Starship Troopers - Terran Command: What You Need To Run It [PC]

The Starship Troopers franchise may have never quite recovered its former glory from the 1997 Paul Verhoeven movie, but it’s not as dead as your average trooper in the Klendathu invasion. Starship Troopers – Terran Command is set to reinvigorate the series on PC with a new real-time strategy (RTS) game from developer, The Aristocrats, and publisher Slitherine Software.

A spiritual successor to the 2000 release of Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy, Terran Command sees players controlling groups of Mobile Infantry troopers in various planetary campaigns against the Arachnid menace. It’s very much a tactical experience, with little in the way of resource gathering or base building, though there will be upgrades, strategic decisions to make, and management of various leader and hero characters.

It’s a modern spin on the RTS genre, so will feature some contemporary lighting effects, 4K resolution support, and in true Starship Troopers fashion, a lot of bugs. The game isn’t set to be particularly taxing, with the minimum specs effectively making it possible to play on just about any modern PC, gaming or otherwise. But if you want to play the game with all of its visual settings set to their maximum, at 4K resolution, then you’ll need something that’s a little more capable.

Would you like to know more? Here’s what you’ll need to get Starship Troopers – Terran Command looking its best.

Minimum System Requirements for Starship Troopers – Terran Command

Image source: Steam

There has been some confusion over the minimum system requirements to get Terran Command up and running. The Steam listing for the game has a higher specification listing than the one on GoG, so we’ll first take what GoG rates the game for and then consider the higher demands Steam may place on your Terran Command experience.

CPU: Intel Core i3 or equivalent

RAM: 4GB

Graphics: Nvidia GTX 550 or AMD HD 6XXX or higher

Storage: 10GB

Operating System: Windows 7, 8, 10, 11

Clarifying Some Confusion

Adding to the confusion over the mixed bag of minimum system requirements on different platforms, the CPU recommendation of an “Intel Core i3 or equivalent” doesn’t tell us much. The difference between a modern 12^th generation Intel Core i3 12100 and a 12-year-old, first-generation Intel Core i3-530, is night and day.

What we can draw from it, at least, is that Starship Troopers – Terran Command will need at least four threads to be played effectively. That covers just about any processor from the past decade, so it’s about as low a bar as you can set. Combine that with just 4GB of RAM, which isn’t much beyond the minimum requirements for Windows 10, and only asking for mid-range graphics cards from over a decade ago, and it’s safe to say that almost any PC can get this game running.

It may not run well, 720p or 1080p resolution at best, with settings on low or medium and a frame rate that is unlikely to climb much beyond 30 FPS when the action picks up, but it will run. Most PCs from the past half-decade should be able to match or exceed these, with even recent generation integrated graphics offering more GPU power than the minimum graphics cards for this game.

Note: Chillblast doesn’t recommend you play this, or any game on Windows 7. It’s an outdated and unsupported operating system that could leave you open to dangerous malware.

Meeting The Minimum With a Modern PC

If you don’t have a PC that can match these specs or even any PC at all, then you’ll need to buy something new to handle it. While you could brave the second-hand market, as even a modest PC from recent years will be enough, there’s no guarantee of the quality of such a build, its potential longevity, or its value for money. GPU shortages have pushed up prices on second-hand gaming PCs by a considerable amount, so in many ways, you may be better off buying something new.

At least then you’ll be able to play a wide range of modern games, and you can rest assured that your gaming PC will last for years to come and give you a credible upgrade path for the future.

For that, we’ll take inspiration from the minimum specifications and aim for a capable Intel Core i3 CPU: The refreshed 10th-generation Core i3-10105F. This CPU has four cores, eight threads, and a 4.4GHz boost clock – more than enough for this game and any other modern indie or esports game. Combine it with 8GB of fast DDR4 memory, and it’ll have excellent general compute performance for web browsing, streaming, and even a little light video and photo editing too.

As for graphics, you really don’t need much for this game, but the best contemporary card for this kind of entry-level gaming system is an AMD Radeon RX 6400. It’s an affordable way to get a gaming PC up and running and has vastly more GPU power than is needed to get this game running. Combined with the capable processor, this PC will easily be able to run Starship Troopers – Terran Command at 1080p with most settings on medium or high, and should maintain a steady 60 FPS in most scenarios.

Recommended System Requirements for Starship Troopers – Terran Command

Image source: Steam

Although Steam only lists a set of “Minimum” system requirements for Starship Troopers – Terran Command, they are significantly higher than those GoG lists, so unless Steam’s DRM places more of a demand on your system than the game itself, it seems likely that having a PC that matches those will equate to a much more impressive gaming experience.

CPU: Intel Core i7 or equivalent

RAM: 8GB

Graphics: Nvidia GTX 1050 or AMD RX 560

Storage: 10GB

Operating System: Windows 7, 8, 10, 11

A Solid 1080p Choice

Although these specifications don’t specify a particular generation of Core i7 CPU, simply mandating a Core i7 instead of a Core i3, is a big step up. Even the very first generation of Intel Core i7 processors from 2008 had four cores and eight-thread support. And though any modern processors would wipe the floor with those early Core i7s, this suggests that at higher settings, you need at least eight threads for decent in-game performance.

The memory and storage demands aren’t difficult to achieve, and though the graphics card is a big upgrade over the minimum specifications, a GTX 1050 is still an entry-level GPU from six years ago. Any gaming PC from the past few years will have no trouble meeting these specifications, though you will at least need a dedicated graphics card – only the latest onboard GPUs, like AMD’s RX 680M, will stand a chance of matching GTX 1050 performance.

If your PC can meet the above specifications, you shouldn’t have any trouble running the game at 1080p with most of its settings on high at a comfortable 60 FPS in most settings. There might be the odd setting you need to turn down to maintain a steady frame rate, but for the most part, this kind of system will let you maximize performance and visuals at 1080p.

Meeting The Recommended Specs On A Modern PC

As with the minimum specifications, meeting the recommended specs for a lightweight game like Starship Troopers – Terran Command is not particularly difficult. However, we’ll want to make sure that we have a bit of wiggle room to guarantee the expected performance and detail levels without compromise.

For the processor, an Intel Core i5-10400, or an AMD Ryzen 5500 would be more than enough to deliver the kind of frame rates and general compute power for mid-range settings. Each sports six cores and 12 threads, alongside high boost clocks. That makes them fantastically affordable gaming processors and great chips for even lightweight photo and video editing if you dabble in that sort of thing.

As for graphics, an AMD RX 6400 would suffice again, but if you want a bit more grunt for higher frame rates or maximizing detail settings, you’d be better off targeting an Nvidia GTX 1650 Super, or an AMD RX 6500 XT.

For storage, 10GB is easy to handle on even the smallest of drives, but just make sure it’s an SSD. There’s no reason to consider a hard drive for game installs unless you have a gargantuan game library, and even then, you should put your actively played games on an SSD to get fast load times and a responsive gaming experience.

That’s why all Chillblast gaming PCs come with a high-speed NVMe SSD as a boot drive and game storage drive, as standard.

Playing Starship Troopers – Terran Command at 1440p

Image source: Steam

There are no official specifications for playing Terran Command at higher resolutions, so we’ll have to speculate about what you might need based on similar games and scaling up from what kind of performance we’ve seen from early testing of the demo.

Playing at higher resolutions doesn’t put much additional pressure on a CPU and can often, in fact, mean the CPU load is lessened while the graphics card shoulders more of the load. Still, we’d likely want to target a modern generation processor to make sure that it doesn’t bottleneck the GPU and provides you with the kind of performance you’d need for playing other games at 1440p, too.

With that in mind, the AMD Ryzen 5600, or Intel Core i5-12400 would be excellent choices for a 1440p gaming PC. They each have six cores and 12 threads, and much higher clock speeds than anything you’d need to get this game running well and looking great. Pair it with 16GB of RAM to ensure that no background tasks interfere with your gameplay performance and to make this system capable of playing other contemporary games, and you have a firm foundation for a great gaming PC.

The graphics card will need to be a bit heftier to game at this resolution, so you want to look to something more capable, like an Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti, or AMD RX 6600 XT. They won’t be enough to play every game at 1440p, especially modern AAA games, but they’re more than enough for Starship Troopers – Terran Command, and can play similarly lightweight games at 1440p with all detail settings at maximum, and comfortable frame rates.

Playing Starship Troopers – Terran Command at 4K

Image source: Steam

Playing any game at 4K resolution, even with modern hardware, is no walk in the park. Modern AAA games at 4K can bring even the most powerful of graphics cards to their knees; fortunately, Terran Command is not a AAA game. Still, if you want to keep all the settings high and continue to enjoy smooth frame rates at 4K resolution, you’ll need a PC that is much more capable than all of the others in this guide.

Most modern gaming CPUs should do just fine for this build, as it’s the GPU that will do the heavy lifting. That said, you still don’t want to go with something too entry-level as that can mean missing out on higher frame rate experiences where the game isn’t too demanding. A powerful mid-range CPU like an Intel Core i5-12600K, or AMD Ryzen 5700X would be a fantastic choice for a 4K gaming PC.

The graphics card is the real kicker in any 4K gaming PC, whether you’re playing Terran Command or something more demanding. Since this game isn’t AAA, we can get away with something more modest like an Nvidia RTX 3070, though if you plan to play other games at 4K resolution, then you’ll want to push for something more capable, like an AMD Radeon RX 6800, or the quintessential 4K GPU of its generation, the Nvidia RTX 3080.

Pair either of those with 16 to 32GB of high-speed memory, and make sure you have a fast NVMe SSD to power the boot drive and game library, and you can look forward to a fantastic 4K gaming experience in just about any game; Starship Troopers – Terran Command, included.