Reflective planning and hectic activity

It is hard to classify Star Fleet, a program that combines aspects of both management and strategy simulations. You need an Archimedes equipped with a PC Emulator to play it - which rules out the basic 305 machine - and a colour monitor is an advantage too.

The initial setting-up procedures are quite lengthy: First you have to register as a new player, then enter a password to gain proper access to the game and finally choose your own private password.

After that the universe is created before your very eyes. One of my reference books tells me that it took seven days. Well, Star Fleet took long enough for me to take the car out and fill it with petrol at my local garage and still have a minute or two to wait afterwards.

Although subsequent entry into the game is considerably speeded up, you'll need at least an hour of spare time to make it worth starting a playing session.

In the package are acouple of well-produced booklets which are essential reading before beginning to play the game properly. They are a mixture of background and instruction, and an hour spent absorbing the information given is well spent.

Your task is to rid your sector of the galaxy of assorted baddies - the number of enemies and time allowed varies from mission to mission. As your experience and expertise increases, so does your rank and the difficulty of the mis sions encountered if you are to receive further promotion.

You can seek out and destroy the enemy with torpedoes or disable them with phaser fire then capture and tow them to a star base where you can also replenish your supplies.

My first mission saw me totally disabled and powerless, my second left my ship a raging inferno, I ran out of time on the third but the fourth and fifth I completed. I felt pathetically grateful to be told I was a hero and to be promoted from cadet to Lieutenant JG. That, I think, indicates something of the addictiveness of what at first sight appears a rather unprepossessing game.

The screen display is fairly simple and such graphics as are present are relatively crude. Star Fleet is no Zarch, yet it has the compelling quality of a first-rate idea well implemented.

The game is well bug-proofed. Irrelevant entries are trapped and excellent use is made of the function keys to provide the many controls of your ship. A mixture of real-time activity and reflective planning are required to master this program - and the activity can get pretty hectic on occasions.

If you like management and strategy simulations this is for you - I'm just off to have another session.

Mad Hatter