Hello once more for tonight!
As promised, let us finally take a look into the available starship bridges, since the game is named after them!
The SNES version of "Starfleet Academy" features six different starship bridges.
[pictures 11 & 12]
First, the bridges of the playable 'Federation Starfleet' ships as they are introduced during the game's campaign: the USS Banting (Oberth-class), the USS Tereshkova (Miranda-class, 'USS Excalibur' in the campaign), the USS Bolivar (Constitution-class, like an 'Enterprise NCC-1701 A').
The USS Hood (an older version of the Constitution-class from TOS, like the original 'Enterprise NCC-1701') is only playable in the training simulator as part of the ship-to-ship combat practice or the TOS-inspired special mission about Spock.
[picture 13]
Next are the bridges for the 'Klingon' and 'Romulan' ships. Unfortunately, they reuse the same bridge for the different ships of both 'Klingon' and all 'Romulan' starships. But hey, the later PC-version did not have any of those!
I like, that every starship bridge design is somewhat different and to a certain degree even resembles a little bit their counter part from the original series (TOS) or the first seven motion pictures (feature films with William Shattner). They even differentiated the bridge crew stations or positions for the 'Klingon' and 'Romulan' ships, but in the series and movies, the 'Romulan' bridge was laid out circular around a central structure with the crew stations facing inwards, instead of outwards (as here in the SNES game). Nonetheless, they depicted the circular arrangement, opposed to the rows in the 'Klingon' 'Bird of Prey' as used in the movie 'Star Trek IV'.
Functionally, they are of course the same.
Each bridge has almost the same size of the main screen, merely varying the contur or shape. Centered below the main screen, we have the light indicating the current alert stage (green, yellow or red). In between the screen and the captain's seat we have a flat radar. Other than in the later PC version of the game, it is sometimes harder and other times easier to read. Why? Because the center of the small radar screen represents our ship (no dedicated dot necessary), things in front of our ship are above the center, objects behind our ship are below the center, something on the left means it is on the backbord (left) side of our ship, and right means starbord (right) side. Each contact is displayed as a colored (not exactly) 'dot'--let us call it 'bleep'--that turns into an upwards or downwards pointing triangle, if the object is above or below our current position.
Some may prefer the 3D line/column abstraction of the radar as used in the PC game and other space shooters, but I kind of like the simpler representation here. The problem comes with more than one contact in proximity to each other. Each bleeb of a different color overlaps and overwrites the other and you can easily loose the one you are tracking or trying to follow. In addition, you have absolutely no indication on the main screen for which bleeb corresponds to which ship. A colored targeting indicator (e.g. brackets or something) would have been nice.
One way to handle it, is to focus on only one bleeb in the first place and rely on their relative position on the radar. Another is to switch the radar / scanner range (between battle mode, short, medium and long range). However, on the 'Federation' ships each maximum range of the lower mode represents the innermost circle on the next higher range mode, causing even more clustering of all contacts on nearly the same radar spot. Best of all, there are times when we need to use the longer ranges to find our mission objective(s) while fighting or trying to avoid the enemy vessel(s). Oh, who thought it would be 'nice' to remove even those range rings on the radar screen for the 'Klingon' and 'Romulan' bridge?
On the left side of the main screen, we have on top the phaser charge(s) indicator (green=ready to fire, red=charging/loading, black=disabled or destroyed). Similar on the right side on top for our torpedo launcher(s).
Beneath these weapon status indicators we have on the left side a bar of our shield strength, and on the right side a bar reflecting our current 'impulse' speed (each block of 1/4 of the bar equals half of an 'impulse' speed, known in Star Trek as non-warp-speed for within a star system).
Severe shield, hull or system damages are also acompanied by a corresponding text message of our crew that do not obstruct the main screen and disappears again by itself after a couple of seconds. Shield strength and hull integrity are given in percentages within those messages.
[picture 14]
Here are two other nice features in the game: two player split-screen ship-to-ship combat training, and how the cloaking device of the 'Klingon' 'Bird of Prey' (likewise on all 'Romulan' ships) functions!
The game seem to change all polygon surfaces with to the same grey vertex color in steps of three or four intensities, independent of their orientation, causing the ship to fade into the black background, but still covering the white dots for stars. (Maybe it uses an alpha mask for the modle's contur, I do not know.)
The best part is, that the grey intensity of the ship model is not fixed when cloaked, but from time to time alternates bewteen the middle and the darkest tone, causing the shilouette to get visible again for a brief moment. Thus, we can aim at cloaked ships for an extra damage directly to their subsystems or hull. By doing so we can even damage the claoking device itself, preventing the enemy from 'hiding' again. (This reminds me of the Enterprise's encounter with the Klingon Bird of Prey in Star Trek III Search for Spock.)
In my next report, I will present what happens on an exemplary campaign mission (regular procedure). And discuss the different mission types and solution alternatives.
Kind regards,
foxgog
