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STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE 9 - DOMINION WARS

NO BASE BUILDING, NO RESOURCE GATHERING-
JUST PURE STRATEGY AND GLORIOUS COMBAT!

FOUR RACES IN AN EPIC STRUGGLE.
CHOOSE YOUR ALLIANCE. BUILD YOUR FLEET.
YOU'RE THE TACTICIAN-THE COMMAND IS YOURS!

  • COMMAND up to six ships simultaneously.
  • CHOOSE your fleet from more than 20 different starship classes, including original, never-before-seen ship designs.
  • SELECT a captain and then determine the crew for each ship.
  • CONTROL your ships, from sensors to power to weapons.
  • BOARD and conquer enemy ships.
  • BATTLE ONLINE with LAN and Internet multiplayer gameplay for up to 8 players.

~ from the back of the box

Deep Space Nine fans will know all about the Dominion Wars. It dominated an entire season of the show, elevating it from a fairly uneventful first few seasons to dramatically intesnse must-see TV. The 2001 game by Simon & Schuster pits the Federation and its Klingon and Romulan alliance against Jem Hadar and the Cardassians in a fight for control of the Alpha Quadrant. That is pretty much all the game throws at you in its limited time given to plot. Those who've seen the show know that this is quite the devestating war, but that doesn't really come across in this fairly generic real-time strategy game.

You can play as either side of the war, taking on a fleet of up to 6 ships chosen from a wide selection of warcraft. Depending on how many credits you have in your coffers, you can purchase a pretty imposing artiliary, but don't think you'll get anywhere near that at the game's start. After each of the 20 levels, you'll earn more credits which gives you access to upgrades, better ships and more experienced crew members. Even if you can afford those huge chunks of space metal, you'll need to hire a new Captain with enough experience to command it. Thankfully, Captains can rise through the ranks from Lieutenant all the way to Admiral as they succeed objectives commanding smaller ships. If they don't die first, that is.

Ships can be destroyed and Captains can die even if you complete all stage objectives, but regardless of your success rate, you can replay them multiple times. So, if you've truly grown attached to that Class 2 Steamrunner Commander, you can still replay it over and over again untill life has no meaning anymore.

You control your fleet using the mouse in tried and true RTS fashion. Drag over some ships then click on a target to attack it. Alternatively, hold Shift and click on the Ship icons on the hud, before selecting "Fire at Will" on the Command Ring to the right of them. There are also commands like cloak, guard and warp should you need them, and enemy ships can be targeted in different areas such as the shields or weapons systems. Despite most of the keyboard real-estate being taking up with numerous hotkeys, that's pretty much it. Crew can transport to other ships and planets, but that's needed very rarely. There are no resource management mechanics beyond purchasing ships, crew and upgrades between missions. No station building, weapon researching, or area exploring. Just a bunch of passive, command-driven space combat. 

Graphically, the sparseness of space looks better when you can zoom in. The ships look pretty neat up close and it really shows off the game's visual capaibilites. That being said, this view isn't how you'll be spending most of your time. That will be the most zoomed out angle possible so you can get a good look at the playfield. From this angle, your view into the vast expanse of space is mostly empty and featureless, with even enemy and allied space craft represented by some indestinguishable pixels. The HUD does highlight them, giving you a better idea of what they are, but then you're just looking at a bunch of icons on screen, wasting the good work of the team of 3D artists.

Dominion Wars is a fairly straightforward game, but the somewhat simple ideas are presented in a confusing manner. It will take time until you get to a point where you are comfortable with what everything does before you can finally enjoy it. And when you do, you'll find that the game ultimately lacks depth. Some situations do hark back to events seen on the small screen, but without much in-game context, this prooves to be a game where true Star Trek fans would be the ones who get the most out of it.


To download the PC game, follow the link below. This is a custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses dgVoodoo and QRes to run on modern systems. Manual included. The game must run with an actual desktop resolution of 1280x960. Read the ChamberNotes.txt if your current desktop resolution is anything other 1920x1080. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 466 Mb.  Install Size: 513 Mb.  Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

Download


Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Dominion Wars is © Paramount Pictures & Simon & Schuster Interactive
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (the TV shows) is © Paramount Pictures
Review, Cover Design and Installer created by me


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14 comments:

  1. Seems to keep asking me to insert a CD, is there an ISO within I'm missing? Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I may have made a mistake Iin there somewhere. Im not at home atm so I'll have a look over the weekend. Is there a .reg file in the install folder?

      Delete
    2. There doesn't seem to be, I'm having the same issue with New Worlds, perhaps something I'm missing!

      Thanks for all the work, sorry to be a pain.

      Delete
    3. You just need to have a virtual CD rom drive on your PC. using something like Daemon Tools to make the game think there is actually a CD rom drive attached to your PC will do the trick

      Delete
  2. I seem to get an issue where it loads up but the mouse cursor stays on the left side when its on the menus and can only move it up or down any reason why this may occur?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is due to your screen resolution being too high. QRes should change it automatically when you launch using Run.bat (see the Chamber Notes), but if not you can physically change it to 1280x960 or lower in the Windows Display Settings.

      Delete
  3. I can't get this to work. It locks up at the menu screen. Windows 8

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  4. To anyone having problems getting this to run because the game asks for the CD: The crack needs a CD drive to work. So if you - like me - have a laptop without a disc drive, you need to mount an ISO (in a virtual drive), any ISO will do. Then the game will launch without any problems. Hope this helps :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. I know this is old, but if anybody looks at this, the included cracked exe will still complain that there is no cd if you do not have an optical drive at all. You need to connect a cd, dvd, or bluray drive. I imagine a virtual drive will also probably work.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well disregard my comment.. I did not see that last post. Looks like someone else already figured it out. Cheers!

      Delete
  6. I have the existing CD in an external drive and also installed an ISO, but it still complains that I need to install the disk.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I had this running on a previous win 7 partition before I upgraded to win 11 and lost the ability to dual boot into 7 (at least easilly). Not having much luck in Kubuntu atm. I'll play with this method, see if I can get it to work in win11.

    I'm honestly thinking of picking up a cheap 3rd or 4th gen I series mininpc to just sit on my desk exclusively to play thus and a few other troublesome games. Only question there is has anyone got this to run using an igpu? It /should/ work fine but we all know how much of a buggy mess this game is.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I can't believe you got the game to run this well. But I do have one complaint. The framerate tanks hard when there are a lot of ships within view distance. My system shouldn't have this problem. Are there any suggestions for files I might tweak to improve this?

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  9. Sorry to add to the list, but my game does work fine until I actually get to playing the actual mission. When it first starts, it mostly runs okay, but as more ships come in and are seen, the fps drops VERY quickly to a very low level. To clarify, in the menus it is perfectly fine, but when the mission actually starts, the fps drops very low, very quickly. Does anyone have any idea what I might be doing wrong?

    My computer specs:
    Windows 10 OS
    Intel i5 6400
    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080

    ReplyDelete