Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday: 5

I'm curious if any game has successfully modeled zero-gravity combat. I'm not enough of a physics buff to know exactly what it would look like--not having to arc grenades, flying backwards every time you shoot a weapon, blood droplets zooming through the air--but I know it would be a little different than the Buck Rogers approach, where you're simply told that you're in zero-gravity, but the movement and combat engines otherwise proceed normally. Characters who don't have the "Maneuver in 0G" skill, or who do not successfully make the roll at the beginning of combat, suffer significant penalties.

Technically a role-playing choice, though if you "return to base," you're ordered to go back out and search the ship.

My first exposure to zero-gravity combat came aboard a derelict ship that I found while on my first mission for the New Earth Organization (NEO), scavenging ships for parts and valuables. The ship was organized into ten 6x6 levels infested with defense robots and "gennies," or genetically-engineered alien life forms. Apparently, the ship's crew had been breeding them but they got out of control.

Note that despite being on a spaceship in the middle of space, I'm somehow facing "north."

The gennies infected my characters with some sort of parasite, causing them to slowly develop a rash, go insane, attack the party, and then fall into a coma. I had to find my way to the sick bay and use clues left by the previous crew to create a cure and a vaccine.

On the top level of the ship, I encountered a sentient hologram calling itself "Scot.DOS" (that would make a good name for a hip-hop artist) who told me the chilling news that RAM had a plot to sterilize Earth and flood it with gennies. Scot.DOS was so appalled by this plan that he decided to defect to NEO, but he was trapped in his console. It was apparently he who released the gennies that destroyed the RAM crew. 

After I repaired his system, things got busy. He directed me all over the ship in an effort to stop the gennies, first by finding canisters of argon gas on the bottom level so I could feed it into the air pumps and kill the creatures, then to fix the life support system when the creatures turned off the air pumps, then a mad rush to a top-level control panel to abort a self-destruct countdown initiated by one of the creatures.

There were several combats along the way, but none terribly difficult, and I'm forced to admit that even in this early stage of the game, I'm relying on "quick combat" (computer control of characters) quite often. When characters only have the ability to shoot at enemies and not much else, the computer does just as well as I do. The one problem is that it seems to target enemies indiscriminately instead of targeting the most dangerous or concentrating firepower on one enemy at a time. I just take over when the foes require that level of logistical effort.

One oddity of the game is that there's no way to treat injuries outside of combat. There's a round of healing at the end of every battle, but if the medic fails to heal everyone then, injured characters will remain injured until perhaps at the end of the next battle, or until returning to the clinic at starport. This has been a problem a couple of times when characters were rendered unconscious and I had no way to revive them except to find another enemy to fight. It's a weird dynamic that makes me wonder if I'm missing something, but there really aren't that many menu options to investigate.

Anyway, after I disarmed the self-destruct, the level came to a scripted end, and I don't think I had time to explore every part of the ship. I suspect I missed out on some encounters, items, and experience. In any event, NEO assigned the ship to me permanently.

The game had been fairly linear up until now, but then it opened up a little. The Commander gave me three pieces of intelligence to check out next: a secret RAM base "near Ceres in the asteroid belt"; a RAM base on Mars that has been seeing high levels of activity lately; and a "manufacturing base" in the "Venusian lowlands." He recommended that I start with the asteroid base, since that's where the ship was programmed to go next.

Leaving spaceport, I found I could now fly just about anywhere in the inner solar system. A map in the game manual gave basic clues as to the location of the asteroid belts and other features, but of course everything is constantly orbiting.

The space atlas (above) and the navigation window (below). I've just encountered an enemy ship.

Your travel is limited by the amount of fuel held by the ship, but a quick return to base provides free fuel, repairs, and medical supplies.

Not long after I began to explore space, I was introduced to the game's ship-to-ship combat system, which so far has been tactical and fun despite occurring on a static screen. At this stage of the game, I like it a bit better than the regular combat system because there are more substantial choices, and it draws directly upon the various skills of the crewmembers--skills in which I clearly haven't invested enough points.

I'll save a detailed review for later, when I better understand everything, but it begins a little like a combination of Pirates! and Pool of Radiance, with the crew encountering enemy RAM vessels randomly in space. (You don't see them on the map). You have the option to hail, attack, and flee. If you hail, you can bluff, intimidate, or ask for help. So far, everything I've done has ended inevitably in combat.

Deep into combat with an enemy raider.

On the combat screen, you see your ship's and the enemy's ships statistics in terms of the hull, sensors, control, life support, fuel, and engines. One character takes "command" of the vessel; I assume that it's best to make that person the rocket jock. Each round, each character has a chance to perform different actions depending on the distance to the enemy, the character's profession, and what's happened in previous rounds. For instance, pilots can close the gap, attempt to ram the enemy vessel, and fire a barrage of weapons. Other characters can fire weapons as well, or load them if they've run out of ammo. Engineers can attempt to "jury rig" (repair) systems, boost engines, or activate the ship's sensors to evaluate the enemy vessel. It's in these areas that my engineers most often fail; I need to allocate a lot more points to "jury rig" as well as "nuclear engine repair" (which boosts engines).

Operating sensors to assess an enemy ship.

Characters who operate weapons can simply fire, doing random damage to any part of the enemy, or target specific systems. Targeting has a lower chance to hit than simply firing, but if you can knock out the engines, you can close and board the enemy ship. I haven't attempted this yet.

The enemy has all the same options, including repairing systems that you've damaged. Their attacks damage your systems and often cause injury to crewmembers. There are fun messages during enemy attacks, like "Starbuck leaps clear of an explosion!" that recall the cheesy bridge scenes on Star Trek and other sci-fi shows.

At the end of combat--at least when you simply blow up the ship--you get a status report, the medic heals injured crew, engineers fix (at least partly) damaged systems, and you can plunder fuel or other goods from the ships. Experience rewards have ranged from 50 to 500 so far (balanced against an average of 50-100 for regular combats).

Repairs and restocking of ammunition, fuel, and medical supplies are free at the Salvation base but cost money at any of the outlying bases on planets and asteroids. So far I haven't found much use for money, so I don't mind having to pay, but it's such a quick jaunt back to the center of the solar system that I'm not sure, if I was trying to be economical, why I would. Bases also offer various bars and restaurants. Owing to the various skills you can develop that have to do with conversation, I thought I'd meet people in these bars and get something akin to the "tavern tales" of the D&D games, but so far they've just taken my money and tossed me out when I'm full.
      

One of the many asteroid bases, which operate like the "menu towns" of the D&D games.

     
As I close, I'm in the midst of exploring what appears to be an absolutely enormous base on an asteroid. It's mostly bereft of encounters, so it's turning out to be boring to painstakingly map. I'll have more on that in a bit. My lack of posts in the last week has been due to travel, work, yadda yadda, and not the game, which so far I'm enjoying.

    

It occurs to me that, for obvious reasons, it would have been awesome if I had been playing a game of this title exactly one year ago. I could have had a lot of fun with the theme. Ah, missed opportunities.