Star Trek and military games seem to fit like cozy, spaced-out spandex. While, in the past, game enthusiasts have tried to apply the Star Trek brand to the brand of sexier game genres such as first-person shooters or flight combat simulators, this often seems like a lukewarm attempt to fit Trek into the non-fantastic definition of “cool”. Thankfully, Trek’s fortunes seem to be changing, as this is the second time this year it’s been used for a game that both fits the brand and can stand alongside other titles in its genre. Developed by Nimble Giant Entertainment (the 2016 teachers of Orion reform) and published by Paradox Interactive (Pilgrim Kings, Stellar) Star Trek: Infinity 4X is a grand strategy game that shares many qualities with a good Star Trek episode: it’s cerebral, accessible, sometimes a little clumsy, and an overall good time.
Star Trek: Infinity It gives you access to the Alpha and Beta Quadrants of the Milky Way Galaxy, where most of the Star Trek stories are set. There you take command of one of the four most prominent factions in mythology and the nation of the other three to dominate the cosmos. The object of the game is to expand your empire and absorb as many civilizations of smaller countries as possible over three centuries, but each faction is involved in this in its own unique way. The benevolent Federation of Planets makes friends by sharing the bounty of their post-poverty economy. The Romulan government uses enigmatic intelligence and political deception to establish puppets, while the Klingon government prefers a direct approach, overwhelming its enemies like a blizzard of war. The Cardassian Union occupies their neighbors and serves the interests of their impoverished country. In addition to certain forms of victory, each faction faces the parallel challenges of exploring the final frontier, acquiring and managing resources, and balancing the myriad tasks of maintaining a large galactic government.
Image: Paradox Interactive
Veterans 4X type of grand war (mainly Stellarthe direct predecessor of the game will be playing at home Infinitesending stars through 2D maps to explore new star systems and colonize habitable planets in them. Victory requires controlling ambition, and expanding control at a sustainable rate without allowing yourself to be defeated by your opponents. Players are guided through the process through a faction-type mission tree that encourages you to exercise the powers of your empire. The biggest advantage of the Federation is that its ability to provide almost unlimited creature comforts means you rarely have to think about internal stability, so you can feel free to start exploring new worlds right away. On the other hand, the Cardassian mission tree gives you a number of how many tribute camps you will need to build to meet your material requirements, suggesting that you build reduction centers to maintain the state’s population. Completing challenges in the mission tree gives you bonuses that will keep you competitive as the other three major powers carve out their corners of the board.
That is not to say Star Trek: Infinity the player keeps the player completely on the rails. You have to role-play your party to match their behavior from the TV show, you’ll have certain results, but nothing that takes you away from the canon. Each tree has a special mission, a different path that you can follow, to quickly investigate the peaceful reunification of the Romulan and Vulcan peoples or allowing the Federation to turn into a bunch of police in the state, but you can ignore the tree altogether and your experiment. own stories. Each party has unique characteristics and abilities that cannot perfectly mimic the story of another, but there is plenty of room for crunch if you like to create new obstacles on repeat playthroughs. But the canonical path does not resist at all, and offers the fastest path to victory.
I started my adventure, as I think most players will, with the Federation campaign, which features the most party-specific features and perks and the friendliest difficulty. The Federation benefits from the start with four stable foundation worlds and an abundant supply of Energy, which is the game’s primary currency. There are several smaller powers in the vicinity that are easily persuaded to join your ranks, developing worlds and adding stars in exchange for their admission to the Federation. The challenge of the Federation is to strengthen your military force proportional to the size of your territory, at least until you can accumulate such resources that your opponents cannot overcome you. On the failure of the “Ensign” difficulty, I became too big to fail the cards ages ago, but even in “Commodore” the fourth six levels of difficulty against AI opponents, I was able to win eke long before the start. the official endgame.
Image: Paradox Interactive
The three alien empires are each more playable in different ways, consistent with the canon arrangement. The Klingons can only expand their territory by force, but the longships are cheap and the cultural empire gets a benefit every time one of the ships is destroyed in battle. Romula’s expedition has an extra crisis to manage, as the star home system will be destroyed by a supernova a quarter of the way through the game, but the smaller powers are lured into puppet states that nurture those resources until they are fully ready. The Cardassian homeworld is suffering from failure, but they also start the game with a smaller occupied power (Bajor of course) and the ability to work non-Cardassians literally to death to increase resource production. (The player receives annual mortality reports from the labor camp.) It may take time to adjust to the dirty ways in which the governments serve their interests (do I remember the labor camp mortality reports?) but they certainly distinguish the game between campaigns.
Players are presented with various crises, anomalies, and dilemmas throughout the campaign, specifically duplicated to the three-paragraph story cards, and produce structured options to advance the story. Some of these stories are based directly on the episodes” The next generationothers, on the other hand, to play. Everything is written in plain language rather than light than you might expect from Trek, though the flavor of the text is appropriate. Stellar or a tabletop war game. What’s more important about these story missions set up is how, although their costs and rewards are the same throughout the campaigns, I found that the material needs of each government almost always led me to make the kinds of choices that my party would be likely to make. make it to the show. Choosing the most humane or diplomatic option was always practical like the Federation, but often not affordable like the Klingons or the Cardassians. It fits the Journey ethos that the galaxy’s more inhuman powers make some questionable or cruel choices, not because they are bad, but because those circumstances lead them to. Disrupting that is possible, but it’s going to take a lot of work.
The most immersive gameplay element is the Borg, which is included as a non-player faction that invades your space intermittently. The Borg are positioned as an ongoing early game threat, regardless of which faction you play, but in a lack of settings, it’s little more than a nuisance. (Thankfully, they have their own difficulty slide in a parochial game.) In contrast, Nausicaan pirates are a much bigger problem, attacking more frequently and with greater attack, but with no corresponding story importance.
Image: Paradox Interactive via Polygon
Infinite it also has some UI issues that only get more frustrating the deeper you go into the game. While it’s easy to move the camera directly to the location of any planet or constellation you’re controlling, this isn’t true in mission areas, which you can still explore though. The game’s quest function will take you to any star system, but not every mission description specifies where it takes place, requiring you to scroll around the ever-expanding galactic map looking for the yellow pulse signal. The designers have also clearly put a lot of effort into flavoring the game (even including a full Klingon language audio track in the Deluxe Edition), but it means it’s even more inconsistent every time I run into the terminology used. e* Stellarfrom which Infinite branches at the beginning of development. (The terms “vacant” or “node” are never used in the Trek canon, although franchise-specific equivalents do exist.
These subtleties are usually critical. As with any 4X game, what’s the most fun about it? Star Trek: Infinity the challenge is to see how many plates you can keep spinning. A century in the game timeline (or a few hours in real time), to manage the population and production of twelve colony worlds, the invasion of civilians and military stars, ground forces, scout network, three streams of research; and your relationships with multiple friendly and hostile factions. Some of these studies can be selectively automated to allow you to focus on the ones you enjoy the most. The ability to control time means that you can be as granular as you want, micromanage to your heart’s content, or rush ahead and put out bursting fires. Star Trek: Infinitythe flexibility of its systems has a lot of replay appeal – as does the presumption that, as a Paradox game, official expansions and polished community mods are sure to come. There is still half a galaxy to explore.
Star Trek: Infinity It was released on October 12 on Mac and Windows PCs. Review the game on PC using a pre-release download code provided by Paradox Interactive. Vox Media has affiliated companies. These editorials do not influence the content, Voice Media may earn commissions for products acquired through affiliate links. You can find information about Polygon’s ethics policies here.