MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy

[Fat Dragon]

Is this game any good? I was cleaning out the garage earlier and organized some of my old games stacked away in there and found this. I don't recognize it or remember playing though, must have never gotten around to it. Worth playing?

 

[rpgcodexusername]

combat sucks and its like a big generic galaxy,worth a try though!

 

[Lord Rocket]

The combat system is awful, as Slenkar points out. I wanted to play it but the first thing that happens is a fight and I just couldn't bring myself to keep going after that.

 

[Fat Dragon]

What's combat like, why does it suck?

 

[rpgcodexusername]

i only have vague memories, its difficult to tell whats going on, its too fast

 

[Lord Rocket]

I'm no turn based zealot, but its basically a particuarly poor RTwP system. The controls are ridiculously unintuitive - the 'shoot at a guy' key is O, if I recall correctly - and, yeah, way too fast. As a bonus, your unselected party members don't seem to do anything except get repeatedly shot in the face without your prompting, and half the time they don't seem to do anything even if you do prompt them. Presumably Megatraveller imparts initiative penalties for wounds or something (it had some weird damage system - which is stupid since the Classic Trav had a good system), but since everything goes by so quick they'll stack up before you can start punching the O key.
The enemies are also able to shoot you from off screen, and I couldn't find any way to return fire then either. All in all, very frustrating.

Anyway, the last time I tried to play either MT game (the sequel is a little more playable, but not by an awful lot) was in... 2007? So, yeah, the specifics here may be a little off.

 

[mondblut]

Combat is a bit RTS-like, with bunch of enemy fleas moving chaotically across a (thankfully small) playing field successfully evading your cursor. All while, I think, you are controlling a single character while the rest of the party stands still awaiting their instructions without a semblance of AI control, action queueing or group orders. Add a horrid interface to boot.

The game had a great character creation engine, but after that, it was mediocre to bad.

 

[rpgcodexusername]

I wonder what depths of gameplay one could reach if one ignored the combat?

after a bit of reading i noticed that if you press 'p' it pauses the game so you can shoot in combat

 

[Seboss]

Haven't played it in a loooog time but I clearly remember that combat is indeed awful at first.
But once you get the hang of it (pause is your friend) and if you have some ex-marine character in your party (with a battle dress and some heavy firepower) it's actually pretty easy.
If I remember correctly it's pretty short so you won't have to commit 50 hours to beat it anyway.

Make sure to look up in the manual which skills are actually useful. The character creation system has all the skills of the pnp game but only implements a handful of them.

I think MT2 is much better, but it's also pretty hard if I remember correctly. Last time I tried, I barely managed to buy the space drive needed to leave the starting system before losing the game (limited time for the MQ).

 

[rpgcodexusername]

what kinds of quests does it have?