- Original Release: 1999
- Developer: Quicksilver / 14 Degrees East
- Publisher: Interplay
- Platform: PC
This ship combat game is based on the board game Star Fleet Battles (which licensed designs from Star Trek but is officially not Star Trek). This game has a lot to it. There are six races: Federation, Klingon, Romulans, Gorn, Lyran and Hydran, each with their own ships and campaign – every faction even has its own unique HUD and menu interface, a lot of effort clearly went into this game.
The same is true with the gameplay itself, there’s an immense amount of depth, so much you can do with how the weapons work, power distribution, using the transporter in offensive ways, having shuttles help you in combat and so much more. For someone who wants to feel like they’re fully managing a ship on their own, this is the kind of game for them. I personally did not enjoy it at all, with everything feeling extremely slow and sluggish, with battles feeling like endurance tests of not getting bored.
It’s not the game’s fault, really. It does what it sets out to do and does it well, it just really isn’t my kind of thing.
Where to get
How to play Star Trek: Starfleet Command on Windows 11
The GoG version works on Windows 11.
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As far as im concerned, the best Star Trek computer game I’ve ever played, and the gold standard I judge other ship sims by. It influences my trek decisions even to this day and I reference the iconography in my other trek fan works.
My absolute favorite Star Trek game, could never beat the Kobyashi Maru test though.. 3 Klingon K’tinga classCruisers verses 1 Constitution Class Refit..
This game, this game is a classic. Really great gameplay, lots of different missions, cool variety of ships, wonderful Ron Jones music.
I even made mods for this one back in the day!
Thankfully available on sale for modern PCs. Give it a try, it’s a good one!
A brilliant game. It’s a shame that I haven’t been able to run this or its successors on my current computer, but I do definitely remember it fondly
1 and 3 are both on http://gog.com now, those versions run fine. 2 was the most difficult to run (and isn’t officially available), but I managed to get a modified version of Orion Pirates (a standalone expansion of SFC2) with all the original missions running.
i loved this whole series of games. Even though they slightly dumbed down the 3rd one, it was still a blast to play multiplayer skirmishes.
They really captured the turning for weapon arcs and directing where your shield gets impacted, like no other game series i’ve played.
Great franchise destroyed by Activision Marketing.
I LOVED the whole series! I modded the ships as well to get better graphics & different ships.
The game gets quite repetitive after a few missions. But I still keep coming back to it. Just as you said – it feels like you’re controlling huge ships, which is true. This, combined with being set in a bit unusual time period makes the game feel very special.
I played it so much back in the day. I think this was the inspiration behind Star Trek Online battles too.
Once again Ron Jones providing a great score, even if he does reuse tracks from Starfleet Academy. Always played this one more than the others i never got to play the 2nd one
This game was based on Star Fleet Battles. It was and is the only way I was really able to play that tabletop game. I still love both this and the second one to this day, though I can’t get the second game to run anymore. ;..;
This is a game I remember easily playing in adolescence that now looks like it would be completely inaccessible to me.
I spent hours on this as a kid. Easily one of my favorite games. Way too slow and clunky now, though, if you can still get it to work, but it’s basically my standard for these kinds of games. Star Trek Online feels like it strongly references this in their starship combat sections.