This is about as Star Trek geek as I get. This game/sim and the Ships of the Fleet books.

So, I play this with the Kobayashi Maru mod, and heavily decked out with TOS and TMP era ships. Lotsa fun with actions small as 1 Fed CA vs. 1 D-7 or fleet actions up to 14 ships (Fraps doesn't like the bigger numbers, tho). I don't go for some of the newer, weirder ship styles, yes, even though it's space and it's a mostly vacuum and all, I just like the old school stuff better.

Anyway. I was in a Quick Battle- one Fed CA vs. a Klingon Bird of Prey. Kinda bein' lazy and not putting up that much of a fight. Then as my shields start collapsing, weapons systems going down, I decide it's time to warp out. So I order my navigator to hit the "go real fast button". But as she does, the Klingon idiot turns in front of my big `ole cruiser... and WhoooOOOOO- BAAMMM! I warp right into the BoP. Both ships >BOOM< and >KA-BOOM<. Those familiar with the game know that when you go to warp, a warp cinematic kicks in that shows your ship slipping into the starry stream and your point of origin zips behind you. Well, NO. I'M BLOWING UP. SO'S THE FRIGGIN' BIRD OF PREY. The warp transition shot shows stars whipping by and two diminishing explosions falling behind empty warp space.

I'm sitting there just laughing my can off and realize it would've been an awesome screenshot sequence, but between the surprise and uncontrolled guffaws, there was just no way.

Just thought I'd share that here.

Talk about bad timing!

I would hope that if we ever develop a similar FTL drive, we'll tell the computer "If there's something in our way, stop."

I finally found this game a while back, free with some kind of outdated 3d setup.
Really cool game.
If you could link to where the mods can be found, I'd appreciate it.
This would be another excellent candidate for an updated re-release.

Here it is:

http://bridgecommander.filefront.com/files/Bridge_Commander;8index

Mind you, I couldn't get all the mods I wanted to work. It's taken time and experimentation to get it where it is now. I'll come back and post screenies later.

Weird thing is, different mods work at different times, so something in the Windows updates might affect it... or something... things...?

I have the box version somewhere and I remember I liked it. Does it install and run fine in x64?

Loved this game. Wish someone would have added a sequel.

This one has been cooking for ages. But, if it actually gets released it will be awesome.

http://www.stexcalibur.com/

Deacon

Yep. Picked up a copy about a year ago via Amazon ($145!) after having lost my CD years and years ago. The mods available and the inclusion of NanoFX make it comparable with the visuals of games today. The only issue that keeps me going back are the limited resolutions. While there are HR patches available, most of them make the game very unstable.

Oddly enough, the guys who created NanoFX are the ones behind the completely free stand-alone game, Star Trek: Excalibur. That's one I'm eagerly awaiting.

It runs excellently on my Win 7/64 PC. It's just a little buggy/tends to crash more if you don't set compatibility to Win 95 or 98 or anything older.

There's also the Bridge Commander 2 mod group. They have a big Facebook page.

I read in a forum that the mods are supposed to work on the free demo as well (Galaxy ship against some asteroids- woo-hoo!). but I couldn't ever get it to work. And I tried. Just remember to patch the game (patch 1.1) before you mod anything or it'll just laugh at you.

Oh- one more tip about the game: If your PC's been running a while, like days, or you've got stuff open in the background, strange behaviors happen. After having every browser open, and most of my Adobe CS apps open and closed the other day, I started STBC. Every opponent flew into the nearest star instead of engaging me. I couldn't eeven catchup with them to intercept them. Made for a couple minutes of "Hmmm..."

Also, the game takes 3-4 minutes of black screen to load. This means it's working. If you see a mouse cursor on startup, it probably isn't working.