Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Vasudan Commander on May 21, 2007, 01:10:03 am
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It's hard to come across sim games that can stand up to the likes of Freespace 2 (in fact, i dont think there are ANY sim games that can match Freespace 2 ! :nod: )
But , perhaps there are some that come close. Games that jumped out at me that seem to have similarities to Freespace 2 are such:-
Mechwarrior 4 series (Vengeance, Black Knight, Mercanaries (there is a MASSIVE mod for Mercanaries, and the multiplayer community for MW4 :Merc is alive and well)
Freelancer / Starlancer (They're good for a space sim but dont come close to matching FS2. Freelancers attempt at 'replayability' gets rather dull after you finish the main campaign)
The 'X' series isnt even worth putting up here because it stinks so bad. It took the struggling genre that is space sims and cut off its legs then beat it to death.
This said, Freespace 2 holds a monopoly on the genre (what little is left of it). According to highly acclaimed game reveiw site 'gamespot', Freespace 2 is ranked 407 out of 37,809 games. Thats pretty damn impressive for a game that came out in '01 and isnt even on the shelves anymore. I think Hard Light and its community should give themselves a pat on the back for contributing to the popularity of the game, and letting their friends and their friends friends and everyone they know about Freespace 2, and the fact that such a wicked game is now free.
Kudos to you all. And to sum up, check out those games i listed, if you arent into them. They're worth looking at.
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As far as I know, FS2 is, and was always, the best. It combined the best of the best as found in X-wing, Wing Commander, and a few other flight sims in terms of interface and controls, multiplied the complexity and capability, and had a darn good story to boot.
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Thats pretty damn impressive for a game that came out in '01 and isnt even on the shelves anymore.
'99 :p :lol:
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Thats pretty damn impressive for a game that came out in '01 and isnt even on the shelves anymore.
'99 :p :lol:
Yes, which makes it being 407th even more impressive. If you like Freespace2 then you might like Starwraith 3D. It' no way near the graphic capabilities of FreeSpace2, but for around 30mb complete, it doesn't do to bad and it's sister product (Riftspace IIRC) has the capability of re-entry from Space to atmosphere as long as you fly in the re-entry corridor. They're both written in something called Dark Basic and are both under 30mb Google them to check them out!
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I agree re FS2, at the top for space sims, I have tried Freelancer and got very tired of dodging debris in space, it literally dragged that game out of the sky and dumped in the garbage heap for me. X Universe, X3 is awful, I agree, even the control screens are so poorly designed that you can't read them and the controls and way the menus work they took away from what was good in X2 and borked it. Homeworld, HC and HW2 are nice for a little while but you are so remote from the action it is very clinical and Cataclysm is a stupid plot. ORB i had hopes for but the same thing the distance from the play and the overall feeling is much more remote and impersonal, FS and FS2 are much better. I keep hoping someone will break past the "privateer" model of fly around and buy and sell and add things to your ship idea.....Independence War I I had hopes for but it is too hard to get to run and the plot idea of the "graffiti" rebels was so lame I did not even try very hard....and IW 2 was far too complcated and remote from the action, after a cool intro movie, to bother with either. So we are back to the king of space and the classic FS2 and I am so glad everyone here has pitched in with the improvements and Open.
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Allegiance (www.freeallegiance.org) was a very nice team-based sim by microsoft, but it wasn't a big succes, therefore, Microsoft made the game open-source (!) and released it to the public for free, it is in development and is a very nice team game. (Top dog in the underdogs.org)
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I think X3 is okay. The only things I didn't like were the combat system (particularly when it comes to turrets and missiles, missile launching logic, missile usage logic and the lack of afterburner). I love Terran hardware, but no Earth sector to explore? :wtf: :mad: :(
I can live with bad cutscenes (at least it wasn't totally OMG like in X2) and tiring interfaces (though I agree the script editor is much harder to access now). I've tried fleet command scripts before - they just don't do exactly what I want them to do as fast as possible, but I won't complain about this because of the size of the game. It's not like FS where you only control small wings of units.
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I only got Freespace2 because I couldn't find X2 (or 3, I forget which one it was)
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Mechwarrior 4 series (Vengeance, Black Knight, Mercanaries (there is a MASSIVE mod for Mercanaries, and the multiplayer community for MW4 :Merc is alive and well)
I'm sorry to hijack this thread, but where can I find this massive mod for Mercenaries?
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I'm sorry to hijack this thread, but where can I find this massive mod for Mercenaries?
I suppose he's referring to the mektek's mekpaks, that you can find here: http://www.mektek.net/projects/mp3/
And its indeed massive but it serves mainly for multiplayer, I have no idea why they never tried doing a SP campaign.
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I'm sorry to hijack this thread, but where can I find this massive mod for Mercenaries?
I suppose he's referring to the mektek's mekpaks, that you can find here: http://www.mektek.net/projects/mp3/
And its indeed massive but it serves mainly for multiplayer, I have no idea why they never tried doing a SP campaign.
Thats what i was referring to. I think the main reason they didnt make those mekpaks for SP is because they would be overkill for the game. (Got railguns?)
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there is also tachyon
and I-war
now because i like you all hail the greatest game intro evar all 13 minutes of it
independance war
http://media.putfile.com/IWar
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It combined the best of the best.
*cough* *cough*
FS2 control are not bad, but, uh, there are too many key bindings. I have read comments about WCS, which sounded like "good game, but the controls are a small nightmare". Some people fail to understand, that most of the functions available are not required to play the game. :doubt:
The interface is not bad, but could use some more "I am on a space ship" flair :)
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I agree re FS2, at the top for space sims, I have tried Freelancer and got very tired of dodging debris in space, it literally dragged that game out of the sky and dumped in the garbage heap for me. X Universe, X3 is awful, I agree, even the control screens are so poorly designed that you can't read them and the controls and way the menus work they took away from what was good in X2 and borked it. Homeworld, HC and HW2 are nice for a little while but you are so remote from the action it is very clinical and Cataclysm is a stupid plot. ORB i had hopes for but the same thing the distance from the play and the overall feeling is much more remote and impersonal, FS and FS2 are much better. I keep hoping someone will break past the "privateer" model of fly around and buy and sell and add things to your ship idea.....Independence War I I had hopes for but it is too hard to get to run and the plot idea of the "graffiti" rebels was so lame I did not even try very hard....and IW 2 was far too complcated and remote from the action, after a cool intro movie, to bother with either. So we are back to the king of space and the classic FS2 and I am so glad everyone here has pitched in with the improvements and Open.
Oh hell no... :mad: you just went and shanked every space sim I liked...and Independence War II is NOT too complicated, in my opinion it's too SIMPLE, I just don't like the fact that you can duke out capital ships on a Storm Petrel and somehow win. But then there's Buda 5 for that, two things I like in one. ;7 The Homeworld series is extremely good, especially Homeworld II with the Point Defence Systems mod, it makes the combat very intense and there's no longer such thing as a moment's peace. As for X3: Reunion, that game is the pinnacle of the Privateer-style genre of space sims, being able to own stations and have your own ships commence trade runs FOR you while you go around fighting whoever makes it a hell of a lot better. I can make all my money and still fly the fighters I like, unlike on Privateer or Freelancer where if I want to make decent money, I have to go off and buy a useless P.O.S. freighter that can't defend itself worth crap. The only thing X3 lacked was the multiplayer, which Infinity: The Quest for Earth will basically fix.
And there's a patch for X3 that adds afterburner...not a mod...a patch...yes...
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WIng commander 3 *bows in reverence*
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Homeworld, HC and HW2 are nice for a little while but you are so remote from the action it is very clinical and Cataclysm is a stupid plot.
You like Homeworld 2 but accuse Cataclysm of having a stupid plot? Homeworld 2? Where you literally salvage God and use him to crush your enemies?
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:wtf: that sounds lame.
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and Independence War II is NOT too complicated, in my opinion it's too SIMPLE, I just don't like the fact that you can duke out capital ships on a Storm Petrel and somehow win. But then there's Buda 5 for that, two things I like in one. ;7
I tried to like I-War II. I really did. Out of respect for Glyn Williams' earlier game Warhead which I absolutely loved.
But by the time I got to the 3rd act and missions which required 10 minutes of flying on autopilot to get to the site of a mission I decided that it simply wasn't worth continuing with.
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But that's the thing with space, it's so damn big.
I was told Infinity: The Quest for Earth will literally have so many planets that searching for them all WILL result in death from old age.
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So add time compression to the game.
Any game in which finding something else to do for 10 minutes is not only possible but virtually necessary isn't doing its primary job of entertaining you.
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Yeah, and let hostile ships come out of nowhere and blast you before you have enough time to slow time back down to normal... :doubt:
Want to test me on that? Trust me, I've been through that...
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You just need something that turns time compression to 1x when hostiles show up.
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Exactly. It's not hard to avoid the boring bits. Just sloppy game design that it doesn't.
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Starwraith doesn't look too bad, for the bad textures, it looks like it has some nice flashy affects. Other than that i scored a copy of x3 the reunion, after reviewing x1 and x2, while both of those seem interesting, only x3 has an actual story line. I read the whole story on wikipedia, and man that looks like a long game. Of course i'm still reluctant to install it, at least x3 seems like an interesting trade empire space game, i wonder if the controls are playably fun.
Anyway what was that other space sim that featured bruce campbell one-liners all the time? It was older, but it had nice ship models.
That's also another thing. How come with space sims people need to get oogly eyed complicated and make it so big and grand. The fs series reminds me about how simplistic an fps is while x3 and freelancer and other similar games try to get too big. Quite frankly i don't care about exploring all that space huge ass space. Space is what space is, huge and spread out with nothing in between whatever celestial bodies are out there.
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Actually you raise a good point. If you play an FPS there's almost always a path you're meant to follow through the game. You don't see many open ended FPS games where you're dropped in a ruined city and allowed to go into every building you want even if that doesn't progress the storyline at all.
So why do space sims insist on doing it?
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Because one: I don't think the gaming community would give two craps about a Fallout-style FPS game. (To answer karajorma's question about FPS games)
And two: The reason why companies insist on making space simulators where you can do whatever the hell you want is because there's very serious space dudes (Like me) who like to experiement. Can you conquer all of space, have a military space station and gianormus fleet patrolling every point of the known universe on FreeSpace? Don't think so. That's one thing I like about X3: Reunion so much, I can do ANYTHING I like WHEN I feel like it. I LOVE exploring the vast void of space, encountering other dudes (Friendly or hostile) along the way, and eventually claiming it as my own. ;7
And as for what S-99 was saying, the X3: Reunion storyline is actually shorter than you'd expect.
And that "other space sim that featured Bruce Campbell one-liners" is Tachyon: The Fringe. And yes, those ship models (Especially GalSpan) are VERY nice.
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The game that got me into PC gaming in the first place was the great STAR WARS X-Wing Starfighter, still love all the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games.
BTW - I case you guys didn't know, there is pretty big mod scene for X-wing Alliance, greatly improved models, total conversion, ect...
http://www.xwaupgrade.com/
http://www.darksaber.gaylenol.com/
http://www.xwingalliance.net/linksxwa.html
I really enjoyed Tachyon too. (remember that crazy guy with the roof of the Sistine Chapel floating space, LOL)
I have not seen it mentioned yet in this thread, has anybody tried Darkstar One? (I have it but I have not tried it yet)
It got a "Great" Rating over at gamespot:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/sim/darkstarone/review.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary;review
Looks nice:
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2006/225/reviews/930194_20060814_screen012.jpg
They say you can kinda morph your ship into whatever type you want and stuff...
hip63 :P
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I played the demo of DarkStar One. It was pretty good but you need a very good processer to play it.
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Darkstar One had all kinds of graphics problems for me. One day I'll bother to sort them out but for now I can't be arsed.
Because one: I don't think the gaming community would give two craps about a Fallout-style FPS game. (To answer karajorma's question about FPS games)
A lot of space sim fans don't want to fly around and do everything too. Which is kinda my point.
Space sims at the moment are almost 100% open ended. The problem with that is that they tend to suffer from a tight gameplay point of view as a result. Now some people like that. But why do the game companies seem to believe that everyone who likes space sims does?
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I very personally like being able to veer off course on the main storyline and do other things. It just makes it more worth playing. Now I'd say the same thing about FreeSpace if you could just pop into a capital ship and start flying it and control specific turrets and such, but you can't. I know you can FRED a mission so you fly one but it's buggy as hell. You normally can't do that on Freelancer unless you have a mod for it, same with Independence War II.
And Darkstar One is fun. I've played it a bit even though it's close to unplayable on this system. :rolleyes:
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I really enjoyed both Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance and MW: Mercs, but they both suffered from the same problem: a painfully short single player campaign (and a bit too easy). The multiplayer options left me cold (football in mechs?), but fortunately the modders have provided Co-op versions of the campaigns for both games.
http://www.fileplanet.com/48420/0/section/MechWarrior-Series (check the subsection for the version you have).
Co-op Mechwarrior is just about the greatest LAN experience ever.
Independance War 2 does not get nearly enough credit, in my opinion. The graphics are kind of bleah, and I agree that the Storm Petrel should not be able to take out cap ships. The physics model can make for some *very* fancy flying. I wound up remapping engine kill to my joystick for fast access and promptly sat down to mastering a radial version of the corkscrew. The flight system can take a bit of getting used to, but once you're comfortable with it you can pull off maneuvers that just aren't possible in other games. Fans of space sims should be warned: this is NOT a fighter sim. You are not flying a fighter or interceptor class vessel, and you never will. The mechanics of flying a light corvette (which is what the storm petrel is, for all intents and purposes) are very different from what we see in most space games.
The main thing I appreciated about IW2 was the completeness of the ship systems. Your ship is not part of a fleet, does not have a tech crew ready to refit it when you land, and doesn't have a full com deck waiting on the bridge of a capital ship to map your jump locations and objectives for you. The ship is designed as a self-operating, self-directing entity, and as such you have to do almost everything yourself. I really liked the hat menu and the wealth of information and options it allowed you to access. I think it did a good job of presenting the feeling that you were in full command of your vessel.
Freelancer isn't a space flight game so much as it is Diablo in space. The campaign was great, the combat was satisfying, but it lacked the depth that I look for in this genre.
Starlancer, on the other hand, was a pretty conventional spacer. You had mission structure, clear objectives, etc.... most of what we take for granted from the genre. The main complaint I have with it is the ease of combat. The auto-target functions are just too powerful, too accurate, to the point that if you're facing in the vague direction of your target and pull the trigger you can expect a kill.
General fans of the genre might want to at least take a look at some of the more hardcore sims. The Jane's series is as far from "arcadey" as it gets. A fair warning is in order: this series ranges from quite a bit more difficult than the average spacer to downright brutal. If mastering a takeoff sequence that requires 20 manual operations (system checks, flaps, vectoring, etc) sounds like your idea of a good time, look no further. Combat can be incredibly hard: even lining up a decent shot can be a challenge. I find all this complexity and difficulty very rewarding, as it makes each kill feel like a real accomplishment. Folks looking to grab the joystick and settle in for some quick kills may find it more frustrating than fun, however.
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As i say before... sometimes when playing Freelancer too late at the night, i get sleep even while i was in the midle of a fight! after finish the main campaign is too boring and non sense...
Starlancer was good, but too easy, is not even closer to match Freespace.
the "X" series are another thing... is like an "offline MMORPG"... is too good in what things you can do, but the combat is a little boring... is too far from the action and fun of Freespace... in my opinion, a person (if have time), can play both "X" and Freespace at the time...
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If you want to play a flight simulator that does that "20 sequence take-off" play Lock-on.
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And if you want to play a space simulator which has the "20 sequence take-off", download Orbiter (http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html). It's freeware and has lot of mods, and the last version has beautiful hi-res textures.
It features fully newtonian physics: if you set the options to maximum realism, your flight path will be influenced not only by the engines, but also by thrusters and gravitational anomalies generated by non-spherical celestial bodies.
The learning curve is a bit steep, but is fun.
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Hey if we are gonna mention Flight Sims, take a look at my favorite, Fighter Squadron: Screamin' Demons Over Europe (SDOE).
Kinda sucky straight out of the box, but once again Mods (some created by yours truly ;)) by the community have really made the sim into a really good and fun game.
A really good blend of flight sim/video game.
and the WWI Conversion is considered to be among the best of WWI Sims (nuthin' but stick, rudder and a trigger baby :pimp:)
you can check it out at www.openplanesim.com
hip63 :P
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Since the first time you posted here and linked to the Fighter Squadron forum, I tried to get it in every way possible.
And I haven't succeeded. :(
I can't find it anywhere, when I found it on Ebay the seller didn't accept my payment method, and the... ehm... "alternative way" has been blocked for months since no one has the remaining 20 MB. :(
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http://www.amazon.co.uk/Focus-Multimedia-Ltd-Fighter-Squadron/dp/B00005NQ1O
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After our Ebay experience (which has been much more problematic than I explained) my father doesn't want me to receive software/hardware via mail.
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Davros totally agrees with Gestalt regarding Independance War 2
enjoy Gestalt
http://media.putfile.com/IWar
as you can guess I never pass up a chance to pimp I-War "it's Teh Awesome"
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After our Ebay experience (which has been much more problematic than I explained) my father doesn't want me to receive software/hardware via mail.
I've built three compys off of online parts... and have learned. Only buy from ppl with rock solid reputations, also, never buy refurbished stuff unless it's still got a lifetime warranty from the manufacturer. (I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but it's still risky to buy refurbished stuff when it's only warrantied for 30-90 days by the person that sold it.)
So, for Amazon or eBay, look at the ratings. If it's 500+ ratings, 97% or more positive, I'd say :yes: , as long as it is either new, or still warranted through the manufacturer for life (or a year, perhaps... depends.)
But buying software is usually pretty safe.. just be sure you're buying actual software, not a cover, and that all disks are included, along with CD keys if applicable. And, the ratings stuff applies here as well.
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If i can't buy it brand new off the internet from a retailer with good ratings, them i'm not buying it online :)
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And there you go easy as that.
However, i did buy a refurbished logitech quickcam messenger from an online retailer with good ratings on amazon before, they had good ratings, and actual people who left real opinions as opposed to "great products" "fast delivery"...really unspecific fake ratings which you should avoid retailers with those.
That refurbished webcam has served me 3 years perfectly working as the retailer said it would be, and still working great, after all, it's a webcam, what the **** is going to go wrong with it. Unless you smash it with a hammer or electrically surge the damn thing, nothing specific is going to happen to a ****ing webacm :lol:
I can see an unplugged webcam surviving being dunked in water, provided you open it up so it can dry out properly...first ethernet card i had was an isa piece of **** that worked great for lan games that i grabbed out of the alaskan snow...just let it dry off, and i convinced my brother to use the other one i grabbed out of the snow i also let dry out. They worked fine. Water damage does vary in some cases though....
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Off-Word-Resource base (ORB) is completely superior to homeworld (I never played homeworld 2, so I don''t know about that, but since ORB was released shortly after Homeworld (with a 2/3 year production cycle, so its not a clone), It shouldn't be compared to that.
Unfortanly, ORB suffered from the same thing that hit FS2, it wasn't popular (probably because Homeworld was advertised much better)
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Just looked at it, I think it looks too much like Homeworld: Ion trails from the engine exhaust, ion beams up the whazoo (Though I don't see any mass drivers of any sort on it), and the stranger thing is that how many ships I can see that look deadly familiar to other ships, because I swear I see ships that look like Storm Petrels from Edge of Chaos, Steltek Drones from Privateer, Xenon N / M's from X3: Reunion (Well I'm sure this came before X3), one of the big ships looks a lot like a Cardassian Military Freighter, and I'm not sure but there's a ship that looks a bit like the Cutlass from Tachyon: The Fringe, if that one frigate looking ship's front went down more you'd have a Tallahassee Cruiser (Wing Commander 3 / 4), and I'm not sure what to say about the ship that's part Hammerhead (Space: Above and Beyond) and Dragon Heavy Fighter (Wing Commander 4)...oh it's a cruiser...and a Starlancer Jump Gate? No...not enough junk sticking out. The in-game control panel looks so much like Homeworld's is isn't even close to funny. All I can say is this game literally followed Interplay's slogan: Made by gamers, for gamers. These guys probably played every space simulator to that date when they made ORB.
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The one thing i liked about Starlancer were the guns on the fighters. Those blazing automatic guns that seemed to shake the whole fighter, very reminding of the Maxim Cannons. Whenever i was going up against a cruiser or corvette, i had at least one of my gunbanks packing maxims. Turret and a hull buster.
Starlancer -was- fun, but went too quick, and had a rather crappy storyline, kinda like an 'intergalactic cold war.'
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I quite liked the storyline, the take-offs and in-game engine set-pieces were a nice'ish touch. but i felt the landings were too automated.