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It seems that no review of Conquest: Frontier Wars would be complete without first giving a mention about its tumultuous past. Highly anticipated by many, C:FW almost never made it out of the construction queue. The original developer was Digital Anvil, headed by no other than the Roberts brothers (Chris and Erin) of Wing Commander fame. Somehow it came to be that Microsoft acquired Digital Anvil and decided to scrap the C:FW project. Shortly afterwards, the team working on C:FW left DA and formed their own company called Fever Pitch Studios. With Eric Peterson at the helm, work continued on the project, with the hope that another publisher would be interested in publishing it. Eventually, Ubi Soft decided to pick it up and as a result C:FW was released this year.

The story behind this game is admittedly a run-of-the-mill hard core military science fiction kind of affair. We Terrans were minding our own business, doing our usual exploration-type things like charting unknown sectors and navigating through newly discovered wormholes when first contact happens with another alien race. As with many first encounters Terran blood gets spilled and we end up getting dragged into an alien race’s civil war as a result. Predictably siding with the rebels (after all, we Terrans always regard the enemy’s enemy as our friend), we fight the greater of two evils and hope for the best once the dust settles. Of course, what is going to happen with us once our “friends’” civil war is over and they have no more need for us?

Inevitable comparisons between C:FW and StarCraft would probably be made inside gamers’ minds since these two games share many similarities. I suppose it could be seen as a testament to how influential StarCraft was to the whole RTS genre. Whether you think this is a good or a bad thing depends on how much you like StarCraft’s style of play, of course. There are three races in the game with each reflecting a different ideology. Thus, there are your usual vanilla flavour Terrans, the Zerg-like “organic/insect” aliens called the Mantis, and the Protoss-like “high-tech/energy based” aliens called the Celareons. The similarities don’t end here, however.

Like in StarCraft, there are two major resources that the player can harvest for materials to build things with: ore and gas. Unlike StarCraft however, there are a couple of different sources for each like asteroid fields and various gaseous nebulae. Research is similar in that “going up” the game’s tech tree is done through the construction of orbital structures. Once these structures are complete, you can spend some of your ore or gas supply in order to gain special abilities or weapons/shields/engine upgrades for your ships. Mission briefings are done like StarCraft too, since the screen can display up to a maximum of four of the characters in the game for briefing dialogue purposes. Speaking of characters, the story is played out through them like in StarCraft where they will occasionally say a line or two and are usually represented in the game as special elite units. Thus, on the surface at least, one might possibly call C:FW a StarCraft clone but thankfully upon closer inspection it seems that C:FW has more to offer than another game set in a human vs. “organic alien” vs. “technological alien” universe.

Much of what separates C:FW from the rest of the RTSes out there however, stems from its usage of multiple maps and supply lines. In what we could consider a good design decision, the inclusion of these features brings a whole new set of tactical considerations onto the table in the RTS genre. Now, you will have to worry about the amount of ammunition your units expend in combat on top of having enough “command points” to field a large enough offensive or defensive fleets (think supply depots). Furthermore, your supply line can be extended via jumpgates that are built around wormholes that lead to sectors that you control. Once a supply line into a sector is created, any repair or supply platform that you build in that sector will automatically resupply any vessels within its resupply radius. Having a working supply line is important since also has the effect of reducing the distance ships must travel for repairs and rearming. Sometimes you may not have the luxury of having to wait for a base to be built, especially if you have to make a quick strike deep into enemy territory immediately. Sending out a large and unsupported expeditionary force is all fine and dandy but once your units run out of ammo in the middle of nowhere, they’re nothing more than large metallic sitting ducks. The solution for this is that you bring along a couple of supply vessels along to keep your guns fed. There is nothing more frustrating than having your corvettes run out of flak cannon ammo in the middle of an enemy fighter attack… Your capital ships will quickly become Swiss cheese since their weapons will not be able to track such tiny targets.

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