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The graphics in Star Trek: Armada aren’t particularly great. However, they do offer some unique features in that everything in the game is a polygonal structure as opposed to a simple sprite. The fact that all of the ships and stations are 3-D polygons allows for some interesting camera perspectives. Generally, these are employed during the beginning of the level when the camera does a flyby of a ship or station during a voiceover, which explains the mission. There is a little window in the lower right hand corner of your screen, which acts as a remote viewing window for whatever occurs. By double clicking on this little window, the game automatically shifts into a “cinematic view,” allowing you to see the game from the perspective of whatever it was that caused the event in the window. Thus, if you double clicked the window at a point when the ship was the event that triggered the view screen, your view will jump to the ship’s perspective, moving through space. However, if you click on a stationary space station, the view will switch to the static view of that station.

Design

Despite the fact that the environment is 3-D, the actual plane of play is a 2-D world. This helps keep things simple, and allows the game play to emulate that of a standard real time strategy game. For the most part, the z-axis really doesn’t matter. However, for effect, the programmers included planets under the game field. The only advantage to the planets is that you are able to gain crews much faster if your star base is located near a planet as opposed to in deep space. Also, some of the special weapons that your ships have will actually grow larger as they move along the vertical axis if they miss their targets.