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#101
Sounds an awful lot like the X series of games. X3 Terran Conflict isn't particularly difficult to start out with, and has everything you mentioned.Must have joystick & cockpits, must have shiney shippes, must have long upgrade path and wide range of difficulty in different places, must have trading mining & loot.
Personally, I want a game like Freespace 2. Just a pure fighter-pilot-in-a-war game, no trading or mining required and instead have an extensive, awesome campaign.
JGE looks a lot more arcady, almost cartoonish, in comparison to Black Prophecy, however. I'm a lot more interested in the latter than in the former.
In any case however, I hate MMOs. I like games with a SP component and a smaller scale MP - for this I'm still of the opinion that Freelancer's MP is the best deal you can get, giving you a flexible MP experience while still allowing for persistence instead of just arena combat.
@Retro: The "vanilla" (non-modded) Freelancer experience is quite bland, especially in single player. It's the mods that make it shine. To be honest, without mods Freelancer would've kicked the bucket many years ago. To anyone who's only played the singleplayer when the game was initially released, I urge you to consider giving the MP/mods a shot. Sure, it may not be a hardcore space sim ala Elite, but it still is an enjoyable experience which, in my opinion, is a good break from the likes of EVE or X3 - all for a bargain price. It really got a whole lot nicer, I'd say.
Well, yes, Starshatter was ugly. Starshatter The Gathering Storm has improved graphics. I like them. I dont think a space sim needs a crytek 3 engine^^Imagine a WW2 Naval simulator, in space. That is Starshatter in a nutshell. Given, it is one of the few games that treats capital ships and fighters with equal detail, and a Carrier's hangerbay is probably one of the most detailed messes in the entire game. There is no mining, only capital ships and fighters slugging it out with eachother. Unfortunately, the graphics were not that great, though.
<Kalimac>Schakal - he's the hero #art deserves... but not the one it needs right now. So we'll hunt him, set the dogs on him, because he can take it.<***>god was sitting on the swiss alps and making germans. and the ones he didn't get right, he just tossed over his shoulder...
True, but the first Starshatter was REALLY ugly, and my standards are not very high to begin with (I consider Deus Ex 1 to have good graphics).Well, yes, Starshatter was ugly. Starshatter The Gathering Storm has improved graphics. I like them. I dont think a space sim needs a crytek 3 engine^^
Hell, now that I think about it, it was not the graphics technology that was ugly, it was a texture/design issue. Most ships just had one, uniform texture throughout the entire ship and it made the game look really bad.
It also did not look like there was any way to acquire new ships or repair/refuel ships you had in your fleet.
Last edited by Nanaki; 20th Oct 09 at 10:49 AM.
It was definitely all of those things, but the ability to play it multi player was just sweet. Sitting between two gate points and jumping on ships warping through the system was just awesome with a friend.I think what most people seemed to like about Freelancer is that it had a trading and upgrade component. It was "polished" (as most Microsoft games generally are), but I too found it a bit bland. The graphics were okay and well visualized in some areas like the crystal asteroid fields, and the transit system was well thought out. But when the darkness of space is more like a brightly lit Super Mario World, a single fighter can easily take out a whole mess of capital ships, and when you can complete the entire game without feeling like you need to purchase or install missiles to participate in dogfights with AI enemies, you know there's something a bit wrong with it.
But we love CoH, it's by far the best RTS game I've ever played. Every rose has its thorns, except CoH's thorns are more like laser guided serrated switch blades. - Painmuffin
#106
We did X, it has lost its way IMHO. No cockpits or other immersive finish, ship and gun speeds ludicrously slow, endless fiddling about. Its not really built as a trader, its built as a manufacturers economy sim which is by coincidence a trader. Its lost focus on core space sim gameplay. So I don't think X3 TC is what I want, I do have it and have played it, but no.Originally Posted by Langy
@ Nanaki, jeah the game has some issues, but it is very friendly for modding so, i like it
Freelancer was enjoyable, in fact due to the lack of other options in the genre I've started playing it again with the Discovery mod just this week.
However, I'm find myself really, REALLY bugged by the sense of scale. All of the planets are so tiny and ridiculously close together.
I just now purchased X3 because of what you guys have said about it.
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Nexus: The Jupiter Incident was fantastic. There were some odd frustrations about it, and I never did beat the second-to-last level (I'm not sure, but I think my ending combination of ships just didn't cut it, or something), but otherwise the combat was absolutely wonderful, and it was great fun having 2 battleships blast energy torpedoes at a ship, and then return with a volley of magma or torpedo fire to excuse the sorry buggers from the universe.
dormimos
#110
I never finished Nexus because a bug crashed the game to desktop whenever I destroyed the station thing. I tried that mission several times so not overly impressed tbh though I though Ace Rimmer was quite amusing.
You might like X3 Cybersargent, if you like mountain climbing, it has a fairly steep learning curve but it does work, mostly. The older the X game the more community scripts and mods it has so X3 will probably be more flexible than X3 Terran Conflict. I helped to beta test it but I am just bemused by their design decisions, I wonder if they are working on something else. I know at least one ex-egosoft employee is now working for Reakktor (Black Prophesy dev). Maybe they have all been poached by other operators in the German media industry.
Oh my Wiki has a list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...imulator_games
I very rarely used the movement controls in Nexus, generally targeting something and moving towards it was a lot easier than faffing around trying to target a specific point in space.
It does have some of my favourite moments in space games. I modded one playthrough to give the Angelwing more heavy weapons, and on one mission I had to go in cloaked to drop some satellites off. I came in stealthed and moved slowly to the first drop off near an asteroid, as I got closer my passive sensors picked up an enemy ship idling on the other side with it's shields down. I turned off everything I could do without, targeted the ship and manually charged all the rail guns before issuing a move to command on the other ship.
It was tense as my ship crawled over the surface of the asteroid on minimum thrust to avoid detection. I didn't know if I'd been spotted and the enemy was raising shields, rendering my charged weapons useless. Thankfully I was undetected and cleared the asteroid, as soon as all weapons were clear I dropped the cloak and immediately restored it, giving enough time for one massive volley at the enemy ship. It was pure spacenerdjoy watching my ship shimmer in and out of existence just long enough to deliver this huge torrent of fiery death, then watching it slam the unsuspecting enemy amidships and break it apart in one volley. Proper ship captainy moment it was.
I never really liked Nexus because it was just spamming two weapons. You had the most anti-powerful shield weapon to rape shields, and than a buttload of anti-hull weapons to rape them when their shields were down. The way the game mechanics worked generally discouraged anything else (I never even used lasers, fighters, missiles, or anything else really), and the most fun I got out of the game was the first few missions of the campaign where you did not have to deal with the silly antishield/antihull mechanics.
Their choice of bad guy in the campaign also meant that epic fleet vs fleet battles were far and few between (and epic fleet vs fleet battles stopped as soon as you got your 'I win' button in the campaign). It was basically a zombie survival game in spaaaaace.
You liar, tactics, ECM, even the environment as well as strike craft & lasers are fairly important in the game.I never really liked Nexus because it was just spamming two weapons. You had the most anti-powerful shield weapon to rape shields, and than a buttload of anti-hull weapons to rape them when their shields were down. The way the game mechanics worked generally discouraged anything else (I never even used lasers, fighters, missiles, or anything else really), and the most fun I got out of the game was the first few missions of the campaign where you did not have to deal with the silly antishield/antihull mechanics.
If you only fit your ships with anti shield and hull weapons, and you win the entire campaign, your copy must be bugged.
Freelancer was a very gun game, impressive modding too, but once you get the biggest and best ships there's no more fun to do.
#114
X3 Terran Conflict is significantly easier to get into than X3 Reunion. Has better modding capability, too, though some mods for X3 Reunion haven't been ported to X3:TC yet - though the only useful one I can remember right now would be the Xtended mod.
X3:TC's UI is a hell of a lot better than Reunion's, and you can find interesting missions a lot faster, which means you can get up in the world without building a huge manufacturing empire a lot easier. Only one of the game's plots requires a big manufacturing center, and in the patches they made it so you don't need such a ridiculous amount of resources as you did originally (though it's still going to take a long time to finish that mission, even with 10x time compression).
Everyone should play X3 if they are into this genre, even if it does have it's flaws. No genre enthusiasts playlist is complete without it.
I had the release version, played the campaign, than uninstalled it and never touched it again.If you only fit your ships with anti shield and hull weapons, and you win the entire campaign, your copy must be bugged.
Lasers were useless because any kind of shielding rendered them impotent, and it was simply easier and faster to just destroy the hull with hull-destruction weaponry if the shields were down.
I never really liked torpedoes/missiles because the sheer volume of enemies thrown at you sometimes, combined with the very low ammunition of those weapons, meant that you had a one-off shot, than that weapon slot was useless for the rest of that mission. There was no way to resupply your weapons or even repair your hull mid-mission, as far as I remember, unless your ship came with health regeneration built in which only, AFAIK, the Angelwing did.
Fighter craft, I loaded simply because there was no penalty to doing so, but I rarely used them, I think, been a long time since I played the game. I even kept a wing of vintage Earth-made fightercraft on my Angelwing for fun.
@nanaki, MelvinVM
from my experience going for Hull/Shields only, was viable and the most straight forward approach, especially later when you had lots of firepower at your disposal it was miles faster at taking down enemy ships.
In multiplayer you would lose as soon as the enemy brought lots of small laser equipped frigattes with ECM and strong engines. These could ususally evade direct hits and pummel subsystems, such as weapons et al. and therefore neglect your superior firepower.
As far as I remember shields would also only fend off a few laser hits completly before beeing pirced and then repeated hits on a subsystem could increase its recharge indefinetly. Therefore I would say that lasers were a viable option to gain the upper hand in the hull/shield draining battle.
I didn't use fighers and bombers much on the other hand because they seemed to be quite vurnable to flak-lasers and before destroying those other subsystems had higher priority. But if you caught some ships without flak, they could be devastating, same as with missiles.
the other thing I remember were those E-Bombs, which were borderline to imbalanced IMO, because they had loooong range, lots of Booom and huge splash radius. I don't remember if you could actually intercept chem.
@saki: Nah, E-Bombs can't be intercepted since they're not actual projectiles, just large blobs of energy. They were bloody fun to shoot though!
I also have to say I went hull/shield only. Most of the time, the lasers didn't do enough damage to prevent my ships from getting pummelled, so they rapidly lost their interest. Had there been more ways to evade fire or were the lasers more powerful in comparison to the hull/shield weapons, it might've been a different story. As it was it was just impractical and dangerous to attempt to disable a LOT of stuff versus just pounding on them.
#119
Are you serious? Angry that *gasp* a weapon doesn't have unlimited ammo? Also, lasers = subsystem destruction. While banging away at the ship with normal weaponary, use lasers to kill things like ... weapon generators? engines? etc.Lasers were useless because any kind of shielding rendered them impotent, and it was simply easier and faster to just destroy the hull with hull-destruction weaponry if the shields were down.
I never really liked torpedoes/missiles because the sheer volume of enemies thrown at you sometimes, combined with the very low ammunition of those weapons, meant that you had a one-off shot, than that weapon slot was useless for the rest of that mission. There was no way to resupply your weapons or even repair your hull mid-mission, as far as I remember, unless your ship came with health regeneration built in which only, AFAIK, the Angelwing did.
Fighter craft, I loaded simply because there was no penalty to doing so, but I rarely used them, I think, been a long time since I played the game. I even kept a wing of vintage Earth-made fightercraft on my Angelwing for fun.
<Hyperian> yes treb
<Hyperian> teach me how to be a player like you
<treb|coffee> 1. learn to dance 2. be yourself 3. treat them as friends
<Hyperian> those dont work
The shield piercing lasers are ungodly when mounted on a maneuverable ship, take out that weapon generator and the big fancy battleship is toast, unless it gets a lucky shot in first. Also strike craft in Nexus aren't the capital ship destroying superweapons of other games, the gunships and bombers are supposed to be used in a joint task force with laser equipped destroyers. Take out the flak system fast and that puppy is finished no matter how big it is, don't take it out and all your gunships will be vapourised before doing any damage.
Fighters themselves aren't there to be used offensively, they're an extension of the flak system to intercept gunships and bombers at a distance, but most importantly to take out those massive area of effect torpedoes before they get close enough to damage your fleet.
#121
Angelwing + cloak; coming up behind a strike force and obliterating their engines ... leave the rest to your fleet. Nothing is sweeter.
Nope, I am angry that I cannot resupply. Limited ammo is fine. Inability to resupply that ammo mid-battle is not fine. If you have to put enough realism in to add limited-ammunition weapons, than you have to put in the realism of mid-combat resupply. Putting in one without the other just reeks of half-assed.Angry that *gasp* a weapon doesn't have unlimited ammo?
Especially when it felt like the 'Support Ship' name was a bit misleading, considering the only support it ever does is the huge fortress shield bubble. Being able to transport spare parts/ammo from it to the rest of the fleet in transports would have made ammunition-based weapons a lot better.
As I said before, Lasers did not seem to work very well at all at destroying subsystems of shielded ships when I tried them, it usually took forever to even do a little damage, maybe they got massively buffed in a post-release patch or something that made them able to actually pierce shields, but they were ineffective when I used them.Also, lasers = subsystem destruction. While banging away at the ship with normal weaponary, use lasers to kill things like ... weapon generators? engines? etc.
Well, im hardly asking to have one fighter take out hundreds of capital ships like what happens in most sims *cough* Freelancer *cough*.Also strike craft in Nexus aren't the capital ship destroying superweapons of other games
Hell, I might have even used fighters to take out strike craft and such and than docked them all and went on my shielddestroy/hulldestroy spree. I hardly remember what I did many years ago.
#123
Actually, almost all of Xtended's features are in TC already (some of the Xtended mod team worked on the game.)
I'm a little surprised that Privateer only got a passing mention and that Privateer 2 wasn't even spoken about.
Perhaps that's simply because I place more importance on the story than the other stuff. Though I never found Privateer 2 lacking in the space combat, upgrading, new ships, trading or missions. The AI wasn't bad either.
I've only taken a passing look at Freelancer and Freespace and X3 I just couldn't get into. Tie Fighter didn't seem like it deserved even half of the praise it got, though it was a good game.
Tachyon: The Fringe was another good one, but the story wasn't as good as Privateer 2's story. I mean ... come on. What story is going to beat Clive Owen as Sir Lev Arris.
The cutscenes were orgasmic, the one-liners were great, the story was top notch, and the game play was very well done. Long story short? Play Privateer 2. Now.
It takes a lot of argument
to convince most people
that they are lying.
#125
Tie Fighter was huge for its time. It had a mature storyline, loads of half-decent voice acting and really good production values for a game that was released 15 years ago.
Heh. Just checked out the Privateer 2 game trailer on YouTube. Clive Owen looks like a little boy.
Ser Lev Arris, it was the Privateer 2 version of Mr, the women were called Sera when people were being polite. Also it had Christopher Walken in, how very cool was that?
I think Privateer was as close to perfect as a space trader is going to get, combat, exploration and trading were all fun and intuitive and the universe felt real. Unlike the X series. All you'd really need to make an awesome game now would be to re-make Privateer with current gen graphics. I think I'd faint over that even more than a Tie Fighter re-make.
#127
Yeah, some of the stuff in Xtended was in TC, but a lot of it was left out, too - a few races, a large number of ships, etc. Still, your point and mine fit together well - there's very little reason to buy X3: Reunion if you don't already have X3: Terran Conflict.Actually, almost all of Xtended's features are in TC already (some of the Xtended mod team worked on the game.)
Privateer is awesome. I remember when I played it with my friend...ah those beutifull cockpits, New Detroit cutscenes, everithing...I think Privateer was as close to perfect as a space trader is going to get, combat, exploration and trading were all fun and intuitive and the universe felt real. Unlike the X series. All you'd really need to make an awesome game now would be to re-make Privateer with current gen graphics. I think I'd faint over that even more than a Tie Fighter re-make.
#129
DarkSpace is growing on me. Once you get the hang of the navigation system and stop crashing into planets it starts to come together and you begin to feel like a captain. Core gameplay is new to me and its not bad, up to date version could be pretty spiffy.
Just realised no one had posted it yet, the Ur-Quan Masters/SC2 while by no means a sim, ships manoeuvre as you would expect in its fast paced and dramatic combat. Since its open-source/freeware, there is no real excuse not to play it unless you hate funny, cool, and deep gameplay and story.
#131
Building up planets is how to fast track prestige gain. Once you find a server/time of day where people are actually working together as a team, you'll really start to realize the beauty of the game.DarkSpace is growing on me. Once you get the hang of the navigation system and stop crashing into planets it starts to come together and you begin to feel like a captain. Core gameplay is new to me and its not bad, up to date version could be pretty spiffy.
#132
Heresy Wars (www.heresywars.com) is something new, and has a trailer out.
Looks like they have a long way to go yet though.
Retro- Link appears to be broken
A176- There doesn't seem to ever be anything bigger than a Destroyer on the scenario server, is there a ship size cap?
Star Control 2Just realised no one had posted it yet, the Ur-Quan Masters/SC2 while by no means a sim, ships manoeuvre as you would expect in its fast paced and dramatic combat. Since its open-source/freeware, there is no real excuse not to play it unless you hate funny, cool, and deep gameplay and story.
#135
CERTAIN SHIPS NEED A SHIPYARD ON A PLANET (AND RESOURCES) TO ACCESS. FORCES TEAM TO PLAY THE ECONOMIC GAME AS WELL.A176- There doesn't seem to ever be anything bigger than a Destroyer on the scenario server, is there a ship size cap?
#136
The link is actually www.Heresywar.com (singular, no s.)
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle
#137
I bought it based on recommendations from these parts as well, and I have to say that I've been unable to figure out even the basics of trading / where to start playing. I just feel lost when I start, even after I printed out the entire manual (got it off Steam) and have no clue what to do. I've searched in vain for a newbie-friendly "start here" guide, but have been unable to find one. Any suggestions from those of you who've played it?X3 Terran Conflict isn't particularly difficult to start out with
#138
There is a trading guide in the manual which gives you a few stations/goods to trade to get you on your feet. But I agree, the game seems to punish you for wanting to have fun.
There's usually two ways to start a X3 game, depending on your perfered style of playing.
Whatever you choose to do thoughe will require you to explore the nearby systems, good thing is that you usually start with a relatively fast M4 class fighter, so you could explore relatively fast. one trick here is to go to game play and set the SETA factor to 10, and explore the near by systems.
If you want to start trading, your focus of explorer is the factories in each systems. As you visit them they will show up on your universe map and after you have the data on a couple systems you will have a good idea what is required at each place and where those goods are produced. If you have read the manual, you will have an idea how economies work. so figure out a trade route only after you have a good picture of the needs and production of a local systems.
The other start is of course the pirating path. Your goal in exploration in this case is to find gates and systems. So you should be able to find a pirate system pretty close around most starting positions. Once you found one, just start to attack ships that's not armed or protected, and you can try to capture or just destroy them and take their cargo.
it doesn't matter if you get into trouble with al the races. you can always get it back later by shooting pirates in their space once you get going.
Last edited by zakublazer; 22nd Oct 09 at 2:46 PM.
#140
Thanks, TDG.
Yes it's WWW.HERESYWAR.COM - and they have a gameplay video(the second one - the first is a high quality trailer that requires a friend request) that shows a fleet convoy defense. SFX from weapons are somewhat underwhelming, but perhaps it's one to keep an eye on.
Last edited by Retroboy; 22nd Oct 09 at 3:15 PM.
nice they've set the trailer as a private video retro
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.
#142
Noted. Pretty stupid if'n y'all asks me.
The combat video looked nice though.
Also watched some video on this naumachia thing. Looks very pretty and very I-war'ish .
There is a playable demo out for Heresy War, I remember playing it at some point.
http://www.heresywar.com/download.html
Ah yes.
Does anyone know how to get Privateer 2 to work again?
#146
#147
Instead of trying to jump into trading or anything, try playing through one of the plots first. If you go with the Terran Defender start, you'll be able to start the Terran plot right off. Otherwise, go to Omicron Lyrae, where you'll probably be asked to escort some people to another system; do that and you'll be able to start the Terran plot.I bought it based on recommendations from these parts as well, and I have to say that I've been unable to figure out even the basics of trading / where to start playing. I just feel lost when I start, even after I printed out the entire manual (got it off Steam) and have no clue what to do. I've searched in vain for a newbie-friendly "start here" guide, but have been unable to find one. Any suggestions from those of you who've played it?
This is a half-decent walkthrough, which should help you out in the beginning. Just ignore the talk about his mod - it's a blatant cheat and isn't required to actually do much of anything mentioned in the walkthrough.
There is really no need to go with the plots for X3 though.
i have always started off my career with being a pirate, and only went onto the plot missions after capturing some nice M3s.
#149
Yeah, there's no need to, but it's a significantly easier way to get into the game than to just go off on your own doing your own thing. Plus, the Terran plot is essentially a tutorial for the rest of the game.
Its significantly more fun to do the plots. Starting with nothing and basically grinding to get anything interesting is boring as hell.
I started with the Terran Defender plot, mainly because I live on Terra and damned if I'm going to play as an Argon swine. Did the first few plot missions, sold off all the crap fighters they gave me for a squadron and did a few basic missions till I could get an Auto-Trader up and running. The instant I discovered the greatness of an auto-trader I did some more basic missions to get more of them and left it running overnight so they could work their magic. Did the rest of the Terran Defender plot with all the subtlety and tact that an M7 (Heavy Frigate) could muster.
Had 10 auto-traders flying round the closed environment that is Sol before I really got out and started having any real fun with the game.
I highly suggest you either read into a money making guide or get a quick start mod. You literally need to build a little trading empire in this game to have any fun, else your stuck with a shitty little fighter and no good missiles for a very long while. Do it the real way the first time if you can, just for the experience, then save it and never ever start a new game ever again.
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