Hotkeys continue to allow you to nicely sidestep the clunky button system, but this will prove awkward at first for those lack an eidetic memory. Spend too much time glancing at the manual and those Klingon D7s will make short work of even the biggest Federation dreadnought. God help you if you panic under fire and need some visual cues to prompt what commands you should be ordering next. The lone saving grace for all of this is the ability to slow game speed down to a crawl and even pause the action to issue orders when playing solo. Still, Starfleet Command II was meant to be played in real time, so doing this introduces an odd, herky-jerky flow to combat that makes the events seem less than realistic.
These flaws were only vaguely acceptable in 1999 and they're not at all acceptable at the end of 2000. Too many other game designers have shown us that complicated games don't have to be complicated to use. Homeworld: Cataclysm, for example, is the perfect example that a robust combat engine doesn't have to be saddled with the control panel of the space shuttle.
Basic gameplay also remains largely unchanged. Where Starfleet Command II truly shines is in single-player and multiplayer skirmish modes. There's nothing better than setting up a one-on-one showdown between a Federation heavy cruiser and an old model Romulan bird of prey and recreating "Balance of Terror." Or going online to either take on a friend or team up with him against a common foe. There's no denying that you can have a great time just messing around with these features… there's also no denying that these features don't make a whole game.
A few game balance issues were addressed. Missile weapons are still extremely powerful, though Taldren has responded to complaints that they upset gameplay in the original title and scaled them back somewhat. This was partly necessitated by the two new races that have been introduced. The Mirak Star League favors the use of missiles, and would have been virtually unstoppable under the old rules, while the Interstellar Concordium (ISC) wouldn't be nearly as strong as the designers intended if projectiles were still so effective.
The ISC features prominently in the solo campaign game. Allies of the Organians, godlike beings who enforced peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire way back in the original Star Trek series, the ISC intends to stop all galactic conflict by subjugating warlike civilizations like that of the original game's Federation, Klingons, Romulans, Gorn, Lyrans, Hydrans, and Orions. So you can jump into the captain's chair of a vessel from any civilization and wage war on the ISC and whomever else your civilization happens to be having problems with on that particular stardate. Or take over the ISC itself and wage the War of Pacification. You can also take on the newbie Mirak and attempt to learn their secrets, or sign up as a Mirak captain and use those secrets against the other races.
This sounds much more engaging than it actually is. There is no focus to the campaigns, no overall story arc that draws you in and keeps you playing. The designers focused entirely on making them dynamic and replayable, never bothering to consider the possibility that including a real plot or two might have been a more successful tactic. All you do is pilot a starship from sector to sector, accepting or declining random assignments as they become available, and completing certain necessary missions to move the game forward. The further out you get from home, the more interesting the tasks become, though even the ones beyond the frontier aren't that fascinating because there's no build up to them. While text bulletins about important events come in ("Gorn attack an outpost in sector 13,6," for example) to keep you informed about the state of the galaxy, everything is so random and downplayed (I could do without escorting any more convoys) that it's hard to care about what's going on.