Terminus

Hobbes

K, first off the game ships with Linux, PC and MAC versions (on seperate CD's) in the same box.

It looks like Elite only you have jump gates and they are Sol System jump gates only.

The cool thing about it is... you can set up a persistant state server, much like a Quake server only when you log out in a station it saves your stats of your ships, etc so you can leave off where you left from.

It also means you can pick different paths So if your bored start hunting other players or trade with them.
http://www.vvisions.com/



[This message has been edited by Hobbes (edited 17-07-2000).]

LoLth

hmmm, Hobbes' idea of 'trade'

Hobbes: "ok, I give you a missile at high velocity and you give me a lovely bright flash and a lot of flames"

victim: "eeeep!"

Looks good though. Definitely gonna give it a bash.

Rev Hellfire

Are the multiplayer games run on the company server, or can u create your own worlds and host them allowing players to join ?

Hobbes

Originally posted by Rev Hellfire:
Are the multiplayer games run on the company server, or can u create your own worlds and host them allowing players to join ?

You host your own either as client/server or dedicated server. GameSpy were supposed to support the game but it was released before gamespy was set up fully.

I think the max pilots on at any time is 7, but you can any number of stored pilots on the server (space permitting).

Hobbes

I haven't been able to get fully into it, so I've only played for an hour. Here's my initial reactions.

- RTFM
OMG.. the manual is 195 pages long, and you have to read at least some of it. Especially if your planning on doing spy missions or hijacking other ships (In multiplayer you can pirate other peoples ships! )

- The game is huge.
I mean massive. First character I was getting used to the controls of the ship and for fun I thought I'd fly into the moon for a laugh (from Earth space station). At maximum borderline thrust for that ship it took a good 20 minutes to get to the moon. At the speed I was going it was ripping pieces off my hull. Of course there are jump gates to get to these places quicker.

Oh another thing I noticed as my hull was being stripped away. Damage directly effects your ship! What I mean is when the Computer got damaged it effected the HUD's, when the ertia dampers blew out the ship was shaking like crazy. A bit like X-Wing damage effects the ship.

- Ship control.
ack! It's a mix between a jet, Elite ships and Asteriods game.

Its possible to use all methods but I just locked mine into Elite style controls (dive, climb and rotate left/right). You also have vectoring thrust, inertia compensators and flight guidance system (which matches your speed relative to your target. Makes space combat easier).

You also have a docking computer built in. Still scary watching it dock though.

- What does this button do?
I haven't figured out the nav system, the comms system or the engines. Whole different game there.
Eg. Comms system allows you to command other ships, control spy probes and intercept/jam transmissions. Engines system controls cargo, hard point layouts (eg. Jettison damaged systems or repair or shut down/tweak engines).

- Space stations.
The cut scenes are a bit naff, I would of preferred something like Frontiers interface. Also I don't know who picked the pictures of the pilots (which are locked into the game) but they deserve to be smacked. It looks like the developers pictures with thier pizza stained t-shirts on.

- Trading
is much the same as Elite/Frontier. You can buy sell goods (certain stations allow you to buy narcotics+pirate software). You can also buy extra ships or tweak your ship. You can steal other ships cargo by threatening them or blowing them up. It's recommended you get a scanner before picking up cargo or you could find yourself jailed when you dock.

You can also I believe board other peoples ships and raid them.

- Ships.
You can only fly one ship at a time, but you could for example buy a mining ship, and when your done mining buy a combat ship.

I still haven't scratched the surface on this one. There are quite a few different kinds of weapons/add-ons and you can spray your ships hull with colors (limited).

It does seem to be more then aim and shoot, if your planning on winning combat good ship systems management and good weapons helps.

Bad points.
- Doesn't like my USB mouse for some reason (it's a MAC, so may not effect you windoze heads). I can use the built in mouse fine though.

- Missile lock is freaking me out. You get missile tone continually if your locked onto any target even if a weapon isn't armed. The tone gets annoying fast.