Been revisiting SFC for the first time in a long while. Played the heck out of it back when it was new; still have my original box and discs. With the excitement for the new Star Trek show, Discovery, in the air - and having been re-watching TNG/DS9 on Netflix - I've been in the mood for a good Star Trek game, of which there are few and far between these days.

That said, nostalgia is a helluva drug. The game seems balanced only around Federation, which is the faction I played the most. I finished their campaign and it was pretty much as I remember it. But then trying a Klingon / Romulan campaign and whoa mama what a mess!

The AI clearly plays a different game than the human player. I've seen Federation ships get 100 percent accuracy with photon volleys at distances of 15+. All AIs get massive shield replenishment compared to your ship; their shields will steadily reinforce seconds after you've taken them down. Where as it takes an eternity for one of your weak shields to get back up even when you have energy to spare, which also brings to mind another observation: that your shields do not replenish the same way AI shields charge. The 1.02 patch notes say that all shields recharge evenly but that is NOT the case for the human player; shields seem to recharge from strongest to weakest, which makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE. Meanwhile the AIs are able to quickly get their weak shields up in record time while still being able to charge their weapons in record time.

AIs almost certainly have damage table (and accuracy) advantages over the human player, even with the use of the Mizia effect; a single hit (by a single weapon) by an AI will affect 2-3 of your systems, whereas even if you stagger your attacks on their exposed hull, their systems remain relatively untouched hit after hit after hit.

All the meanwhile, the AIs seem to also get amazing maneuverability. I've seen heavy cruisers and battleships keep pace with frigates, pulling speed 20 while still able to recharge their shields, fire weapons and still have several points in ECM. And then there's the AI's ability to perform HETs again and again, over and over, with impunity. I think I can say in over 60 hours of gametime over the last two weeks I have seen the AI fail an HET **once**. Just once.

The SFC manual states that difficulty only affects how many systems the AI will use and their access to crews (i.e., senior, veteran, legendary). But crews only give a small bonus to their relative system according to the 1.02 patch notes.

Even then they wouldn't account for the incredibly lopsided performance the AI is able to squeeze out of its ships. Certainly my own ship crewed by legendary officers don't even get half the performance the AI seems to get.

The more I play SFC the more I'm convinced the developers ran out of time and simply stitched things together and took shortcuts so it felt convincing. One look at Dynaverse and its completely haphazard results seem to support this; nothing you do makes a difference. Succeeding on the fringes has the same effect as simply staying in the core sectors. Even moving your ship into enemy territory will still bring up an Orion mission. WTF?

Very disappointing.

You should've seen SFC1 at v1.00 and without the extra downloadable missions that the Gold Edition comes standard with. 90% of all missions were pirates or monsters.

I have the original box and disc from launch. I should try installing it to see the difference haha but what you say doesn't come as a surprise.

Though I'll be honest I feel like the gog version plays differently from what I remembered, unless my recollections have been overwritten by experiences in SFC2 but I also played the heck out of SFC1 with the 1.03 patch and gold additions. Until my recent experience with the gog version I always seemed to recall getting sector-specific missions; travelling to the (whatever it's called) "unexplored" sector would get you some exploration mission, while those in the core were anti-pirate. Travelling to a border with a warring neighbor will get you a mission against that faction.

That's how I seem to remember it. Now it seems unless you're on faction-specific quest line it's mostly Orions regardless of your sector.

Either nostalgia has done a number on me or this version plays differently from what I remember.

"Federation ships get 100 percent accuracy with photon volleys at distances of 15+"

Hardly. Are you using your tractors?
ECM and ECCM, Erratic manuvers, location, and speed all play into if those are going to hit. Maybe you played at easy where the AI doesn't use those as much?

"All AIs get massive shield replenishment compared to your ship; their shields will steadily reinforce seconds after you've taken them down."
That's because they reinforce them. You can also do this for the same result as long as you have the power for it.

"which makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE"
It's helpful, actually, because you can turn your tougher sheilds to face the foe. You can prevent this from happening by deselecting the stronger sheilds. Sheilds have reCHARGE and reINFORCE functions, as well. At base, your sheild has N power. It won't go above N unless reINFORCED but it will VERY SLOWLY go back to N with reCHARGE. ReINFORCE reads the current sheild value, NOT N, in order to tell how much it needs to buff a sheild.

"Meanwhile the AIs are able to quickly get their weak shields up in record time while still being able to charge their weapons in record time."
Most Orions have REALLY GOOD ships with great power management, but they're generally under-armed.

"All the meanwhile, the AIs seem to also get amazing maneuverability. I've seen heavy cruisers and battleships keep pace with frigates, pulling speed 20 while still able to recharge their shields, fire weapons and still have several points in ECM."
I can do all this in my Romulan battleship, you just need to be really good at quickly shifting speeds. Battleships are freaking great man. Not nearly as good as HBCs but still pretty awesome.

"Even moving your ship into enemy territory will still bring up an Orion mission. WTF?"
Yeah the Orion missions are hella heavy in the weighting system. The whole map seems pretty useless, but it's a nice concept.

Just did a check on moving, I'm getting the entire Hydran Vs. Klingon campaign alright, so that seems to work with a few missions I had to avoid because they crashed or the AI occasionally seems to double the BV of non-NPC battleships, which I shouldn't be flying anyways but meh.

The AI is not too bright. They need all the help they can get. I've watched Orions run into their own mines and a Fed CADR run right into the teeth of two Klingon heavy cruisers and die because they didn't wait for me to catch up in my Firehawk (Protect the Diplomat) mission.

Fed is easier to play as that is the faction you're meant to start with. However Fed and Klingon drone cruisers do feel very overpowered.