Star Trek: Conquest is a turn-based strategy game. The developers attempted to break it out of that genre a little by adding in a shooter aspect when you go into battle, but I found that particular aspect to be harder to handle than the strategy part and it constantly tore me away from my strategic mindset. Thankfully, there is the ability to simulate those battles, but more on that later. In
Conquest, you will be able to control the Federation, Klingon, Cardassians, Romulans, Dominion and Breen as they attempt to take over the other races and dominate the galaxy.
There are two gameplay modes, Campaign and Skirmish. Campaign Mode lets you and up to three opposing races vie for systems on a Galactic Map. You control a system if you have cleared it of all enemy structures and ships and you have at least one structure or ship in play there. A race is defeated when they no longer have any systems under their control and all of their fleets have been destroyed.
Basically, a turn happens like this. You move your fleets to different systems, if there are opposing forces in that system; the two sides fight with whatever resources they have in that system. You can also spend your money, which you earn via mining colonies, to create new structures (starbases, research facilities and mining colonies), or new ships for a fleet. If you don't have any fleets, you can hire one of your three admirals and create a fleet. Each admiral has a different strength. Some are better at attacking, some defending and some at maneuvering. You can have at most three fleets/admirals in play and each admiral can control up to seven ships in his fleet.
These ships are divided into three categories: scouts, cruisers and dreadnaughts, and each ship type also has its specialty. While scouts are cheap, they move fast but don't necessarily do a lot of damage and Dreadnaughts, the most expensive, are exactly the opposite. They are slower, but have better shields and stronger weapons. Meanwhile, the cruisers are essentially the middle ground between the two extremes.
At the end of each round, your assets are tallied up. Any money you earn based on your mining colonies is collected; any research you've done at the stations goes towards the ability to create a super weapon as well as your upgrade research. These super weapons are devices you can create, like The Genesis Device or a Sub Space Disruptor, and use on a system. Each race has a different mix of these weapons available, but they all fit into three categories: healing, attacking and defending. Meanwhile, the research upgrades are used to reduce the cost of admirals, increase the efficiency of your facilities or make the ships in your fleet more formidable weapons. Effectively setting up your income and research is just as big a part of this game as the fighting itself, since having a good infrastructure is key to having systems that can withstand enemy attack even when your fleets aren't in that system.
When you do end up in a fight, there are three options you can choose. You can control the ships themselves by flying around the system trying to take out the enemy ships and structures, or you can tell the game to simulate the fight (giving you only the barest controls of aggressiveness) or you can just hit a button and it will tell you how it ended up. I tried the flight controls aspect a few times, but I kept finding it to have very loose controls (even when I upgraded the ships' abilities) and not worth the hassle. Most of the time, I turned the Sim option on and watched the various static sprite ships and stations shoot at each other. It just seemed like I tended to win more skirmishes that way. Skirmish mode is simply the fights themselves. When setting up a skirmish, you decide what type of what ships are in the combat area, and you fight it out.
