Star Fleet I: The War Begins! will appeal to anyone who has ever had the urge to take a spaceship's helm and single-handedly grapple with hostile alien races. Rut this is no game for dilettantes: Whereas previous Star Trek-style space operas emphasized the single mission, Star Fleet 1 is a veritable career opportunity, allowing the consistently successful player to scale the professional ladder from ensign to admiral.
Heft the handsomely illustrated game package, and you begin to get a sense of what lies within. A solid pound and a half of documentation describes the use of phasers, torpedoes, mines, tractor beams, and transporters. Shield configurations are discussed at length, as are navigation, internal ship security, and damage control. Moreover, descriptions of the Krellan and Zaldron empires and the history of their war with Humanity imbue the straightforward tactical spiel with a rich strategic texture.
Curiously, the 60-page Training Manual describes advanced tactics such as hunting the invisible Zaldrons and the efficient use of shield energy, whereas the 100-page Officer's Manual covers the basic functions of the 13 ships. Equally curious, the Officer's Manual, originally written for the IBM and TI Pro versions, describes keyboard inputs that do not apply to the Mac. That text nevertheless remains an ugly necessity because of a cumbersome password copy-protection scheme. A concise and excellent 10-page supplement outlines Macintosh commands.
Rest assured that Interstel did a thorough job of porting the original version to the Mac. Double-clicking on an enemy vessel launches a torpedo; double-clicking on a disabled vessel takes it in tow with the tractor beam; do it once more and a company of space marines moves in to slug it out with the alien crew. The only impediment to a smooth interlace is having to type in headings and velocities to navigate between quadrants.
Battle messages scroll across a movable, resizable window and conventional dialog boxes convey messages of varying seriousness. Indeed, the program is heavily spiced with a decidedly corny humor that surfaces at unexpected moments. As if worrying about the treacherous Krellans and invisible Zaldrons weren't enough, you must also deal with sewage backups in the captain's quarters, a crew protesting depleted pizza reserves, and power failures that flood the ship with melted ice cream. Initially funny — but ultimately maddening — is having to wait for your marines to subdue the Hungarian cook's runaway goulash. Starship Troopers this is not.
Comic diversions aside, the game’s essence remains unobscured: To destroy as many of the enemy in the least possible time; earn high mission ratings; and progress up the ranks, where the missions become tougher. Success requires one thing: efficient use of the ship's energy.
Your Invincible-class heavy cruiser has 5000 units of power to energize shields, fire weapons, move within or between quadrants, track down saboteurs who sneak aboard your ship, or operate any other system. A point-blank blast from a Krellan warship scatters almost 500 units of energy to the solar winds. If you had less than 500 energy units invested in that particular shield, internal damage results, To fix it, you have to spend energy points on damage control or repair to the nearest starbase, which costs you only time and, consequently, rating points.
Two successful training missions get you out of the Academy and into uniform as a lieutenant, junior grade. Three missions with a mean rating of 75% promote you to lieutenant. Thereafter five missions are required. Superlative single-mission performances earn you any of 21 decorations, and with the numbers stored on disk, your service record is etched on a floppy for all to see.
Although many of the details contained in the documentation seem like useless window dressing — for game purposes you hardly need to know what the Officer's Academy curriculum consists of — Interstel will be fleshing out the series with the announced August release of Star Fleet II, which will put you in command of several Krellan vessels. Rumor even has it the series might prove resilient enough to reach Star Fleet VII sometime in the next decade, That should ease the minds of all the Admiral Emeriti out there, restless for a new challenge.
Hornfischer, James D. (May 1988). Star Fleet I: The War Begins! MacUser. (pg. 120).
Interstel Corporation
Games
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starfleet1.zip
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Mini vMac
