Is it just me or is this game boring?

[Pulaski]

I was so looking forward to it, yet now that I have it it seems like the hardest part is to not crash into dark moons. I seem to just wander around making a decent living collecting debris like Fred Sanford. I even came across waht appeared to be an intact but hullless carrier (meaning 500 + tons of componets including 9 fighters). The most difficult part was limping to a trade center at 1/4 power.

Am I missing something?

[Devilsbane]

Restart the game on the hardest difficulty. Go through one of the warp points. Then try not to die. Also there is a command to set game to eight times normal speed. Hit esc then click on controls.

[ October 08, 2003, 15:55: Message edited by: Devilsbane ]

[Pulaski]

Yeah I figured that. Yet does that make it not boring or just ridiculously difficult? The latter I think.

Also has anybody noticed a difference when you beef up your negotiation skill? There doesn't seem to be any free trade beyond the Quark "garbage scow" model.

I miss Privateer... or elite... or...

[Suicide Junkie]

Have you tried my mod yet?

[CW]

To be honest this game looks a little dated already even though it has just come out, especially compared to other games in similar genres such as Freelancer, which is itself considered an old game now. Somehow space flight in SF is limited to 2D and being the latest in the SE series it has STILL not moved away from the little box of SEIV... I mean why does my ship slows to 1/8 speed when it moves off the map?

[ October 09, 2003, 02:34: Message edited by: CW ]

[Pulaski]

Not yet junkie, but I do hold out hope that this gane will be endlessly playable some day thanks to great modding community.

BTW do phase sheilds block regular weapons too or just phase? I don't remember how it was in unmodded SE4.

[ October 08, 2003, 19:11: Message edited by: Pulaski ]

[Niltrias]

Is there any way to talk to other races/ ships when they hail you in the full Version? Without some sort of diplomacy, to be honest I am going to have to skip this one. It seems too much of a "Fly here, fly back, fly here, fly back.." I feel like I need the auto repeat button from SEIV...

[flyinj]

At first, I was really into the game... but now... yes, it is seeming just boring. I'm hoping that once I get a ship that can actually perform combat it will get better. But the endless trade missions and whatnot are just getting really repetitive.

[General Woundwort]

Phased shields, at least in SEIV, do block other weapons besides PPB's.

If the trade build-up is repeditive, go and mod the character file to get a bigger starting bonus, and buy up your ship. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

I'm working on a mod now that may (hopefully) make trade runs and other things a bit more interesting. Stay tuned...

[Suicide Junkie]

Phased shields DO block regular weapons, plus any weapons using the "skips normal shields" ability.

Mixing them with normal shields will cause all the shield points to be normal.

[Pulaski]

Mixing them anywhere on the ship or on the same side?

[Suicide Junkie]

I'm not sure as of recent patches.

I think most of us want them to be fully stackable, and have the shield bar show two different shades of green to mark phased and normal shields.

[Krsqk]

I, for one, would still like to see levels of phased shielding/phased weapons. Two possible options:

1) If weapon_phase_level > shield_phase_level, weapons pierce. Level 2 beams pierce level 1 and normal shields, level 5 pierce levels 1-4 and normal shields, etc. A similar case could be made for Skips Armor weapons and armor.

2) If weapon_phase_level = shield_phase_level, weapons pierce. More accurately, there wouldn't be phase levels, but frequencies. There could be several levels of shields, each vulnerable to a different "frequency" weapon.

Option 2 seems more quasi-realistic to me, but I think Option 1 would make for better gameplay. Option 2 would tend to limit the usefulness of phased weapons and multiply the usefulness of Skips All Shields weapons like tachyon cannons. It also brings the question of why you couldn't just "tune" your weapons to a different frequency (a la ST).

Both cases could bring up display issues, such as how many shield levels could be displayed. Maybe the best option would be to have each level displayed as a different shade of green but combined into a single bar, with the total shield points displayed.

[Baron Munchausen]

Please remember:

The whole point to this project was to develop a 3D 'real time' combat engine for SE V. The other elements of the game are just added fluff to make it worthwhile to release it as a seperate game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif In another year or two maybe you'll be able to pull your SE V ships into Starfury and play 'practice battles' or even run missions on game maps from SE V. Then it will not seem so incomplete!

[Pulaski]

You know, the 2d vs 3d thing doesn't bother me as much as then endless colisions in battle, (crazy ivan tactics)the lack of trade model, or the boring differences in weapons.

I would love to have seen boarding parties carried over from SE IV, even if to not capture ships, than just kill crew.

Now that somebody mentioned it it's not that different from SFC which did have boarding parties.

[Devilsbane]

Please allow me to inform. Real space is not 3D in fact most of our own solar system is w/i a 2D plane. I think it is called the 'Elliptical Plane'. Even our own galaxy dimensions are 10000 light year spiral and 3000 light year deep at its core.
Yet I would have liked the game to have a floor and ceiling like that of air flight.

[ October 10, 2003, 17:11: Message edited by: Devilsbane ]

[Suicide Junkie]

You know, the 2d vs 3d thing doesn't bother me as much as then endless colisions in battle, (crazy ivan tactics)the lack of trade model, or the boring differences in weapons.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">One of the first things I did for my mod was to diversify the weapons.

Meson bLasters have become machine gun type weapons doing 3 damage per hit (at level one, double for heavy mount) They fire 3-5x per second, too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
Ripper/incinerator beams suck down your power like crazy in order to do lots of damage fast.
Wave motion guns dish out a few hundred damage points, and reload takes a minimum of 30 seconds or 5000 energy.
Torpedoes give some nice punch for breaching shields and getting kill shots, but do less damage over time than beams.

Endless collisions?
Try bumping up the scale in campaign data.txt, and see if that helps.
Once you figure out the navigation rules, you'll also find it much easier to predict what the other ships will do, and collisions will become extremely rare.

[Pulaski]

OK Junkie I'm convinced. I' m gonna restart with your mod. I had hoped to get through a plain vanilla campaign but it seems more like work at this point than play...

[milo]

Originally posted by Devilsbane:
Please allow me to inform. Real space is not 3D in fact most of our own solar system is w/i a 2D plane. I think it is called the 'Elliptical Plane'.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, "space" is three dimensional, but the interesting concentrations of mass are distributed in or near the plane of the ecliptic. On the other hand, real planets would not be distributed the way they are in SE:SF either.

However, all of that is beside the point.

This is a game, not an orbital mechanics class. Many people have trouble navigating true 3D environments on a computer. This is one of the reasons why Descent never caught on - people got space sick trying to figure out where they were in those mines. I think the decision to go 2D instead of 3D for movement was a good one for the kind of game this is meant to be.

[Pulaski]

Ya'know I forgot what game it was that actually got me motion sick... it was Decent. Ugh the memories.

[Phoenix-D]

As a reviewer once said..
"Decent. The first battle was staying oriented. The second was keeping your lunch down."

Didn't bother me at all actually, and I think most of it stemed from the closed in setting and not 3d.

[Baal]

Descent was an awesome game. I got right into it and the 3D never really bothered me, but then one day I was watching my friend play it and he was visibly getting nausous. I guess combat pilot is just in my blood.

[Makinus]

Hey, i loved Descent! I even found some friends to play it in my LAN that got addicted to the game....

We had hours long games where one chased the other in the 3d environment, and one of the most fun tactis were ambushing the other players in weirds places, where you can attack someone from above or below...