Star Trek: Armada
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Image:StarTrekArmadaBoxArt.jpg Star Trek: Armada is a computer game published by Activision, based upon the Star Trek universe. It also has a sequel, Star Trek: Armada II.
A real-time strategy game, it showcases the events in the Alpha Quadrant between the United Federation of Planets, the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Empire and the Borg.
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Storyline
While the Enterprise-E is performing humanitarian work, a time ship from the future suddenly appears, warning Jean-Luc Picard of an upcoming Borg invasion to assimilate Earth. While Picard confers with Starfleet Command about the Borg, the Klingons and Romulans go head to head.
Meanwhile the Romulans come across an unknown particle in space: The omega particle. Although the Romulans try to secure Omega, the Borg eventually take it from them. With this particle and the threat of Borg dominance over the Alpha Quadrant, it is up to the three major powers to put aside their differences and defeat the Borg once again.
Picard meets an old, personal nemesis in this game.
Gameplay
There are four races in this game: Romulans, Klingons, the Federation, and the Borg. Each race has a starbase, dilithium refinery, two shipyards, a basic defense turret, an advanced defense turret, two special weapon research facilities, and a super weapon. The super weapon can be based on a station or on a ship that is built from this station. The Federation super weapon is the Temporal Stasis Field, created at the Temporal Research Facility. This freezes all enemy ships in the designated area for a specific amount of time.
The Klingon super weapon is the Shockwave. This is based on a ship that is built from the Shockwave facility. The shockwave destroys the ship, but creates a lot of damage to anything in front of it.
The Romulan super weapon is the Phoenix rift. This is similar to the Shockwave, except that it creates a circular rift instead of a straight wave.
Finally, the Borg super weapon is the Transwarp Gate, a building that creates an artificial wormhole to any point that is or has been visible to you (i.e. is not in the shroud).
Each race has 8 normal ships. They include a construction ship that constructs all buildings, a dilithium freighter to mine dilithium, a scout ship, a destroyer, a phaser cruiser, an artillery or torpedo cruiser, a science ship (each contatins 4 special weapons), and a battleship.
The stations have the following functions:
- Starbase: Builds construction ships and dilithium freighters, as well as collecting crew into the crew pool.
- Shipyard: Builds basic ships (scout, destroyer, cruisers)
- Advanced Shipyard: Builds Science ships and Battleships.
- Phaser Turret: Fires pulse phasers (or races equivalent) at all enemy targets within range.
- Torpedo Turret: Fires torpeoes, more powerful than Phaser Turret, with a longer range, but not so accurate.
- Research Facilities: Researches all special weapons (see below).
- Super Weapon Stations: Activates (or builds ships that activate) super weapons. These buildings are very expensive, but often worth it.
Each ship has its own special weapon. A special weapon uses special weapon energy. Each ship has a predetermined energy quotient, and a specified energy recharge rate. A special weapon often affects a number of targets within the vicinity of the ship from which it is released, but some need a target to aim at. Special weapons can be used to benefit your own ships as well as against those of your enemies. For example, the Romulan Shield Inversion Beam (Warbird), drains an enemy ship's shields and simultaneously adds the shield energy to its own shields.
Commercial success
As Star Trek games go, Armada would eventually prove to be one the second best selling Star Trek game's behind Interplay's Star Trek: 25th Anniversary by a small, but fair margin. The year it was released (2000) was the year in which no less than 6 major Star Trek game titles were published and marked a period in the franchise history where all 4 of the major publishers who held segments of the license released now-classic games.
By this point in time the deal was sealed by Viacom and Activision for Activison to take over all the franchise segments but it didn't stop the other 3 publishers from releasing Starfleet Command II: Empires At War (Interplay), Deep Space Nine: The Fallen (Simon & Schuster), Star Trek: New Worlds (Interplay) and Klingon Academy (Interplay). The year of 2000 was the start of a massive surge in the popularity of the Star Trek gaming franchise, the likes of which has never been seen since. 2000 also seen the sudden and drastic rise in "modders" (a term for people who create add-ons for games) who had been around before for games like Interplay's original Starfleet Command but who, at that time, didn't have easy tools for which to mod the game. Activision's Armada changed all that by releasing simple modding tools on their site for people to create game maps and simple ships for the game.