Starship Troopers: Terran Command is a Real-Time Strategy game based on the Starship Troopers universe that began with the 1997 movie Starship Troopers by Paul Verhoeven. The game takes place between the third and fourth movie in the series, placing the player in command of a Mobile Infantry division sent to prevent the important mining world of Kwalasha from falling into the hands of the Arachnids.
This game contains examples of:
- Action Prologue: The tutorial mission takes place during the initial assault on Klendathu before shifting focus towards the fight over Kwalasha.
- Alien Invasion: The Klendathu Arachnids are invading the Terran mining colony of Kwalasha and your job is to make sure they don't succeed at it.
- And the Adventure Continues: After a daring, if costly victory, the Terran forces are redeployed elsewhere to keep up the momentum. Just because the Arachnids are dealt with on Kwalasha doesn't mean the war's over.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: The appropriately-named Scorpion Bug that players will quickly come to despise, although it isn't used as a stabbing weapon like most cases. Rather it instead fires blasts of plasma like a living infantry support gun.
- Blatant Lies: Many of the news reports, especially early on, give the impression of the Arachnids being soundly defeated and life going back to normal on Kwalasha. It soon becomes evident, however, that reality doesn't match the propaganda.
- Bug War: The war over Kwalasha is fought against the Klendathu Arachnids.
- Call-Forward: The high-tier Power Suit Troopers are early models of the Powered Armor units that become more commonplace by the time of Starship Troopers: Invasion.
- Cannon Fodder: Both factions can deploy some form of basic, semi-disposable units that almost border on Mooks;
- The Rifle Trooper is a large squad of grunts armed with long-range Morita rifles (but lacking the accuracy to use them effectively at a distance) that are at least capable of fending off incoming waves of Arachnids.
- Arachnid Warriors are the most commonly seen bug on Kwalasha and are only really effective at swarming towards the Mobile Infantry in massed attacks.
- Civil Warcraft: A few missions involve dealing with local insurgents and rebellious prisoners, in addition to the Bugs. This also forces you to change tactics when taking on said human enemies, as they're more than happy to shoot back.
- Close-Range Combatant: The higher-tier E-Pulse Troopers are much more effective at repulsing waves of onrushing bugs, the tradeoff being an inferior range than the Rifle Squad.
- Colonel Badass: Hawthorne, who ends up demoted to a private in a penal unit after disobeying orders halfway through the game and gets replaced by Colonel Ava Cortez.
- Communications Officer: One of the Mobile Infantry's specialist units, allowing you to call in reinforcements in the field.
- Continuity Nod: The Marauder mechs are first introduced as being sent from General Rico's Roughnecks to help the war effort on Kwalasha.
- Death from Above: The Fleet Liaison Officer is capable of calling in TAC Fighter airstrikes on Bug positions. One of the upgrade options once they reach the elite experience level is an Orbital Bombardment.
- Deadly Gas: The Chemical Reaction update added the new Chemical Trooper unit as well as two new scenarios focused on them; Chemical Reaction and Expanding Gases.
- Defensive Feint Trap: The Terran Federation pulls one of these on large scale on Kwalasha in order to eradicate the Bugs and capture the Brain Bug.
- Elites Are More Glamorous: Subverted with the "elite" Marauder contingent sent in for the final push to capture the Brain Bug. While capable of holding their own, unlike the ones General Rico sends to the fray these bright-colored variants are explicitly described as glorified propaganda set-pieces meant to look pretty for the cameras, and have to be protected from Bug attacks.
- A Father to His Men: Colonel Hawthorne is shown to take care of his men that he is willing to be court-martialed for insubordination over his refusal to sacrifice his men to pointlessly hold the line. Later, he was demoted and assigned to 5th Division's penal battalions—which he assumed command after all the officers of the division were wiped out—in the final mission.
- Faction Calculus:
- Mobile Infantry are Cannons. Their units pack impressive firepower but most of their units lack durability and they also lack the numbers of the Arachnids.
- Arachnids are the Horde, pumping out wave after wave of disposable shock troops with a few heavier units like tankers mixed in.
- Foregone Conclusion:
- Anyone who's seen the source material will know that the Battle of Klendathu, as portrayed in the tutorial mission, ends in complete disaster for the Terrans.
- The Raising Hell DLC, which involves a Terran operation on the planet Gehenna, all but confirms that humanity eventually wins in the Kwalasha campaign.
- Friendly Fireproof: Averted, but only because many units actually demonstrate trigger discipline and won't shoot through their fellows. This makes arranging your units to give each other a clear line of fire via fanning out or finding elevation an important part of the strategy. There are some exceptions to this, such as Snipers (whose aim is just that good) or fixed HMG emplacements (which would have their utility crippled otherwise). Also, they're not fireproof, so ordering your units through an area where your engineers just tossed an incendiary grenade will get them killed.
- Gatling Good: Two of the Marauder variants mounts a large anti-infantry Gatling gun.
- Glass Cannon: Most Mobile Infantry units tend to fall into this category, able to lay waste to hordes of Bugs at a distance, but if the Arachnids manage to close to close range and engage them in melee they fall pretty quickly.
- Guilt-Free Extermination War: Much like the films and novel, humanity has no real qualms in wiping out every last Bug from the galaxy. This is further underscored by the Chemical Reaction update, which features new scenarios involving the Terran Federation's experiments on WMDs that, if not for being aimed at the Arachnids, would be considered war crimes.
- Hold the Line: A lot of the campaign missions center around defending critical positions like Fort Meru from relentless Bug onslaughts.
- Hopeless War: Eventually, it becomes evident in the campaign that the Federation is losing horribly on Kwalasha, with the Mobile Infantry just barely holding on against the Arachnid onslaught. Subverted, when it's revealed that it's part of a large-scale if costly feint, done to goad the Bugs into a trap of humanity's making.
- Instant Awesome: Just Add Mecha!: As the campaign progresses the player can get access to heavily armed Marauder bipedal tanks to compliment their infantry squads.
- Kill It with Fire: Combat Engineer squads are armed with flamethrowers. They are quite effective at blunting the charge of oncoming lighter Arachnids, but are surprisingly vulnerable to being flanked and require that the wielder gets dangerously close to the bugs...
- Mood Whiplash: Much like the films, there's a jarring dissonance between the gung-ho propaganda and the grittier realities on the ground.
- More Dakka: Combat Engineer squads can construct heavy machine gun turrets in the field. They excel at tearing through hordes of Bugs but are prone to overheating.
- Mythology Gag:
- Rico from the original movie has apparently made it all the way to General by the time the game takes place.
- The Marauder mechs get their name and appearance from the otherwise much maligned direct-to-DVD sequel of the Verhoeven film Starship Troopers 3: Marauder.
- The Power Suit Troopers, on top of being more accurate to the novel, also call to mind the powered armor seen in the later CGI sequels.
- Multiple achievements are references to lines from the movies. Mostly the original Starship Troopers film, but "An army of angels" is a reference to Starship Troopers 3: Marauder.
- Private Military Contractors: These show up in the Raising Hell DLC as mercs working for Hephestar at Gehenna and turn on the Mobile Infantry sent there after going rogue.
- Propaganda Piece: Every mission opens with one of these; a cartoon that usually completely fails to accurately portray the reality of the situation that you're going into.
- Powered Armor: Power Suit Troopers are a high tier infantry unit you can field. They are faster, tougher and pack a lot more firepower compared to standard Rifle Squads.
- Pungeon Master: The Terran Federation's broadcaster is sure fond of making puns like "It is a ore effort for the war effort" and "Don't Doubt This Redoubt".
- Walking Tank: Marauders are heavily armed and armored bipedal vehicles designed to provide heavy fire support to your infantry squads. It comes in three variants; one armed with a heavy flamethrower, one with a Gatling gun and one mounting a powerful howitzer.
- We Have Reserves:
- The Arachnids certainly do and the Terrans can reinforce depleted reserves with fresh reinforcements as long as they are within range of a radio tower.
- The Terran Federation's higher-ups are also willing to throw many soldiers into a costly feint operation to fool the Arachnids into a trap.
- Zerg Rush: Default tactic of the Arachnid army. Stronger units start to show up eventually, but even then the hordes will consist primarily of enormous numbers of standard Bugs.
