Star Trek Bridge Crew

[Jarhead0331]

Damn, I guess I really need to go and shell out for a VR set.

Is the PS4 VR set really that bad and not worth it? (I'd rather play this game on the PS4)

It's not necessarily "bad" but it only supports seated play and it only has one camera positioned to the front, which means there are no sensors behind you. As a result, the action must all take place in a limited arc to the front of the seated player.

[Pete Dero]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/527100/Star_Trek_Bridge_Crew/

50% off (only 8 hours left)

[spelk]

Now you don't need the £400 PSVR setup to play it, and it's currently £15.99 on PSN.

https://www.dualshockers.com/star-trek-bridge-crew-no-vr/

[Tpek]

Awesome, I might just pick it up now.

[Destraex]

Yeah. Non VR mode. What is the combat system like? Full simulator mode?

[spelk]

I've only done the first two missions in the main campaign. The combat isn't bad.

You have control over the ships systems, targetting, scanning, readying plasma torp tubes, firing phasers in beam or burst mode, and managing the power levels, even re-routing power for a little extra poke (but the ship becomes unstable rapidly if you use re-routing for any length of time).

Shields management, transporter beam lock & energising. Subsystem repair and allocation of engineering teams.

Helm can be manual but as a captain you generally use target location points to navigate from the Captains chair on the local map - you can also use Impulse engines for short-ish jumps or full Warp drive for long distance travel.

Analysis/Scans long range probes. Even Subsystem targetting with phasers or Subsystem intrusion (disrupting engines, weapons, shields)

It's not massively "action orientated", more like the show, in command, trying to manage all the balls up in the air and making decisions on what to employ and when. They even give you a stab at the Kobayashi Maru in the first mission. :)

Solo playing and having to manage all systems is frantic. Although the captains chair gives you a lot of general orders that take care of specific more complicated actions. However, if you want fine control you need to drop into the Helm/Tac/Engineer stations to fine tune anything.

What I've played of it so far, I absolutely love it. It is a dream come true. And that is just doing it Solo. I bet with a team of three others it becomes a very intense and co-operative event.

It has a campaign (not sure how many missions), commanding the U.S.S Aegis, but they do have some replay value if you want try out different tactics and timings. It also has a random mission generator commanding Aegis or the U.S.S. Enterprise - there are a number of types, defend, combat etc.

It even has solo voice command control, but does some weird sending your voice data to IBM Deep Mind to analyse it! But that is an option you can turn on or off.

It is VERY Star Trek and one of the best Spaceship Bridge "Simulation" games I've seen. But my judgement could be clouded there because it is VERY Star Trek.

[Tpek]

^Is it really so Combat-ish or does it actually present different kinds of missions?

[spelk]

^Is it really so Combat-ish or does it actually present different kinds of missions?

It's not massively combat heavy, I've only played the Prologue (which is a training mission with three stages to it), and Mission 1 (with three or four stages with a few objectives in each stage). In one of the stages in both missions there was an element of combat. Mostly, travel, scanning exploration and manoeuvre.

From what I can tell the campaign has 6 missions, 1 prologue and 1 Kobayashi Maru challenge. So I don't think this is a long story heavy game at all.

There are "Ongoing Voyages" which are randomly generated missions and they are from four types of mission (Defend, Recover, Rescue, Research). I haven't tried any of them yet. Presumably you can set the difficulty.

I think the main draw of the game, is simply being part of a crew manning a bridge console, or trying to orchestrate the whole team and make the decisions on how to tackle problems.

I can confirm I've seen Klingon ships drop in from cloak, I have fired on them, and I've also battled generic Space Pirates. That's about all the combat I have had exposure to. And they were just short sessions within a wider mission structure.

[Grim.Reaper]

spelk, i know you mentioned solo and being a little frantic...can you expand on that? i only want to play solo and i do t want to control every aspect, prefer to just direct things.  fast pace is not my strong suit:). would a purchase by worth it just for solo?

[spelk]

spelk, i know you mentioned solo and being a little frantic...can you expand on that? i only want to play solo and i do t want to control every aspect, prefer to just direct things.  fast pace is not my strong suit:). would a purchase by worth it just for solo?

It's do-able solo. You have to be the Captain, and most things you can handle from that chair. Course, speed, scans, red alert, engage enemy, major power boosts, repairs etc. If you want a finer control than just telling full power to engines. Say to boost shields AND engines and drop phaser power, then you'd need to go into the Engineers chair, and manually move the energy about. If you want to re-route power, then that also needs to be manually controlled. But for most things, in solo mode, you haven't got time to micromanage power down to that level.

It is frantic, but only in times of combat stress. There are times when you can drop to helm and fly around anomalies or asteroids at your leisure. You can even let the AI fly around those obstacles but sometimes they're a little long-winded. I've had AI try to take us to Warp and the Warp cells discharge before we're aligned up. But most of the time, the AI are good at committing your orders.

If you want a taste, here is me doing Mission 2. If you don't want to spoil the contents of Mission 2, don't watch this.

My biggest worry is that the Campaign only has 6 proper missions, 1 tutorial mission and 1 challenge. So you can see Mission 2 is about 12 minutes long. That is a short one I think, because you are under a time pressure, but you know, even if they were 15 to 20 minutes long, that isn't a lot of gameplay. I've played Mission 2 three times, and I got 12/24 survivors on the first go, only 6 on the second, and 18 on my third - this one. So you can replay them and try and get a better outcome, try some things differently.. but you know, only 6 missions.

However, the random mission generator may provide a bit more longevity. Not tried them yet.

[Grim.Reaper]

Thank you, certainly tempted...sounds like something I might enjoy....

[JasonPratt]

Of course, it's relatively cheap for a ~2 hour campaign plus some random-gen replay.

[Jarhead0331]

The value comes from the unique VR experience. Take that out and the experience is pretty flat if you ask me. The game is meant to be played in VR. I think it was a bad decision to release a non VR version. It will result in negative reviews and complaints by those playing the game in a way it wasn't meant to be played, which is unfair to the overall accomplishment of the original concept.

[spelk]

I'm glad they released a non-VR version, because there are a number of multiplayer  starship bridge simulators out there none of them have the official Star Trek IP. Plus there are none on the console platforms.

VR is an expensive luxury at the moment. Making the game work outside of it, opens up their market, a little bit, to people who want to play co-op bridge sims, but can't afford the heavy price tag for VR buy-in.

I think the single player "campaign" is built to teach you and challenge you a little bit. But the random missions are for co-op play with a crew of mates. With or without VR.

Just my two penneth.

[Jarhead0331]

I'm glad they released a non-VR version, because there are a number of multiplayer  starship bridge simulators out there none of them have the official Star Trek IP. Plus there are none on the console platforms.

VR is an expensive luxury at the moment. Making the game work outside of it, opens up their market, a little bit, to people who want to play co-op bridge sims, but can't afford the heavy price tag for VR buy-in.

I think the single player "campaign" is built to teach you and challenge you a little bit. But the random missions are for co-op play with a crew of mates. With or without VR.

Just my two penneth.

Yes. That's reasonable and I agree that ordinarily a non-VR version is a good thing. However, where the game is developed around that kind of experience, playing it without the VR capability detracts from the overall game and I will not be surprised if there is an influx of negative reviews by people who ignore, or are oblivious to the fact that the game is meant to be played in VR.