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Star Trek Klingon Academy: FAQ

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GENERAL QUESTIONS

1. When was Star Trek Klingon Academy released?
2. What are Star Trek Klingon Academy's system requirements?
3. Who made this great game?
4. What's the latest version?
5. Is there a demo for Klingon Academy?
6. Can I make customized Klingon Academy missions?
7. Is anyone from Star Trek voice acting in Klingon Academy?
8. How do I make a Klingon Academy DVD?
9. How many ships will Klingon Academy have, and what types?
10. Wow, that's a lot of stuff! How many of those will I get to command in the game?

GAME QUESTIONS

1. Can I attack planets in the game and destroy things on their surface?
2. Are these capital ships going to zip all over the star system at warp speed?
3. So, what kinds of weapons do these starships carry?
4. What about the weapons we've seen before? Are they like what we've seen in the movies and episodes?
5. Space is really big, so I'm going have to travel at warp speeds to get anywhere. What will warp travel be like in the game?
6. Do the ships have transporters? If so, what can you do with them?
7. How will the control interface work? During combat, will I have to jump from one bridge station to the next?
8. Will I be able to individually set power to the shields, weapons and other systems aboard my ship like that?
9. Is the cloaking device a complete invisibility shield, or could I somehow detect a cloak ship in a fight?
10. What does my ship's crew affect in the game?

GENERAL QUESTIONS ANSWERS

	1. When was Star Trek Klingon Academy released? June 15, 2001.

	2. What are Star Trek Klingon Academy's system requirements? These are the system requirements listed on the boxes: Minimum System Requirements: Pentium® 150Mhz processor 32 MB RAM US version of Microsoft Windows® 95/98 operating system 100% Windows® 95 compatible computer system 185 MB of uncompressed hard disk space for game files; plus an additional 100 MB for Windows® swap file DirectX® 3.0a 100% Windows® 95 compatible sound card. 1MB VESA compliant SVGA card
	3. Who made this great game? The game is being developed by 14 Degrees East. The game is being produced by Interplay.

	4. What's the latest version? The official patch is 1.02. Download it here.

	5. Is there a demo for Klingon Academy? Yes! Check out our downloads section.

	6. Can I make customized Klingon Academy missions? The Klingon Academy Scripting Package is available to make customized Klingon Academy missions. The package has the same functionality used by the development team to create missions for Klingon Academy. It can be found in our downloads section. This package is intended to allow you to make Klingon Academy Scripts only and DOES NOT include the ability to customize ships, planets, and/or systems. To use the package properly, you will need to obtain some third party utilities (i.e. text editor, precompiler, etc.) This scripting package is not intended for the casual gamer. While the scripting language is similar to Pascal, it contains many advanced features and processes that will require some knowledge in programming. Interplay has provided this package in good faith but it is not free of defects.

	7. Is anyone from Star Trek voice acting in Klingon Academy? Yes. The game features the voices of Christopher Plummer as General Chang, David Warner as Chancellor Gorkon, and Michael Dorn as Thok Mak.

	8. How do I make a Klingon Academy DVD? Complete instruction can be found on the How To Make A Klingon Academy DVD page.

	9. How many ships will Klingon Academy have, and what types? There are the following: Klingon: 9 warships, 6 bases/stations Romulan: 10 warships Federation: 10 warships, 4 bases/stations Gorn: 4 warships Tholians: 6 warships Shakurians: 3 carriers, 2 fighters There are also 35 assorted shuttles, workbees, defense satellites, mines, old series style warships, and civilian freighters.

	10. Wow, that's a lot of stuff! How many of those will I get to command in the game? In the solo-play campaign, you will command 8 of the 9 Klingon warships in the game. For multiplayer, QuickBattle, and any missions you create using the editor, you have access to all warships within the game as well as the civilian freighters, and other non-combat craft.

GAME QUESTIONS ANSWERS

	1. Can I attack planets in the game and destroy things on their surface? Planetary bombardment is not only possible, but called for in certain missions. However, planets might have their own set of defenses…

	2. Are these capital ships going to zip all over the star system at warp speed? Ships will certainly move slower than in other space combat sims that have come before. Exactly how fast or slow we can't say for sure since the maneuverability of the ships is something were likely to tinker with for quite awhile longer. How fun the game is will be the main determining factor. In any case, the ships will not maneuver as fast as fighters.

	3. So, what kinds of weapons do these starships carry? There are twenty weapons systems in the game. We have all the classic weapons you've seen before, like phasers, disruptors, and photon torpedoes, plus we have quite a few new ones. Some of these are variations on classic weapon designs like the dreaded Assault Phaser, while others are radically exotic. For example, the GDDS is a field generator allowing a starship equipped with one to collide with another vessel without incurring the expected catastrophic damage. This is proprietary Gorn technology that they use to great effect when ramming enemy warships.

	4. What about the weapons we've seen before? Are they like what we've seen in the movies and episodes? Yes. Phasers are continuous beams of energy that fire at a fixed point in space, and stay locked to that position even if the firing warship is moving. Disruptors are bolts of energy; photons are projectiles of intense energy that follow a more-or-less straight trajectory, and the plasma torpedoes are similar to photons but have deadly homing capabilities.

	5. Space is really big, so I'm going have to travel at warp speeds to get anywhere. What will warp travel be like in the game? There are two kinds of warping in Klingon Academy. First type is out-system warping. This is the kind used for traversing huge interstellar distances and is used exclusively for traveling between star systems (typically, this represents warp factor 2 and above). In every mission, the player is given the run of a complete sector map and can choose what star systems to go to by using out-system warps. The second type of warping is in-system warps (warp factor 1). This type is used exclusively for navigating within a star system. A typical star system in the game is billions of kilometers in volume and may contain a variety of terrain like planets, asteroid belts, nebula, etc. The player may go anywhere within each star system, in real-time, at will. Incidentally, all combat occurs at impulse speeds.

	6. Do the ships have transporters? If so, what can you do with them? Transporters are used solely for transporting boarding parties. Boarding parties are specially trained away teams (or marines, depending upon your race) capable of beaming over to an enemy vessel and either sabotaging critical areas of an enemy vessel, or capturing it outright. The success of a boarding party depends upon a number of factors like: the number of boarding parties you transport to an enemy vessel, the number of defenders the target vessel has (the bigger the ship, the more it will have), and the effective quality of your boarding parties. Also, terrain affects the operation of transporters (a risky proposition inside a nebula). In the game, if you successfully capture a ship with boarding parties, it may be serviceable enough to fight on your side as a wingman, under your control.

	7. How will the control interface work? During combat, will I have to jump from one bridge station to the next? No one will ever have to jump from bridge station to bridge station during combat unless he wants to. Our principal user interface is what we are calling the Verbal Orders System, or VOS. The VOS is a detailed menu system replicating the functionality found in the bridge station interfaces. The player will never have to take his eyes off the action to issue commands and affect changes aboard his ship. We will also tie voice?over to each of these commands when they are issued. The effect we are trying to produce, is the sense that you are actually issuing orders to your bridge crew, rather than just typing in hot-keys. Also, because of the way we have designed the game, the player is not required to leave his tactical/HUD view unless he wants to.

	8. Will I be able to individually set power to the shields, weapons and other systems aboard my ship like that? Power management plays a big role in the game. The way we are simulating starships, they have a variety of systems ranging from weapons and sensors, all the way to movement and life-support, and the performance of all these is governed by the amount of power allotted to them. Each ship's system has its own unique power/efficiency curve governing its performance, and the player is given full reign to configure these systems however he wants to. With this much control and flexibility, it would be too overwhelming to assume that any sane human being can configure these settings on the fly during combat situations, which is why we've created macros. At any time during gameplay, the player is able to configure his power settings, then save them off as macros. These macros can be called upon at any time (through the function keys, or the verbal orders system), so that his ship's power settings can be reconfigured instantly. This game has a fair amount of complexity, especially power allocation, and for this reason we have paid extra attention to control interface. Even though we are allowing the player full control over his ship, we are not making mastery of this complexity a requirement for enjoying the game. For this reason, the game will ship with default power macros sufficient to carry him through the entire game without ever having to even look at the engineering screen.

	9. Is the cloaking device a complete invisibility shield, or could I somehow detect a cloak ship in a fight? It is not only possible to detect cloaked vessels, it is possible to fight them. The kind of balance we are trying to achieve is analogous to classic WWII submarine/destroyer duels. In Klingon Academy, cloaking devices are not completely impervious to detection, just as being submerged below the ocean waves was not during World War II. It is possible to detect the presence of a cloaked ship during combat if enough power is allotted to sensors. Detection of a cloaked warship, in the game, is a function of sensor efficiency and range. However, the amount of power necessary for this, relatively speaking is enormous, and you have to be at extremely close range to even get a chance at a good firing solution. For example, a Federation warship, like the Constitution, would have to divert much of its power to sensors to have a chance at a blip on a cloaked vessel. Under this scenario, the Constitution would not have enough power to maintain full speed movement and still have shields up and all weapons charged; but it would have an indication of the cloaked ship's general location and be able to move toward it. The closer it gets to the cloaked vessel, the more frequent and longer the blips become, allowing the Constitution to narrow down that enemy's position. If the Constitution manages to maneuver close enough to the cloaked warship (I'm talking about near point?blank range), it might get a contact good enough to get a target lock on the cloaked vessel, but it would be weak at best. At this point the Constitution could fire on the cloaked ship, but the weapons fire is still subject to inaccuracies due to the poor target lock. If it misses, the cloaked vessel has lucked out, but if it hits…ouch, no shields. The game's AI is being designed with this hunting dynamic in mind. In the game, expect to see Federation warships hunting in?groups and spreading out as they conduct search patterns-much as what destroyers did in World War II. This interpretation we've made for cloaking devices and their counter-measures may seem a little unorthodox, but it really isn't. It is based on two simple assumptions: Cloaking device technology is not infallible, otherwise the Klingon or Romulan Empires would have annihilated the Federation a long time ago. Cloaking and sensor technologies are in a constant state of evolution and refinement, much as stealth and radar technologies have been during the Cold War in the latter half of the twentieth century. At the time that our game takes place, we will find ourselves at the height of a cold war between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire, which lends support this conclusion.

	10. What does my ship's crew affect in the game? Your ship's crew is very important to the functioning of your ship. Every ship system is manned and controlled by crewmembers. The overall performance of your ship is not just governed by damage and power, but by the experience level and number of the crew. The crew's experience level is determined by the actions of the ship's captain. If a player does well during battle, completes his mission objectives, as well as hidden ones, his crew's morale and experience will increase so that in the next mission he has a better crew that make his ship perform better. If the player is a poor captain, his crew's morale will suffer and the opposite will occur in subsequent missions. The numbers of the crew is determined in combat. As your ship gets damaged, so does your crew-somebody has to fly over the bridge railing. During battle, crew can be wounded, critically injured, or even killed. Wounded and critically injured crew can be healed during warps between systems, but dead crew can't be brought back.