Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Tyrian on June 12, 2011, 05:05:21 pm
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I've been trying to find a good free roaming space game for a while now, but I keep coming up empty. I've played the I-War games to death, along with Freelancer. I played a bit of an X3 demo (I forget which one), but couldn't really get into it, mostly because of the indecipherable UI and the fact that I spend about two hours ferrying some guy from station A to station B inside the same orbit... On the other hand, I only spent a couple of hours with it, so maybe it gets better later.
I guess overall, I'm looking for something similar to one of the X3 games, something with combat, trading, maybe a little corporate empire-building.
Anyone have any suggestions? Should I give one of the X3's another shot?
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EVE :nervous:
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I thought about that, but I don't want to pay a monthly subscription. Also, I think the X3 demo I tried was Reunion. Is Terran Conflict significantly better?
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I am grinning like a mad one at the irony of a person with the name Tyrian is asking about free roaming space games :D .
On a more serious note if you fancy going retro Wing Commander Privateer I/II are good along with the venerable Elite series
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X3 is notoriously hard to get in to - there are those out there who say it has the steepest learning curve of any game. The reward is debatable - at least with Eve you have the added random human element which doesn't exist as much in X3 single player. Maybe stick with it for a few more hours and see if you have an epiphany, otherwise consider an alternative?
The sad thing is there just aren't that many modern space sims out there that offer what I think you're looking for.
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I thought about that, but I don't want to pay a monthly subscription. Also, I think the X3 demo I tried was Reunion. Is Terran Conflict significantly better?
If you're seriously willing to consider the brutally unfriendly EVE, you don't actually have to pay a monthly subscription - you can make enough money ingame to buy Pilot License Extensions with ISK, the ingame currency.
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Definitely X series, my father plays it and managed to built a pretty sizeable corporate empire.
I've only flew in X3 a few times, in combat (I'm not patient enough for economic side of such games, but dad once had something else to do and left cleaning an enemy strike group to me. I've even managed to capture a nice ship for his collection, one he had trouble getting. :) ), but I can say it's quite enjoyable to fly. Interface is complicated, but you can use a hotkeys for nearly everything. Dynamic economy is also incredible, the simulation is very complex and detailed. Too much for me (it was fine with Freelancer's easy economy), but you may like it.
The learning curve is rather steep indeed, but you can try X2, which is somewhat simpler (and perhaps XTension and original X, though I never tried them).
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Nuke once suggested Oolite, which is an open source clone of the classic Elite game:
http://www.oolite.org/
...I have yet to play it myself. You might also look into the original games if you want to fire up DOSbox. If THAT interests you, you can always look for Frontier or GL Frontier.
I believe Vega Strike is also free-roaming:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/
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Yes, Vega Strike is free roaming.
There was also a Privateer conversion for it's engine.
It's missing a few things, but it's quite accurate (again, according to my dad. I don't generally play such games).
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http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/
have fun
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Free roaming, hmm. Freelancer, anyone? How about Star Control 2?
There's also some lesser known games, such as Hardwar (which is currently unavailable to buy legally), and Darkstar One.
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Oh ****, Hardwar was amazing.
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elite
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/
have fun
yay! new version
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You might do well to wait for X-Rebirth, depending on the amount of time it actually takes to develop and whether it lives up to the promise of being just as deep without the uneccesary complication of the original. X-TC is good, but there are annoying glitches that can ruin the experience at times (Your Colossus was destroyed in [insert system] by Pirate Harrier...:wtf:).
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Battlecruiser 3000
If you find X3 a little too intense with all it's fancy doo-dads and jee-jaws, why not try X1 and 2? They're a lot simpler and easier to get into (in my opinion anyway).
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No Tachyon the Fringe in here... seriously....
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No Tachyon the Fringe in here... seriously....
that game was hardly free roaming. you werent allowed to leave the base unless you had a mission. point of free roaming is that you can wander around mindlessly and the game dont care.
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There's also Pioneer Space Sim, but it is still in rather early alpha and is missing quite a bit. Has procedural systems and planets though. (be warned, the face generator for spaceport comms can get reeally creepy looking people)
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Omg, Hardwar. Thanks for reminding me, I must find my CDs and play that again.
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Freelancer with the Discovery Mod
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There's also Pioneer Space Sim, but it is still in rather early alpha and is missing quite a bit. Has procedural systems and planets though. (be warned, the face generator for spaceport comms can get reeally creepy looking people)
Never heard of that one indeed! I wonder if they took Tom's reverse engineered GLFrontier code (which can be downloaded from his site) and started expanding on it. Might be worth finding out the relation between the Oolite community as well, given the obvious Elite series connections.
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oolite is pretty good at bringing an old game up to modern tech without making it look any less retro.
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I seem to be ahead of the curve with you on this one (this time, at least), Nuke. Well, at least with pointing these things out.
Oolite also offers the ability to mod and edit the resources which it uses, which of course means you can implement higher-detail models which actually can be quite well detailed.
...I still want to see the iNovae engine out for modding purposes, however. I can't think of a better engine for Frontier-esque games.
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I seem to be ahead of the curve with you on this one (this time, at least), Nuke. Well, at least with pointing these things out.
Oolite also offers the ability to mod and edit the resources which it uses, which of course means you can implement higher-detail models which actually can be quite well detailed.
...I still want to see the iNovae engine out for modding purposes, however. I can't think of a better engine for Frontier-esque games.
i was playing oolite years ago. im sure i posted about it too.
thread did make me go after a newer version though. better equip than last time. but for some reason the game has a hard coded joystick deadzone that is really pissing me off. not only that it has a deadzone but its not implemented correctly. instead of the input ramping up or down from 0 at the edge of the deadzone, it just jumps to what the value would be if it was linear ramped from center. its really annoying, so im downloading the source so i can fix the issue. the devs must be a bunch of gamepad users.
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Heh. Post fix/mod, get name in credits.
Go Nuke!
:D
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Heh. Post fix/mod, get name in credits.
Go Nuke!
:D
who the hell sets a deadzone with a #define? guh, and aparently its bigger for osx users.
youd think that by 2010 joystick code would be somewhat standard in its implementation. it doesn't seem to help much that joystick technology is devolving. aparently the entire reason for the setting is so that 360 gamepad users can play the game on osx due to a bug in the hardware drivers. im tired of computer games supporting console controlers over pc controllers. at least its not a commercial game otherwise id be rather pissed off at it.
so much for compiling it, it seems to be setup for cross compiling under linux, but im not about to setup a linux box just to fix a bug in a game that im already starting to get bored with again.
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Frontier Elite 2........... My alltime favourite. And it fits on a digital watches CMOS :nod:
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Frontier Elite 2........... My alltime favourite. And it fits on a digital watches CMOS :nod:
that game is somewhat tedious to the point where i have given up trying to play it. granted it did a lot tech wise. it had colored lighting and true curved surfaces, years before quake2/3 had accomplished the same, and all without the luxury of hardware rendering. it was the first game that attempted to make newtonian physics playable. damn impressive accomplishment, but none the less harder than **** to play.
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Wow, that's a lot of feedback. I'm going to start going through it all. Oolite looks promising. Thanks!
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Hmmm...
For the Wing Commander chaps out there, I found this when browsing Sourceforge:
http://privateer.sourceforge.net/news.shtml
*Edit:
In my random searching, I've come across something called Noctis - is anyone familiar with it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctis
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Evochron series (the latest is Evochron Mercenary) is a good choice (but honestly I having a hard time at collecting bucks at first)
Also
X REBIRTH!
http://www.egosoft.com/games/x_rebirth/info_en.php (http://www.egosoft.com/games/x_rebirth/info_en.php)
Seriously, it looks hawt.
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I thought about that, but I don't want to pay a monthly subscription. Also, I think the X3 demo I tried was Reunion. Is Terran Conflict significantly better?
If you're seriously willing to consider the brutally unfriendly EVE, you don't actually have to pay a monthly subscription - you can make enough money ingame to buy Pilot License Extensions with ISK, the ingame currency.
This is true, but I'd like to add that it takes at least several months to be able to make enough money to do this, unless you have well-connected friends in the game already. That being said, EVE is about as free-roaming as you can get.
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Well, technically speaking, Space Rangers 2 is free roaming... and it is in space... so...
@Twenty: You can always come up with a company that gives loans to people, amass a great fortune, dissolve the company, take all the money, get the best possible ship, and put a bounty on yourself
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wasn't I-War 2 also free-roaming? I've only played it for a couple of hours and that a while back, but I think there was a simulated galaxy and you could fly to different star systems.
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Well, technically speaking, Space Rangers 2 is free roaming... and it is in space... so...
@Twenty: You can always come up with a company that gives loans to people, amass a great fortune, dissolve the company, take all the money, get the best possible ship, and put a bounty on yourself
This is true. You can make a lot of money very fast is you're a good scammer.
EVE: proof that in an atmosphere of total freedom, people exercise it almost entirely to screw each other over. :D
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From everything I've heard, EVE isn't so much a free-roaming space themed MMO with scammers as it is an organized crime simulator with warp drives.
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From everything I've heard, EVE isn't so much a free-roaming space themed MMO with scammers as it is an organized crime simulator with warp drives.
Well, there's a lot in the game you can do without involving yourself in crime. Personally, I'm a miner, I shoot rocks and make a crapton of money selling ores. But the people who buy the ores from me probably use them in scams and the products made from them get used in scams...and well, crap, you're really not that far off. There's gonna be crime at some point.
Sometimes I have my suspicions that it was originally someone's college sociology project - give a socially maladjusted demographic a sandbox universe and the closest thing to a free-market economy outside a perfect simulation and watch them destroy each other in a supernova of greed and selfishness. Y'know, just like the real world. :P
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Funny part being, is some people get all this ingame money, and sell it for real money
That's where the real fortune lays
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BTW, X Rebirth presentation at Gamescom (dunno whether it has been posted already though)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6UAB-YNXns (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6UAB-YNXns)
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(Your Colossus was destroyed in [insert system] by Pirate Harrier...:wtf:).
Your Sathanas was destroyed by Alpha 1.
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Your sunflower oil refinery in Argon Prime was destroyed by mammoth transporter.
:hopping:
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The Escape Velocity series and Transcendence are not considered free-roaming, right?
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I'd consider Transcendence free-roaming, Yes you have a task to complete, but i can't for the life of me find the system so i just fly around...
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Oh, that? The end point is in the Heretic system. It should be somewhere around the bottom-right of the system, quite a distance away from the centre. You'll need to help the various stations at the centre first, though. Also minimise the number of stations lost to the Iocrym Sentinels. Once you complete enough missions, you can fly to the end point, where the Iocrym Command Ship is waiting near a jump node. Destroy it and salvage a special rod from its wreck. Use it on the node to activate it and jump out.
A strong shield with a high regen rate is strongly recommended for protection against the Command Ship's Quantumsphere Disintegrator as well as the Sentinels it summons.
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The Escape Velocity series and Transcendence are not considered free-roaming, right?
I can especially recommend the Escape Velocity Series. Buy NOVA (the thrid one), there are plug-ins for the two previous titles which enable you to play them for free (legal)
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Speaking of X-Series.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ7z1HVonUM&feature=player_embedded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ7z1HVonUM&feature=player_embedded)
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I dunno.
- A new plot throws you into the power struggle between corporations at a time of war.
- More than 30 new ships and stations
- New Stock Exchange feature allows advanced investment strategies
- Improved graphics quality setting for high end machines
- Improved UI introducing charts to visualize economic developments
- Support for head tracking
Kinda not excited about playing EvE offline.
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I can't be the only one who feels like "investment strategies" and "entertaining gameplay" should be mutually-exclusive concepts. :p
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Speaking of X-Series.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ7z1HVonUM&feature=player_embedded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ7z1HVonUM&feature=player_embedded)
Wait what.
How does this suddenly come up out of the blue when they've been talking about X-Rebirth for how long now?
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At least slightly on-topic, I keep wondering if the CryEngine could be used to make a space sim. The graphics could be fantabulous, and the physics implementation doesn't seem too bad, either.
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At least slightly on-topic, I keep wondering if the CryEngine could be used to make a space sim. The graphics could be fantabulous, and the physics implementation doesn't seem too bad, either.
Too bad it has a habit of making computers Cry
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(Your Colossus was destroyed in [insert system] by Pirate Harrier...:wtf:).
Your Sathanas was destroyed by Alpha 1.
Thank god for mods and scripts that fix that. I play X3:TC with added cockpits, scripts that improve and add many other things.
It is FABOLOUS.
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Sadly, any combination of scripts I try to put always end in disappearing explosions and special effects :(
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offline.
:confused:
Wot?
Offline version?
Curious mode engaged.
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Despite being a fan of the X series, I think I'll give this one a miss. It looks like it's doing an X:Terran Conflict on us really, providing, effectively, an expansion pack as a whole seperate game. X:TC was supposed to be an expansion to X3:Reunion, and ended up as a seperate game, I was willing to forgive that (and pay full price for it), but only once, I'm not doing it again.
I'll wait for Rebirth and see how that turns out.
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Speaking of X-Series.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ7z1HVonUM&feature=player_embedded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ7z1HVonUM&feature=player_embedded)
Avalabe for PC on Steam: December 15th (Emphasis mine - typo theirs)
If that can sneak into the trailer, I can only imagine what's snuck into their code. Sweet trailer, up until those last five seconds, though.
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At least slightly on-topic, I keep wondering if the CryEngine could be used to make a space sim. The graphics could be fantabulous, and the physics implementation doesn't seem too bad, either.
Too bad it has a habit of making computers Cry
True, but I really think the whole issue was a bit overblown. My old desktop rig with a Phenom II and GeForce 9800 GTX++ ran the original Crysis at 1680x1050 pretty well on medium settings and it was already outdated by that point. I think what made the early CryEngine games so hard on computers was all the scenery porn. Throw it in space where your biggest bottleneck is (probably) gonna be texture rendering, particles, and physics, even an i3 with a 550 ti should be able to eat it for breakfast, and that's an entry level gaming rig these days.
I actually downloaded the CryEngine source code and level editor. I want to see if this is possible.
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I dunno.
- A new plot throws you into the power struggle between corporations at a time of war.
- More than 30 new ships and stations
- New Stock Exchange feature allows advanced investment strategies
- Improved graphics quality setting for high end machines
- Improved UI introducing charts to visualize economic developments
- Support for head tracking
Kinda not excited about playing EvE offline.
It's better than it sounds. Sometimes. Once you get into it. I've got a two-month free trial if anyone wants it...
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What about Naev?
http://blog.naev.org/
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Speaking of X-Series.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ7z1HVonUM&feature=player_embedded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ7z1HVonUM&feature=player_embedded)
Iiiiiii'mmmm excited!
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Speaking of X-Series.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ7z1HVonUM&feature=player_embedded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ7z1HVonUM&feature=player_embedded)
Iiiiiii'mmmm excited!
Me too, and it's three days after I hand in the first draft of my thesis!
Time to snuggle up to the joystick!
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! :D :D
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Time to snuggle up to the joystick!
:wakka:
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Time to snuggle up to the joystick!
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! :D :D
Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?
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At least slightly on-topic, I keep wondering if the CryEngine could be used to make a space sim. The graphics could be fantabulous, and the physics implementation doesn't seem too bad, either.
Too bad it has a habit of making computers Cry
Not anymore, my computer, which is a very good, modern, well tuned machine, but nothing that costs a couple thousand dollars, is able to run Crysis on maxed out settings. I've heard that people with computers now considered "current generation" are able to run Crysis on max. It turned out Crysis was ahead of it's time by about 4 years. Granted, it's an eon in computer industry, but we're here now.
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I always get suckered in to buying the next X-* game, I have no idea why or how it happens because I always end up absolutely hating them..
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I once tried a game from the X-series at a friends, the X2 or one of the X3 games I think, hoping it was a lot like privateer which dad had on his PC but found it quickly lost my interest. He's really into them, I don't get why. Playing Freespace and X-Wing lately has more been nostalgia probably, strange as I disapprove of clinging to nostalgia! :P That and the mods/campaigns here were really worth it.
There were some rumours about LucasArts considering a space-sim again but those remained rumours I think. Probably based on that Lawrence Holland in an interview said he'd be interested in returning to the series when time and technology had moved on further.
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I once tried a game from the X-series at a friends, the X2 or one of the X3 games I think, hoping it was a lot like privateer which dad had on his PC but found it quickly lost my interest. He's really into them, I don't get why.
The X series is more comparable to games like Transport Tycoon, Business Tycoon and others, rather than other flight sims.
The flying about is just a bonus.
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Starfarer.
When it's released, that is. Or when the next update for the alpha comes out in a few weeks. Either way, will be free-roaming at that point. And it's in space. And it's a game.
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I once tried a game from the X-series at a friends, the X2 or one of the X3 games I think, hoping it was a lot like privateer which dad had on his PC but found it quickly lost my interest. He's really into them, I don't get why.
Because can fly hunderds of different ships - from freighters to capitals ships.
Because you can have a whole empire - a whole army you can command around.
Because you can train troops and board and capture enemy ships.
Also because it looks pretty and you can do s****loads of stuff.
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Yes.. I suppose you also think Star Trek the motionless picture was a thrilling and action packed film.
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Heheh, also know as Star Trek: The Slow-Motion Picture :)
I get why some people like the X series. I did play X1 and X2 and briefly tried 3. But tbh playing that game is almost like another job. I don't need that atm, what I do want is an immersive experience in a large, explorable universe. Smuggle stuff beneath some opressive space empire's radar, pick up missions from shady characters, engage in an interesting plotline (preferably something more than Xenon bad, shoot Xenon). I have no interest in building a virtual economical space empire, worrying about securing supply routes and resources and keeping the profits up, etc. It's basically a vast space economy sim, not exactly what I was looking for. So I lost interest. Those who want exactly that, a first person perspective space tycoon game, will get a blast out of the x games. Those of us who just want a Han Solo type of experience pretty much have to look elsewhere.
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Yes.. I suppose you also think Star Trek the motionless picture was a thrilling and action packed film.
The new one?
That piece of garbage? :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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You do have a plot and missions (some of them quite good).
And you don't HAVE to build a space empire. And evne if you want to, you can automate 90% of it.
You can smuggle stuf and pick up missions. But I guess you never got to that part. :P
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Currently having a blast playing the stock market whilst I fly my Centaur (with a Nova Prototype flying shotgun) around the Argon sectors bordering Terran space and rack up some lovely, lovely bounty money by destroying invading Terran ships. (Saw a beautiful slugging match between an Argon Boreas and a Terran Kyoto, along with their attendant fleets)
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The new one?
That piece of garbage? :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
No, he did not mean the new one. That one's anything but motionless. He meant the original Star Trek: The (slow) Motion Picture. The one with V'ger, Ilia the bald chick from Delta and a 15 minute undocking sequence which I guess audiences found interesting at the time.
You do have a plot and missions (some of them quite good).
And you don't HAVE to build a space empire. And evne if you want to, you can automate 90% of it.
You can smuggle stuf and pick up missions. But I guess you never got to that part. :P
In X3, no I didn't get that far. Not sure if they fixed it in X3 but in X2 picking up side missions was a waste of time. At least where accumulating profits is concerned. The rewards were peanuts, not nearly enough to cover the (astronomical) costs of fixing any damage your ship might have picked up during flight. Frankly, I was pretty much done with the franchise by the time I finished X2. I completed X1 and X2, having played through the plot and having a huge space empire. But frankly getting it all set up is a major drag for me, and I pretty much hate cheating. I feel much more at home with games like I-War 2, or even Freelancer. Fl had a large, cool universe to explore, a pretty good plot (much more interesting, for me, than the slow paced X stuff), lots of characters, ships, weapons, etc. Ship control was arcade like to say the least, planet scales totally off, but it was what any game is supposed to be first and foremost - tons of fun. X series, for me, was always more work than fun. I prefer being paid for my work. Unless it's Diaspora :P
One other thing that the X universe always failed to convey, in my opinion, is the vastness of the universe. Even in completely astronomically wrong universe of Freelancer I had a feeling of being in a vast explorable universe. The X universe feels like a bunch inter-connected at 90 degrees boxes, each having a 2d texture of planet and local universe on it's walls, a few space stations, and gates on some ends of the box that lead to other boxes. Never felt right to me, I had a constant feeling of flying inside a small skybox and that totally killed all immersion for me.
Not saying they're bad games, they just concentrate on things I don't find all that interesting. So no need to be defensive, if you like those games that's fine. We're not talking about the same game anyway, I'm pretty much explaining how X1 and X2 put me off that entire series, and you keep talking based on your experience with X3, a game I didn't play and have little interest in.
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You do have a plot and missions (some of them quite good).
And you don't HAVE to build a space empire. And evne if you want to, you can automate 90% of it.
You can smuggle stuf and pick up missions. But I guess you never got to that part. :P
In X3, no I didn't get that far. Not sure if they fixed it in X3 but in X2 picking up side missions was a waste of time. At least where accumulating profits is concerned. The rewards were peanuts, not nearly enough to cover the (astronomical) costs of fixing any damage your ship might have picked up during flight. Frankly, I was pretty much done with the franchise by the time I finished X2. I completed X1 and X2, having played through the plot and having a huge space empire. But frankly getting it all set up is a major drag for me, and I pretty much hate cheating. I feel much more at home with games like I-War 2, or even Freelancer. Fl had a large, cool universe to explore, a pretty good plot (much more interesting, for me, than the slow paced X stuff), lots of characters, ships, weapons, etc. Ship control was arcade like to say the least, planet scales totally off, but it was what any game is supposed to be first and foremost - tons of fun. X series, for me, was always more work than fun. I prefer being paid for my work. Unless it's Diaspora :P
X3: TC is different in quite a few ways.
You get standard random mission ( a big variety of them) that get generated in sectors and you got plot mission. You have several different storylines you can do. Usually you have some requirements to start some storylines (specificreputation, loaction and such)
You also have a repair laser, so you can repair ships. Mission bring in more $$$ and with all the extra scripts, oyu can set up some trade station and transports, fire the thing up and never have to worry about it again. You don't even have to land to take the credits- they can be automaticly transferred to you.
Fun is somewhat defined by what you're trying to do and what you think you should do. If you think you must builda big empire, and you don't like it, the game won't be fun. The gist is to play it the way you want to.
You don't really need a huge trade empire. Plot mission reward you with lots of credits and ships.
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Solar Jetman....
Sort of.
BEST NES GAME EVAAAAAAR!
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:nervous: I hope I'm not intruding.....
I don't think it's free-roaming, but maybe you should give Allegiance (http://www.freeallegiance.org/) a try.
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The thing about X3's plot missions is that, particularly in the case of the Xenon base, they can, quite literally, take weeks of real time to complete, and that's just ferrying stuff back and forth. Whilst the automation features are pretty good, I'm really hoping the revamp promised in the new game will make management of stations and routes easier, as well as make auto-trading ships less monumentally stupid.
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:nervous: I hope I'm not intruding.....
I don't think it's free-roaming, but maybe you should give Allegiance (http://www.freeallegiance.org/) a try.
that actually looks rather fun....I might give it a whirl later.
Well done FC.
*pat on head*
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You may consider to give a try to evochron mercenary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru8kzWyPc1Y
there is a 2 hours demo available if i m not wrong.
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I too vouch for Escape Velocity. I was so excited when I got Freelancerr because it was essentially a 3D version.
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EV Nova with EV Classic mode: THE BEST THING EVER! (Yes, I'm including that. Yes, I've done that. Yes, EV:N's better.)
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Oh yes..EV: Nova is great (and I has a mod made for it too)
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Or you Could wait for this games to come out...
http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=33 (http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=33)
(sorry if this has already been posted)