Snipping.
Good news? Bad news? Who knows!GS: Give us a basic overview of Legacy. It sounds like a real-time tactical game, but will there be any kind of real-time strategy elements like base-building or unit construction? What's the focus of the game?
ID: The short answer is that we've put in a lot of strategic and tactical elements such as taking over planets, defending and attacking starbases, using nebulas to hide in, and being able to tackle multiple objectives with multiple ships, but we've tried very hard to stay with a unique flavor of Trek realism. That is, I've always wanted to do a game that is faithful to the scale and timescale of the series. The gameplay is sort of like a squad shooter, but with spaceships.
GS: We understand that Mad Doc is working with the unified Star Trek license, which means that you can include ships and content from all the Star Trek television series. Indeed, in one of the screenshots we can see a Constitution-class, Excelsior-class, Ambassador-class, and a Defiant-class vessel. (Yes, as your scanners probably indicate, there are signs of Star Trek geekdom here at GameSpot as well.) How will Legacy tie together these different eras?
ID: With Legacy, in a nutshell, you get it all, and you get it all from the beginning, bound by a solid story. Legacy is literally the first form of media that brings all the generations together in the same place; here you'll see the history of the series from the beginning, in a way that really makes sense. Having a chance to incorporate all the key ships from all the series is something I've been craving since my first Star Trek game. Plus, you'll see the characters, the styles, the races, and the core conceits of the series unfold and evolve. And like pieces in a well-worn puzzle, they fall together to form this amazing world with all the things you've come to know and love, woven together by a rich history and all that it entails.
GS: How in-depth will ship-to-ship combat be? The focus on tactics and commanding a squadron of starships in Legacy reminds us a bit of the Starfleet Command games, which were essentially a real-time translation of the famous Star Fleet Battles pen-and-paper war game. Will the game go after a serious simulation of starship combat that models all the different systems on a ship, or more action-focused gameplay?
ID: Legacy is designed with two goals. The first is that you feel like you're really in charge of this fleet of ships, and the second is that it's easy enough to play that you don't have to go diving to the manual! Nobody will mistake this for a translation of a pen-and-paper board game, but you will feel that it's the exact right level of control that a captain or admiral would have. You can control each ship's energy allocations, movement, firing, repair focus, special maneuvers, warping, cloaking, targeting, and more, and you can do it all with an easy-to-use control scheme. This is not a spaceship simulator, it's an action-based game with the appropriate amount of realism to make sure everything looks and feels like it should.
GS: And how will this gameplay be adapted to work on both the PC and the Xbox 360? Is the overall game itself planned to feature more action-heavy, "twitch" gameplay? How is the strategic gameplay being adapted to work with console gamepads? Will both versions be identical aside from control schemes, or will there be differences to take advantage of each platform?
ID: The PC and the Xbox 360 are clearly different platforms, but I think that you will find a game tuned to each platform in terms of pacing, the amount of micromanagement, and user interface. We're fans of both platforms and have enough experience with both to know that the final product may tell the same story and give the same overall experience, but it will be tuned correctly for each platform.
GS: We understand that the Xbox 360 version of the game will take advantage of the persistent statistics kept by Xbox Live. What kind of stats will be kept track of in Legacy?
ID: The game will offer a robust multiplayer experience with full Xbox Live support: from small-scale engagements to all-out war involving multiple systems, with matchmaking, stat tracking, and player rankings on Xbox Live. Players will also be able to view a comprehensive history of every ship in their fleet as the years pass; when it was commissioned; the number and variety of opponents it has destroyed, the upgrades it has undergone, and when. Your Starfleet rank will also be tracked!
GS: What can you tell us about the technology that powers the game? Will the game use an all-new engine that Mad Doc has created from scratch, or an enhanced version of your existing technology from previous Mad Doc titles, like Empire Earth II? We imagine that you'll need to push the limits in terms of graphics, especially to take advantage of the Xbox 360's power.
ID: We've actually been working on the core graphics engine for Legacy as its own new engine since 2002! Finally we have the platforms powerful enough to give us a result that looks downright cinematic, and that's why we're doing the big push on this game and game engine now. It's its own glorious beast!
GS: Any details on multiplayer that you can share at this point, like the approximate number of players you'll be able to support? What about modes that will be available to play?
ID: Single-player will focus solely on the Federation, with multiplayer enabling you to command the Romulan, Klingon, and Borg war machines as well. Full details on the races aren't available yet, but you can rest assured that these fleets will be comprehensive, allowing players to really assess the strengths and weaknesses of each race and develop new tactics accordingly. And it'll be fun to see each of those races in eras you might not have seen a lot of them in before!
We're still finalizing player numbers and modes, so I can't give you more info on that right now.
