Star Trek: Starfleet Command Volume II – Empires at War on Windows 10

This 2020 blog post tells you how to install Star Trek: Starfleet Command Volume II – Empires at War on Windows 10.

Warning: You use any files and modify your PC at your own risk!

Please note: I’m using the 2 CD version of the game.

Introduction
In July 2020 I decided to install this 2000 game on my Windows 10 Pro 64-bit PC. The computer is using a Q9400 quad core CPU and 8GB DDR2 RAM, so is more than capable of coping with this very old Star Trek game.

The installation instructions below presume you’ve installed to the default directory.

How to install the game:

1. From disc one run the setup application. *
2. Insert disc two when required.
3. If DirectPlay isn’t installed, agree to install the Windows feature.
4. Click ‘No’ to installing DirectX 7.0a.
5. From Moddb download the v2.0.3.6 patch.
6. In your Windows directory rename IsUninst.exe to IsUninstOLD. **
7. Run the patch setup program for the game. ***
8. Don’t do anything until you see ‘Press any key to continue…’.
9. From the \\Program Files (x86)\Taldren\Starfleet Command II\ directory, right click on the StarFleet2 application and select ‘Properties’.
10. From the ‘Compatibility’ tab, select ‘Windows 98 / Windows ME’, ‘Disable fullscreen optimizations’ and ‘Run the program as an administrator’.
11. Then select ‘Apply’ and ‘OK’.

* It took quite a while for the setup files on disc one to copy across to the PC.
** This is to get around an error message stopping the patch from installing.
*** If you have an issue, you should be able to extract the patch using 7z and then run the patch’s setup application.

How to change the resolution
You run the SDC2Setup application and then you can change the screen resolution, such as choosing 1280×1024.

Conclusion
I’ve played a skirmish and campaign so far and both ran fine. When loading the campaign, I thought it had halted, but pressed a mouse button and it continued.