Space sims question

[Zomg]

And by space sims I mean the term people misapply to Wing Commander-likes

Is it possible to actually get good at these? They seem so random. Particularly since they're all basically copies of Wing Commander which just has the AI ships randomly choose between a few maneuver/attack patterns. Are there dudes that can perfect every mission in like WC/TIE Fighter/Freespace just with pure game knowledge and ability?

I kinda enjoy them but I don't feel like I'm ever getting any better at them and winning "hard" missions is just a matter of replaying it until everything random goes in my favor.

 

[Satori (original)]

It basically comes down to practice and knowing the mechanics of the game. I recommend X3 Terran Conflict in particular for this.

 

[Zomg]

Also, am I the only person that thinks WC1 was good and then they ruined it in WC2? Every time I see any kind of internet critic thing talking about the series it's like "WC2 TOOK IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL" when in fact it was annoying and then continued being worse through the Nth sequel.

I feel like they confused what was good in WC1 as being "CINEMATIC" when it really wasn't, they just kinda haphazardly looted movies for cool imagery like the briefings and space burials and so on. Almost everything that wasn't actually gameplay was commentary on your gameplay or tied into gameplay in some way (like the wingmen you could get, who actually acted the way they were characterized in missions, and who could die and disappear forever).

Then WC2 is really a movie with space sim fights stuck in between cheesy thriller cutscenes and no wingmen die and so on IIRC, huge disappointment at the time for me although I couldn't articulate why.

 

[RaXz]

Never played WC2 for prolonged periods, as it was for the PC. Played WC1 a lot on the Amiga, I don't seem to recollect that luck was into play, you just had to play well. I now remember one mission, where I had to fly to some waypoints to battle Kilrathi, it took me to long, when I returned to the Tiger's claw it was gone. It seemed that I was not efficient enough in my killing.

 

[DraQ]

And by space sims I mean the term people misapply to Wing Commander-likes

[intelligence] So, you misapply said term as well?

 

[Zomg]

Don't recursion me boy

I can tolerate shitty genre labels but "space sim" is just egregious for quasi-retarded WWII fighter plane games where you bank to turn and blah blah except there's no ground and the background is a blank black field.

Edit - This post is not a request for someone to tell me about some obscure indie space sim with pure Newtonian mechanics either, I don't have a problem with the actual gameplay just the effrontery of the name

 

[Ulminati]

It's stretching the definition of a space sim, but did you try Hardwar? It was released back in 98. You had spaceships flying around in craters on titan. The combat was decent, and it came with a sorta-passable plot.

The combat was best in the first 3/4ths of the game, where all ships were solar powered. At night, your batteries drained over time. (Fairly rapidly if you were firing your weapons). Unless you were fighting in the middle of the day, you had to conserve shots and speed or risk running out of juice mid-fight. The in-game solution was oversized lamp posts called lightwells, where you could hover and recharge your batteries. Or wait for other ships to arrive with low batteries, blast them to bits and take the cargo they dropped. It was more of an Elite clone than a Wing Commander clone.

I have fond memories of buying a hangar near a light well, making it open for public to enter and purchase repair drone time. Then at night, I'd fly over to a light well with some narcotics or other expensive contraband in my hold and jettison the cargo. I'd make a tidy profit in the ensuing clusterfuck firefight as AI ships battled for posession of the expensive goods and ran to my hangar for repairs afterwards.

Towards the endgame if you followed the plot, fusion batteries made combat less interesting. But between missions, bounty hunting, piracy and trading there was still plenty of things to make the game entertaining. Also, it featured hilaroiusly bad acting in the videos for many of the missions you could pick up.

Ah, good ol' Psycho Bob. :wistful: He was a true Bro, supplying us with nukes and threatening to "personally blowtorch random individuals"

 

[Ermm]

Not a Wing Commander style of game but Space Rangers 2 is a must play.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Hardwar is/was great. Especially with the patches released years after the game, which expanded hangar management and let you recruit NPC copilots and crap.

Never did the story on it, always just freeformed that game.

 

[Ulminati]

Hardwar is/was great. Especially with the patches released years after the game, which expanded hangar management and let you recruit NPC copilots and crap.

Never did the story on it, always just freeformed that game.

You totally need to do the story. Psycho Bob is a true patriot.

 

[Zomg]

Not a Wing Commander style of game but Space Rangers 2 is a must play.

I bought that shit starforce and all I can't really love a game with translation that painful but it was OK.

I didn't mean for this to be a recommend me thread, I really just wanted to know if anyone felt like they were super good at one or had a video of someone that was really good at one of the stereotypical WClikes, or if they're all just kinda skillless idiot games where, once you know the super basic shit like leading with your guns you just bang on the missions until they fall down. I guess I was hoping a space sim nerd would pop up and give me a page long space sim lecture.

 

[Zeit]

What in the fuck did you expect? It would take all fuckin year to show a video displaying some poor fuck bein good at some stupid ass space sim game. those fuckin things take 100 years to understand how to play and then you fuckin fail because you fucked up and have to start over. Worst genre ever, That derek smart fuck wqs as dumb aas a bag of rocks covered in ssht. Fuckin crap.

http://www.spike.com/video/galactic-command/2939743

This fuck mght be good I have no clue fuck brain.

 

[Zomg]

Hey there satire alt Blobert

Every thing I ever read about MP space sim stuff is guys saying that the guns in X game are useless and that they never use anything but missiles, when the single player games are always about killing 50 ships per mission and you have 4 missiles that can half destroy one ship each.

 

[Lightknight]

I really just wanted to know if anyone felt like they were super good at one

Wing Commanders are pretty much arcade shooters, so it stands to reason that you at least need a joystick, and i could never dedicate myself enough to fork out the cash for one.
Freespace has much smoother pace (and wingmates), so its not that unreasonable to get all the medals in both games oh highest difficulty. I did, on the third playthough or so.

 

[Zomg]

I played FS2 with a flight stick a couple years ago and still had the no skill feeling. Like I'd do a mission, lose, lose again, have no change in strategy or tactics and do it again, then win easily for no discernable reason.

 

[DraQ]

Edit - This post is not a request for someone to tell me about some obscure indie space sim with pure Newtonian mechanics either, I don't have a problem with the actual gameplay just the effrontery of the name

FE2/FFE isn't exactly obscure, unless you are the kind of 'tard who think Fallout series started with FO3, but then you shouldn't be talked at, but dragged out and shot for everyone's, including your own, good.


Neither is I-War, though it failed to pursue the whole Newtonian spaceflight thing to its logical conclusion, and also suffers from AI not knowing it's Newtonian resulting in much (at lkeast in IW2:EoC).

 

[Lightknight]

K, lets start from the roots : what do you mean by "get good at" ? Getting perfect ratings ? Not getting hit ?

In space there's a lot of maneuvering you can do in theory, but its all pretty much useless because of lack of proper physics in games. Acceleration plays a very limited role, there is no weight, no wing balance (and no wings for the most part), no inertia, and you can turn on a dime at any moment. Most arcade space shooters even lack a built-in back view, when even WW1 pilots had enough smarts to install a mirror. So any kind of dogfighting theory, or importing any knowledge from the real air combat is next to impossible. Best thing you can do is sit on someone's tail.

 

[Zomg]

K, lets start from the roots : what do you mean by "get good at" ? Getting perfect ratings ? Not getting hit ?

I'd say it would be like turning things I'd consider very bad odds at the "I know all the controls" post-newb stage (like defending X capital ship from Y bombers) into something routine if I'm concentrating and I consider some tactical concepts (like e.g. shoot the bombers first, shoot the torpedoes first, shoot the escort, whatever) and maybe build up a little muscle memory for the interface? As it is I never feel like there's any noticeable increase in performance past the knowing-the-controls stage.

 

[RaXz]

FE2/FFE isn't exactly obscure, unless you are the kind of 'tard who think Fallout series started with FO3, but then you shouldn't be talked at, but dragged out and shot for everyone's, including your own, good.

Well, you're kinda contradicting yourself here. This is what I was playing on the Acorn before FE2 was around, it really was ahead of it's time, even more than it's sequels.

 

[Drakron]

Also, am I the only person that thinks WC1 was good and then they ruined it in WC2? Every time I see any kind of internet critic thing talking about the series it's like "WC2 TOOK IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL" when in fact it was annoying and then continued being worse through the Nth sequel.

I call bullshit on that.

WC3 had good things as how well did you do in certain missions could lead to different missions if you failed.

WC4 taken that to the next step, you COULD remain on the Lexington and see how thing unfolded (you still ended up in a winnable situation if you stick with ConFed to the end but at least you get to make the choice) and you had multiple exclusive scenarios ... raid Shipyard or help Civil War and even those had options.

The shit only hit the vent with WC that EA only did to put a nail in the coffin.

I never played WC1, I played WC2 that yes ... its very straightforward, I ended up with the bad habit of following my torp so the flak would still fired at me instead (the AI would target the torpedo and blow it up if I did not).

 

[Zomg]

I never actually played 3 or 4 to be honest, I completely dropped out of gaming during the meat of the full motion video era until Fallout came out

I was just extrapolating from 2 and assuming the full motion video stuff made it even worse. Take a look at a WC1 faq or something sometime though even if you don't want to play it, the structure and reactivity of it was really unique and it had no conventional plot like we think of the term in the cutscene era.

 

[Drakron]

Well WC4 is pretty good ... you get stuff that were in WC3, you could select the fighter, wingman and loadout and there are planetary missions (now with ground textures).

Also if you raid the shipyard you can get some nifty toys, like the Bearcat fighter that you can only get IF you pick that path AND pick that mission when its still available.

There are other stuff, if you stick with ConFed you have about 3-4 missions before you are give "thou you must" (or lose) and its not briefing->mission->briefing, you have actual CONVERSATIONS.

Also there is choice-consequence, if you dont side with Maniac at one point you lose him as a wingman choice, if you do ... well, lets say one mission is going to be longer that it should.

Also you gain access to what you see at the intro of the game, IF you decide to use it ... lets say you only have ONE of those (if you DONT use it, you get the option later).

Them come WC and everything is gone ... no fighter selection, no loadout, no planetary missions and the only choices are in 2 missions were you pick what role will you play and you end up picking bomber because its back to WC2 "only torps can damage cap ships" (and plasma guns but only one fighter have it and its a bomber) and the AI is either too stupid or takes to long (serious, in ONE FUCKING MISSION that is to blow up transports I waited about 15 FUCKING MINUTES for them to blow up FOUR TRANSPORTS).

 

[MetalCraze]

I myself was never able to get into WC1 & 2 because space sims and 2D sprites just don't mix and gameplay was just too messed up because of this (like you target the ship then fire only to see that it immediately did some huge turn because the sprite switched and you miss). Same goes for Privateer.
At least vector-graphics space sims were really 3D without those problems.

WC3 and WC4 are ok. WC4 is the better one of the two because it finally had missions that weren't all 'kill X enemies', but I do miss cockpits.

 

[kingcomrade]

Did anyone play Tachyon: The Fringe? I had it way back when I was little, but my computer wasn't good enough to play it except on basic graphics and I don't remember it much at all, just that it had a kind of between-mission interface where you could buy more guns or different ships.

 

[DefJam101]

I enjoyed feeling helpless in FS2, made the battles seem more chaotic and epic while at the same time downplaying your own role in them. Makes sense with the fighter pilot premise.

Ofc once "the experience" wears off it does result in stale gameplay.