Star Trek: Bridge Commander

[Alferd Packer]

Does anyone know of an online vendor where I might find this game? Amazon turned up nothing, and the six stores I've been to so far haven't had a copy of this game.

Or am I just pissing into the wind trying to find it?

[InnocentBystander]

www.chipsbits.com , but it's out of stock. Bridge Commander was a real flop, you'll find the most luck just google searching it.

[Soontir C'boath]

Or go to eBay. You'll have the best chances there if not by google.

[InnocentBystander]

I can't bring myself to use ebay, I like knowing what I'm buying. I have no idea what I'm getting if I use ebay. Perhaps I have too little faith?

[Vohu Manah]

Not a bad thing, though I haven't been burned on eBay yet.

[Sarevok]

One of the players in my Brigecommander clan got it by downloading from the internet. I doubt it is legal though.

[Soontir C'boath]

I can't bring myself to use ebay, I like knowing what I'm buying. I have no idea what I'm getting if I use ebay. Perhaps I have too little faith?

Well, there is the contact sellar option if the person didn't put enough details of it.~Jason

[RedImperator]

I can't bring myself to use ebay, I like knowing what I'm buying. I have no idea what I'm getting if I use ebay. Perhaps I have too little faith?

Outright fraud is pretty rare and usually easy to avoid if you're careful. Ditto stupid tricks like the guy who sold the box an XBox came in for $300 because the buyer wasn't paying enough attention.

[frigidmagi]

Wonder which is worse being the guy who won the box or the guy who lost the bidding?

[InnocentBystander]

I'm sure it's plenty safe, I'm not very trusting when money is on the line.

Back to the topic; Bridge Commander isn't a bad game per se, it just wasn't good enough. I found that the combat was just aligning your ship's torpedo banks over and over. The option to let the lieutenant drive was nice, but only to a point (I don't think you could do that in multiplayer, though). I did like taking control of the phase, but that gets old pretty fast. The battle damage was pretty cool looking, but most of the time you saw any, the ship would get it's shields banged up, there would be a few chunks blown off near key sections, and shortly thereafter, it blew up, and thanks to the vastness of space you had to REALLY try to hit a dead hull. If ship hulls cuold take more damage (a lot more), it would really improve the feel.

I believe I tried the multiplayer three times, on the third time some guy start lobbing quantum torps at me at an ungodly rate. It wouldn't have been so bad if he had the standard compliment of torpedoes, 50 or 100 or something, but he sent hundreds my way. Needless to say, I decided that Bridge Commander multiplayer just wasn't for me and have not played it since.

[Alferd Packer]

As I understand it, there are mods out the wazoo for this game, including a STvSW mod, which is why I want to give 'er a shot.

[InnocentBystander]

Really, got any links? I know star wars weapons work in power ranges an order of magnitude greater, but I’m sure concessions were made for game play’s sake.

[Alferd Packer]

Really, got any links? I know star wars weapons work in power ranges an order of magnitude greater, but I’m sure concessions were made for game play’s sake.

Sure. They call this the "Taster Pack" so it just has the Sovvie, Defiant, ISD, Carrack, and maybe some MC ships, but the groundwork's all there.

More info here.

And it my shamblings around the internet, I found this site. So go nuts, download everything, and tell us which ones don't suck.

[Uraniun235]

Bridge Commander suffered from the problem that the game was very pretty but had little substance. Ironically, I found that where Bridge Commander was strong was often where Klingon Academy was weak, and vice versa. If anyone's interested I can go into detail, but basically, there were times when I felt like the development team had gotten so pumped with the idea that their game was "so easy to mod" that they decided to make their game a very bare one and leave the rest to the modders.

There's also the issue that Totally Games lied to the people who were interested in the game; they said that they would be as faithful to the franchise as humanly possible, because the ships of Star Trek were 'inherently unbalanced' and to balance them would mean detracting from the experience.

I can only assume that changed when they decided to delay the game for several months to tack on multiplayer, because when the game came out, the characteristics of the starships were wildly inaccurate. Hey, the Galaxy class only has the saucer phasers... and four forward-facing torpedos... and they take fucking forever to reload/recharge. Wow. And I have to line up the torpedo tubes precisely. WOW, I have to fucking jockey a 4.5 million ton starship into a firing solution, rather than have the torpedos fire off-axis like has been seen on TV, and in Klingon Academy.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Bridge Commander suffered from the problem that the game was very pretty but had little substance. Ironically, I found that where Bridge Commander was strong was often where Klingon Academy was weak, and vice versa. If anyone's interested I can go into detail, but basically, there were times when I felt like the development team had gotten so pumped with the idea that their game was "so easy to mod" that they decided to make their game a very bare one and leave the rest to the modders.

There's also the issue that Totally Games lied to the people who were interested in the game; they said that they would be as faithful to the franchise as humanly possible, because the ships of Star Trek were 'inherently unbalanced' and to balance them would mean detracting from the experience.

I can only assume that changed when they decided to delay the game for several months to tack on multiplayer, because when the game came out, the characteristics of the starships were wildly inaccurate. Hey, the Galaxy class only has the saucer phasers... and four forward-facing torpedos... and they take fucking forever to reload/recharge. Wow. And I have to line up the torpedo tubes precisely. WOW, I have to fucking jockey a 4.5 million ton starship into a firing solution, rather than have the torpedos fire off-axis like has been seen on TV, and in Klingon Academy.

I agree, and I wouldn't mind hearing you go into detail.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Does anyone know of an online vendor where I might find this game? Amazon turned up nothing, and the six stores I've been to so far haven't had a copy of this game.

Or am I just pissing into the wind trying to find it?

BTW Klingon Academy for all its problems is still a much better game. Lots of content if you know where to look.

I love sending troops over to board cruisers and disable critical components.

Once I was in a Federation DD, and I went up against a Klingon CC. I was able to win by dropping a shield facing and beaming over an assault team to destroy their shield generators.

That pretty much evened the odds, it was still a tough fight but I pulled out on top. I had massive damage to my ships systems, lost both warp nacells, and other heavy structural damage. It was fucking cool....

[Uraniun235]

Here's a list of pros and cons for both games that I wrote up awhile back.

Klingon Academy

Pros:
- Ginsu effect (where you hit the starship, there's a nice explosion, some debris flies off and bang; hole in the hull) looks IMO much more impressive than the damage in BC. While it is probably a bit overdone (ships looking 5x worse than the Enterprise after ST6 can still repair themselves and fight once more) it still looks much more impressive than the damage effects in BC, which usually wind up being far too underdone.

- The environment looks much prettier. The planets, nebulae, backgrounds, all look much better than in BC, with the exception of the stars. Maybe not as realistic, but it's sure as hell more impressive.

- Weapons you are not directly controlling will automatically target and fire on enemy ships that come into range. This can be disabled if desired.

- The music is much more stirring... pumps you up for battle.

- Damage control and power allocation are much more detailed.

- Shields have numerical as well as graphical indicators, letting you know just how much more punishment your shields in a particular area will take.

- Specific shield arcs can be reinforced.

- Ships can be boarded and captured. They can also be defended from capture.

- Your crew can take casualties, and your sickbay can heal the wounded. (but not the dead)

- You can use ECM, and you can pump up power to the sensors to defeat ECM.

- Torpedo tubes can fire off axis. This is a biggie.

- Destroyed ships/stations take a while to fully explode.

- Despite the difficulties imposed by the Ginsu effect, KA has dozens of ship models and classes.

- Quick Battle groups friendly and enemy forces together and separates them beyond weapons range. However, each side is limited to 8 ships. (unless you use a mod...)

Cons:
- Ginsu effect requires significant amount of work to be implemented in any new ship. Ginsu can be ignored if desired, but it doesn't look nearly as spectacular compared to other ships then.

- Ships are far too nimble, and move like slow fighters.

- Torpedos have no tracking whatsoever.

- Short weapons ranges force close-in fighting.

- Starbases/stations are far too small.

- Manuevering worsens with reduced speed.

- Interplay could not make a good Excelsior model if their lives depended on it.



Bridge Commander

Pros:
- Exterior camera tracks target, allowing a superior view of your foe.

- Manuevering improves with reduced speed, allowing for tighter turns.

- Damage effect shows scarring to the hull (as in the ST6 burn marks) and eventually a hull breach which gradually grows larger.

- Damage effect is much easier to apply to BC ships; your computer will automatically generate and use the voxel files needed.

- Phasers deal more damage than their KA counterparts, at least at close range.

- Greater range; range is mostly limited only by phaser effectiveness or torpedo accuracy, as at longer ranges the enemy can more easily dodge torpedos.

- Torpedos track their targets for four seconds.

- Destroyed ships/stations take a while to fully explode.

- Space stations/Starbases are finally as big as they should be.

- Bridge officers can be instructed to continue combat while you attend to other matters.

- In-system BC stars look prettier than in-system KA stars.

- 3D map of immediate area is very useful, though one wishes for the tactical display shown in ST2.

- Nice bridges.

Cons:
- Damage effect is usually underdone; it's entirely possible to kill an enemy ship and not once breach his hull.

- Your targeting system allows only one target to be tracked and fired upon at a time, allowing multiple smaller and weaker ships to have a big advantage over a bigger, more powerful starship.

- Torpedos cannot fire off-axis. That they would design this game with capital starship combat in mind, and then make it so that you had to line up a 640 meter long ship into a firing solution is utterly incomprehensible.

- Torpedos take far too long to reload and do not do enough damage for their long reload time.

- Far too few starship classes, and in my opinion this is really inexcusable considering the vast number of starships we saw in Klingon Academy. How many times did we see an Excelsior class in TNG? Much more than the Ambassador, that's for sure.

- Quick Battle just dumps the ships in a ridiculous big mix. But, the number of ships in said mix is limited only by your hardware.

- Issuing orders to wingmen is clunky and slow.

- Game was balanced (ship stats fucked, etc.) despite interview promises to the contrary.

- Shields have a vague color-code strength indicator.

- The 'simulation' lacks the detail of Klingon Academy, in that power allocation and damage control is severely oversimplified, and shield arc reinforcement is nonexistant. Simplification I can handle, but outright removing the ability to reinforce a particular shield arc is again damn near inexcuseable.

[Laird]

Ha! thats great...1 broadside from an ISD II beats down a Nebula class!

[Sarevok]

http://www.bcfiles.com For all your Bridgecommander needs.

[Sarevok]

Bridge Commander suffered from the problem that the game was very pretty but had little substance. Ironically, I found that where Bridge Commander was strong was often where Klingon Academy was weak, and vice versa. If anyone's interested I can go into detail, but basically, there were times when I felt like the development team had gotten so pumped with the idea that their game was "so easy to mod" that they decided to make their game a very bare one and leave the rest to the modders.

There's also the issue that Totally Games lied to the people who were interested in the game; they said that they would be as faithful to the franchise as humanly possible, because the ships of Star Trek were 'inherently unbalanced' and to balance them would mean detracting from the experience.

I can only assume that changed when they decided to delay the game for several months to tack on multiplayer, because when the game came out, the characteristics of the starships were wildly inaccurate. Hey, the Galaxy class only has the saucer phasers... and four forward-facing torpedos... and they take fucking forever to reload/recharge. Wow. And I have to line up the torpedo tubes precisely. WOW, I have to fucking jockey a 4.5 million ton starship into a firing solution, rather than have the torpedos fire off-axis like has been seen on TV, and in Klingon Academy.

z

You may want to try the MPMP 1.4d mod. It is very accurate. And since it is also played multiplayr you can face human opponents.

[InnocentBystander]

I'll admit I didn't really spend that much time looking into it, but I downloaded the taster pack Alferd suggested, and I can't figure out where the heck I put these .TGL's.
Any help on installing mods for Bridge Commander?

[Uraniun235]

You may want to try the MPMP 1.4d mod. It is very accurate. And since it is also played multiplayr you can face human opponents.

Accurate insofar as the BC engine will allow, which considering the promises made by Totally Games is still not terribly acceptable to me. I'm still going to need to jockey that half-klick starship into a torpedo firing solution.

I've tried earlier versions of the MPMP mod before... they are usually good, although the one I got screwed up the textures on the Galaxy class.

This is the other thing about Bridge Commander that pisses me off. Okay, TG deciding to half-ass the game and let modders flesh it out is one thing, but when they can't even provide a sane, efficient, and easy way for people to go about implementing mods, I really take offense.

I've played around with Bridge Commander mods before. It's a confusing hodgepodge of files that need to be inserted in such an order and in certain places.

Granted, I can do it. But I shouldn't have to; if TG was really so gung-ho about having people be able to mod the game, they should have implemented some fucking basic concepts.

Comparison example:
Let's say I want to add a unit into Total Annihilation. I drop the NewUnit.ufo file into the TOTALA folder, and BAM I'm ready to play Total Annihilation with my new unit.

Let's say I want to add a ship into Bridge Commander. I'll need to copy several files into multiple different folders and make entries in certain script files for the ship either by hand or using a third-party utility which partially automates the process.

To remove the TA unit, I just delete the single file in question. Done.
To remove the BC ship? That'll be a bit more complicated.

Any help on installing mods for Bridge Commander?

This is exactly what I'm talking about.

[Sarevok]

Fan made mods for Bridgecommander are incredible. It is hard to understand why Totaly Games would put so much effort in building such a great engine only to fill it with crappy ships. If the fans can come up with mods like NanoFX 2 and the Enemies of Life mod a full fledged software company could do much better.

[Sarevok]

Sorry if this constitutes thread necromancy but I found an awesome Bridgecommander mod I would like to share with everyone.

http://dynamic3.gamespy.com/%7Ebridgeco ... s my links

[InnocentBystander]

Can I get a link to tips for installing Bridge commander mods?