Battlecruiser Generations

Battlecruiser Generations is a compendium of all four games in the Battlecruiser 3000AD series, first released in 1996. It includes each game in its original format, based on its final patch, preserving its models, worlds, features and bugs. The games focus on commanding a capital ship, exploring space and planets, and trading. They are single-player only.

The four games

• Battlecruiser 3000AD: DOS, version 1.01D7C (1996).
• Battlecruiser 3000AD v2: DOS, version 2.09 (1998).
• Battlecruiser Millennium: Windows, version 1.0.03 (2001).
• Battlecruiser Millennium Gold: Windows, version 1.01.07 (2003).

Command your ship

You control a military Battlecruiser and can manually fly four fighters, four shuttlecraft and four all-terrain vehicles in space and across planetary landscapes. Assign orders to more than 150 crew members, including officers, engineers, medics, marines and fighter pilots. You can mine planets and moons; attack targets in space and on planets using fighters, vehicles or marines; deploy or extract personnel and items; and stage invasions across the galaxy, including attacks on space stations.

Orders include search and destroy, strike, escort and defend, among many others. Use transporters to move personnel to and from surface strike zones, attack surface targets from orbit, and launch probes to gather intelligence and prepare attacks. You can also trade hundreds of items with dozens of stations and bases.

A changing universe

The universe evolves over time and includes more than 13 alien races, among them the Gammulans and Vesperons. Its 25 castes include military forces, raiders, assassins, scientists, traders and diplomats, each with its own agenda. Explore 25 star systems containing 75 planets and 145 moons, all modeled in 3D, and travel by wormholes, jump gates and other anomalies.

Search asteroid fields for cargo pods or draw attackers into them. Fly above the clouds of Earth, drive across the craters of the Moon and Mars, and explore Saturn’s rings, including their rocks and debris. Planets and moons have different topologies, climate zones, cities, bases and other points of interest. Days and nights pass in real time, and you can explore without time or distance limits while the universe continues to develop around you.

Alien nations wage war, and military ships engage raiders threatening traders, diplomats and other non-combatants. You can join these conflicts or cloak your ship and go undetected. Destroyed stations and surface targets are rebuilt over time with more advanced components.

Ship and crew management

The fully modeled starship has systems for personnel, engineering repairs, tactical command, cargo, communications, navigation and power allocation. Repair and upgrade its systems using a detailed parts database with dozens of components. You can monitor crew members’ artificial intelligence, fatigue, health and other attributes as they move around the ship, including to their quarters, the galley, the bridge and engineering.

Marines search for escaped prisoners and fight intruders who board the ship. You can evacuate decks affected by radiation after a reactor core breach, or quarantine away teams returning with infectious diseases. Clone dead officers from stored DNA signatures, hire marines and engineers at starstations, and manage food supplies to keep the crew fed. Assign fighter pilots to fighters and marines to all-terrain vehicles according to their skills.

Game modes

Three modes let you choose how to play. In Galactic Command, you serve as a Commander in Earth’s galactic force, maintaining law and order in allied territories, or you can explore space on your own. Your decisions and conduct affect your career: you can face a court-martial for breaking the rules, and poor decisions can cost crew members their lives. Choose where to go and what to do, from invading a planet to joining an NPC-controlled attack on an enemy station, mining Iridium or destroying hostile assets to earn experience and rise in rank.

Advanced Campaign Mode presents a series of missions shaped by the changing universe. You can follow the mission path or ignore orders and move on to the next task. Xtreme Carnage lets you fight space and planetary hostiles while learning to operate your fighters. All four games are single-player; Battlecruiser Millennium Gold’s separate multiplayer executable is not included.