Dominion Wars Preview

Luckily for those of us stuck in the 21st century, where the low-budget International Space Station represents the summit of our space exploration thus far, a relatively new software developer named Gizmo Industries is aiming to deliver the action and feel of Star Trek tactical starship combat on desktop PCs this summer.

Set in and around the events that took place during the two-year war between the Federation and the Dominion, Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars will give you the ability to command up to six authentically re-created starships from the Federation, Klingon, Cardassian, or Dominion Star Trek races. And while you may already have gotten a taste of what it's like to command highly advanced combat vessels in previous games such as Star Trek Armanda and Starfleet Command I and II, Dominion Wars sets itself apart by focusing squarely on the action portions of space combat that gamers crave.

To achieve this goal, the design team behind Dominion Wars has tried to place the gamer within Star Trek Deep Space Nine's environment as much as possible. Ship hull designs are instantly recognizable to anyone who's seen more than a few episodes of the show, as are the accurate representations of the traditional control screens and interfaces that the Deep Space Nine, Next Generation, and Voyager command bridges have all used on TV and the big screen. Right away, you'll feel as if you're a part of the Star Trek universe, thanks to all the work the artists and designers have put into less-critical areas of the game, like the prerendered intro and menu selection screens that make up the game's interface. But all the glamorous parts of the game won't add up to a hill of beans if the actual gameplay is lackluster, and this area has correctly garnered the most attention of Gizmo's staff over the past year and a half of Dominion Wars' development. You will assume the role of a Flagship Captain for either the Federation/Klingon or Dominion/Cardassian sides and will be expected to personally control the actions of a six-ship fleet across a variety of missions toward the end goal of destroying your opponent's war-making ability.

To aid you in your quest, each of the ships under your control has a captain assigned to it, and each has specific abilities and talents. You'll be able to designate this captain out of a host of candidates while the fleet is still in spacedock. Some of the selectable captains are recognizable to fans of the show, like Captain Benjamin Sisko or Commander Worf, while others are new to the universe. The captains' skill sets vary across certain variables, including the commendations they've been awarded for exemplary effort or knowledge, their tactical combat proficiency, and overall command rating.

Engage!

The level of customization mentioned earlier hints at the strategy portions that the gameplay features prominently, and it will also offer you the ability to customize your ship's weapons loadout, crew complement, and overall tactical focus. Since some missions may require special functions, say to overtake an enemy ship, changes can be made to make your own fleet more compatible to the mission, in this case by boosting the amount of security officers your ships contain. The ships themselves also have major ratings designed to let you gauge their overall effectiveness quickly. Major factors such as weapons, speed, shields, and crew help to dictate a ship's power level, while its cost dictates how large of a resource hit you'll take to equip your fleet with the ship. For example, Dominion Wars players will not be tasked with mining some precious mineral to generate resource points, which is required in a traditional real-time strategy game like Star Trek Armada. Instead, your in-game performance from mission to mission will earn you the resource points necessary to better outfit and equip your fleet for the next assignment.

As mentioned previously, six ship classes are available per race, for a total of 24 different controllable craft of varying sizes and capabilities. Each of the six ships corresponds to a different class, and the classes are roughly comparable in strength from race to race. For instance, the top-of-the-line Federation ship in the game is the Galaxy class, and it's directly comparable in power and strength to the Klingon Negh'Var Battleship. Several new ships had to be created to fill out the ranks of the Cardassian and Dominion forces, and an all-new Federation ship is also scheduled to be included in Dominion Wars when it ships to retail. From what we've seen of the new ships, Gizmo's artists have clearly got a good grasp on the alien races and their motivations for starship design.

Everything from the Dominion War's title to its action-packed intro will indicate to you that a quick pace and furious combat lies ahead, and it's this part of the game that we were most interested in. Across 20-plus missions, you will battle it out against odds that would make William Shatner think twice about enlisting. For starters, we found that all combat takes place from an external view, either right behind and above your selected ship or farther out to give you a strategic view of the action. The camera and movement of the ships look and feel very similar to those in Sierra's Homeworld space combat series, but without the altitude-adjustable 3D plane. To be more specific, Gizmo's designers let you move ships on the X and Y axis (left, right, forward, backward), but not the vertical Z axis (up, down). This is a similar system employed by the Starfleet Command series, and Gizmo's designers chose it for two reasons. First, at no time other than one incident in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan movie did a tactical ship battle in the Star Trek universe feature a strong vertical movement. Second, you will have enough to do while managing six large starships in battles with up to 30-plus enemies that you won't need the additional hassles associated with altitude control.

To fully simulate the look of the combat sequences in Deep Space Nine, however, the team realized that some vertical movement was needed, and toward that end, the artificial intelligence within the game will vary a ship's height in relationship to one another by a small degree. A good example of this would be a small JemHadar fighter flying over the saucer of a Galaxy cruiser while strafing it with fire from above. The end result is very fluid and realistic type of combat that so closely mimics the action from the actual shows that it's eerie.

Graphics

Atmospheric effects within the game's space are re-created with all their astral beauty, including fiery nebulae, massive wormholes, lush planets, and luminescent stars. The graphics team at Gizmo should be commended, as there have been very few space-based games in recent memory with such captivating and visually stunning playing environments. Beyond the cosmetic appeal of the playing environment lies the actual beauty of the ships themselves, which are rendered with hundreds of polygons each and decorated with amazingly realistic texture maps that show varying levels of damage based on how much punishment the ship has taken. Warp nacelles can be damaged and even blown off during combat engagements, and phaser fire from Federation ships arcs through the void with a visual accuracy seldom seen in Star Trek video games. The sound environment is seemingly sampled right from the show's master tapes, and the weapon effects and damage levels closely mimic those that fans of the series are used to. Watching the game in action reminded us a little of the breathtaking first moments of playing the original X-Wing nearly a decade ago, when PC gamers for the first time actually felt as if they were a pilot in the Star Wars universe, thanks to the convergence of accurate music, perfect sound effects, and spot-on visuals.

To accurately create and control both the ships and the combat elements within the game, a complex mathematical engine was created, and it keeps hummingbird-quick fighters moving and acting like fighters, while slower, more pondering battlecruisers act like the massive elephants they are. Size, mass, and speed are the three dominant rules, and each ship class has different handling characteristics that dictate their feel. The math engine is, of course, transparent to you, and it also controls the gravitational effects of a wormhole or large stars, which can effect a your ships or overall mission.

Gizmo is quick to point out that Dominon Wars isn't meant to be another Starfleet Command, which means that it's not loaded with so many rules and statistics that less-intense Star Trek fans may be overwhelmed. Instead, the priority is on action and enjoyment, with a good dose of realism injected for game balance and believability.

We saw several new features within the game being put to use, and they peg the meter on the fun scale. One of the features gives you the ability to quickly go to warp within the tactical environment with little drama. Warping, like everything else in the game, has its pros and cons, not the least of which is the spool-up time it takes to get shields and weapons back to full power once the warp is complete. But this is just one example of how Dominion Wars is shaping up to be one of the most unique Star Trek games of 2001.

Forget the Joystick

As we mentioned previously, Dominion Wars' control is similar to Homeworld's, and it will use a mouse for all ship movement and combat functions. The game differs greatly from Homeworld in presentation, though, by offering a full interface/HUD for each ship that allows detailed control of the ship's shields, weapons, energy, and crew. This interface also follows the damage of an enemy ship or facility and allows for limited science functions, say tracking a cloaked ship via its warp signature. Like Klingon Academy, Dominion Wars is certainly not a joystick game, one in which you're on the bridge of one ship and piloting it by hand. Instead, you control your fleet's behavior via remote button commands, which allow for a more strategic level of handling that still gives you to closely micromanage your forces.

Since the camera in the game gives players such strong freedom of movement and zoom capability, we'd suspect that players will be directing the action as if they were mini-Spielbergs searching for that perfect angle to catch a phaser burst or photon torpedo arcing through space. And speaking of photon torpedoes, the weapon control in Dominion Wars is both manually controlled and computer controlled, based on your preference. Phaser and beam weapons are fired by using a mouse button and are aimed based on computer targeting. You won't need to line up a crosshair on the target - the computer will do that for you. Photon torpedoes, though, have an optional manual aiming mode that will give you a chance to outperform the ship's targeting computer if you feel that you're skilled enough to do so.

Ship movement will also have varying degrees of computer control if desired, including specific commands to automatically guard allies, initiate complex evasion maneuvers, and orbit large planets. You'll manually navigate your ships as you would in most current real-time strategy games by first clicking on the ship and then clicking on the area that you want it to travel to or the unit you want it to fire on. In practice, the system is simple and easy to pick up for veteran strategy gamers.

The Gizmo team has designed Dominion Wars to be a multiplayer game from the get-go, and it will come out of the box prepared with three to four online gameplay modes and support for more than six players with six ships each simultaneously per battlefield. Full ship selection for all the four races in the game is available in multiplayer mode, as are some ships that make appearances in the single-player version as nonplayer characters only. Gizmo's netcode team has done a good deal of work to ensure that even dial-up modem users will be able to log on and enjoy the game online, as well as LAN party players looking for a Star Trek rush.

As it stands right now, Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars is only two to four months away from shipping to retail. There will likely be a few extra surprises, which were still being decided upon at the time of our visit, but, regardless, we're enthusiastic about what looks to be a great game for anyone who ever wanted to command a fleet within the Star Trek universe. We particularly appreciated the game's impressive graphics, simple controls, and robust and intuitive interface. If the mission complexity and campaign depth levels live up to the rest of the game's already strong points, Gizmo will be looking at a hit game square in the face.