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Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Nemesis6 on December 11, 2010, 12:58:36 pm

Title: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Nemesis6 on December 11, 2010, 12:58:36 pm
For some reason, I'd completely missed this series of games. It was apparently released a few years before the first Freespace game. It looks nice diversion, so I'm gonna see if I can somehow get a hold of these games.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Angelus on December 11, 2010, 02:40:29 pm
These games s'port newtonian physics and stuff, that's fun.
Also, these games are infamous for their difficulty level.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Astronomiya on December 11, 2010, 02:53:30 pm
gog.com is your friend here.  They have both I-War 1 and 2 for $5.99 US apiece.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: CP5670 on December 11, 2010, 03:42:33 pm
I played IW2 for the first time a few months ago but gave up a third of the way into the campaign. I really "wanted" to like this game as it has numerous original ideas and is unique even among space sims, but I found that the difficulty and lack of save games ultimately made it a chore to play. Some missions are absurdly hard and you also often die due to random events and bugs, which can mean replaying the last 20 minutes (most of which consists of just moving between places) to get back to that point.

It's worth trying out though, as there were a lot of things in it that impressed me. It's like a much more hardcore version of Freelancer. The graphics still look pretty decent too.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: NGTM-1R on December 11, 2010, 04:34:19 pm
Quote from: CP5670 on December 11, 2010, 03:42:33 pm
It's worth trying out though, as there were a lot of things in it that impressed me. It's like a much more hardcore version of Freelancer. The graphics still look pretty decent too.

One could also make the argument it's a slightly-less-incomprehensible version of Battlecruiser Millennium. I'd personally consider that a stronger argument, considering the way I-War likes to kill you with bad luck.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: karajorma on December 11, 2010, 07:03:41 pm
Quote from: CP5670 on December 11, 2010, 03:42:33 pm
Some missions are absurdly hard and you also often die due to random events and bugs, which can mean replaying the last 20 minutes (most of which consists of just moving between places) to get back to that point.

This was my biggest issue with the game. Flying for 10 minutes to get to the place a mission starts only to die 30 seconds into the mission is frustrating to say the least but when that happened so often that I was actually pulling out a book to read during the travelling sections I realised that this was a game I no longer wanted to play. 


And I speak as someone who absolutely loved Glenn Williams' original game Warhead (which the I-War games are based on).
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Klaustrophobia on December 12, 2010, 12:54:07 am
would i get crucified here if i said i'd never played freelancer?  by the time i even knew about it i could barely find any official mention of it anywhere, and i'd seen it referred to as the "horrible, gurgling death of sci-fi sims" more than a few times.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Mongoose on December 12, 2010, 02:27:05 am
Quote from: Klaustrophobia on December 12, 2010, 12:54:07 am
would i get crucified here if i said i'd never played freelancer?  by the time i even knew about it i could barely find any official mention of it anywhere, and i'd seen it referred to as the "horrible, gurgling death of sci-fi sims" more than a few times.
If you are, I'll be right in line behind you. :p Though I think GameTap has (or at least had) it in its catalog, and since I have a subscription, I should probably give it a shot.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: karajorma on December 12, 2010, 02:28:53 am
Freelancer and Starlancer aren't anywhere near as bad as they're made out to be.

They're not Freespace, but then, what is?
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Hades on December 12, 2010, 02:32:27 am
Starlancer was pretty good, but I found Freelancer (mainly mods) to be extremely dull, the vanilla game is ok, but mods usually make it boring because the only way to make money is trading, which is essentially moving halfway across the map and back...

Singleplayer's kinda dumb in some areas of the plot, but otherwise I thought it was pretty ok.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Davros on December 12, 2010, 08:18:07 am
Hail the mightyness of the I-War intro (all 13 minutes)

part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7AsRQXOUSY

part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw1m2ZW1u84&feature=related
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Thaeris on December 12, 2010, 11:49:24 am
Dear God, that is epic...

 :eek2:
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Unknown Target on December 12, 2010, 10:16:19 pm
It really was a good game - IMO it was the best free-roaming game ever made, probably the most true to the old Elite games and stuff must have been. If you want to get an idea of it, it's pretty much Serenity and you're a pirate instead of a hauler. In game terms, it's like a single player EVE online.

Unfortunately the very long pace, lack of random events or any "jobs" that you could pick up in between the main story (I didn't find anything) really killed it for me. That, and I gave up on the SP JUST when it started to get interesting (after a warm up phase of almost 10 hours or something), because after playing for the last 2 hours of traveling between points and picking things up (not even doing anything exciting, just kind of droning on, selecting nav charts, etc), I died due to some random freighter jumping on me and getting a lucky missile off.
Bam. Dropped back to nearly 2 hours of gameplay ago because I didn't save (because you can ONLY save inside your main ship).
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: CP5670 on December 12, 2010, 10:54:32 pm
Yeah, I think what really hurt IW2 was the lack of save games, as this amplifies all its other flaws with the difficulty and randomness. They would have been far more tolerable if you could save any time. You get attacked by randomly spawning Marauder wings frequently, and they aren't just a nuisance and often destroy you. They can come in at any time, even while you are docked or in the middle of a mission, and sometimes break the mission scripting. I also ran into a bug while entering jump points where your autopilot tries to jump even if there is another ship in the way, resulting in your death (this even occurs with the invulnerability cheat). I stopped playing after this happened twice, after spending a hour each time to get that far.

As karajorma said, after a point the game starts to feel more like work than fun, which is a real pity as it had all the ingredients to be a classic. The gameplay has some serious depth with the 6DOF Newtonian flying mechanics and all the different ship subsystems you can use, the story and universe are very detailed and the missions have a lot of variety in them.

As for Freelancer, it has its issues but is highly regarded on all the other forums I've been to. I think we've been spoiled by FS around here. :p
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Sushi on December 13, 2010, 12:44:45 am
Freelancer is actually pretty good. It's definitely "sim-lite" compared to FS or I-war: more of an action RPG than a sim. One of the things it did right though is make the universe feel very alive and full of stuff. The combat was reasonable, and the game was very accessible and easy to play. Playing online is the closest I've come to enjoying an MMO. They've got a pretty strong community still: see http://discoverygc.com/forums/index.php?act=uportal for an example.

It's too bad the Freelancer source code was never released. Despite all of the love for it, the lack of source code access severely limits what kinds of mods can be made for the game. If code had been released for Freespace 2, it would probably have seen the same amount of attention and tender loving care.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Hades on December 13, 2010, 12:50:09 am
Frankly, I always found Discovery to be boring, the only way to get anything that isn't a vanilla fighter is to trade between systems and it is boring, not to mention some of the rules for the Discovery server that most people play are are in, a lot of cases, asinine, as is the 'plot'. Discovery always felt the same as vanilla, just with a few more ships to fly.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: zookeeper on December 13, 2010, 01:22:39 am
What's this about IW2 being difficult and random? Sure, it wasn't easy, but I don't recall it being frustratingly difficult or particularly random either, and I don't count myself as an expert player. If I recall correctly, enemies almost always appeared far enough that you could run away if you weren't up for taking them on, and there weren't nasty instant-death surprises.

I'm sure I died near the end of a mission plenty of times, but I guess the general awesomeness made up for it... Best space sim I've ever played without a doubt.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Flaser on December 13, 2010, 07:15:51 pm
Flying through jump nodes on manual also helped, as did playing dirty (as you should), and shooting up the escort of freighters from behind when they jump out of a node. I only used the autopilot for travel between jump points/stations.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Thaeris on December 13, 2010, 08:13:14 pm
I don't think I'll be able to buy any new (or rather, new old) games for a long time to come, but I would love to get a hold of I-War, especially now. That said, grabbing I've Found Her might fill my Newtonian physics needs. Then again, I've got a copy of Starshatter that has been collecting dust - that might be a better place to start first.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Flaser on December 13, 2010, 09:33:53 pm
I-War & Defiance - 6$
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/independence_war_deluxe
I-War 2 - 6$
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/independence_war_2
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Thaeris on December 13, 2010, 09:36:26 pm
Yes, I know that. One of the reasons why I'm not jumping on that however is that last time I tried to do that, a transaction with my bank and GOG would not go through. I believe it had something to do with that company being based in Cyprus. That may not be the case now, but my funds are very tight.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Angelus on December 14, 2010, 09:34:51 am
Freelancer isn't that bad, i played the campaign and for a short time the BSG multiplayer.
The story is average ( and gets recycled in X3 ), and it plays like an RPG with fps shooter elements.
What i absolutely didn't like ( and that's why i bash this game with pleasure  :P ) is the fact that they didn't bother to implement joystick support. Flying with a mouse wasn't hard, it was too easy and it's just not as immersive as with a joystick.
A flightsim/ space combat game without joystick?  :ick:
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Sarafan on December 14, 2010, 11:40:09 am
The first I-War was a great, great game and it has one of the best intro I've seen, the story of the first is pretty good (does anyone know there is more than one ending?), it was a hard game but I dont consider that to be a bad thing, if it had a quick save option it would have been great  because of the already mentioned long travel time.

The sequel was a huge letdown, the plot was nowhere near as good as the first, it didnt had anything good for you to do between missions and I dont get what people say about the 2nd being hard, the moment you get a patcom the game becomes easy. I was always disappointed at how fast and easy you could take out capital ships in the 2nd, mount a mining laser or two and they're dead before you know it.

Freelancer was passable, the problem with it is that like I-War 2 you had nothing to do between missions (yeah, you had those "sidequests" but those were silly) and then nothing to do after you finish the main plot and the other problem is that the modding comunity is like the modding comunity of HW2, "Hey, let's add more ships/systems/guns and nothing else!!!". Starlancer, otoh, was just as good as the first Freespace, a great plot, nice ships, etc, you name it but it suffered from that lousy friendly AI and bugs.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: karajorma on December 14, 2010, 08:37:03 pm
I didn't find I-War II that hard. I got pretty far. What I found was that it was so annoying when you died that I didn't want to play it any more.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: CP5670 on December 14, 2010, 11:00:23 pm
IW2's missions varied a lot in difficulty. Some were quite easy (but if you did die with a random Marauder attack or something, your last 20 minutes got wasted) while others were extremely hard. There was an especially brutal one where you had to dock with a bunch of gun platforms. I stopped playing at the point when you first leave the system (about a third of the way through) and still only had the tug available then.

Quote from: Had-- on December 13, 2010, 12:50:09 am
Frankly, I always found Discovery to be boring, the only way to get anything that isn't a vanilla fighter is to trade between systems and it is boring, not to mention some of the rules for the Discovery server that most people play are are in, a lot of cases, asinine, as is the 'plot'. Discovery always felt the same as vanilla, just with a few more ships to fly.

I played this with my brother a few years ago on that RP server. We actually got a ton of money by just begging to random people and making up various stories. :D Once we got good ships though, there was little more left to do. We tried to become pirates but the fights often turned into endless stalemates, with someone eventually just getting bored and running away.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Unknown Target on December 15, 2010, 06:37:53 am
Quote from: CP5670 on December 14, 2010, 11:00:23 pm
IW2's missions varied a lot in difficulty. Some were quite easy (but if you did die with a random Marauder attack or something, your last 20 minutes got wasted) while others were extremely hard. There was an especially brutal one where you had to dock with a bunch of gun platforms. I stopped playing at the point when you first leave the system (about a third of the way through) and still only had the tug available then.

Quote from: Had-- on December 13, 2010, 12:50:09 am
Frankly, I always found Discovery to be boring, the only way to get anything that isn't a vanilla fighter is to trade between systems and it is boring, not to mention some of the rules for the Discovery server that most people play are are in, a lot of cases, asinine, as is the 'plot'. Discovery always felt the same as vanilla, just with a few more ships to fly.

I played this with my brother a few years ago on that RP server. We actually got a ton of money by just begging to random people and making up various stories. :D Once we got good ships though, there was little more left to do. We tried to become pirates but the fights often turned into endless stalemates, with someone eventually just getting bored and running away.

The gun platform one was BRUTAL. I BARELY made it through that one, I was so pissed at that game I put it down for a week or two I think.

By the way, both Iwars are available on GoG.com for cheap, if no one's mentioned it yet. :)

EDIT: Damnit Flaser beat me to it. :)

EDIT2: Man that intro is AWESOME.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Kszyhu on December 15, 2010, 12:40:10 pm
Gunstar mission was really easy if you know what to do. I'm on my third playthrough, and I can't beat an escort mission late in the game, which involves defending disabled freighter against waves of Marauder vessels. Apart from this, only problem I can think of is the autopilot, taking constant detours through crowded L-points.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Mars on December 16, 2010, 03:31:23 pm
I could not learn to like these games. It's  30+ minutes of flying to get to the first enemy, who promptly blows you to hell.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Ace on December 21, 2010, 07:36:45 pm
Quote from: Flaser on December 13, 2010, 07:15:51 pm
Flying through jump nodes on manual also helped, as did playing dirty (as you should), and shooting up the escort of freighters from behind when they jump out of a node. I only used the autopilot for travel between jump points/stations.

Yeah, fights could be nasty but you had LDS drive which means: *wham* 0.9c of speed between you and them.
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Kszyhu on December 23, 2010, 06:48:02 pm
Quote from: Ace on December 21, 2010, 07:36:45 pm
Yeah, fights could be nasty but you had LDS drive which means: *wham* 0.9c of speed between you and them.

Followed by a LDSi missile.
Title: I-War 1
Post by: Mikes on January 03, 2011, 09:13:56 pm
Tribute to I-War 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-7uEF-gDY8

Quote from: Sarafan on December 14, 2010, 11:40:09 am
:snip: does anyone know there is more than one ending? :snip:

I-War 1 not only had multiple endings.... it had a fully branching campaign with radically different mission arcs leading up to the endings.

Major Spoiler:
Spoiler:
for example... remember the Mission where the peace conference between President loyalists and Independents got sabotaged and turned into an instant fleet battle with everyone shooting and shouting at everybody? It was totally up to you which side you joined in that mission ;)

As far as I-War goes in general.... i still consider it to be one of the greatest games of all time. That game was actually a spaceship simulator without compromise. Newtonian physics is often quoted, but that was really just one part of it. They put an incredible amount of effort into every single system on your ship. From LDS drives to the way you had to work with your Deflectors to actually block incoming attacks to the huge combined arms fleet battles it felt more *real* than any other space game i played. The campaign was outright incredible as far as story and mission design goes.

I-Wars 2 strenght was the sandbox/trading part... the mission/campaig design was still outstanding, but not as superb as I-War1 and while I-Wars 2 combat mechanics were still much more complex than the huge majority of other spacesims.... they were a lot less complex than I-War 1s, which was a bit of a disappointment for me. (Especially deflector handling.... that was an art in I-War 1, not so much in I-War 2).

Still.... both games are pretty much the non plus ultra as far as actual space-sims go that are also incredibly good games .

(There is - to my knowledge - only one other game out there that wants to be an actual complex "starship simulator", but it really, really, really does not deserve to be named in the same thread as great like I-War LOL ;) )


Top 3 memorable I-War 1 moments:
Spoiler:
... "landing" your heavily damaged (jumpdrive offline) 200m Corvette on a Carrier made for 20m fightercraft in order to escape a devious trap that routed your fleet.... 
(See 6:51 in this video for a snip of the missionending cutscene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kohENjJK7kY&feature=related )

... having your (disabled) Corvette boarded by Pirates who commence to throw your crew out of the airlock one by one until you open the hatch to the command deck... and seeing actual corpses float by in front your window while one of your bridge crew members exclaims in horror that he knows that guy...

... facing off 1v1 in the final mission vs. a heavy cruiser in your badly damaged corvette...  an outright impossible fight in this game...  and taking it out by going full burn and ramming your ship into it while escaping with the command shuttle at the last second...

ah i could go on... as far as "unique memmorable moments" go I-War 1 is hard to beat. ;)
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Colonol Dekker on January 04, 2011, 08:10:37 am
Quote from: Mikes on January 03, 2011, 09:13:56 pm
Tribute to I-War 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-7uEF-gDY8

Quote from: Sarafan on December 14, 2010, 11:40:09 am
:snip: does anyone know there is more than one ending? :snip:

I-War 1 not only had multiple endings.... it had a fully branching campaign with radically different mission arcs leading up to the endings.

Major Spoiler:
Spoiler:
for example... remember the Mission where the peace conference between President loyalists and Independents got sabotaged and turned into an instant fleet battle with everyone shooting and shouting at everybody? It was totally up to you which side you joined in that mission ;)

As far as I-War goes in general.... i still consider it to be one of the greatest games of all time. That game was actually a spaceship simulator without compromise. Newtonian physics is often quoted, but that was really just one part of it. They put an incredible amount of effort into every single system on your ship. From LDS drives to the way you had to work with your Deflectors to actually block incoming attacks to the huge combined arms fleet battles it felt more *real* than any other space game i played. The campaign was outright incredible as far as story and mission design goes.

I-Wars 2 strenght was the sandbox/trading part... the mission/campaig design was still outstanding, but not as superb as I-War1 and while I-Wars 2 combat mechanics were still much more complex than the huge majority of other spacesims.... they were a lot less complex than I-War 1s, which was a bit of a disappointment for me. (Especially deflector handling.... that was an art in I-War 1, not so much in I-War 2).

Still.... both games are pretty much the non plus ultra as far as actual space-sims go that are also incredibly good games .

(There is - to my knowledge - only one other game out there that wants to be an actual complex "starship simulator", but it really, really, really does not deserve to be named in the same thread as great like I-War LOL ;) )


Top 3 memorable I-War 1 moments:
Spoiler:
... "landing" your heavily damaged (jumpdrive offline) 200m Corvette on a Carrier made for 20m fightercraft in order to escape a devious trap that routed your fleet.... 
(See 6:51 in this video for a snip of the missionending cutscene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kohENjJK7kY&feature=related )

... having your (disabled) Corvette boarded by Pirates who commence to throw your crew out of the airlock one by one until you open the hatch to the command deck... and seeing actual corpses float by in front your window while one of your bridge crew members exclaims in horror that he knows that guy...

... facing off 1v1 in the final mission vs. a heavy cruiser in your badly damaged corvette...  an outright impossible fight in this game...  and taking it out by going full burn and ramming your ship into it while escaping with the command shuttle at the last second...

ah i could go on... as far as "unique memmorable moments" go I-War 1 is hard to beat. ;)


I lived for I-War and Defiance. Commonwealth all the way baby!
Title: Re: The Independence-War(I-War) series
Post by: Sarafan on January 12, 2011, 05:50:26 pm
Quote from: Mikes on January 03, 2011, 09:13:56 pm


Top 3 memorable I-War 1 moments:
Spoiler:
... "landing" your heavily damaged (jumpdrive offline) 200m Corvette on a Carrier made for 20m fightercraft in order to escape a devious trap that routed your fleet.... 
(See 6:51 in this video for a snip of the missionending cutscene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kohENjJK7kY&feature=related )
... facing off 1v1 in the final mission vs. a heavy cruiser in your badly damaged corvette...  an outright impossible fight in this game...  and taking it out by going full burn and ramming your ship into it while escaping with the command shuttle at the last second...

ah i could go on... as far as "unique memmorable moments" go I-War 1 is hard to beat. ;)

I've just finished the main and Defiance's campaign again, man, this game is one of the best. Landing on the carrier was one of most insane parts I've ever seen, I was completely surprised at what you had to do the first time I played and it still am. The last mission you know what to do if you've seen the intro and Clay and your character downright say it but the carrier part was just crazy.

What had always impressed me is how complete the game is, nearly every mission you have different ways to accomplish things or different options that lead to different outcomes that are all well thought out, this is really letting the player decide how to handle things and letting you have a real impact in the story unlike the halfassed things we have today.

Now to replay I-War 2 again. I have to wonder, how possible would it be to make a total conversion of I-War to FS2? There already is realistic physics in the Babylon Project, I think the only real problem would be the amount of system to system jumping you have in I-War and how to handle the LDS.