The fundamental difference between space battles in Star Trek and space battles in Star Wars, is, generally speaking, the size of the ships. Sure, Star Wars has big battleships like the Star Destroyers or the Mon Calamari cruisers, but what made Star Wars such a big deal was the way it basically took aerial dogfights and moved that combat into space. This is why a ton of Star Wars games, especially the early arcade releases and many of the '90s hits, mirrored the starfighter action of the films. A large-scale strategy game within the Star Wars universe was possible, of course, but that aesthetic was never really something that gamers seemed to want.
However, the reverse is true for Star Trek. When Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan hit theaters in 1982, with special effects direct from George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic, the spaceship combat didn’t try to emulate Star Wars at all. Instead, just as in the 1960s show, starship combat in Trek was all about strategy and deployment, more like naval combat than fighter planes. But, unlike the Star Wars franchise, it took the Star Trek franchise much longer to deliver gamers an experience that matched with a more methodical type of starship combat. In fact, twenty-five years ago, when Star Trek: Armada was released, this style of Trek starship combat had really only existed for gamers in a tabletop format. For a certain subsection of Trek fans, Armada actually delivered the type of gaming experience that had eluded the franchise for decades.
