The Borg have been beaten back to the Delta Quadrant, and the Federation has decided to pursue them and try to put an end to their threat once and for all.  With the Federation fleets on the move, the Klingons are reluctantly left to guard the Alpha Quadrant (which some may argue is akin to leaving the fox guarding the chicken coop).  The Borg have more immediate problems on their hands, though.  They opened a rift into fluidic space in an attempt to find new technologies to assimilate, but instead unleashed Species 8472 into the Delta Quadrant.  With so many fleets on the move, it is only a matter of time before the galaxy erupts into warfare.

This is the situation at the opening of the campaign game of Star Trek Armada II.  The game provides 30 missions which together tell the story of this new galactic conflict.  Players first play as the Federation, then the Klingon empire, and finally as the Borg.  The game also features the Romulans, Cardassians, and Species 8472, but they are only playable in skirmish or multiplayer games.  The Ferengi also make an appearance, but only as a source of revenue at player trade stations and to occasionally hijack derelict spacecraft.

Fans of the first game will immediately notice that the game has undergone an extensive overhaul in its latest incarnation.  The most immediately noticeable of these changes is the move to 3D.  Not only are the ships, stations, and planets now 3D objects, but ships are no longer restricted to a single plane of movement.  Movement orders can consist of a z-component to move the ship above or below the zero plane - simply hold down the [Shift] key and the mouse can be moved back and forth to specify the distance to move above or below the zero plane.  The move to 3D also allows the game to give the player the ability to group ships into different three dimensional formations.  Battles now take place in 3D space, giving players the option to split their attacking forces on multiple planes which opens the door to feints and flanks not possible in 2D games.  The camera can easily be zoomed in on the action or pulled back to give the player a larger field of view.  As the camera pulls back its angle changes so that at the lowest zoom the player is given a top-down look at the action.  This is the zoom level at which players will most likely spend most of the time as it is difficult to manage fleets and give orders when zoomed in.  

Unfortunately, the lowest zoom level introduces a problem of its own.  When viewing the action from a top-down angle, ships on the highest plane loom very large while those on the lowest are reduced to a very small size.  When reduced to such a small size, ships are very difficult to distinguish.  In fact, it is entirely possible for a ship on the highest plane to obscure a fleet which is traveling below it.  Needless to say, this can lead to some issues with combat from difficulty targeting enemy ships to the inability to tell your own different ship classes apart.  However, these problems do not prove to be too frustrating when playing against the computer since the AI does not appear to make too much use of the entire range of the z axis.  In fact, it is entirely possible to be quite successful against the computer without bothering with the third dimension at all and leaving everything at its default z coordinate.

The resource model has been expanded in Star Trek Armada II.  In the previous game, players needed to mine dilithium from special dilithium moons to be used to construct ships and stations.  Ships also required crew, which were generated at a steady rate by certain stations.  In addition to these resources, Star Trek Armada II adds metal and latinum.  Metal is gained by mining planets and is used primarily for station construction.  In addition to providing metal, planets can also be colonized to produce additional crew.  Latinum is gained by mining special nebulae or at trade stations.  It is used at trade stations to purchase additional dilithium and metal when stockpiles run low.  With this host of new resources, it is not too surprising that Armada II places a much greater emphasis on resource gathering than its predecessor.   To win games, resource sources must be quickly found and exploited, and the destruction and conquest of your enemies' resource sources becomes the primary focus.

Also new to the game is warp speed.  Ships can now be moved via both impulse power and warp.  As expected, warp speed gets ships to their destinations much more quickly.  However, while in warp ships are more vulnerable to attack, so warp speed should be used with caution.  It's a great way to rush a fleet to a hot spot or quickly explore a map, though.

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