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Space Sims making a comeback (Chris Roberts)


cimerians

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Everspace is OK but it's a totally different animal, what with being more of an arcade-roguelite. As much as I despise CIG's financial tactics, the fact remains that what they aiming for with SC is fairly unique. It remains to be seen if this is really a con, always aiming for the impossible (after 7 years you can fly around one planet, well...) or if they know what they are doing and will accomplish it eventually.

 

If I had a kickass PC at the moment, I would get my space fix from No Man's Sky, I do love this game, was even upon its release, and now it seems much more advanced after all the updates. But it's still different than SC of course. Then there's Elite Dangerous: I did spend a fair chunk of time in this Universe and it's reasonably impressive, but eventually got bored. You never get to see other players and I'm quite a weak dogfighter so was getting my ass whooped. And without combat it's all a bit tedious there.

 

I would also check the new X4 game, single player driven, allegedly emergent, big universe that seems more polished than its previous iterations.

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I'd agree with that. I'm out on it being a con or not too which is why I'm still open to getting their emails and reading about updates. The pay wall to get into a shaky alpha is what bothers me especially after the millions they've raked in while barely moving the bar towards a stable beta let alone full release. Just so many unanswered questions and you see other goal posts ignored or moved quietly (or not) which gets annoying.

 

I do have a solid enough PC I picked up 4 years ago, went kind of nuts on the video card side and main processor so I can happily run PS4/Pro era stuff without issue so I do have No Man's Sky I picked up through GoG. That game is insane. I put some time into it, a blip compared to more who are greatly more dedicated. The game being called vast is an understatement, and the levels of harvesting needed alone just to pop from place to place is overwhelming for me in the time I can commit. I love it, but hate I can't feel like I'm getting very far so I backed off of it. I love what they did there and it's truly amazing and unique in their scope, and blows me away how small of a team managed to do that too and on a far smaller budget as well compared to the big fish that got huge then whine about profits. It's not hard to develop lean, if you try, and that game is a testament to it, even if it came out with a rocky start. I really did love the dogfighting in it, once thing I'm fantastic with is that kind of down and dirty combat in flight/space ships. Once I get the controls down, AI or people tend to get wrecked. I'm more of the savant type with those blindly than FPS games like so many others are. It's also why I keep holding out on Star Citizen, memories of that makers excellent past in the Wing Commander series.

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Yeah, I guess NMS i definitely more of a sandbox than game where there's a tangible progress or story (I thought this whole Atlas whimsy was its weakest part). I just love the procgen planets, some visuals are breathtaking, and sense of scale is simply incredible. In Elite I don't really get it since it's much more realistic so you spend many minutes flying to some distant planet only to stare at a dull surface. I guess that's how it is in reality but I do like the sixties SF vibe NMS offers probably bit more.

 

There is one more series worth attention on PC, Starpoint Gemini. I kinda liked it too.

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I never touched Elite but a bit on the NES version of all things, so I'm not familiar with it. I am though with NMS and I agree with you. The overwhelming space of it all and no tangible progress with it where you feel like the story is going along and X happens lacks so I kind of just ran out of time to play it by proxy with other things coming along. I don't hate it, rather like it, but it's like a 1 game thing for a person to invest all into or forget it by design too I think. I'm happier with a Wing Commander Tie (and or) Xwing style game, Descent even, Terminal Velocity, Starlancer and so on type, and presuming here Star Citizen too if it ever sells at a normal rate.

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Well, I tried everspace again. It feels like the wing commander sim pod if it had a random level mode and (oddly) less permadeath. I say oddly, since everspace sells itself as a "roguelike" for reasons that bend my brain. Needless to say, it didn't sparkle with me.

 

Freelancer got taken over by weird roleplayers, so that's out, but maybe I can put some more hours into trying to get gog privateer not to suck.

Edited by Reaperman
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  • 1 month later...

I got my mouse hovering over Add To Cart for this: https://www.gog.com/game/helium_rain

 

Seems like a lot of game for 10$...I especially like the (alleged) deep economy simulation angle. And it ain't bad looking either.

Never heard of that but it looks pretty fun and not too deep to get annoying or detract. I like the idea of just sectors around one system of moons and things around a large gas giant. You don't get the annoyance value of multi-systems or epic multi-system size like NO Mans Sky annoyingly did. I wonder what the time investment would be here.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's not exactly a space sim, but you might check out Stellar Tactics. Basically it's got to aspects - one space combat (which is sort of a space sim, but it's only in a 2d plane for some reason) and then a ground RPG aspect which is like Wasteland 2, real time until you get into combat, where it become turn based.

 

But it has a gigantic procedurally generated galaxy to explore.

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  • 1 month later...

There are a few space combat sims on Android I've found. Star Combat, Project Charon, Alpha Squadron 2, Arc Squadron, Strikewing and more. Galaxy on Fire 2 is a good one as well but takes a lot of space, 1GB on a 16GB system is a lot. Look around you'll find something you like. I've put them on a Madcatz Mojo and they work pretty well with the controller and some tweaks.

Edited by vrocko
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It's more than a little annoying that everything Star Citizen puts out looks absolutely amazing. It's these little droplets of hope that draw me along.

 

This time around it's their facial technology, and how efficient it looks to be in its current iteration. Granted the last few amazing facial techs that they showed off looked great too, but they were scrapped, I guess. The deal on this new one is the volume of facial variety it provides, the ability of all of those to work with the animations, and overall efficiency of facial transmission over the wire. They're morphing multiple faces together into new ones, in real time, while the animation is still playing, and the customization data seems to be under a kilobyte(?). Jeez... It starts @7:15 below and is a pretty long segment.

 

I was wondering how they were going to fill their NPC-heavy city areas without the drones all sharing just a couple faces, or the flip side of having to load 30 unique models just to walk across the street. These are the low-quality, non-actor faces. The ones used by players, and for the NPCs that don't have names.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HL4ZpNHg0E

Edited by Reaperman
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  • 3 weeks later...

3.5a is now live to all backers for those who still care. We get:

  • the face maker
  • lady-characters finally (I think)
  • more FPS/better netcode
  • more missions+mission-givers
  • they screwed with controls yet again and gimbals are actually a little automatic (finally)
  • their full city-planet and its moons are now in the persistent universe.

 

Looks pretty. All in all a fairly big update. Not enough to get me to try it today. I'll wait for at least the first stability update.

Here's a video from boredgamer showing it all so you can also skip playing. Mercifully, this time he opted not to shoot the whole thing with the in-built face-tracking.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87yYGWsf6oM

Edited by Reaperman
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Well I tried it. Female character model works pretty well, frame rates are now up around 60 (even around busy port olisar), and the new planet, ArcCorp, is simply brilliant. That said, I hate this game. Star Citizen is simultaneously the most incredible and most frustrating digital experience I've ever had.

 

I guess the big problem is that so little of the game, is actual 'game.' Mining, missions, shooting, cargo--the fun bits--all take a back seat to this supposed "realism" in travel. The new planet is 8 minutes away from port olisar. 8 minutes of nothing, another 4+ of landing, and a few more waiting for, and riding, the space-bus after you land (not kidding). And we complained about the load times on Neo Geo CD?

 

Also, it doesn't matter because you'll probably never make it to ArcCorp. See, somebody thought overheating engines for in-system travel would be fun. This mechanic is poorly documented and rapidly changing, but the current build mechanics need this guide. You'll need the video because star citizen backers are mostly unhelpful douchenozzles, who (at best) tell you to RTFM--as if there even were a manual. But don't worry, you have plenty of time to alt-tab out to youtube to watch the guide after you've started your flight.

 

But if you don't finish the guide fast enough and overheat, or pirates intercept, or you drop from quantum speed for *any* reason before your destination, you're probably boned. In my experience, you have a far greater than 50% chance of your navigation system leaving you stuck and having to suicide. Or maybe you'll fall through the floor of your ship which will then instantly despawn. Either way you start back where you came from, and get to wait for an insurance cooldown which is totally your fault...somehow. who thought insurance cooldowns and 12-minute in-system travel times were fun?

 

You know what was fun? Three-second auto-landing and an autopilot button that takes you right into battle. Pick up mission, hit 'A' at each nav point, fight some pirates, auto-land at the planet. That's fun. Who makes an HD version of that game?

Edited by Reaperman
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Apparently in the 30th century ship computers are too dumb to figure out on their own if your engines will overheat and how to compensate for that. I can understand why they'd have an insurance cooldown period in a fully functioning game because of griefers. However, it makes no sense when the game hasn't even hit alpha status yet so the bugs just make this at least as much a pain in the ass as griefers would be. Oh and yes, there's definitely a reason people on the Star Citizen forums are known as shitizens elsewhere.

 

Glad to hear the tech demo is getting a lot more optimized for the brief moments you're around cool stuff.

 

Personally I haven't had this installed since October of 2016 and won't install anything again unless they release a final version of Squadron 42.

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I loved Wing Commander so I was very happy to hear this.

Then I found out it will be yet another MMO and I was unhappy to hear this.

 

However, if you guys like Wing Commander, I recommend Wing Commander Saga. It's a free fan made version with excellent production values

 

There is a Wing Commander universe that would fit well with the MMO model: Privateer. Imagine buying, selling, and upgrading your ship while performing missions for hire of varying legality, while finding an occasional "quest" to complete. In fact, it seems that Star Citizen is something close to this model. Of course I'd still prefer to see the familiar faces (Kilrathi, Retros, and even an occasional Steltek reference).

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The trade off between realism and tedium seems to be hard to solve in these persistent universes. In old Elite and similar single player games you'd just hit time acceleration and problem would be solved. In Elite: Dangerous the endless cockpit time eventually made me quit. But on the other hand I am also sort of for this approach. It's kinda tricky, though they definitely should think of ways to alleviate this problem, there really should be some sort of insta travel with possibility for encounters and events baked in.

 

Now, I'm talking of course about accomplished "full" games such as E:D. SC is still neither a fish nor fowl - is it a scam? tech demo? super ambitious undertaking rightfully still in alpha? Really hard to say.

 

 

 

I guess the big problem is that so little of the game, is actual 'game.' Mining, missions, shooting, cargo--the fun bits--all take a back seat to this supposed "realism" in travel. The new planet is 8 minutes away from port olisar. 8 minutes of nothing, another 4+ of landing, and a few more waiting for, and riding, the space-bus after you land (not kidding). And we complained about the load times on Neo Geo CD?
Edited by youxia
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Oh and then the best part. Once I got intercepted by two pirates in 'Caterpillars,' which are medium sized freight ships on the larger end of one size level over the little Avenger I was flying. "No problem" I thought, "my ship is the more battle-ready starting ship, being literally built around its main gun. Let's show these ruffians what for!"

 

So instead of running, I target one and begin to kind of orbit around it. I quickly get over my initial disappointment at the new "auto gimbal" system (appearantly electronics 500 years from now are worthless) and switch over to manual. The new flight model, despite its many, many, flaws does make it exceedingly easy to spin around my enemy and land nearly every bullet right in it. I do this for several minutes. I have to do this, because history tells me that if these freighters do land a single hit on me, I'll be half dead. Mercifully the reloading and overheating mechanics of my ship weapons appears to be suspended, because I was at this for minutes. It felt like somewhere over ten when I had to simply give up and run. I wasn't making any serious headway on its shields, and had only managed to turn one of its little winglets red.

 

Now, I know roughly what the time to kill was in Wing Commander, starlancer/freelancer, or colony wars games, and no matter how small the small ship was, it usually seemed to be able to hurt the big military ships. This is just a freighter the next size up, and I would define it as unkillable. Now I know it's alpha, and these stats have changed many times, but if it keeps as it is, it looks like paid invulnerability. Of course the star citizen's "fantastic" community will tout how "realistic" it all is, but how much fun is a game where everybody HAS to own the largest ship to do anything but run? It reminds me of the worst parts of Eve.

Edited by Reaperman
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Well I tried it. Female character model works pretty well, frame rates are now up around 60 (even around busy port olisar), and the new planet, ArcCorp, is simply brilliant. That said, I hate this game. Star Citizen is simultaneously the most incredible and most frustrating digital experience I've ever had.

 

I guess the big problem is that so little of the game, is actual 'game.' Mining, missions, shooting, cargo--the fun bits--all take a back seat to this supposed "realism" in travel. The new planet is 8 minutes away from port olisar. 8 minutes of nothing, another 4+ of landing, and a few more waiting for, and riding, the space-bus after you land (not kidding). And we complained about the load times on Neo Geo CD?

 

Also, it doesn't matter because you'll probably never make it to ArcCorp. See, somebody thought overheating engines for in-system travel would be fun. This mechanic is poorly documented and rapidly changing, but the current build mechanics need this guide. You'll need the video because star citizen backers are mostly unhelpful douchenozzles, who (at best) tell you to RTFM--as if there even were a manual. But don't worry, you have plenty of time to alt-tab out to youtube to watch the guide after you've started your flight.

 

But if you don't finish the guide fast enough and overheat, or pirates intercept, or you drop from quantum speed for *any* reason before your destination, you're probably boned. In my experience, you have a far greater than 50% chance of your navigation system leaving you stuck and having to suicide. Or maybe you'll fall through the floor of your ship which will then instantly despawn. Either way you start back where you came from, and get to wait for an insurance cooldown which is totally your fault...somehow. who thought insurance cooldowns and 12-minute in-system travel times were fun?

 

You know what was fun? Three-second auto-landing and an autopilot button that takes you right into battle. Pick up mission, hit 'A' at each nav point, fight some pirates, auto-land at the planet. That's fun. Who makes an HD version of that game?

 

Real space travel just is not sexy as in the movies. But people seem to believe they want both realism and want to be Luke Skywalker/Captain Kirk in the same game.

 

It's never going to work, you just have to choose one. And if most people understood what the former entails, they'd choose the latter. Space distances are vast, and people don't comprehend just how vast.

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Geez I've been playing Wing Commander since it popped out decades ago in a big pretty box on a few floppies, and that statement is depressing. If you can't even take out the equal of having a fighter (rapier) against a basic transport (drayman) having so little damage done over that amount of time there's just no point in playing. You're right, it's a run like hell game, or pay major bucks for a moderately large transport or larger war ship and just pound people. Paid punisher, paid invulnerability against anything outside those who also pay heavily.

 

 

I did forget about WC Saga, nice to see that link from 2012 is still up.

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  • 3 weeks later...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2019/05/01/exclusive-the-saga-of-star-citizen-a-video-game-that-raised-300-millionbut-may-never-be-ready-to-play/

 

Forbes pulling no punches here. It's not exactly anything new but all these figures coming from a respectable source are quite sobering. Nearly 300 million dollars spent. 7 years of dev time. Just about one star system and lot of ship models (some as jpegs) to show for it. Latest 45 mil private capital injection to be spent on marketing. Phew...nice job if you can get it.

 

Somewhere in a parallel universe not far away Derek Smart is cackling with glee.

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