Qt3 Classic Game Club #22 - Conquest: Frontier Wars

Games
1

Hello my friends, and welcome to my turn at deciding a game for the Qt3 Classic Game Club! I hope y’all don’t mind following up one space game (the amazing Freespace 2, thanks for choosing that Casey) with another, but as soon as this club was created, I knew, KNEW the one game I had to select. It’s an amazing game that’s never gotten the love or attention it so deserves, so I’m hoping to change that one new fan at a time. Friends, I present you with 2001’s Conquest: Frontier Wars:

Conquest: Frontier Wars (Wikipedia, Mobygames) is a real-time strategy game from Ubisoft and Fever Pitch Studios, and came out of what once was Digital Anvil, the folks behind Freelancer. It was supposed to be also published by Microsoft, as Freelancer was, but since that didn’t happen it found a new publisher in Ubisoft. Unfortunately, it was barely marketed at the time, so most folks just either didn’t even know about it, or looked at it and went, “This isn’t Homeworld, it’s 2D, ew.” and moved on.

And what a mistake they made, because Conquest is an amazing RTS for a variety of reasons. While it is only in 2D, that makes it more fun and manageable than Homeworld, I think. It also has maps with multiple systems, supply lines that need to be maintained across systems, ships and characters that gain experience, a fantastic single player campaign, random maps in its skirmish mode, and some of the best music you’ll find in a space game.

Thankfully, the soundtrack is included with the game on GOG, where this amazing game can be purchased for only $5.99.

Honestly that’s one of the best values in all of space gaming, as there’s a ton of content here thanks to the lengthy campaign and random maps of the skirmish mode. Multiplayer also works via GameRanger! The game can also be played in widescreen with an Ini edit. I’ve tested this and while the pre-game menus don’t scale, the game itself does.

Here are some pics of the game in action I found, to get you interested:

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Please, therefore, join me as we play some of this amazing game, and I hope you fall in love with it as I have. It’s actually my favorite space RTS ever (yes, moreso than Homeworld, which I feel is overrated). Thanks for letting me be a decider, and I really hope you enjoy this game. :)

PS. Also, the game apparently has issues running on Windows 8, but this GOG thread presents some solutions.

PPS. If you’re playing in Windows 7 and have no audio, install this codec and it works!

2

Ooooh, nice choice! I should play it in earnest, really. I started twice and never finished it.

I could also take a look at the source code… I’ve been meaning to do that for a while.

3

I once watched an hour-long Youtube video of someone playing this and had my interest piqued, but have yet to actually boot it up. Might be time to change that.

4

Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!

5

I also enjoyed Conquest Frontier more than Homeworld, although I never played Homeworld Cataclysm or Homeworld 2. That said, I think it gets pretty repetitive, like all single player RTS games, but I still really enjoy seeing fleets of ships battle.

6

How do you think it gets repetitive? I mean any game can be repetitive after a while, so I’m curious.

7

I think I have a CD of this sitting around somewhere. Wonder if I can make it work.

8

I ran the CD version a while back just fine on Win7 before GOG released their version, FYI. Not sure about Win8 or 10 though.

9

Looks interesting. For us slow old farts, is it a twich-fest RTS? Or a slow and stately RTS? Can you vary the speed and/or pause?

10

Nah, it’s not a super twitch fest, it’s much more deliberately paced, and has more of a naval feel to it, which is one reason I love it so much. I forget about the speed though but I thiiiiiiink you can pause it. I’ll be reinstalling it tonight so I’ll confirm then.

11

You can pause the game, but I don’t remember if you can give commands while paused. Most likely not.

12

Wow, I know nothing about this game. Excited to try out a naval-ish RTS. But… Not sure I want to jump through all those Windows 8 hoops. :( Someone please let us know if they find a reasonable solution!

13

Ooh, this is one of the few RTSs that I’ve never played, but that I’ve heard really good things about. I’d love to jump in, but since it doesn’t seem to work with Windows 8, it looks like this is one that’s simply passed me by. Alas, if only I still had my networked Windows XP LAN…

-Tom

14

Whoa, the GOG version doesn’t work on Windows 8?

That’s not good, I’d be unable to join if that’s true.

15

Sigh, has anyone tried and verified it’s problematic on their Windows 8 install?

16

Hopefully someone has, if not I may wind up being the guinea pig here, once I finish my MoO campaign in the next day or so. I’ve not usually had issues, but a full stop not working on Windows 8 would be unfortunate as I only have Windows 8 machines.

17

That’d be awesome, thanks Craig!

On my end, after so many PC hassles, I got the game installed this morning, and it runs great! YAY! The second game I reinstalled was Elite: Dangerous of course.

18

The main interface window looks really rough on my widescreen monitor. The font looks all weird. Couldn’t you have picked this last year Brian, when I was the last one at Qt3 still holding on to my 4:3 ratio monitor? When I finally gave up and switched, THEN you pick this game.

19

Going by the GOG thread, it looks like it’s been an outstanding issue for a couple years. Otherwise, I would have expected someone to weigh in with the usual “works for me” comment. But, yeah, I’d love to get more direct confirmation.

-Tom
20

I just tried to install it from my CD on Windows 8.1 64-bit. It doesn’t work. I tried compatibility mode, no help. Google says you have to install VMWare and create a windows VM with an older version of windows to make it run.

So I can’t confirm that the GOG version doesn’t work, but… I’d assume it doesn’t.