparently Direct Play incompatibilites between 8 and 9.

[Widowmaker]

I liked the first two SFC games, largely because I toyed with Star Fleed Battles so many years ago.

I've been thinking about getting this one as my next game purchace. Should I buy it sooner or wait for patches? If it is the same developers then it will have patches, Orion Pirates they continued to patch even after Interplay stopped supporting it so you had to search out where to find the new patches as they were not on any of the game sites.

[Hale]

It depends how tolerant you are of bugs. I have SFCII:OP, which I got for dynaverse play and I don't think they every got it working to my satisfaction.

There should be a patch out for SFCIII in a week or two, which should address most of the glaring issues, but Taldren seems to break one thing for every two that they fix.

There is D3 server instability, and PvP on dynaverse is still iffy (as was D2). If you get stuck and kill and restart the game, you may get locked out the server for a few hours or so.

Uprading to DX9 may help. I think most of the players on GFL have, and I ask the guys I fleet up with. The patch may require DX9.

People say Romulans suck, but thats nothing new.

The patch should address a lot of these issues, and I'm crossing my fingers that D3 will actually be a stable PvP arena after the patch.

Other then the bugs its a great game. I was never a big SFB fan, so I don't miss a lot of whats gone. ECM/ECCM are out, replaced by 'Angular Velocity' which makes combat a little more like a flight sim as shots that don't have a high relative delta hit more often.

Officers are back in the game.

Missles and slow plasma are gone. Rom plasma is fast and still packs a wallop if it hits.

The Klink and Rom cloak is a real cloak now, and cloaked vs non-cloaked ships now resembles anti-submarine warfare.

Most of the weapons arcs are very narrow. 30 degrees or so. Borg and Feds have some of 360 arcs.

There are primary weapons and heavy weapons for each race. Each ship is customizable with weapons, engine, shields, armor, thrusters, etc. The refit may be the best part of the game. You can make any ship type you choose.

On D3, you can join fleets, and the fleet leader moves the group thru hexes and they all enter combat together. You can let AI join your fleet, or join AI lead fleets (which is pointless).

AI acts a lot like players now, they show up in the hexes and move around the board and attack you.

Races are Fed, Klink, Rom and Borg. I'm a big fan of the Borg. You can fly a cube, but its ungodly expensive.

[Widowmaker]

No drones (missles)?

Hmm, that was one of the main strengths of the Klingons. Anti missle systems took care of a lot of them and if you had a shuttle or two out defending you they would shoot the odd missle for you.

Are missles totaly out? Not that I would miss them terribly (what a pain scatter packs could be) but it would be kind of a shame.

[Hale]

No missles at all. The Mirak (Kzinti?) are gone all together. I haven't played much Klingon, but I think you can configure you ship to be a close in brawler (Hydran fusion style) or a long range sniper. Klingon transporters (for H&R) are still the best in the game.

Also all the shuttle variants are gone. Not more WW SP or SS shuttles. The admin shuttle remains.

[Widowmaker]

Good, I made a lot of use of admin shuttles.