Interviews

In focus: Star Trek: Tactical Assault (Part two)

Quicksilver's Rantz Hoseley gets tactical

In focus: Star Trek: Tactical Assault (Part two)

Yesterday, Star Trek: Tactical Assault creative director Rantz Hoseley talked us through the process of how the game was placed within the Star Trek universe. Now we move on to how the basic gameplay elements came together.

Key among these is the 'Tactical' element of the title.

"The game is about naval combat, so you're trying to position your ship at the enemy's weakest point, while keeping your strongest point towards him," explains Hoseley.

It gets a bit more complicated than that, as all the weapons in the game take a certain period of time to recharge after they've been fired. They have firing arcs too, which limits the relative position of your ship compared to the enemy. And even though most automatically lock onto targets, the further you are away, the less powerful or less accurate they become.

Then there are the special manoeuvres, such as high speed energy turns, shield regeneration and overdriving weapons, while in the case of the Klingons and Romulans you have the ability to use cloaking.

"These all take juice from your emergency power reserves, and once that is sucked dry, it takes quite a while to build back up," Hoseley says. "You have to think tactically about when is the best time and position to attack and where to allocate your energy."

For instance, do you throw energy to your shields to keep you alive in the hope that you can come around and hit your enemy's weak side? Or do you overcharge your photon torpedoes and get close, hoping your near-destroyed ship can hold up long enough to get off that killer shot to their damaged midsection?

After each mission, you'll be rewarded with upgrade points, which you allocate towards a given skill set for a crew member. For example, you'll be able to upgrade the shield recharge rate on your engineer or the phaser recharge rate on your weapons officer. As these build up throughout the game, they in turn, will affect the sort of tactics you'll be able to successfully deploy.

Bite-sized battles

Another element Hoseley says his team spent plenty of time thinking about was how to balance pick-and-playability with the intricacies some expect from a Star Trek game.

"We knew there was an entire faction that wanted this game to be a hardcore ship combat game, complete with submenus, stats, tables, and the like. But it's a handheld game, and let's face facts, that's just not going to fly," he says.

Clearly, by it's very nature Star Trek Tactical Assault isn't going to be as easy to get into as games such as Big Brain Academy or Mario Kart DS. Hoseley says he hopes the relatively short mission structure, as well as the quick play Skirmish mode, will at least mean you don't have to block off an hour of playtime to get a fun experience, once you've learnt the ropes.

"I think we've done a really good job of it being a satisfying and deep experience, even if you've only got 10 or 15 minutes," he says. "And to be frank, there's a pretty selfish motivation behind that. A lot of us on the team are married and have children, and a lot of our gaming gets done playing handhelds. We know from personal experience how annoying it is to not be able to have a 'complete' gaming experience that actually has some depth in that short break you've got."

Our interview on the Holodeck concludes tomorrow with a breakdown of how the game makes the most of the specific features of the DS and PSP.

Don't forget to check out yesterday's look at the genesis of Star Trek: Tactical Assault. The game's due out for PSP on 1st December and for DS on 22nd December.

Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.