Star Trek: Starfleet Command Gold Edition now available at GOG

[BanzaiCat]

I just tried it for a few minutes, Nef. So far so good, but it crashed to the desktop when I tried to view another village in my main/first one, in a campaign game.

[Nefaro]

Can someone please explain the differences between all the SFC2 games? There seem to be a few of them. Empires at war, Orion pirates, community development? What is the one to get? I know I've had them all in the past, but I just don't remember.

Empires At War was the first SFC2.  A great game but the developers released a standalone expansion named Orion Pirates a short time later that had pretty much everything in EAW but with upgraded software (maybe even a newer DirectX support at the time), new ship types (like the Mauler with the big spinal mount weapon), and some other small additions. 

So Orion Pirates is just an upgraded EAW.  I think it's missing the ISC vs Everyone storyline campaigns, having a different set, but the storyline campaigns weren't terribly good anyway.  Campaign's best used as a sandbox for creating battles and expanding your fleet IMO.

The Community Edition is a mod of EAW (the first SFC2).  Therefore, it doesn't have some of the upgrades in OP.  But it has some additional user-created content such as mission types, maybe some new ship class variants, etc.  The main bonus is that it's supposed to make EAW work better with modern OSes.  In theory. 

However, CE regularly crashes in the middle of a battle on my Win7-64 machine.  Some were due to a buggy modded mission type in it, but even after dropping the workaround in it, the thing still occasionally crashes.  So I've moved over to playing Orion Pirates instead.  It seems to run far more smoothly .. and no crashes.  Also, the CE edition hasn't had any update to fix such bugs in the past year or so.  I can't recommend the CE edition in it's current condition.

The AI in Orion Pirates has also been more challenging compared to the same difficulty level setting.  Not sure if that's due to new AI scripting in OP or something else.

[Jarhead0331]

Awesome summary, nef. Thanks.

[mirth]

Awesome summary, nef. Thanks.

+1 Thanks for the info, Nefaro.

[Nefaro]

I just tried it for a few minutes, Nef. So far so good, but it crashed to the desktop when I tried to view another village in my main/first one, in a campaign game.

There is a couple GOG forum threads about HOMM3 crashing when you have Nvidia Shadowplay turned on. 


There are also suggestions of using the HD Mod on Win8 with it.   Also making sure you install it outside your Program Files folder and all the other usual Windows protection workarounds (Run As Admin, etc).



Sorry for the OT in the SFC thread.  We should probably put up a new discussion of the advantages & pitfalls between GOG's HoMM3 Gold and Steam's HD remake.

[Nefaro]

Oh, one more thing:


Be aware that if you purchase SFC2: Orion Pirates from Dynaverse.net, you'll probably have to download the freeware version of MagicISO and extract the files to a folder via that. 

It doesn't cost anything to do that.  Just an annoyance.  I don't know why they didn't just zip/7z the damn thing for the digital distribution.  I guess that was the image they used to print off physical copies.



Another piece of info about CE/EAW & OP I picked up.  Evidently they only received permission to modify EAW into CE & sell it.  But they only received permission to sell theunmodified version of OP.  There are still some OP mods available at that site, although I've not tried them yet.

[DoctorQuest]

Is there any sort of DRM with the Dynaverse SF2: OP install? Very tempting.

So you download an ISO file?

[mirth]

Is there any sort of DRM with the Dynaverse SF2: OP install? Very tempting.

So you download an ISO file?

I'm tempted to pull the trigger on OP from Dynaverse, too. Pulling the files off an ISO is no big deal. More interested in any potential DRM.

[Nefaro]

Is there any sort of DRM with the Dynaverse SF2: OP install? Very tempting.

So you download an ISO file?

Just a serial key activation the first time you start the game.  Like the Matrix serials.

[mirth]

Is there any sort of DRM with the Dynaverse SF2: OP install? Very tempting.

So you download an ISO file?

Just a serial key activation the first time you start the game.  Like the Matrix serials.

Beautiful.

[Nefaro]

I'm tempted to pull the trigger on OP from Dynaverse, too. Pulling the files off an ISO is no big deal.

Like I mentioned before, they send you an ISO.  Which is no big deal.

My issue (and another person who picked up CE there had it too) was that I had to specifically use MagicISO to extract the files from the image.  The ISO program I already had on my computer didn't do the trick, and supposedly some others won't either.

So just be aware you may have to extract the files with that specific program.  I just burned the files off on a backup disk after that.

[mirth]

Thanks, I've played around with ISOs before. They can be weird like that. I've used Magic Iso before. I'll do exactly what you did, grab the files and burn them to disc.

[JasonPratt]

In conclusion: I'm waiting for SC2OP. I'm not fooling around with all the iso gibberish.

Also, I think it says something about the appeal of the game system generally that this thread has not (yet) gone on a hunt and post for hot Romulan girls.  ;)

[mirth]

Ael t'Rllaillieu is the hottest Romulan chick.

[Martok]

Ael t'Rllaillieu is the hottest Romulan chick.

Tangentially related to that:  Did you check out the final Bloodwing/Rihannsu novel yet?  (Or Dark Mirror?)