The game follows the expansion of the human race into the farthest reaches of space, thanks to the sudden discovery of wormholes and the best way to exploit them. The action opens as a small human fleet stumbles across an ugly, insectoid, decidedly unfriendly alien race called the Mantis, one who immediately descends upon the Earthling craft and attacks without mercy. Further along, we’re introduced to a second alien race, the Celareons, who appear to be allies of humanity only as a matter of convenience.

All of this sets up a three-way conflict that might have fans of Starcraft wondering if they went out and picked up an expansion pack without realizing it. The play balance between the Terrans, Mantis and Celareons certainly doesn’t hesitate to draw upon similar dynamics between the Terrans, Zerg and Protoss. The Terrans rely upon building up the right mix of technology in their forces; the Mantis devour everything in their sight to provide the resources for their massive fleets; the Celareons rely on more esoteric supplies to build their exotic but effective units. The biggest difference between the races in this title and those of Starcraft is that only the Terran side is available for campaign play — those who find the others compelling can only express their love on the multi-player battlefield.

Where Conquest really decides to do things differently, however, is in the scale of the conflict. Battles are entirely fleet-based, and the wormholes that kick off the entire plot figure very importantly in the tactics that govern it. Mission maps are divided into sectors and the individual systems contained within, some of which might contain planets that can act as bases, some of which might contain resources, and others which might only hold nasty surprises for the intrepid player. The wormholes connecting each system can be choked off by the player who manages to construct a jump gate around them, which has the added bonus of creating supply lines across the sector.

This is crucial, because the units fighting the Frontier Wars only have a finite amount of ammunition, and they run through it very quickly indeed. In part this is remedied by the availability of both repair and supply craft, which diligently support any units that fall within a certain radius; however, even their capacity is limited, and without control over the wormholes, even the most formidable fleet can quickly become stranded. Even structures built around planets in captured systems will be rendered useless, and so one of the quickest lessons to learn about Conquest is that the wormholes really are the tactical heart of the game.

Which is just as well, because there aren’t that many other new things to pick up on. The structures that make up your bases sit in tight rings around your captured planets, and are comprised of the sort of things you might expect — a shipyard, a refinery, a headquarters, and so on — and various upgrades are provided as new facilities are built. On top of all this, unit availability is directly capped by Control Points, the limit of which can only be raised by the construction of radar towers and headquarters. So, expansion is not only required to support your fleets, but to build up enough Control Points to assemble your craft in the first place.

Once you’ve managed to do all this, though, Conquest does provide some conflicts of impressive scale. The box shots don’t lie about the kind of hairballs that can develop between your fleets and those of the enemy — if anything, they might mislead you into thinking they’re more organized than they actually are. To assist with this, the Terran technology tree allows you to research special Admirals, hero units who can be assigned to take control of a fleet and provide it with bonuses of all different sorts, depending on the Admiral’s own strengths and weaknesses. The idea is an interesting one, but even with the help of a herd of seasoned warhorses, you’re still going to find yourself chasing after ships that have wandered away from your fleet for no reason, or smacking your forehead as your corvettes happily distribute their fire evenly across an enemy force, instead of focusing on destroying any particular target.

At least your ships look good when they’re shot down, though. Fever Pitch has put a great deal of energy into making each unit look clean and distinct, to the point where you can actually tell how badly a unit is damaged by the size of the fires burning on board. Similarly, the buildings reflect the personality of their respective races — the Terran bases orbit serenely above their worlds, with mechanical arms busily constructing ships, while the Mantis structures dig into their planets like ticks, and birth their ships from pulsing sacs. A recent patch has also made available high-resolution backgrounds, to make your space exploration even more tantalizing.

The sound effects and score are well done too, with ships groaning and screaming before they finally come apart in space. It’s no surprise to discover that Fever Pitch studios is actually part of Digital Anvil, the company founded by Chris Roberts. Much of the scripting and musical accompaniment is very much reminiscent of the old Wing Commander series, though it might have been nice to see some of the branching mission trees that made those titles so enduring.

As it stands, Conquest: Frontier Wars is a solid game, but mostly because it’s been built on such solid foundations. Players will still find themselves fending off massive rushes of units, and they’ll still find themselves picking off the resource gathering freighters to cripple enemy supplies — it’s just that they’ll be doing it on a wider scale. Conquest does add the wrinkle of having to control supply lines over a larger area, and makes it critical by limiting the ammunition available to any given unit; but, since so many of your ships never survive long enough to run out of ammo, it can often seem irrelevant. So, while there are enough new things about Conquest: Frontier Wars for fans of the RTS genre to appreciate, casual gamers might want to steer clear, if only to avoid the sense of déjà vu.