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Bridge Commander Gameplay FAQ
Questions
 
1. What's the storyline Bridge Commander will follow?
 
2. Will I be able to control Bridge Commander with my voice?
 
3. Can I self destruct my ship?
 
4. What races will be in Bridge Commander?
 
5. What gaming modes are included in Bridge Commander?
 
6. What modes of play are available in the Multiplayer online mode?
 
7. How are ships controlled in Multiplayer mode?
 
8. Can you explain a bit more about these ship limitations?
 
9. How are these ships balanced between races?
 
10. What ships can be used in Multiplayer Online/Offline (Quick Battle)
 
11. I've seen screenshots showing a detailed representation of the bridge. Will I be able to visit different areas of my ship, e.g. the engineering section?
 
12. How smart will the artificial intelligence be in Bridge Commander?
 
13. Are the Borg in Bridge Commander?
 
14. Who is writing the story that Bridge Commander will follow in its single player campaign?
 
15. Is a cloaking ability for Klingon and Romulan ships being included?
 
16. Do ships in Bridge Commander have weapons consistent what what we see on the TV and do they fire from where they do on TV?
 
17. Do the shields have a flair effect when they are hit by a weapon?
 
18. Will I be able to use a tractor beam on my enemies?
 
19. How will collisions be implemented in the game? I hope the bounding box method inflicting massive damage of Klingon Academy is not used.
 
20. Will we be able to select a difficulty setting to play?
 
21. Will I be able to manually dock at Starbases?
 
22. What will visiting a Starbase do for me?
 
23. How can I control my ship in Bridge Commander?
 
24. Is Bridge Commander played in a flat plain terrain or a full 6 degrees of freedom terrain?
 
25. Can the Galaxy class separate its saucer section?
 
26. As a Klingon Academy veteran of sorts, I’ve always been disappointed with the so called “phoney physics” used by Klingon Academy. Will Bridge Commander have a more real physics model? So for example if I had my propulsion systems destroyed would I drift in the speed and direction that I was going before my propulsion was cut?
 
27. What happens after a collision with another ship or other object?
 
28. You have mentioned in the past it will be possible to crash into a star or planet, Will the corona or atmospheres affect the ships systems or crew?
 
29. I’ve seen no mention of nebulas or black hole terrains, will either of these terrains be included in the game? If not are there any reasons?
 
30. It’s been asked on the forums if the federation ships will show the phasers charging then the energy pulse moving around the saucer section. Is this a feature to be included?
 
31. Can you eject the warp core?
 
32. If the warp systems are sufficiently damaged, can the ship have a warp core breach at random?
 
33. What unit of speed does Bridge Commander use while a ship is at impulse speed? KPH, MPH etc?
 
34. Please, please, please tell me the AI in Bridge Commander at least has the intelligence not to fly into a planet, star or asteroid etc? The AI in Klingon Academy was a joke and us trek gaming fans would dearly like to see AI that could see a planet or other celestial body and avoid it now and again
 
35. Which ships does the player control in the storyline?
 
36. Is the outcome of the game affected by my performance?
 
37. Where do the campaign missions take place?
 
38. When does the game take place?
 
39. Can I look on to and fire at more than one target?
 
40. Why have digital readouts been excluded?, this was a feature in Klingon Academy that worked well.
 
41. If my main power systems are damaged or destroyed will there be auxiliary power source?
 
42. What happens when a ship is destroyed? Does it just vanish?
 
43. Will there be any secrets for us to find during the game?
 
44. How often can we save during the game? Can you save during battles or KA style and only at the end of a mission?
 
45. How many ships will the new race have?
 
46. What is this new race called?
 
47. Can you explain multiplayer a little more?


Answers

1. What's the storyline Bridge Commander will follow?

For the full shakedown on the storyline see this page here.

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2. Will I be able to control Bridge Commander with my voice?

Yes, while this feature is not built into the software but the game will ship with configuration files for most major voice control software. Examples of dedicated voice software are Game Commander & Gamevoice although many more products exist.

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3. Can I self destruct my ship?

David Litwin explains...

You can self destruct. It is useless in the single player game, but we wanted it in for the Multiplayer in case someone leaves you crippled but not dead (i.e. weapons and impulse engines destroyed). It wouldn't be fun to spend the entire game waiting for someone to destroy you so you could come back in again.

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4. What races will be in Bridge Commander?

The races included are the Federation, Klingons, Cardassians, Ferangi and the the Romulans. Also there is a new race being introduced into the Trek gaming universe that is unknown at this time. Dammit no Borg to shoot at :(

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5. What gaming modes are included in Bridge Commander?

Here's a list of the gaming modes in Bridge Commander...

Single Player Campaign - For information on what storyline Bridge Commander follows see this page here. The campaign is split into 8 episodes with each episode split into a maximum of 4 sub missions. The ships you will use in the single player campaign are the Galaxy and Sovereign class vessels. In your travels during the single player campaign you will encounter, The Akira, Ambassador, Nebula, Galaxy, Sovereign, B'rel, Vorcha, D'deridex and D'Kora class ships. The storyline and and outcome of the game are not set in stone, depending on your performance the game may end in different ways. The mission types include the standard missions which are to be found in the Star Trek TNG series. The mission types are combat. scientific and diplomatic missions. Its very possible some of these mission types will cross with each other. e.g. using diplomacy to get out of a combat situation you can't win. (This is pure speculation)

Quick Battle Mode (Multiplayer Offline) - Player chooses his ship and AI ships to play against and the terrain in which to play the battle in. Here's a note from Erik Novales concerning ship limits in Quick Battle mode...

Quick battle does not have a limit of 8 ships. (The practical limitation is how powerful your computer is, which means that if you have a speedy rig, you can have more ships in the battle before your frame rate and playability begin to suffer.

Multiplayer Online - LAN or Online using the Gamespy service. 4 players using the Gamespy system or more depending on system specifications. 8 players using LAN again maybe more depending on the system specifications and possibly the speed of the LAN. The 4 or 8 player limits are not set in stone, they are recommendations to keep the game playable. Peter Leahy explains why Gamespy is being used...

It is Gamespy as of now -- all the MP code and interface is layered on top of their technology.

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6. What modes of play are available in the Multiplayer online mode?

As all the KA veterans here will know, this pretty much was our wish list for Klingon Academy :)

Deathmatch, It's an every-man-for-himself duel. The player selects a ship and attempts to damage and destroy as many ships as possible in either Time Limit or Frag Limit competitions. The player with the highest score wins.

Team Deathmatch, Team Death Match pits two teams against one another in Time or Frag limit competitions to destroy as many ships as possible. High score wins.

Federation vs. non-Federation, Federation vs. Non-Federation Team Death Match mode pits the Sovereign, Galaxy Akira and Ambassador class ships against their Romulan, Klingon, Cardassian counterparts.

Star base Attack/Defend Mode, Players are challenged to defend their star base against enemy fire in timed challenges.

Turkey Shoot, Players engage in instant action mode in a race to shoot as many AI controlled ships as possible in a limited amount of time.

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7. How are ships controlled in Multiplayer mode?

Unfortunately due to the system limitations discussed below it would cause significant slowdown if bridge mode was to be used in multiplayer. Instead all ships in multiplayer are controlled from tactical mode.

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8. Can you explain a bit more about these ship limitations?

No, I can't but Peter Leahy can...

Multiplayer already uses a significantly larger amount of CPU and RAM time. From the outset we've said Multiplayer only from Tactical (3D External) because to get the optimum experience using the Internet and Modem on a slow machine you can't have the bridge running at the same time. By limiting the amount of code being accessed and not rendering the ship interior we can dedicate all that extra speed to making Multiplayer more reliable and enjoyable -- two things most MP games lack. Remember TG did the first MP space combat game so we've got a ton of experience in this area.

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9. How are these ships balanced between races?

Larry Holland explains the balancing issue?

We haven't tried to balance the ships. They are inherently unbalanced, so if we were to balance them, it wouldn't feel like Trek. Instead we try to balance the point system so even if you use a small ship and get destroyed many times, you can win in points against a larger ship that only gets destroyed once.

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10. What ships can be used in Multiplayer Online/Offline (Quick Battle)

The ships available in multiplayer are...

From the The United Federation of Planets. The Ambassador, The Galaxy, The Akira, The Nebula and The Sovereign.

From the Klingon Empire. The Vorcha and The B'rel.

From the Ferangi Alliance. The Marauder.

From the Cardassian Union. The Keldon and The Galore.

From the Romulan Empire the following ship is available. The Warbird.

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11. I've seen screenshots showing a detailed representation of the bridge. Will I be able to visit different areas of my ship, e.g. the engineering section?

Unfortunately not, the player is limited to the 360 degree view of the Bridge from the captains chair.

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12. How smart will the artificial intelligence be in Bridge Commander?

Erik Novales explains...

Enemy ships can have varying levels of "smarts", which will affect how they behave in combat.

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13. Are the Borg in Bridge Commander?

Sadly no, they may appear in a future expansion pack so don't give up hope yet :)

Well due to a recent mistake this site received a screenshot which listed a Borg cube in the enemy target list, This caused a bit of a debate which only David Litwin could explain...

Sigh.

No Borg in the game: Single player, multi-player or Quick Battle.

That screen shot was apparently overlooked by those in charge of screening them and I'm quite sorry for any confusion.

The two explanations I can come up with for that shot would be that it was either a MP game where someone chose the name "Borg Cube" (unlikely) or that it was based on an experimental scenario an intern was playing around with a number of months back. We did look into that Borg scenario briefly to explore it as an option, but we just didn't have the time or resources to add it to the game. I guess someone was playing around with it and took a screen shot, which then made it out to you guys.

Again, we certainly wouldn't want to lead you guys on, which makes a flub like this really unfortunate.

I suppose a Borg scenario would make for a great mod though...

Well this all got out hopes up a bit but we can always mod it or see if it's going to be in a possible future expansion pack. Just for those of you who missed it this is the screenshot that got out hopes up.

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14. Who is writing the story that Bridge Commander will follow in its single player campaign?

D. C. Fontana (Trek novel author) and Derek Chester (Totally Games) are writing the story, for more information on the story check out this page.

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15. Is a cloaking ability for Klingon and Romulan ships being included?

Yep

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16. Do ships in Bridge Commander have weapons consistent what what we see on the TV and do they fire from where they do on TV?

David Litwin Answers...

To the best of our knowledge.

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17. Do the shields have a flair effect when they are hit by a weapon?

Yep, they sure do.

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18. Will I be able to use a tractor beam on my enemies?

Yes, by pressing the tractor beam button.

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19. How will collisions be implemented in the game? I hope the bounding box method inflicting massive damage of Klingon Academy is not used.

David Litwin explains...

Our ship-ship collisions will be more accurate than simple bounding box or bounding sphere. You will get point to point collisions, and they will do massive, unrecoverable amounts of damage unless it is really a small grazing hit. These are *huge* ships after all, how could they survive a collision at any reasonable speed?

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20. Will we be able to select a difficulty setting to play?

Yes.

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21. Will I be able to manually dock at Starbases?

David Litwin explains...

From the Tactical mode you have navigational control and can fly yourself into the starbase. There is no complex manual docking, but if you fly in you've done most of the work for Kiska, your helm officer.

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22. What will visiting a Starbase do for me?

Visiting a Starbase will reload your torpedoes and fix any serious damage that has been received.

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23. How can I control my ship in Bridge Commander?

There are 3 ways of controlling your ship, The Bridge mode,  Tactical mode and Full Tactical mode.

Bridge mode is where you control the ships functions from the captains chair using drop down menus and mouse clicks.

The Tactical mode gives you full control over weapons, shields etc. All other stations are controlled as in bridge mode.

Full Tactical mode gives the player complete control of all systems using a similar system to the Verbal Orders System (VOS) and Heads up Display (HUD) as found in Klingon Academy.

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24. Is Bridge Commander played in a flat plain terrain or a full 6 degrees of freedom terrain?

Bridge Commander unlike most of the Star Trek series is played in a full 3d 6 degrees of freedom space terrain.

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25. Can the Galaxy class separate its saucer section?

David Litwin explains...

Ah, saucer separation...

No, it isn't in our game. But it wasn't because of Paramount or Activision asked us not to do it. It's because things that are cool in a movie don't always mean good game play.

Controlling more than one ship at a time would make the interface a pain (either direct control or some form of remote control). Having to do a separate Battle Bridge would take up way too much art time (doing the two bridges we have took a *lot* of time). Dealing with the separation and re-integration would be an awkward issue in a battle. In the very few times this has been done in the shows it isn't quick, and you’d be a sitting duck. And if you got damaged, which you will in battle, what if you can’t then fit back together? Your game would be over…

It's a cool story thing but not such a cool thing in practice (kind of like the Picard manoeuvre…). If it was such an advantage, why not just always send around two smaller ships instead of a large Starship that can split in two? Why not split into four? Why don't they saucer separate in every battle they encounter (it’s really only been done a very few times)? While I'm sure many answers can be made up for these questions (I'm not trying to start a huge discussion, I've got too many bugs to fix!), having them work in game play is another thing altogether (or making games would be easy...)

To me it's a lot like having the radar dish on the Millennium Falcon break off in the Death Star. When programming the death star sequence for Xwing Alliance I knew people would want it, but how do you make it work in game play? Just hearing a "whump" will get overlooked, and popping out into a cut scene to show it would yank you from the action just in the middle of a tense and harrowing flight.

Both of these situations are undeniably classic movie moments, but they just don't translate well to an interactive experience. In interactive entertainment you have to answer all the sticky and difficult questions that non-interactive entertainment can avoid by showing you just the cool part.

So two years ago when we were designing the game we thought long and hard about it before deciding it wasn’t going to happen.

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26. As a Klingon Academy veteran of sorts, I’ve always been disappointed with the so called “phoney physics” used by Klingon Academy. Will Bridge Commander have a more real physics model?  So for example if I had my propulsion systems destroyed would I drift in the speed and direction that I was going before my propulsion was cut?

David Litwin explains...

Yep.  But don't confuse real physics with Trek physics.  We've modelled our game to make you feel like you are in the shows.  But as a game we have to be practical as well.  A large starship like that wouldn't have you controlling actual thrusters, as it is too hard.  Instead they would have a more familiar control scheme that had computers then taking those commands and determining thrusters timings.  So we have standard up down left right controls with throttle.  But our feel is of a large, heavy ship that has a lot of inertia.  So once you destroy a ship, its hulk will keep moving in the same direction/speed.  Make sure you get out of the way in a head on fight :)

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27. What happens after a collision with another ship or other object?

David Litwin explains...

You take huge amount of damage.  These are most often fatal.  Big ships aren't meant to bump each other at speed.

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28. You have mentioned in the past it will be possible to crash into a star or planet, Will the corona or atmospheres affect the ships systems or crew?

David Litwin explains...

Yes, we recently put in an atmosphere effect where you get an orange halo as you hit the atmosphere of a planet.  Different atmospheres do differing amounts of damage, and that is set by the designer.

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29. I’ve seen no mention of nebulas or black hole terrains, will either of these terrains be included in the game? If not are there any reasons?

David Litwin explains...

We have nebulae in our missions but not black holes.  It didn't fit into the story of our game and would require a lot of special effects coding.

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30. It’s been asked on the forums if the federation ships will show the phasers charging then the energy pulse moving around the saucer section. Is this a feature to be included?

David Litwin explains...

Yep.  We recently released a shot of the phasers charging :)

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31. Can you eject the warp core?

David Litwin explains...

Nope.  The only time you would ever eject the warp core is when you've already lost and will probably want to get back into the game again.  These things are cool in the movies where they can skip over the boring wait and tow back to a starbase for repair, but in a game it doesn’t work.

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32. If the warp systems are sufficiently damaged, can the ship have a warp core breach at random?

David Litwin explains...

Your warp core is a critical system and a good target for an attacker, but you've got a good engineer and he'll keep it from breaching until they've wiped it out.

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33. What unit of speed does Bridge Commander use while a ship is at impulse speed? KPH, MPH etc?

David Litwin explains...

We use KPH.

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34. Please, please, please tell me the AI in Bridge Commander at least has the intelligence not to fly into a planet, star or asteroid etc? The AI in Klingon Academy was a joke and us trek gaming fans would dearly like to see AI that could see a planet or other celestial body and avoid it now and again.

David Litwin explains...

Our collision avoidance AI is pretty good and avoids most collisions.  If you put it in a dense asteroid field and ask it to fight you might get it to collide, but I can say the same for most manual pilots.

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35. Which ships does the player control in the storyline?

You will control the USS Dauntless, a Galaxy class vessel. And USS Sovereign, obviously a Sovereign class :)

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36. Is the outcome of the game affected by my performance?

Yep, depending on your success in the missions.

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37. Where do the campaign missions take place?

Your campaign missions will mostly take place in the star system where your ship was damaged by the sun. However you will visit other systems in order to complete your mission.

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38. When does the game take place?

It takes place soon after the storyline in the upcoming Armada 2 title.

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39. Can I look on to and fire at more than one target?

David Litwin explains...

You can only have one target at a time. While it is conceivable that a Federation starship could handle multiple targets at once, it's really hard for one person to do, and a horrible interface mess to track more than one.

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40. Why have digital readouts been excluded?, this was a feature in Klingon Academy that worked well.

David Litwin explains...

Knowing exact numerical info about another ship's systems presents a problem in Multiplayer, where you have to send all that detailed info for each ship. This is a lot of bytes. Also, if you consider complex warfare and protection of information being an important part of strategy it seems logical that one ship would not know with perfect precision the details of another's systems.

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41. If my main power systems are damaged or destroyed will there be auxiliary power source?

David Litwin explains...

Emergency power is engaged when you boost power to enough systems that your warp core and main battery cannot satisfy the power drain. Your reserve is limited, and if you use it up you may have nothing left if your main power is damaged and taken off line.

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42. What happens when a ship is destroyed? Does it just vanish?

David Litwin explains...

The dead hulk of the ship will remain, and if you hit it you will take a lot of damage. In Star Trek ships are big and don't just disappear when destroyed. Remember the scene from Wolf 359? We wanted something more along those lines.

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Will there be any secrets for us to find during the game?

David Litwin explains...

We'll try to pack a few fun things in, but if we don't chalk it up to lack of time, not lack of desire.

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44. How often can we save during the game? Can you save during battles or KA style and only at the end of a mission?

David Litwin explains...

Missions are auto-saved at critical junctures, most often the beginning of a mission.  Some complex missions may have multiple save points so you can avoid having to re-do the early part of a long or difficult mission if you fail at the end. 

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45. How many ships will the new race have?

David Litwin explains...

Three.

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46. What is this new race called?

The new race is called the Kessok.

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47. Can you explain multiplayer a little more?

David Litwin explains...

It is Client/Server, and we do have a dedicated server option.
Lag sucks, and messes with every net game. For our game it will mean that the server thinks your ship is slightly off in position or rotation. This will mean a bit of warping when your ship gets updated if it is off too much, but other artefacts might be that you think you have a guy in your phaser arc whereas on the server and his machine he might be slightly out of that arc. Similar with torps, you might see a hit that didn't register on the server, or vice versa. The only time this is really an issue is if you have two machines side by side and you are comparing them. Each machine will look pretty good, but they might be showing things differently because of the lag.

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