Star Trek: Armada
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| Star Trek: Armada | |
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 North American boxart |
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| Publisher(s) | Activision |
| Engine | Updated Battlezone engine |
| Version | 1.2 |
| Platform(s) | PC |
| Release date | 2000 |
| Genre(s) | real-time strategy |
| Mode(s) | Single player, Multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: E (Everyone) |
| Media | CD-ROM |
| System requirements | Pentium 200 or equivalent, 32 MB of memory, 16-bit sound card, 4X CD-ROM drive, Pentium 266 required for software mode |
Star Trek: Armada is a computer game published by Activision in 2000, 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 Star Empire and the Borg.
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[edit] Storyline
The storyline takes place right after the end of the Dominion War (Seen in the final seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), beginning with the Federation Campaign. The first level sees the player as Captain Jean-Luc Picard commanding the USS Enterprise-E on rebuilding duties in a sector devastated during the war. Suddenly, a federation timeship appears from the future, under attack from two Borg vessels. When the player rescues the ship, the captain reveals himself as Thaddeus Demming, of the USS Premonition. He warns Captain Picard of an upcoming Borg invasion to assimilate Earth. Picard goes to confer with Starfleet Command. The perspective then changes to Commander Worf of the USS Avenger, defending the Ba'ku from a Son'a attack, as seen in Star Trek: Insurrection. Worf then must travel through nebulous space, where he is attacked by his old enemy, Toral. He learns that Toral aims to become chancellor of the Klingon empire. Meanwhile, the USS Enterprise arrives in a sector of space that has been attacked by the Borg. Picard must rescue the disabled fleets while defending from Borg attacks by assimilated Federation vessels from a nearby Borg base.
Simultaneously, the Klingon Empire is attempting to repel the Borg invasion as well, when Toral tries to kill Martok, Chancellor of the Empire. A Klingon civil war breaks out with fighting over the Klingon Homeworld itself. Once the player, as Martok, defeats Toral, he retreats to the Neutral Zone, revealing that Toral was getting assistance from the Romulan Empire.
At this time, the Romulans come across an unknown particle in space: The Omega Particle. The particle, discovered first by a Ferengi mining guild, is about to be sold to the Cardassians; however, the Tal Shiar sends Admiral Sela to secure the particle. Unfortunately, the Borg are also aware of the particle's presence, and will stop at nothing to secure it. After dodging the Borg in several sectors, Sela finally delivers the Omega Particle to a fortified Romulan base.
The Borg assimilate a Dominion cloning facility and use it to clone Locutus, the former title of Jean-Luc Picard when he was assimilated. With Locutus, they take the Omega particle from the Romulans despite the Romulans' formidable defenses. With the Omega Particle secure, and resources pouring into the Collective, Locutus decides to attack Earth. He is successful even though the Federation defense is armed with the experimental Temporal Distortion Field, complements of the Premonition crew. The USS Avenger and USS Premonition are destroyed, and Earth itself is assimilated. Only the Enterprise is barely able to escape the attack, using the Premonition's special time travel weapon.
Going back in time, the Enterprise is able to forge an alliance among the Romulans, the Klingons, and the Federation. Together, they are able to repel the invasion of Earth, and take the fight to the very heart of the Borg empire. The three factions realize that the only way to truly halt the Borg invasion is to destroy the Omega Particle the Borg have obtained. Thus, the three factions converge on a Borg satellite base in the Alpha Quadrant and capture its Transwarp Gate, a device similar to the Voyage episode Endgame's Transwarp Hub. With the gate secured, Worf leads a strike force into the Delta Quadrant to secure a gate on the other end to allow uninhibited passage of Federation, Klingon, and Romulan forces through. Despite the Collective's armada of Cubes and support ships, the Alliance breaks through the Borg defenses and destroy the Omega Particle. The resulting explosion devastates the region of space, and the three Alpha Quadrant factions barely escape before the shockwave destroys the gate to home. However, the fight is not over yet....
Realizing defeat, Locutus travels backwards in time in a Borg Sphere to kill Picard shortly after the Farpoint mission. However, Locutus is thwarted by the USS Premonition, which, unaffected by the resulting changes to the timeline because of its "different temporal signature" (Captain Deming's lieutenant), pursues Locutus back in time to stop him from killing Picard. If Picard had died then, the Borg would not have been thwarted from assimilating the Alpha Quadrant. When a battle-weary Premonition returns to the "present," and witnesses that all has returned to normal, Captain Deming sends the ship and crew home to a brighter future. Picard ends with a positive note as a new Federation-Klingon-Romulan alliance forms.
[edit] 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 disables the ship's engines preventing escape. This weapon also does heavy damage to anything in the way of the shockwave before it dissipates.
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, also this does not disable the ships engine, thus allowing escape.
Finally, the Borg super weapon is the Transwarp Gate, a building that creates an artificial wormhole to any traversable point on the map that is visible to the player (i.e. is not in the shroud). The wormhole is two-way and can remain active as long as the building has the power to maintain it. This allows a player to stage an attack inside an enemy stronghold and retreat, but likewise can lead the enemy to the player's doorstep if they are inattentive.
Each race has eight normal ships. They include a construction ship that constructs all stations, a dilithium freighter to mine dilithium, a scout ship, a destroyer, a phaser cruiser, an artillery cruiser (Federation/Romulan) an assimilator (Borg) or a boarding craft (Klingon), a science ship (each contains four 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.
[edit] Commercial success
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As Star Trek games go, Armada would eventually prove to be 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 Activision to take over all the franchise segments but it didn't stop the other 3 publishers from releasing Star Trek Starfleet Command II: Empires at War (Interplay), Star Trek: 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 saw 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.
Activision struck a joint deal with Decipher, Inc., creators of the Star Trek Customizable Card Game, wherein Decipher produced a special card to be packed in with the initial release of Armada. The card, U.S.S. Jupiter, featured a CG model based on a ship that appeared in the first level of Armada, and was fully playable within the card game environment. Decipher would later go on to create another card based on the chain-reaction pulsar weapon featured in Armada. The Jupiter card would go on to become one of the more highly sought-after cards in the game due to its limited release. It was later re-released for the "All Good Things" card set, the swansong for Decipher's first edition of the Star Trek card game, but still in limited quantities.
