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dteowner
Shoegazer
Joined: 21 Mar 2002
Posts: 7570
Location: Third Hero of Erathia |
FINALLY!
*installing*
So then, let's see if my pal Dhruin has steered me to a good game!
edit- two training missions in... I think this is going to be a very good game, but you weren't kidding about the interface being just a tad bulky. I'm guessing there will be about a dozen actions that I'll do enough to memorize the hotkey and the rest I'll have to dig thru the menus to find on the rare occasions I need them?
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RIP Red Wings How 'Bout Dem Cowboys! |
Thu Dec 04, 2003 8:49 pm |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
*crosses fingers*
Hope you do enjoy it - I'm having a blast. I'm disappointed with the combat - it lacks something - and the interface definitely could be improved but it's still great fun.
I have realised (I've spent some time at the Egosoft boards) how difficult new players can find some things that I don't notice because I'm "used" to it from X:T, so it's definitely a game that requires patience.
Press 'h' for on screen keys - you'll find some things that don't appear to be documented.
Some hints that people on the Egosoft boards have needed - might be considered spoilers but I think they're just general hints:
Spoiler:
1. Autodock: Some players were crashing into stations when docking. Instead, get close (say within 5-10km) and press "shift-D" for the auto pilot to dock for you.
2. After docking, you still have to fly to a berth which can be annoying (there are some bonuses you can get, though) - press ESC to berth.
3. Press ESC twice to launch from a station insead of manually flying out.
4. Press J for SETA (time compression) don't go anywhere without it!
5. The starting ship (Discovery) is super fast but useless for combat. You won't be doing any useful combat until you get a better ship! It's super fast though - I kept it for exploring.
6. Buy the "Trading Extension" @ Equipment Dock asap...it lets you view prices without having to land. Essential.
*** Definite Spoilers ***
Do the first 3x story missions - you get some worthwhile stuff. Then stop and do your thing for a while.
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Thu Dec 04, 2003 11:52 pm |
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dteowner
Shoegazer
Joined: 21 Mar 2002
Posts: 7570
Location: Third Hero of Erathia |
All 4 training missions complete. I think I'd better plan for a career as a merchant because I'm utterly worthless in combat. Unfortunately, controlling multiple ships hasn't quite sunk in yet, so it's going to be a while before I could spread out much with that.
Next up is the pilot's license trainer. The first step of that is all about commanding multiple ships in combat. Yug! I think I'd better get a good night's rest before attempting that.
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RIP Red Wings How 'Bout Dem Cowboys! |
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Fri Dec 05, 2003 5:16 am |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
Actually, I haven't done that one, either.  Wouldn't worry about it too much - after about 25 hours of play I might soon have to worry about wingmen. Controlling multiple ships for trading is a doddle (if a bit long with the interface).
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Fri Dec 05, 2003 8:25 am |
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dteowner
Shoegazer
Joined: 21 Mar 2002
Posts: 7570
Location: Third Hero of Erathia |
I took your advice and skipped the pilot's license trainer. After a solid afternoon, I have a few thoughts:
1) I'm getting used to the interface as I use it more. Fortunately, I have the time to park mid-galaxy and dig around for various commands right now. I could be in trouble when combat rolls around (and I've got a bad feeling about this second mission I've just started). Ever noticed that this recent wave of European developers make very good games but couldn't design an interface to save their souls? Check the reviews for some of the more well-known ones- 90% of them mention that the controls and/or interface are a kludge. Wonder why that is...
2) If I have to fly into a beef factory again, I'm gonna puke. Thank goodness for that ESC spoiler you gave me, because having the entire station spin around me during the docking run was making me very uncomfortable. Never had a game do that to me before.
3) Question- if I buy equipment (trading extension, docking extension) during this mission (flying the troop transport), will it be available on all my ships from then on (moved to whichever one I'm piloting, so to speak) or did I waste credits upgrading Terra-whatever's ship?
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RIP Red Wings How 'Bout Dem Cowboys! |
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Sat Dec 06, 2003 10:51 pm |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
I had a lengthy reply but a power blackout nuked it before I hit Submit, so apologies if this post seems rushed. 
You can transfer most physical items but not software upgrades (or shields that I can figure out)...sorry.
In general, a transporter (TP or TS) is too damn slow to fly yourself so later on you'll find yourself sitting in a faster or more combat capable ship (according to your taste and budget) and remote controlling your TPs. The Trading Extension only needs to be in a ship you fly, so I would never install a Trading Extension in a TP/TS. Same for Docking Comp - if they're remote controlled the autopilot flies them and he doesn't mind docking himself.
Still, there's an upside...(genuine spoiler follows but read it anyway):
Spoiler:
They give you the Terracorp TP after this mission for doing such a good job, so at least you get to keep any of your expenditure even if those upgrades aren't really needed. This TP is your head-start on trading. Make sure your actual ship (the Discovery, I guess) has the Trading Extension and remote control the TP to do some decent trading with it's big cargo bay.
I went exploring and took taxi missions from the bulletin board for simple cash while the TP made me enough real money to buy a factory.
Interface: completely agree. Gothic 2 would have had much better reviews with a different interface. I've spent a lot of time on the Egosoft boards and they think no mouse-pointer was the right decision. They're just WRONG. Many Euro devs could make much better sales in the US by paying more attention to the interface. That said, the Egosoft one works once you learn the hotkeys.
I just reloaded an old save actually: I'd gotten carried away getting a bigger personal ship for combat before I could afford it. Now I've concentrated on getting a factory up and running for a cash stream. I have come up against a couple of CTD and one corrupt save so save under different slots occassionally.
Hope you're enjoying it.
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Sat Dec 06, 2003 11:49 pm |
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Remus
Overgrown Cat
Joined: 03 Jul 2002
Posts: 1657
Location: Fish bowl |
Mmm, i followed this game since months ago. From the many comments at Egosoft forums, it seem rather good but wasn't something spectacular.
Freespace 2 is still my most memorable space game - epic struggle, war against all odds, battle against gigantic warships, twisting plot and subplots or mission... i felt like the universe itself would collapse at any moments...
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Sun Dec 07, 2003 3:59 pm |
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dteowner
Shoegazer
Joined: 21 Mar 2002
Posts: 7570
Location: Third Hero of Erathia |
Well, I'm VERY early in the game, but I think it really depends on what is important to the player whether this game is a winner or not. There seems to be a good bit of "downtime" where you're flying from one end of a sector to the other (even using the time compression button). As the game progresses, this "downtime" will probably be deeply important to allow the player to tend to background economic tasks. In the beginning, though, it's simply downtime. Short-attention-span FPSers will probably find that unpleasant. I think most everyone agrees that the interface could have been MUCH better. With some time and practice, I'm getting used to it, but some gamers won't have the patience.
I haven't visited the Egosoft boards in a few days (been playin' the game!), but I'd be willing to bet a portion of the unhappy folks are people that got upset with the disaster that was the US release and went into the game with a bad attitude. Another portion will be the console kiddies mentioned above. Then, there will be some folks that simply didn't like the game for whatever reason. I don't think this game draws you in as quickly as Freelancer did, so initial opinions probably won't be glowing. Check the Egosoft boards after the game's been out for 2-3 weeks. I think that will give you a true impression of how the game suits its target audience.
Overall, I'm happy with the game so far. Well worth the 80% of the "standard price for games" that they have the game listed for here in the States. Really, the only gripe I have (and it's not really that big a deal to me, but it's certainly an issue) is that I had to turn quite a few video options down or off to get good frame rate. My rig is aging a bit (AthlonXP 1800, GF3 128MB, 512 RAM), but I was surprised given the good performance I got with Morrowind.
edit- Well, I just hit a bad patch. I was bringing the guy back for mission 2. I had picked up a load of expensive cargo on the way (wouldn't want to waste the trip, doncha know), but my passenger was constantly griping about being late, so I decided to drop him off before selling the cargo. BZZZZZ! "Borrowed ship returned" means "cargo's gone". 28k credits down the toilet. Oh well. I was thinking about a restart anyway so I could spend a few bucks upgrading the scout ship before getting into the loaner ship.
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RIP Red Wings How 'Bout Dem Cowboys! |
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Sun Dec 07, 2003 4:58 pm |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
quote:
Originally posted by dteowner
Well, I'm VERY early in the game, but I think it really depends on what is important to the player whether this game is a winner or not. There seems to be a good bit of "downtime" where you're flying from one end of a sector to the other (even using the time compression button). As the game progresses, this "downtime" will probably be deeply important to allow the player to tend to background economic tasks. In the beginning, though, it's simply downtime. Short-attention-span FPSers will probably find that unpleasant. I think most everyone agrees that the interface could have been MUCH better. With some time and practice, I'm getting used to it, but some gamers won't have the patience.
I think you've pointed out a key issue that I haven't given enough attention in my impressions. X2 is a trading game first and a combat sim a distant third or fourth. After 25 hours (which is nearly twice as long as all of Max Payne 2 for me), I'm just starting to get my Empire going. Apart from a couple of experiments taking on pirates (lost dismally) and avoiding the Khaak (real bad guys), I've had no combat. None. Part of this is because you need better equipment which takes money (which is an inherent game design) and partly because knowing this I want to make sure I have the cash to be able to really equip some good gear and so I haven't gone looking for combat.
Later on, combat will be more a case of me having superior equipment (and perhaps numbers through wingmen) rather than my own dog-fighting skills. X2 is slow paced and takes patience.
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Sun Dec 07, 2003 10:44 pm |
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dteowner
Shoegazer
Joined: 21 Mar 2002
Posts: 7570
Location: Third Hero of Erathia |
Yet another quick question.
I'm preparing for my restart, and I'm wondering if anyone knows what the difficulty level affects. It isn't anywhere in the manual (unless I'm going seriously blind).
Actually, since I've painted European developers with a broad brush earlier, I'll do it once again and broadly say that those guys could use a little practice in manual writing. Remember that Gothic1 manual? Talk about a joke. Just to make sure I don't start an international incident here, let me point out that Europe is about the only place you can find any original game ideas these days.
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RIP Red Wings How 'Bout Dem Cowboys! |
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Mon Dec 08, 2003 1:00 am |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
As far as I know, it only changes the starting cash/equipment. ie, easier = more money, harder = 100cr starting point.
Edit: comment on the manual...
The manual was planned to ~200 pages but the publishers insisted on ~90 (too expensive to print otherwise), so significant blame lies with the publishers. The manual was written by Steel - a long time X supporter/forum mod, at least in part because Egosoft has only 4 employees (I'm told 10 employees if you count family members who help ). None of this means the player shouldn't get a professional product but I guess I'm saying it was always going to be hard for such a small project.
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Mon Dec 08, 2003 1:37 am |
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Gorath
Mostly Harmless
Joined: 03 Sep 2001
Posts: 6327
Location: NRW, Germany |
That doesn´t mean those 4 people , or 10 with family members, do everything. The German games industry is in a bad situation. Budgets are tight, follow-up projects hard to secure, devs are fireing people, the two bigger publishers (JoWooD & CDV) fired even more people. It´s pretty normal nowadays that even full price games are done without 1 internal graphics artist. Ascaron for example fired their whole graphics division after last year´s installment of their football simulation flopped. This was necessary to cut down the fixed costs. Now they have only one graphics lead per project, who coordinates the outsourced tasks. The difference was not visible for the customers.
In short, team size says nothing about product quality. In case of X² the problem is probably that they have an okay but somewhat limited budget, between 1 and 2 Mio EUR I guess, but decided to make a rather complex game with it. They would need twice the budget to focus on everything. On their current budget they have to make compromises.
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Mon Dec 08, 2003 6:19 am |
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Remus
Overgrown Cat
Joined: 03 Jul 2002
Posts: 1657
Location: Fish bowl |
Aye. Under that conditions i will be very surprise if they can produced a game with very high production value.
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Mon Dec 08, 2003 1:01 pm |
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dteowner
Shoegazer
Joined: 21 Mar 2002
Posts: 7570
Location: Third Hero of Erathia |
I'm starting to get drawn in, even though I haven't progressed much in the story since my last comment (did another restart). I'm REALLY missing an in-depth manual, though. There's a lot of things here that simply aren't explained. For example, the trading command upgrade gives you the ability to look for best prices, but I have yet see those options be active. It doesn't matter whether I'm in space, docked, fully loaded, empty...nothing.
Any chance of Steel making his "full manual" available for download?
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RIP Red Wings How 'Bout Dem Cowboys! |
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Sun Dec 14, 2003 8:29 pm |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
I don't know...maybe they didn't actually write the whole thing after the publishers put a limit on it.
The best prices thing you refer to is a specific command for freighters that have a home factory. You can't use it for general trading.
When you build a factory, you'll need (at least) 2x TP's/TS's to get the resources and sell the goods. You set the factory as their home and tell one to go buy the resources for best price and the to sell the wares for best price. Technically you can do it with one freighter and manually micro-manage it but you'd be crazy.
BTW, I was wrong when I said you couldn't transfer software between ships (sorry). You can't transfer engine tunings (maybe not steering or cargo bay, either - can't remember). The problem is the interface is tricky (!) so I overlooked it. You need both ships docked and you need to be controlling it from the new ship, not the old one.
I restarted myself and I'm romping through this time (see below)...except I hit a corrupt save yesterday so I'm waiting on today/tomorrows patch. 
Here's the easiest way to make money for me so far...
Spoiler:
Saved up until I could afford a Boron Dolphin (maxed speed) with a Jump drive from Terracorp headquarters and Best Buys/Best Sell from the Teladi. Had to sell the Disco and it still cost another ~350,000 to set up. Now I jump from The Wall to Atreus Clouds selling energy (buy @ 6-9, sell @ 25-26), making up to 40,000 a run. Check the Bulletin board for good freight jobs each time I land - some of them get you $100,000 a go!).
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Sun Dec 14, 2003 11:04 pm |
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