Full size image in galleryOriginally envisioned as a 3D tactical space combat game, Conquest: Frontier Wars has evolved quite a bit since it was first announced in 1998 as one of the first games from Chris Robert's newly formed game design and movie effects studio, Digital Anvil. Though Roberts has certainly stayed close to his Wing Commander roots with the recent conventional space sim StarLancer, Conquest is the designer's first venture into the strategy genre, barring his strategy / space-sim hybrid, Wing Commander Armada. The game has gone through two shifts from its original concept to ensure that it's as accessible as possible to its players. Though the game engine was built for fully 3D action, the ships are now confined to the 2D plane, and you can spin and zoom the map at will. And the gameplay has gone from tactical combat to a more conventional real-time strategy mix of strategic building and large-scale space combat assisted by the game's distinctive fleet-commander artificial intelligence.

　　Full size image in galleryThis year has seen a bumper crop of sci-fi-themed 3D real-time strategy games, but few have successfully balanced graphical and gameplay innovations with the traditional game mechanics that make for a classic strategy game. Conquest may be one of the upcoming games to break through and capitalize on the tried-and-true gameplay of successful 2D RTS games while offering the impressive visual quality we've now come to expect from today's games.

　　Conquest's designers intend to push the envelope for real-time strategy gameplay with three key innovations: expanding the map area to simultaneously include multiple star systems, adding more strategic supply-line considerations, and incorporating a higher-level fleet commander AI to make your ships smarter in combat.

　　Building a space empire probably wouldn't be as epic an undertaking if it included just one system, so Conquest's battlefields span up to 16 individual star systems, all interconnected by wormholes and containing multiple planets. The strategic implications are obvious, because while Conquest's maps do have impassable terrain such as antimatter ribbons and black holes, the most crucial choke point in each star system is the one or more wormholes. These system portals will indiscriminately let pass friend or foe until you build a fortified jump gate. This structure is also a necessary step before expanding your colonial reach to planets in that sector, because this gate serves as the supply point for your new territory. To avoid confusion, the designers have added an extra minimap to the interface to provide at-a-glance updates on the various systems and make it easier to jump your view across the vast reaches of your territory.

　　Realistic Battles

　　Full size image in galleryAs an avid fan of military history, Chris Roberts wanted Conquest's gameplay to include one of the most important strategic considerations of warfare: supply lines. When battles can span entire star systems, it's not realistic to expect a squadron of corvettes to fight for weeks without any contact with a friendly base or supply ship.

　　Therefore, ships will need to be resupplied in Conquest, although the supply system is fairly simple. Each ship has its supply level clearly indicated next to its health. To resupply, ships need to dock with mobile supply ships or friendly bases. Your entire supply infrastructure needs to flow back to your headquarters on the home planet, and new star systems are only considered to be linked up to the flow of supplies if you've built a star gate on each wormhole leading back home. Supplies work like an extra resource, but with a bit of forethought they can be managed pre-emptively so you needn't worry about them in the middle of a battle. In practice, this means that you won't be able to completely ignore backwater systems, because if an enemy takes out a connecting jump gate, your front lines will suddenly be in jeopardy. Adding supplies has the additional consequence of preventing a mindless rush victory just minutes into the game, though a ship's default ammo stores can allow for effective early skirmishing against soft targets like harvesters.

　　Full size image in galleryIf Conquest's added depth leads you to think the game will be too difficult for a single player to manage, then the game's new tactical-level artificial intelligence will surprise you. While the unit AI works as you'd expect - controlling pathfinding and attacks on a per-unit basis, as in most games - this basic automation actually does very little to alleviate micromanagement. A smart opponent can often trick unwatched units into falling into deadly traps. Conquest lets you recruit fleet commanders to manage groups of ships much more effectively than normal AI. The fleet commander AI is designed to assess a threat and react with organized tactics. A selected group of units will no longer clump together and attack the same enemy, only to be demolished by an area-of-effect barrage from other units in plain sight. In addition to making units more autonomous, the fleet commander makes it easier to manage ship groups, giving you interface options that let you target your fleet's special weapons with a single button or quickly find the closest resupply point before your ships' gun barrels run dry.

　　The three races in Conquest each have six distinct fleet commanders, each of whom you will meet in the course of the campaign. Each one imparts a unique combat bonus to ships of a certain class while they are under its command, and you will only be able to recruit a given commander from the naval academy when that ship is available to you on the technology tree. In multiplayer games, this means that it will be fairly late in a game before you even have the option of recruiting all six commanders. Additionally, the fleet commanders have an actual presence on the battlefield, as they fly in a small shuttle just inside the shields of the largest ship in a group - so when unaccompanied, they can be targeted and killed.

　　Three Races

　　Full size image in galleryDigital Anvil decided to invent a new space setting for Conquest: Frontier Wars and not borrow the universe developed for StarLancer and Freelancer. Thus, the game pits three species against each other. In addition to the familiar Terrans, there will be the swarming insectoid Mantis and the energy-based Celareons. The Terran empire is diplomatic and imaginative, and Terran fleets have a balance of massive capital ships, carriers, and smaller escort craft at their disposal. A caste-bound, militaristic species, the Mantis rely on waves of small fighters, and they are so specialized that they have three different carrier types. Lastly, the Celareons employ technologically sophisticated vessels that, with their speed and stealth, give them the defensive edge. Each race will share three basic ship types - the platform fabricator, the harvester, and the supply tender - but will otherwise feature 11 to 14 distinct ships of its own. The exact number has yet to be decided.

　　Full size image in galleryThe space-bound nature of Conquest brings slightly different mechanics for building and resource gathering. Two of the game's three resources, ore and gas, can be harvested from either planets or resource fields floating in space. The various planetary types, from moons to gas giants, will realistically contain differing amounts of the two resources. However, it is faster to harvest gas from nebula and ore from asteroid belts, as both areas boast more concentrated amounts of the respective resource and also aren't hindered by such planetary obstacles as indigenous people and gravity. The third resource, crew, is only available as your colonies grow on the relatively few habitable planets.

　　Expanding to colonize new planets will also be essential since all nondefensive structures must be built in orbit. Each platform will take from one to four of a planet's 12 available orbital slots, so things can get pretty crowded in a hurry. Defensive platforms, including the devastating ion cannon, can be built throughout the star system, and they are especially useful near wormholes, planets, and resources.

　　Digital Anvil originally envisioned Conquest as a tactical space-combat game, and though the game has changed its primary emphasis, the designers' attention to the details of space combat have not been lost. A wide range of ships will mix it up on Conquest's frontier, and system upgrades and experience bonuses mean that even a basic corvette can become effective in the endgame. Every one of the six ship systems - armor, shields, engines, sensors, weapons, and supply - can be upgraded to four levels of improvement. Just as artillery will adjust as it finds the range of a distant target, a ship's weapons accuracy will improve with each shot as it locks on to the enemy. Ships will of course improve with experience and also when guided by a fleet commander. Each species also has five limited-use special weapons that can have a tremendous effect. Some of the Terrans' special attacks include the tempest charge (an area-of-effect explosive), the vampire arc, and the cloaking field. An additional sly offensive tactic is to board and capture an enemy's ships and platforms with troopships filled with marines. To ensure a single platoon of marines can't seize an unwary battleship, the troopship's effectiveness is determined by its skill level, and levels three and four are required for capital ships and large base structures.

　　Chris Roberts Interview

　　To get more details on how Conquest: Frontier Wars will play, GameSpot spoke with Chris Roberts, founder and CEO of Digital Anvil.

　　GameSpot: Conquest: Frontier Wars ventures into new genre territory for you. How did you first decide to do an RTS and how has the process been different from your other games?

　　Full size image in galleryChris Roberts: I've actually being playing real-time strategy games since Command & Conquer. At the Digital Anvil office it's the most common multiplayer game that everybody plays. Games that have stuck (that were played religiously for multiple months) have been C&C, Starcraft, and Age of Kings. C&C Red Alert, Warcraft II, and Total Annihilation got some playing time, but not as much, as they didn't feel as well balanced as the others.

　　Personally, I probably play as much, if not more, RTS games than any other genre - and like everything else I've done, the games that I'm interested in playing are the games I want to make. Back when I formed Digital Anvil, my brother Erin and I were playing a lot of C&C and we thought, "Wouldn't it be cool to take these elements and put them in space, where you controlled huge space armadas instead of tanks and you tried to conquer the galaxy?" We figured we could take our 3D space experience and bring a new look and feel to the RTS genre. Of course that was four years ago. It has taken a little longer to get to the finish line than we anticipated - and we are not the first anymore, but I definitely think we've got some great and unique stuff that adds to the genre.

　　GS: Tell us a little about the story for the solo campaign.

　　Full size image in galleryCR: It's the story of the war between Terra and the Mantis Empire. The story opens up with the Terran research vessel Andromeda making an uncharted jump into seemingly virgin territory. Before the Andromeda can react, it becomes caught on the fringe of a battle between the Mantis Empire and a rebel Mantis faction. All communication is lost and you are sent to investigate.

　　GS: The game's three races each have very different types of units. What have you done to balance the three build trees?

　　CR: The design of the races and the units is very much like "rock, paper, scissors." This is something I think few RTS games manage to do well. C&C, Starcraft, and Age of Kings all did very well and gave life to the games beyond the initial week fascination that most games hold. The idea behind creating the three races is to give them each a different flavor.

　　The first race, the Mantis, is a swarm, fighter-based race with an emphasis on fleet carriers and long-range attacks. The Celareons are an energy race based on stealth and speed. They have some pretty cool units and effects, such as the ability to create their own wormholes or cloak virtually any ship (a cloaked troopship can be very painful). They also are the most defensive of the three races, having a couple more defense platforms than the other two races. The third race, the Terrans, tends to be the most balanced, as it has elements of both the Mantis (a fleet carrier) and the Celareons (cloaked missile cruiser). But the Terrans' real emphasis is on hitting power. There are two big Terran ships - battleship and dreadnought - which both pack a serious punch!

　　The idea with the units is that no matter how far down the tech tree you are, you will still need a complement of all the units to fight effectively. Conquest is much more about combined arms than creating one uberunit. A good example is the Terrans. Their lowliest unit is the corvette, but late in the game you still need the corvette, as it is the only Terran ship with flak defense (which shoots down fighters) - thus any fleet without corvettes in it will be very susceptible to fighter attacks, and against the Mantis this is a real issue.

　　Interview continued

　　Full size image in galleryGS: What would you say most sets Conquest apart from the number of real-time strategy games that we've already seen this year?

　　CR: We have three things that I have not seen in any RTS yet: Multiple maps. Each game can be played across 16 system maps, each linked together by wormholes Talk about multitasking across multiple areas! Of course if you find this too much to handle, you can play across as little as two systems. Supply. Simply put, supply is a major factor in modern warfare and one that I have yet to see modeled in any RTS game. Most battles are fought over supply lines, and lack of supply is a common factor in military defeat. In most RTS games you can charge across the map, without regard for ammunition or communication. I think we've found a good way to incorporate supply into the game without making it too cumbersome. It effectively becomes another type of resource you have to manage. The bonus is that you can create all sorts of new strategies. For example, a player may cloak some missile cruisers and send them behind enemy lines to hit an enemy's jump gate (you build these around wormholes to link systems together in supply). The jump gate goes up, the supply line is cut, and then you can attack with your full force into the stranded system - at least until your enemy rebuilds his jump gate and reestablishes his supply line. Full size image in gallery Fleet Admirals. Put an admiral in charge of a group of ships, and he will start using them together effectively - like a real player would. No more archers charging cavalrymen. In most RTS games, disparate units grouped together do not work together, and you end up having to micromanage. You have to micromanage them - placing the archers behind the pikemen, etc. The fleet admiral takes care of this for you and allows you to focus on fun. He won't fight quite as well as a human player (and you can always micromanage units in a fleet if you want), but he'll do a better job than a straight group of units - intelligent target selection and splitting (all 12 of the fleet's ships probably should not be firing at the same target, etc.). Additionally, admirals bring combat bonuses to their fleets, and as they win more battles they get better and their bonuses increase.

　　GS: How have you worked to ease the complexity that supply lines and multiple star systems could conceivably add to the game?

　　CR: We've spent a lot of effort on the user interface and have enhanced the current standard for UI (set by Age of Kings) by including new features such as hot buttons (think of it like a more powerful version of the idle-villager button in Age of Kings). We have a research button, which cycles between platforms with upgrades; a build button that allows you to cycle between shipyards; an idle button that cycles between idle fabricators and harvesters; and the fleet button, which allows you to sift through fleets. Adding these options allows you to manage your economy and building without having to search around for the right platform or leave the action you are currently embroiled in. I mean, really, how often have you wanted to queue up some more units to build, but you've been stuck fighting a crucial battle? Well now you can do both!

　　Alerts (enemy sighted, under attack, unit/platform built, etc.) take you to the appropriate location (handy way to jump around systems) when you press the space bar.

　　As for the supply lines, we've tried to simplify the concept so it's manageable and doesn't take you out of the action. Every ship will have a supply bar, similar to a health bar. When it's at zero, the ship is out of ammunition and can't fire anymore (it can still fly around though). Whenever a ship has less than full supplies and is within the radius of a supply ship or platform, it will automatically be replenished. For ships that need a lot of supplies, this may take several journeys). When fighting, a player has to keep an eye on the supply level of his ships or he is dead in the water. It is always a good idea to build a few supply ships to accompany any marauding force.

　　Supply lines work like this: Any system with an HQ in it is automatically in supply (you can build in this system and resupply from supply platforms and HQs). If you move into another system, you have to either build an HQ in it (very expensive) or connect it to a system in supply via a jump gate (you build these around wormholes). When you've done this, the new system is now in supply, and any platforms you build in there will function correctly. Platforms that need to be in supply to function correctly are any shipyard (where you build your fleets), supply, and repair platforms. Other platforms, like refineries, function no matter what the supply status is.

　　GS: What sort of multiplayer support have you planned for Conquest? Will you release a map editor with the game?

　　CR: We'll support eight players over a LAN and four on Zone.com. We aren't releasing a map editor with the game, but that could possibly be in an expansion pack.