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sb hermit posted:imagine doing this with a keyboard and also much harder. That was wing commander. Oh yeah, as I said it's the same in almost every space pewpew. I think a lot of it is due to the lack of reference points, horizon (and physics/gravity) compared to flight sims. In a good flight sim you kindasorta "know" where your plane is pointing and going at all times just based on the visual cues and how it reacts to controls - and not unimportantly you have to take variations of your flight envelope in consideration in your manoeuvers, you can't just point your nose at the MiG's or the Fokker's tail and keep pulling dat stick. In space sims you have no idea. The only games that were semi-helpful in this regards were Starlancer and the X-Wing/TIE Fighter etc series because those typically had a handful of bigass capital ships in every mission that helped you orientate ; but even then you were still mostly in fighter-dog-chase-tail mode a lot of the time.
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Feb 21, 2021 00:23
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Something that got briefly touched on but wasn't directly mentioned is that reputation in this game is a giant messy web. It's never so simple as 'do missions, raise rep', because every faction has friends and enemies, and as you raise rep with one faction, their allies will also gain some rep, and their enemies will lose rep. Even if you pay hackers to alter your rep (which you pretty much need to do if you want to get certain factions out of the red) it'll absolutely tank your rep with other factions, so you can't just be friends with everyone.
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Feb 21, 2021 01:10
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I don't have much experience with Wing Commander. I remember playing one of them briefly as it was given away on a magazine disc, but it was a long time ago and I can't remember which one and why I didn't continue on with it. I do remember watching my father playing a lot of the original Elite, I was only a year old when it was released but I still remember it when I was years older on the ZX Spectrum and when we upgraded to an Atari ST. But even then it went way above my head. The first space combat sim that I really played was Epic, which is a game that should probably remain firmly on nostalgia levels but even mentioning it I'm imagining the 'Mars' and 'Jupiter' music on the Atari sound chip for the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=262ZZLc9DyE&t=80s The video says 1986 for some reason even though the game was released in 1992. Frontier: Elite II was the game that dominated my later childhood years, I invested hundreds upon hundreds of hours into this game and I don't think that I got anywhere. I can't even remember if there was a storyline to this day and if there was, I never found it and didn't try as I was having too much fun doing my own thing. As soon as the game stopped being a challenge I restarted it and began anew with a different start-up scenario. I think that my twilight LP years will be spent in an endless run of a neverending run of this game, all contained within a 1.44MB data disc. I did play First Encounters, I tried to start it up numerous times but it never stuck with me as Elite II did. Even though I didn't play through the Wing Commander series, TIE Fighter and X-Wing were eventually released and continued to re-ignite those space-sim itches, they weren't open-ended like before but they did scratch some itches that Elite left behind on older systems. X Wing vs TIE Fighter did come along in 1997, they made no secret that this would primarily be a multiplayer game and that single-player aspects would be secondary but I still found enjoyment within it. It's at this point where I'm reminiscing far too much about LAN and modem matches with friends. Was it the first X game that made you start without an autopilot, warp engine and made you travel for hours in real-time to the nearest station. Edit: I meant to save this and continue it at a later time instead of posting it. Rocket Baby Dolls fucked around with this message at 10:57 on Feb 21, 2021 |
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Feb 21, 2021 01:55
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Telsa Cola posted:As for the population there is like a million different reasons why it could be low.
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Feb 21, 2021 03:50
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kw0134 posted:My issue personally is that there's no reason to pave over an entire planet to house 220 million people. We have six billion right now and the vast majority of Earth is still undeveloped. Building up the surface area of a planet is a massive undertaking but it makes zero sense with a population that size. Who said anything about housing? If its the commerical hub for the entire sector it is entirely possible its manufacturing or warehouses or such.
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Feb 21, 2021 05:46
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This runs into other problems. How big that world? Terrestrial planets usually don't vary too much in density (as far as we know), so even if you think it's like double the density of Earth, yet only half as big, to come out at around Earth's gravity, there would still be a shitload of surface area to cover. Far too much to build up with commercial buildings, even if every human were to live in a generous mansion. And from what we can see of the planet's surface, it's in reality more like a dense urban core. There's just no way that 220 million people could ever hope to fill a planet spanning city.
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Feb 21, 2021 06:13
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Torrannor posted:This runs into other problems. How big that world? Terrestrial planets usually don't vary too much in density (as far as we know), so even if you think it's like double the density of Earth, yet only half as big, to come out at around Earth's gravity, there would still be a shitload of surface area to cover. Far too much to build up with commercial buildings, even if every human were to live in a generous mansion. And from what we can see of the planet's surface, it's in reality more like a dense urban core. There's just no way that 220 million people could ever hope to fill a planet spanning city. Again, this city is the central hub of commerical activity for a large number of planets, and may have been the central logistics hub for colonizing the rest too. We also really don't have any idea how any of their technology works, or what the industrial chain and requirments looks like. This does cut both ways, yes, but we are just shooting the poo poo about a scifi space game so whatever. Cities also don't have/need people spread out in them evenly, its entirely possible there is a centralized residential district and the rest is manufactoring, agricultural (though this ultimately depends on how you define "city") and the like. Also the planet diameter is given, its almost exactly earth sized, just 10 km bigger. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Feb 21, 2021 |
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Feb 21, 2021 06:41
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Also, depending on what future tech manufacturing requires, a lot of that space might be occupied by large autonomous factories or laboratories. We just need humans to punish the robots when they get out of line, or wield weapons to shoot each other.
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Feb 21, 2021 07:35
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It was very funny listening to all those NPCs with the same voice actor and that same line with the same cadence; "This is our base." I never really liked missiles when I played this. They never felt powerful enough for the cost and their ability to be scrambled by countermeasures.
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Feb 21, 2021 09:39
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I forgot to upload the screenshots yesterday: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=158305 It was late last night while I was writing my last post and instead of saving it and finishing it later I pressed post without really thinking and went to bed. Now that I've woken up again my train of thought with it has completely gone. Has anyone ever finished Hardwar? I know that it was more of a sci-fi flight sim but it was a game that always intrigued me upon its release. I believe that there was an abandoned LP of it once on these forums
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Feb 21, 2021 13:18
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:Has anyone ever finished Hardwar? I know that it was more of a sci-fi flight sim but it was a game that always intrigued me upon its release. I believe that there was an abandoned LP of it once on these forums Never heard of it. But it's title immediately reminded me of I-War, which is a criminally underrated space combat game. Because that game took it's physics seriously. If you accelerated for 5 minutes straight, you would need to decelerate (or accelerate in the opposite direction, really) to come to a relative standstill. In that game, you of course would let your momentum take you along the big cruiser while you oriented your ship in it's direction and blast it out of the sky. It's a really great game, apart from the great gameplay it also has quite the nice plot with several story branches. I'm sad that there's apparently not even an aborted LP of it here 
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Feb 21, 2021 13:46
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:Has anyone ever finished Hardwar? I know that it was more of a sci-fi flight sim but it was a game that always intrigued me upon its release. I believe that there was an abandoned LP of it once on these forums Sadly no, I really loved what I played of the demo from a magazine cover disk, then about ten years later trying to play a downloaded version and it glitching out halfway through the story. And I wouldn't know where to start with finding a copy for sale. About Freelancer, I'm surprised every enemy pilot seems to have a unique name, presumably randomly generated. Is this to make the player feel a little bad for killing Allen Jenkins instead of just another TIE pilot?
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Feb 21, 2021 19:36
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I finished work early and decided to play some more to raise a bit of cash. I did record it with the microphone switched off but nothing really interesting cropped up so all I will upload from it is the rumours that I picked up which I will be in a separate link in the next update. Update five will indeed start off with a new ship and a new weapons configuration, I also picked up some new hardware while completing jobs which I will show off when the time comes.Torrannor posted:Never heard of it. But it's title immediately reminded me of I-War, which is a criminally underrated space combat game. Because that game took it's physics seriously. If you accelerated for 5 minutes straight, you would need to decelerate (or accelerate in the opposite direction, really) to come to a relative standstill. In that game, you of course would let your momentum take you along the big cruiser while you oriented your ship in it's direction and blast it out of the sky. It's a really great game, apart from the great gameplay it also has quite the nice plot with several story branches. I'm sad that there's apparently not even an aborted LP of it here Independence War? They released a sequel a couple of years later and both games are available to buy on gog.com Cloud Potato posted:Sadly no, I really loved what I played of the demo from a magazine cover disk, then about ten years later trying to play a downloaded version and it glitching out halfway through the story. And I wouldn't know where to start with finding a copy for sale. I can't seem to find the LP any more, it must have been moved into the archives. I may have sourced a copy, I have a hundred and one things to work through first but I might fire it up one day in the future and give it a shot. It was a little disconcerting at first seeing the pilot names but I think that it's a nice touch. I wonder if there is a way to edit the names list...
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Feb 21, 2021 23:02
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I'm sure it was just a coincidence that one of the rogues in the second video was named Stephen Harper.
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Feb 23, 2021 12:38
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Torrannor posted:Never heard of it. But it's title immediately reminded me of I-War, which is a criminally underrated space combat game. Because that game took it's physics seriously. If you accelerated for 5 minutes straight, you would need to decelerate (or accelerate in the opposite direction, really) to come to a relative standstill. In that game, you of course would let your momentum take you along the big cruiser while you oriented your ship in it's direction and blast it out of the sky. It's a really great game, apart from the great gameplay it also has quite the nice plot with several story branches. I'm sad that there's apparently not even an aborted LP of it here One problem is that I-War has some serious bugs on modern machines. I have the Gog version and it's even more difficult to fly because some of the controls don't work right even under Win XP, and it crashes a fair amount on top of that. It's also impossible for me to really do anything because the damage calculation is for some reason way off, making enemies nearly unkillable. It seems like the sequel has more people playing it, so it could be that those issues don't pop up, but I haven't tried it yet. The space game I really loved from this era was Tachyon: The Fringe, which isn't quite as open or as large a universe as Freelancer, but it has the soul at its heart that this game lacks. It also does scale excellently (FTL jump gates are needed to move between planets, stars are at the center of each system and of appropriate magnitude, and the stations are impressively large as well).
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Feb 23, 2021 20:54
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Kangra posted:One problem is that I-War has some serious bugs on modern machines. I have the Gog version and it's even more difficult to fly because some of the controls don't work right even under Win XP, and it crashes a fair amount on top of that. It's also impossible for me to really do anything because the damage calculation is for some reason way off, making enemies nearly unkillable. Tachyon is also helped by the fact that its main character is voiced by Bruce Campbell, who absolutely kills it the whole time.
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Feb 23, 2021 21:03
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A good poster posted:I'm sure it was just a coincidence that one of the rogues in the second video was named Stephen Harper. unfortunately the real one does not have a spaceship we can blow up
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Feb 23, 2021 21:23
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Telsa Cola posted:Who said anything about housing? If its the commerical hub for the entire sector it is entirely possible its manufacturing or warehouses or such. I think you're reaching too far afield into literally inventing fiction to cover for what is almost certainly a simple mistake in scale. Which is more likely: they expected the audience to intuitively understand that by having a city planet with a wildly inappropriate density for cities really meant they were Amazon Warehouse Planet, or they're just bad at big numbers, probably because we're bad at it as a species? Think about it this way. Assuming earthlike-but-slightly-larger (so 150 million square/km land area rather than our 148.something), City Planet having ~0.7 square kilometers of land per person simply fails the sniff test. As an extremely convenient counterpoint, the city of Le Pré-Saint-Gervais happens to be 0.7 square kilometers and has a population of just under 18,000. At that density that leaves us with 8555 sq/km of city, and 149.9 million square km of not city, a whopping 17,500:1 ratio. so, nah. They just screwed up their math. It's fine, it happens literally all the time in fiction and especially in sci-fi where the ecumenopolis is such a popular concept. Rocket Baby Dolls posted:I believe that there was an abandoned LP of it once on these forums I didn't see one on the LP Master List, nor did a quick search turn one up. AI War, Colony Wars, Dawn of War, Dragon War, lotta wars. But not Hardwar. Maybe do a doubleheader with Subwar 2050 for the maximum War per thread?  Psion fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Feb 24, 2021 |
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Feb 24, 2021 01:23
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Only management gets counted in the official Liberty census. 
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Feb 24, 2021 01:25
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Hwurmp posted:Only management gets counted in the official Liberty census. aw poo poo, you cracked the case it all fits
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Feb 24, 2021 01:31
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Psion posted:I think you're reaching too far afield into literally inventing fiction to cover for what is almost certainly a simple mistake in scale. Which is more likely: they expected the audience to intuitively understand that by having a city planet with a wildly inappropriate density for cities really meant they were Amazon Warehouse Planet, or they're just bad at big numbers, probably because we're bad at it as a species? My point is that when discussing science ficitions it's incredibly easy to make believable justifications for why X amount of space is used and that using 21st century understandings of city layout and population density doesnt really pass the sniff test beyond "Well I mean thats how we do things now". I also don't really need to invent all that much, we know its first settled planet in this part of the universe and we know it's the commerical/economic hub for multiple planets. I think it's safe to make some assumptions. But yes many times it's because people just pick a big number. Hwurmp posted:Only management gets counted in the official Liberty census. Also this. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Feb 24, 2021 |
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Feb 24, 2021 01:31
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Telsa Cola posted:My point is that when discussing science ficitions it's incredibly easy to make believable justifications for why X amount of space is used and that using 21st century understandings of city layout and population density doesnt really pass the sniff test beyond "Well I mean thats how we do things now". well it would help if you actually posited a believable position first if you want to make that point like if you want to claim that all answers are equally viable because it's all made up anyway we can just disagree now, there's one based on actual evidence and one based on nothing, that's not apples to apples.  Psion fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Feb 24, 2021 |
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Feb 24, 2021 01:35
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Psion posted:well it would help if you actually posited a believable position first if you want to make that point Large amounts of space being delegated to system wide manufactoring and storage is a believable position. Agricultural usage could also fit underneath this, depending on how finicky you want to get. It doesn't nor does it need to hinge on population size. Psion posted:like if you want to claim that all answers are equally viable because it's all made up anyway we can just disagree now, there's one based on actual evidence and one based on nothing, that's not apples to apples. We can agree to disagree now then, I don't find that evidence all that convincing. Anyways Ill stop posting about it, I don't need to poo poo up the thread and we have dedicated spaces for space talk now. Sorry y'all. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Feb 24, 2021 |
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Feb 24, 2021 01:38
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Well, this recording session didn't end very well. I've had an okay test run and then it went tits up during the recording. I only intend to keep this ship for one video and I intend to make it count. To be fair, what I'm doing is far from optimal and possibly quite bonkers but I'm attempting it all the same. Edit: I'll try it again tomorrow.
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Feb 24, 2021 23:17
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:far from optimal and possibly quite bonkers but I'm attempting it all the same Ah, the Rhino.
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Feb 24, 2021 23:26
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Don't drive your space-truck into the bad neighborhood.
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Feb 24, 2021 23:33
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I always like to imagine the NPC's reactions to this sort of thing. Like King and Juni standing around talking about their next mission and they're like, "So is Trent on board?" "Oh, no. He bought a new transport, then flew it into a radiation zone and it exploded." "Oh. Well, poo poo. I don't know why, but I thought he was going to be important, too." "Yeah, weird."
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Feb 25, 2021 00:44
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Kangra posted:The space game I really loved from this era was Tachyon: The Fringe, which isn't quite as open or as large a universe as Freelancer, but it has the soul at its heart that this game lacks. It also does scale excellently (FTL jump gates are needed to move between planets, stars are at the center of each system and of appropriate magnitude, and the stations are impressively large as well). More importantly, it's voiced by Bruce Campbell as the protagonist. The power of The Chin cannot be denied.
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Feb 25, 2021 03:29
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GilliamYaeger posted:Did you know that a Norwegian power metal band made a pretty awesome song about this game? God drat, Keldian are one of my favourite bands, and I somehow never cottoned on to the opening sample being from this game. That said, the game isn't hugely nostalgic for me or anything, I played it for a fair bit way back when, but it didn't leave a very lasting impression. Still kinda surprised how familiar it feels in these videos, though.
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Feb 25, 2021 13:14
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:Well, this recording session didn't end very well. I've had an okay test run and then it went tits up during the recording. I only intend to keep this ship for one video and I intend to make it count. To be fair, what I'm doing is far from optimal and possibly quite bonkers but I'm attempting it all the same. Edit: I'll try it again tomorrow. ah, this takes me back... poo poo, there's some really cool systems in this game. One that sticks out to me is Omega-11, well into the southern Corsairs territory and accessible mostly by jumpholes. See, the asteroid fields there yield Diamonds, which has drawn in the Rheinland's Daumann corp to exploit the semi-molten rocks orbiting the red giant. Oh, did I forget to mention? The star is a dying red giant spewing out a constant stream of intense radiation, strong enough to erode a vessel's hull in minutes. The heavier capital ships and superheavy miners can mostly shrug it off through weight of armor alone, but it's hazardous (bordering on deadly) for fighters and small craft. Only the asteroid fields surrounding the star offer sanctuary, so transiting the system is mostly a game of darting between the rock fields. There are crazy-rear end miners (both legal and not) who dive deeper into the radiation towards the richer, more molten asteroids closely orbiting the star, and the Red Hessian pirates maintain a large base somewhere in the system. Really nice place overall, good tourist destination. Don't forget to check out the nearby neutron star in Omega-41!
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Feb 25, 2021 22:11
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 This video doesn't contain a whole lot of action, most of it is spent visiting three new starbases but I do take on a new mission type in the middle of the exploration. I will find ways of speeding up the process of visiting new bases and ports when we enter new systems, right now I'm enjoying taking some time with getting used to everything again. I'll probably keep the "Current Information" about each system to screenshots from now on. Would it be preferable if I did the same with rumours? I kinda feel like talking to random patrons adds a little more life to the game but the end result is a paragraph or two of text. Screenshots: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=158329 I did manage to record the next session successfully. Well, when I say successfully I mean that it was a complete poo poo show but I survived it and managed to return home. I'm probably going to re-record it as apart from a lot of rookie mistakes, I completely forgot to show off how turrets work, it was only after hitting the "Turret view" button accidentally about two-thirds into it when it suddenly dawned on me.
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Feb 26, 2021 20:03
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Hello, Mr. Rocket Baby Dolls, i am a goon. I don't run this place, but i have paid  to the people who do. Just between us i have heard a rumor:Most bases of one faction all sell the same gear. In most faction areas there is one base which sells the best stuff you can buy at that point in game. Most gear is heavily gated by level (personal wealth + story progression) anyway. The Liberty section is a bit annoying in terms of weapons because you have either access to fast pewpew lasers or those slow plasma cannons. I got quite fond of a later types of gun, particle and neutron, which are middle of the road in terms of speed and damage. The top-of-the-crop pirates, outcasts and corsairs, both use those excellent guns, if you can "convince" them to give it to you. Or maybe you have to go on some treasure hunt for some pirate wrecks with some gear left behind. OutofSight fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Feb 26, 2021 |
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Feb 26, 2021 20:50
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OutofSight posted:Hello, Mr. Rocket Baby Dolls, i am a goon. I don't run this place, but i have paid Thank you to the contribution to the cause. I'll be changing things up in the next video. I actually played for an hour to raise some cash and to "convince" these fine people to share some of their weapons with me, I'll also be on the hunt for some of these wrecks. I do intend to do a lot of "convincing" as time goes on as I know there are some OP guns later on that are only available from this method. Thank you for the advice, I always appreciate it.
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Feb 26, 2021 21:06
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Time saving tip: On the map, you can choose the waypoint option when you click on something, and the game will plot a course for you, including nearest trade lanes. You didn't have to fly 22k to the base, you could have travelled 3-4 to the nearest trade lane gate and done the rest at 10x speed. е: Oh, you use it later in the video my dad fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Feb 26, 2021 |
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Feb 26, 2021 22:26
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my dad posted:Time saving tip: On the map, you can choose the waypoint option when you click on something, and the game will plot a course for you, including nearest trade lanes. You didn't have to fly 22k to the base, you could have travelled 3-4 to the nearest trade lane gate and done the rest at 10x speed. I'm still making some basic errors but I'm getting there and eventually, I'll have things running a lot more smoother. I'm glad that I re-recorded the next update earlier today as I had made a lot of basic errors during the original recording. I stated one of them in the update text but I also made errors with customised waypoints, I kept forgetting to clear them before making a new one. There's going to be a couple of basic errors in the next recording, one of them is through blind panic.
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Feb 26, 2021 22:58
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OutofSight posted:Hello, Mr. Rocket Baby Dolls, i am a goon. I don't run this place, but i have paid  Ah, the Defender, one of my favourites in terms of looks.
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Feb 26, 2021 23:26
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Yeah I remember flying that ship for a very long time when I played.
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Feb 26, 2021 23:33
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:Thank you to the contribution to the cause. I'll be changing things up in the next video. I actually played for an hour to raise some cash and to "convince" these fine people to share some of their weapons with me, I'll also be on the hunt for some of these wrecks. I do intend to do a lot of "convincing" as time goes on as I know there are some OP guns later on that are only available from this method. Thank you for the advice, I always appreciate it. The only really different gear at this point could only be found at the pirate factions' bases. It is doable to pull a stunt to get friendly to pirate factions and still have full access to the main story (e.g. not pissing of the major houses and their security forces). The New York system has two pirate bases, one for the Junkers and the main base for the Liberty Rogues, both hidden way by some scenic asteroid thickets. You have to shoot a lot (and i mean a LOT) of Xenos (everybody hates those) to get landing permissions to the now neutral Junkers base. The job board (no npc will give you jobs this early) gives you Junkers missions to shoot more Xenos. With the faction system being what it is, doing jobs for the Junkers raises the opinion of their allied factions to you (read: most of the pirates operating in Sirius). At some point you can land at the Liberty Rogues bases. Now you have access to their trade goods, buy snazzy red pirate lasers and, most important, can buy that Borderworlds light fighter everybody likes, the Dagger. Managing your good reputation to pirates during the storyline can be somewhat like juggling raw eggs. The game likes to massively change your faction reputation during story revelations and you never know what bar gets reset. Instead of doing "shoot lots of pirates" jobs, i was searching for wrecks and smuggling some goods through the pirates' wormhole routes. It is fun approach for a second full playthrough and lets you visit lots of places in peace that you would not have access to as a loyal house mercenary. But you really have to grind and metagame the reputation system. OutofSight fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Feb 28, 2021 |
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Feb 27, 2021 11:11
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Michael King!  Christ, what an rear end in a top hat
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Feb 27, 2021 20:20
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sb hermit posted:Michael King! Hey, King isn't so bad. Though I guess he did lead us into an ambush without telling us that was the plan, and then later when Trent called him out on it his response was 'yeah and we ain't done killing yet!'
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Feb 28, 2021 00:32
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