Star Trek: Starfleet Command III is a Star Trek computer game published in 2002. It takes place in the Next Generation/Deep Space Nine/Voyager era, as opposed to the previous games in the series, which took place in the TOS movie era. Although the gameplay of SFC III attempts to retain the aspects which made the original SFC successful, there are voices which decry the "dumbed down" game dynamics represented in SFC III. One of the most striking changes, although certainly not the only one, over the old games, is the fact that all starships only have 4 shield "faces"; those of fore, aft, port and starboard, whereas in the original shield rules as drawn from the original table top game "Star Fleet Battles" were translated into 6 shield sides for the original SFC games, and thus much more true to the spirit of the game from which the PC SFC games were derived.