Star Trek: Armada is a real time strategy game, that can be played either as part of a single-player campaign, a single-player custom match in form of the so-called Instant Action or in classic multi-player with two to eight human players. As such it has many strategic and tactical aspects. It is controlled by keyboard and mouse. Its setting in the Star Trek universe brings many aspects with it, that are well known by Star Trek fans.

There are a lot of different game elements and aspects. See the following articles on these details:

• Game Interface: How to use the game's functions? How to play the game in general?
• Maps: Which maps are available for this game?
• Map Objects: What objects can you encounter on maps?
• Factions: Which factions does the game offer? What are their specialties?
• Stations: Which buildings does the game have?
• Units: What units does the game have?
• Special Weapons: What er the special abilities of units and stations?
• Radii: What firing range does the Pulse Cannon have? What's the scanning radius of a Scout? Here you can get the info on all the radii.
• Economy: What are the main aspects of the game's resources?
• Setting Up Matches: How is a (multi-player) game set up?
• Obscure Game Mechanics: What little secrets and oddities does the game have in store?
• Sub-Systems: Each unit can have up to five sub systems, engines, life support, sensors, shield generator and weapons. They all control what a unit is capable of.
• Single-player campaign (Warning: contains spoilers!)

Although the game features only four very similar factions with regard to tech tree and ship properties, still these differences make playing effectively not a simple matter. It already begins with the differentiation in two factions with cloaks and two without, the underlying mechanics of detector units and the discovery of opponent's maneuvers. Then there is the deviation of factions with and without artillery ships. To make matters more interesting, all stations and ships can be captured, including the construction ships. This allows for combinations that can be very powerful, e.g. Nebula Class starships with their Federation Repair Team in combination with the Shadow class vessel with its Energy Shield Converter. This allows to quickly restore entire fleets and base positions after a strong but repelled attack. Or take the combination of Transwarp Gate (Borg) and Phoenix class (Romulan). Once this combination is achieved, the opposing team is pretty much done.

But also the differences of the ships of each faction can lead to certain counter unit mechanics, e.g. the Sovereign class ship's Corbomite Reflector vs. the Akira class' Chain Reaction Pulsar: The Pulsar gets reflected multiple times at the attacking Akira unit, inflicting a lot more damage at the attacker than at the attacked. Similarly works the combination Sovereign vs. Negh'Var: The Ion Cannon attack will be fully reflected to the Negh'var. The Shadow Class ability Holo-Emitter can also leave an attacking fleet devastated as especially the more powerful units will damage friendly units a lot. But also smaller units can have surprisingly big effects. E.g. a single Bird of Prey can slow down ships by using Gravity Mines while being cloaked. This can make hit and run attacks impossible, when placing the BoP on strategically important positions, waiting under cloak for their deployment.

But hit and run attacks still can be facilitated for example with groups of Interceptors, which can engage a target and once opposing reinforcements arrive, simply Transwarp jump back to the home base. So mostly the special weapons and factions differences bring a certain depth to the combat, even when the units may look very similar at first glance.

Also the different factions bring certain traits with them. Such as, the Borg are very powerful offensive-wise, regenerate the fastest, their ships are the most expensive in all categories (lots of crew, Dilithium and time) and the special weapons are not as powerful as for example the Romulans. Which in contrast are the weakest species boarding-party-wise, but have strong special weapons and almost all ships possess a cloak. They are also the only faction, that has a cloakable scout with detector capabilities. Klingons on the other hand are strong offensive-wise, cheap in ship cost, but lack powerful/versatile special weapons and regenerate slowly. Their boarding parties are the second strongest of the game and once a Klingon ship drops to red crew state, it begins firing faster (unlike the other factions, which will fire slower). Federation is very strong defense wise, has decent special weapons but no cloaking capabilities. Their boarding parties are the second weakest but the ships regenerate well.

On the other hand, the game lacks any deeper differentiation of the units, e.g. there is no distinction such as units with and without armor, heavy and light units or general upgrade systems. Only the special weapons, the speed, damage and health values are actually important.

There is a story driven single-player campaign available, which provides mission phases for each faction. Every phase of the campaign has four missions.

There is a spoilering(!) article about the Single-Player Campaign. It is recommended to not read it before having played the entire campaign at least once.

To get an impression of the singleplayer campaign, have a look at the Web links.

Cheats are accessible only in the single player campaign. When pressing Enter, the chat console opens (just like it would in multiplayer). When entering one of the following text snippets, the corresponding effect is triggered:

There are a number of cheat codes floating on the internet, that are actually not feasible for Armada 1:

• avoidance,
• gobabygo,
• imouttastepwithreality,
• kobayashimaru_lost,
• nomoreships,
• phonehome,
• screwyouguysimgoinghome,
• seeyoulater,
• targetacquired and
• youstopmecold.

The kobayashimaru_lost cheat is actually a cheat code for Star Trek: Armada II.

• Very often, there is the possibility to steal enemy construction ships. This can be very beneficial. The apax is the combination of the three/four final buildings, the Transwarp Gate, the weapons of mass destruction of Klingons and Romulans and the Temporal Research station. Freezing the area, opening a Transwarp Gate and sending in a Phoenix or an Jah'eng ship leaves the enemy defenseless while striking a massive blow.
• In some missions there is a rather easy way to reach the map goal or achieving certain tasks, like not going around the long way with the mining freighters intended for the Ferengi but sending them right trough the Metreon Gas Nebula.
• On the very last mission the player is supposed to destroy the Omega containment facility. It is however sufficient to get its shields down, e.g. with the Federation's Nebula class' Shield Disruptor. On the other hand it is not possible to capture the station. You can bring down the stations number of crew to one (e.g. using Psychonic Blast of the Romulan Shadow class multiple times) but once you kill the last crewman, the game simply resets the crew number to ten.

The game's so-called Instant Action is basically the same as the multi-player. But instead of human players joining the match, the game is played solely by one player, against AI controlled opponents. The game mechanics are identical as in multi-player against AI opponents. Note: You cannot play a multi-player match with no other human players. When trying to start a match where only one human player is part of the match, the game will not allow to start the match.

See Setting Up Matches on how to get started. See section Game Elements on other articles with details of the game play.

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