Video Game / Starship Troopers: Terran Command

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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.

The game has two expansions outside of the base game. The first one is Raising Hell where a MI detachment has been sent to assist the Hephastar Corporation and their hired mercenaries with a bug problem on the world of Gehenna. The second one is Urban Onslaught where the focus is shifted to the urban but contested world of Varuna (more specifically, the island city of Mahanagar), where both the MI and the local police forces must work together to stop a well-led Bug Incursion.

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.
• Batman Gambit:
  • With orbital and air dominance ensured, a solid defence ring around most of Kwalasha's important infrastructure, and knowledge of the Brain Bug on planet, the Federation High Command decides to deliberately place valuable TAC Fighter Squadrons at an airbase not far behind the frontlines. The bugs find out and launch a major sneak attack on the airbase with much of their remaining mobile reserves, only for it to be revealed that the fighters were decoys and the real ones were airborne (having been based on orbiting ships) and hammering Arachnid formations.
• 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.
• BFG
  • One of the MPD's units is the JAC Trooper, a jetback equipped soldier carrying a heavy recoilless rifle that can knock down heavy and airborne targets down.
• 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. Often what was described as a certain victory then after disastrous failure gets sold afterwards as a minor setback and insignificant to the next true victory.
• Boring, but Practical
  • Regular Rifle Trooper Squads of the Federation don't pack the heaviest firepower or slaughter Arachnids in large numbers like the E-Pulse Squad. But they are generally some of the most versatile units (able to target both air and ground units), their grenade special ability can wipe out clusters of bugs, is a Tier 0 unit that can be summoned even at the lowest tier bases, and they are relatively cheap supply wise.
  • The Police Squad serves as another Tier 0 unit. Smaller that the standard MI Rifle Trooper squad and with shorter range but each squad has a pair of stunning attack drones that can halt most Bug units in their patch and their special grenade ability will damage hostiles for a sustained period of time which can buy players some time.
  • The Radio Operator Squad may not be large nor can it dish out a lot of firepower but it's special ability of establishing a temporary dropship landing point is extremely useful when one needs to reinforce depleted units or ferrying around reinforcements across the map.
  • The HMG and Autocannon Turrets may not be the most fancy types of turrets around but they can make deep cuts into hostile forces and guard against air threats and they don't cost as much war support.
• Bribe Backfire: Fraser tries to cut Captain Zhao on potential profits and a high salary as a merc in the last mission of the "Raising Hell" DLC in an attempt to save his own life. Zhao, whose already distrusted Fraser for much of the campaign, declines and kills Fraser.
• 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. Even still, he ends up taking control of the Fifth Division (composed mainly of Penal units) mainly due to the fact that all of the Third's officers were dead and he was the only one amongst them with command experience.
• 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. As well, Radio Operators can call in gunship support with an elite upgrade.
  • The bugs have multiple airborne units capable of putting the hurt on. From the Hopper seen in the first movie to more exotic bugs in either DLC like the suicide Bomberbee and ranged Hornet.
  • The Urban Onslaught DLC introduces the Federation A-12 Pegasus, a VTOL Gunship armed with a Rotary Cannon, missile pods, and equippable long range missiles or heavy bombs.
• 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.
• Developer's Foresight: In a later tunnel mission, your MI troops are instructed to hold at a chokepoint after a Bug wave pushes through a supply tunnel behind them. You are warned not to attempt to close off the Bug tunnel. If you do try (as you have been throughout the entire game thus far), endless waves of Tiger Bugs erupt from the ground around the supply tunnel and wipe out your troops. It seems the Bugs laid a trap...
• 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.
• Fire-Forged Friends: At first dismissive of each other due to different priorities and estimates of competence, the Mobile Infantry officer Verhaegen and police officer Keys become true comrades through the Urban Onslaught DLC which leads to Verhaegen killing the Brain Bug in spite of his orders to capture it to avenge Keys.
• 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.
  • One of the Merc Units is a mini-gun operator carrying a rotary cannon that can also be setup up as a stationary turret with a better rate of fire.
  • The A-12 Pegasus Gunship carries an underslung rotary cannon that can target both air and ground units.
• 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.
• Hammerspace Police Force: Not only does the Mahanagar Police Department have some fairly heavy combat equipment at their disposal (jumppack troopers with recoilless rifles, light walkers with grenade launchers, sentry autocannon turrets, and more), players can also rapidly amass and lose a large police combat force in the fight against the Arachnids provided they have enough dropships to sustain reinforcements.
• 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.
• Hover Tank: Played with a bit when it comes the M7 Cyclone in the Urban Onslaught DLC. The Cylcone is essentially a heavy autocannon duct taped to a quartet of hover rotors. While not as tanky or heavily armed when it comes to the Maruader Walkers, it's a very fast ground unit, still fairly armoured when compared to infantry, fairly versatile against light, medium, and air units targets, and it's normal special ability allows it to jump to high traversable ground.
• 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. A combined infantry and Marauder force can generally hold their own against any bug threat.
  • The expansions add multiple smaller and larger mechs and walkers.
• Interface Spoiler: Several missions in, it's assumed that the Federation had won on Kwalasha and the fleet departed. Your unit is called in to investigate a mine cave-in and a missing squad that was investigating. Just as Hawthorne says it's probably a cave in causing issues with comms, the camera cuts to a cavern where a great many Bugs are swarming before cutting back as he finishes speaking.
• Inter-Service Rivalry:
  • There still exists one between the Mobile Infantry and the Fleet, with MI characters taking jabs at the fleet. This is especially notes throughout the Urban Onslaught campaign, where Verhaegen is annoyed that fleet is either unwilling to commit forces without aerospace control or Fleet TAC Fighters fail to knock out key bridges.
  • This is played more seriously on Gehenna between the MI detachment and the Mercenary Group who are both working under the oversight of Hepaestar Corporation. The Mercs dislike the MI for both the fear of losing future profits and their distain of the MI's strict obedience to the Federation. The MI, espically Captain Zhao, distrust the mercs due to their prescence in the first mission and their profit first motives.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Major Verhaegen is introduced prioritizing his mission over civilian lives and brushing off Keys' warnings. However, its quickly established that he does care about saving people and is simply taking the most pragmatic approach to save as many as he can in the long run, and starts cooperating more with Keys once he sees proof of her competence.
• 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...
• Kill It with Water: Part way through the Urban Onslaught campaign, the Federation floods a large portion of the city in an attempt to drown the Bugs. The effectiveness of this plan is mixed, to say the least.
• Macross Missile Massacre: In addition to the various ways to let loose onslaughts of missiles in the base game (Rocket Teams, Turrets, orbital bombardment, and more), the Urban Onslaught DLC introduces both the M23 Rainmaker Missile Walkers (which let loose large torrents of missiles at fairly long ranges) and stationary and mission dependent Surface to Air Missile turrets (which aren't the most fancy but they will do wonders to swat hostile air units out of the sky).
• Mood Whiplash: Much like the films, there's a jarring dissonance between the gung-ho propaganda and the grittier realities on the ground.
• MegaCorp: "Raising Hell" Introduces the Hephaestar Corporation, a major mining and fuel company with de facto control over Gehenna. While their true power is unknown, they have secretive contracts with certain parties in the Federation for captured arachnids including for Colonel Jenkins' research program and having direct connections with the Sky Marshal.
• 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.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: This describes Captain Zhao in the "Raising Hell" DLC. Despite what he's seen about the Federation lying and capturing bugs on Gehenna along with Fraser attempting to convince him on what was going on, Zhao eventually chooses to stick to his orders and eliminates Fraser.
• Only in It for the Money: Fraser and his mercs are shown that they really are only sticking around for the big paychecks for Hephestar's bug hunting and capture contracts. This bites them in the back when they annoy Director Patel to the point she requests MI support to supplement the mercs, which takes away lucrative contracts causeing Fraser and his forces to go rogue and then get wiped out by MI forces.
• Private Military Contractors: These show up in the Raising Hell DLC as mercs under the Fraser Mercenary Company working for Hephestar at Gehenna and turn on the Mobile Infantry sent there when the MI start taking missions that the mercs used to profit from.
• 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.
• Private Military Contractors: The "Raising Hell" DLC introduces a Mercanery Group called the Fraser Mercenary Company (under the same Fraser as its leader) bringing in both new Terran units and subfaction to the game.
• 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".
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Major Verhaegen's primary mission is bug extermination, not civilian evac. But if the civvies and their police escort happen to benefit from tagging along, that's fine by him.
• Sentry Gun:
  • One scenario in the Chemical Reaction update has a research base equipped with sentry guns capable of gunning down Arachnids with ease in the intro section. Which begs the question why more of the base doesn't have them?
  • One of the Riot Teams' special veteran ability is being able to deploy a sentry turret. It's good at knocking down lighter bugs, and nothing else it serves as good bait.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Hawthorne pulls this when his superiors demand he and the few survivors of a failed offensive sacrifice their lives in a pointless last stand for little gain, very blatantly pretending to not heard the orders and losing radio contact while leading his men to safety. He ends up demoted to a common private and reassigned to a penal battalion as a result.
• 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. They also have no issue forcing civilian miners to go into the mines at gunpoint to continue work even when that gets a whole lot of them slaughtered needlessly.
  • Gameplay-wise, there's nothing stopping players from invoking this trope with their own forces. While one may be constrained by the limit of supplies, war support, and material (especially in Urban Onslaught where vehicles require a modest sum to be summoned), there aren't any penalties for throwing squads into the meat grinder. The only true limit is how many dropships are available, which has cool down after its used to reinforce or replace squads, or a player is willing to forgo veteran squads and their powerful abilities.
• 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.