Two Games in One

In another creative departure from typical empire-builders, combat in Star Control 3 is arcade-style. When fleets fight, the ships go up against each other in a series of one-on-one duels. Piloting is accomplished with simple left, right, and thrust buttons, and each ship also has a primary weapon and a secondary weapon or special ability. All the League races produce ships, but they vary wildly in design and capability. On the surface certain ships may appear to be obviously superior in combat, but players never know when some new alien will appear with a unique weapon exactly suited to exploit the weakness of their favorite heavy-hitter. Wise commanders will keep as many different ship types in their fleet as they can.

The actual battles are noisy, colorful bouts where the "camera" zooms in as the combatants get close to each other. New players will probably want to let the computer fight their battles for a while, since the computer opponent flies and shoots very well. The real trick to combat is picking the right ship with the right abilities to take on the enemy. When the computer is in control, it makes very good choices.

For practice, though, players can play the Hyper Melee game, which is simply the combat portion of Star Control 3 all on its own. In Hyper Melee, players can design fleets and pit one ship against another to see which will turn others into scrap metal. Players can take on the computer or two human players can duke it out, sharing a keyboard or over a modem or local area network.


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