EW talks about Starlancer (yeah, I know it's scarry).

[Quarto]

Relax, Knight

. The reason why I bother is because it's so much fun

. I don't particularly care if Earthworm agrees with me, or if I might have to agree with him. The real fun lies in trying to figure out some neat argument to propel the debate onwards

.

BTW, WCP capships weren't _that_ easy. Those turrets could be a real pain. The easiest capships in the series were the ones in WC 3 and 4.

 

[Death's Head]

WC actualy has many different aliens, and even though we don't see most of them, they are described quite acuratly.

You mean how the Hari and races like that are described with the bias of a Kilrathi nobleman? LOL. The only race described at length was the Firekkans.

Why are the WC3 ships easier than the WC1 ships? WC1 ships were like big fighters that sometimes shot off a few rounds of flak. In WC2 the flak intensity increased and capships sometimes fired AMGs, which might be a pain for locking torpedoes and launching them up close, more for a Broadsword than anything else. Kilrathi Corvettes shot down more wingmen's planes than all the missions I flew in WC1.

When you get behind a WC3 era capship, other than a corvette, you need to hit it more than you would an earlier design. The turrets can sometimes fire through the ship, which is more of an oddity than anything.

Well, we all deserve an opinion.

[This message has been edited by Death's Head (edited March 21, 2000).]

 

[Knight]

Quarto, yes, it was that easy to take out capships. You just had to make sure you used Dragonfly's on the shield emitters, and two mass driver shots per turret. Just do those straffing runs like you do to the bridge, only target turretts instead. When you wipe out the ones on top that really give you trouble, then take the bridge. The dorsal turrets don't really matter that much.

------------------
HTML Assistant: WC Space Command
Administrator: UBW 5th Fleet
Member of the LMG and hating it (Disgruntled Man)
Striking a man down with your blade is clean and honorable. Shooting him in the back from the darkness of an alley and hurrying to blame it on another was something else altogether.--Darth Vader

 

[Earthworm]

Earthworm, if SL doesn't have a main character, then who the hell do you play?

Are you just "there", or do you actually take some part in the game? YOU are the main character. Take some time to think these things through before you say them.

Of course I won't be the main character. I don't live in the future, and I'm not a pilot.

Just because it won't have a WC style main player, where we see his face before and after every mission (which, might i remind you, you didn't see in SO), it WILL have a main character.

But we already saw Casey in Prophecy, and I assume he didn't change that much.

Otherwise, why in the hell bother making a user interface, just make the whole thing a CGI movie.

Actualy that's the first idea of yours I liked.

In the matter of WC Aliens and SW aliens. In Star Wars, there were thousands of other races mentioned. In WC, we had, what? 10, at the most?

I didn't say WC had more races though.

That's BS. WCP was the easiest by far to kill a capship. With a Shrike, make straffing runs, using light torps with the quick lock times (while reducing speed slightly

) on the bridge. Then hit full burn, buzz to the engine, sit dead center of the engine (something else WC doesn't have. Anyone heard of Jet/Engine Wash?

), and wait for a large torp to lock on. Or hell, if you want to get really bad ass, just wait til a Devastator mission, sit the 4000 klicks out, and shoot bugs in a barrel.

Hard. Yeah right.

Yeah, I gues I find it harder to fly on the Nightmare level, wait 10 or something like that seconds, for a torp lock, than fire it, than wait for another lock, fire, than wait for a light torp lock, fire, than move to the second component and repeat all that. It's even harder when you run out of torps. Then there's the fact that the Prophecy ships are rather big, so you have to move around them in order to get to the components that you have to destroy.

Quarto, yes, it was that easy to take out capships. You just had to make sure you used Dragonfly's on the shield emitters, and two mass driver shots per turret. Just do those straffing runs like you do to the bridge, only target turretts instead. When you wipe out the ones on top that really give you trouble, then take the bridge. The dorsal turrets don't really matter that much.

Two MD shots per turret? You're not playing on Rookie are you?

I use the RP's on turrets if I have some left after taking out fighters.

Also, then there are missile turrets, that are much more dangerous than your standard gun turrets.

Oh, quAt0, hirs anuTErr ting thur wCP haD. It had missile turrets on capships, which we didn't see before.



[This message has been edited by Earthworm (edited March 21, 2000).]

 

[Earthworm]

You mean like a Talon going down in the Privateer intro with 3-4 shots from the single laser on Burrough's Tarsus? Or leading the missiles around on a merry goosechase in a ship that, even on afterburners, is only a bit more than half as fast as the missiles chasing him?

But of course that was just a cutscene.

What we saw in that SL thing is actualy gameplay.

BTW, is anyone here going to try to get the SL beta tomorrow?




[This message has been edited by Earthworm (edited March 21, 2000).]

 

[Quarto]

Oh, quAt0, hirs anuTErr ting thur wCP haD. It had missile turrets on capships, which we didn't see before.

Funny you should say that, because a Ralari just fired a missile at me

. Missile turrets are not all that fabulous, since one doesn't need a turret to fire a missile.

BTW, is anyone here going to try to get the SL beta tomorrow?

Where from? Is is gonna be downloadable from DA's site?

 

[Death's Head]

BTW, is anyone here going to try to get the SL beta tomorrow?
Not unless I get ten dollars for it.

 

[Earthworm]

Oh, quAt0, hirs anuTErr ting thur wCP haD. It had missile turrets on capships, which we didn't see before.
Funny you should say that, because a Ralari just fired a missile at me

. Missile turrets are not all that fabulous, since one doesn't need a turret to fire a missile.

Realy? I know that the capships are suposed to have missiles, but I never actualy saw one fire any of them. So Prophecy improved that too.

BTW, is anyone here going to try to get the SL beta tomorrow?

Where from? Is is gonna be downloadable from DA's site?

[/QUOTE]

Go to http://www.slvault.com and you should get more info there. They will have to send it to you though, but they'll probably ship it to Australia. Of course they'll have to pick you first.

You know how it is

. Nothing to do... actually, I've got several assignments to finish... which is exactly why I'm here.
Laziness will be the death of me yet

.

Yes, that school thing, I think I should start on that too.

Because it did improve many things. The engine was much smother, the missiles are very usefull.
The WC 2 engine was also smooth

. And the missiles were veeery useful in WC 4.

But the Prophecy engine was even smoother.

And the WC4 missiles don't hit that often if you're not right on the tail of the enemy.

Yawn. Brought back - those are the keywords in regards to Prophecy.

Brough back something that hasn't been seen since WC2, and improved it. It also had the extra shield emiters on most Nephilim capships.

Of course it wouldn't. But somebody has to design them and implement them first. It takes more than a few minutes to create a new ship model, even with the right tools. And the designers would likely be already busy working on POL2

.

Oh, come on Quarto. Making few ships every couple of monts won't be that hard.

At least not for people that are experience with that stuff. And I doubt that we'll see POL2. Maybe some add ons improving the engine a little, but I think OSI would do WCOL instead.

Guess again Quarto. I don't expect one every week.
You're the one who talked about people logging on after "a couple of weeks" to find everything has changed and their state of the art fighter has become an obsolete piece of junk

. That implies a lot of frequent updating.

*Couple of weeks.* Not just one week. A months does have a *couple of weeks* in it AFAIK.

LOL!!! It takes me two days to finish Freespace (and I'm a very busy man).
Busy? Hah. You won't know what "busy" means till you get to uni, young 'Worm.

I'm already too busy trying to wipe out the stupid trolls.

And perhaps that's why ye dinna notice the cool storyline

.

No shit! FS had a cool storyline? I've seen a little of it, but it left me so empty inside.

Anyway, the reason why I spent so long on it was a) I'm not as good a pilot as some,

Yeah, that's OK, but month?

and b) After finishing it, I spent a while flying the gauntlet missions, messing around with the editor (I still had time back them... ah, high school),

Yes, those gauntlets are quite good. Though I didn't care much about the editor.

and generally enjoying the brilliant game engine (which on my _proper_ computer was actually more impressive than WCP).

It was a little more detailed, but overall the WCP engine was better IMO. Not to mention that the ships in FS had way to many different colors on them. And those capships are as easy to kill as in Prophecy.

Ok, smart-ass

.

OK, stupid-ass.

If interactivity doesn't make gameplay, then let's just get rid of it altogether, shall we? What do you get then? Wing Commander the Movie. And the movie, as you know, was a lot of fun... but you can hardly fly a fighter in it. Without interactivity, any game becomes a movie, because you can't _interact_ with it

.

Try to read my posts more carefully Quarto. I said the interactivity doesen't make the gameplay. It's just one of the few parts of it

.

To a degree, yes. But like you said, this stuff has already appeared in WC 2. Just because WC3/WC4 went backwards doesn't mean that WCP is bringing something new in.

But in Prophecy destroying ships was different than WC2, and only once in WC2 did we escort bombers. And Prophecy improved that too. There you could only take out the fighters, and than fly around and try to take some of that Flak into your fighter. But you couldn't take out any of the turrets.

You didn't? That's unusual. You mean, you didn't notice all those people flying on your wing, and all those people that talked to you on the carrier? Why, Earthworm, I thought you cared about the storyline

.

Quarto, if you think those are people, you need to get out more.

I guess that's a matter of skill then. I found them bloody easy. Except for the Corvette, which was a major pain.

I found them easy to kill too. But that's the point, the WC1/WC2 ships are even easier than that.

Whoa... you mean the tanks can actually fire at you? Dang, I never even noticed

.

Ever tried that mission on Nightmrae just for fun?

Half a dozedn laser turrets firing at you can take out the shields on that new Excal of yours quite quickly.

As for the SAMs... nothing a Spiculum won't fix.

You waste your missiles on those?

No, it doesn't. Because it's ridiculous. Why would flying away from the planet result in failure? You entered once, why not again? Or has the planet moved elsewhere, and you can't find it anymore

?

IIRC, once you get out of the atmosphere, even if you get back, you can't win. Though it's been some time since I played WC3.

Better doesn't mean 'ultimate' Earthworm. Besides each of those had its own good aspects, which we won't get into for fear of thread closure.

OK, maybe not ultimate, but better than anything else out there.

Sounds mighty familiar... in fact, it sounds just like SO... except for the CGI. SO didn't have proper CGI

. I'm sure you'll tell me now that unlike SL, SO had a main character. Well, sure it did... but that fact added nothing to the game. It would have played exactly the same without Casey.

But it did have a character, that did have conversations with other in the SO fiction.

And from what I've read, this is very much the case. No sound in space (yes, I really like that a lot),

There still will be sound though. Not as much but there will be.

more advanced controls (something you seemed to overlook in the reviews),

More advanced controls? All of those previews are saying how the controls are very similar to WC. Nothing in there about them being more advanced though.

a better way of handling the storyline

That remains to be seen. FS was also suposed to carry the story during the missions. All I heard in the cockpit was "Yes sir", or "good shoting sir"

(btw, WCP was pretty much linear; the only branch was the Alcor system)...

Actualy Prophecy had more branches than that. And many of the missions were different if you screwed up.

oOh, U aRR tOiLeNteDD aRtTwIrMM!! NoIbAdDyY EiLsE cAn SooND ass duMMb ass yO kAn!!

uCepTT u 0F cIRse! qUart,, U duMMb @$$.

My, oh my. Is it just me, or is idiot-speak a lot more complicated then normal speech?

Hm, at least that means we're not idiots.

[This message has been edited by Earthworm (edited March 21, 2000).]

 

[Quarto]

Whoa... now that's a long post. I'll try to keep the number of quotes down, because we really have got those out of control

.

Yeah, WC1 ships fired missiles. Not too frequently, since they had a very limited supply, but enough to be an irritation.

I'll see about the beta, although I guess it's probably easier to wait for the final product

.

In regards to Nephilem capships... care to explain why the shield emmiters (sp) were on the outside of the shields

? Don't make much sense to me

.

They're making UO2, what makes you think they wouldna make POL2 (if they ever make POL 1

)? As for WCOL... everybody seems to be hoping that POL will be both Priv and WC together (if they decide to have POL take place in the Tri-System, I'll go on a killing spree over in Austin, TX). Unless of course they decide to make WCOL and POL separate games, but have them both take place in the same universe (as in, so POL and WCOL players could actually meet).

*Couple of weeks.* Not just one week. A months does have a *couple of weeks* in it AFAIK.

I guess you missed my point

. The changes you said would take place every couple of weeks were implicitly so vast that they would inevitably have to be introduced over a couple of weeks. Hence, something would change at least once a week

.

Yes, those gauntlets are quite good. Though I didn't care much about the editor.

Neither did I

, which is why I only played around with it. One of these days I might have a look at it again... nah. Oh, and the other thing is that at the time when I was playing FS, I was also playing Starcraft. Believe me, Starcraft will take up a lot of your time.
Yes, FS capships aren't particularly difficult to kill, though they can be quite deadly. I sort of liked that approach - your guns could hurt them, but it took a bloody long time to do anything. But the best part was when they died... why, oh why didn't WCP capships explode

?

Try to read my posts more carefully Quarto. I said the interactivity doesen't make the gameplay. It's just one of the few parts of it.

Your posts aren't good enough to get any more of my attention

. So go ahead and give me your definition of gameplay and all it entails.

Quarto, if you think those are people, you need to get out more.

Well, of course they're not real people. But the point is, in the game they are supposed to be "real" people. I'm too lazy to make the distinction between "characters" and "people" every time I post, so you're just gonna have to figure out which I mean when I post.

You waste your missiles on those?

YES!! In WC 4, anyway. The way I see it, my decoys are much more precious than my missiles. So every time I got to a planetside SAM, I would get a lock and fire off a missile... perhaps that's why it took you so long to do those planetside missions

.

IIRC, once you get out of the atmosphere, even if you get back, you can't win. Though it's been some time since I played WC3.

Oh, I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying that it's pretty darned silly

. I guess it was somehow a result of the engine's limitations.

There still will be sound though. Not as much but there will be.

Of course, as they'd get laughed out of space if they didn't have any sound. But all the sounds that it does have are ones which are made by your ship... or so I've read.

More advanced controls? All of those previews are saying how the controls are very similar to WC. Nothing in there about them being more advanced though.

Understandable, since I too only found that comment in one (but rather detailed) review. At this point, it should be pointed out that reviewers are notorious for agreeing with other reviewers, just so they don't look stupid (this was unfortunately the case with the Movie, though IMHO there their shameless imitation of other reviews made them look very stupid). Thus, odd-one-out reviews are probably more believeable then all the other ones out there.

Actualy Prophecy had more branches than that. And many of the missions were different if you screwed up.

Yes, harder. There was more enemy ships and that sort of thing. SL will do this and more, and yet you say that's not enough...

uCepTT u 0F cIRse! qUart,, U duMMb @$$.

EeeEEEeeeKKKK! I bOuU BuFoRR YeEeE, fRR tHaTT iZ zA bEssTT iDjItT-sPeeK I'Ve'R sEEn.

Hm, at least that means we're not idiots.

No, we're not. Man, it would be tough being an idiot. Imagine having to type everything like that. Or worse... imagine having to TYPE EVERYTHING IN CAPS... <shudder>

 

[Earthworm]

Earthworm's review of Starlancer

Keep in mind, this review is for the beta copy of the game I got in the mail today. The finaly product is still a month away and will probably change.

First, the gameplay. It's quite good, very similar to WC actualy. The fighter stearing may seem a bit slugish at the begining, but I got used to it quickly. Think of SL as Prophecy with improved graphics and better AI that has ships that can equaly to yours, and you'll get the idea. The HUD looks very similar to P2, which is good and bad. The P2 HUD is great, but Warthog should try to do something new. The systems of your HUD are nicely placed all over your screen, and allow for great visibility. The game is much harder than I though it would be after seing one of the trailers from Incite. If you're out of AB fuel, and missiles you'll probably spend couple minutes chasing after one fighter. However, though the enemy can move, they don't seem to be in the offensive too much. From the few missions I played today, I only died once because I acidenly crashed into a Coalition bomber, other than that I was prety safe. The missiles from your enemies don't seem to be of much danger to you. I wasn't hit by any missiles, even though I didn't launch decoys and didn't try to manuver my way out of dying. I played the game on a p200 32 megs RAM with the full install (1.2 GB), and it run quite smothly while still looking great.

The story. I actualy can't coment on that. The game was suposed to run on older machines, and it does. Unfortunetly the cutscenes themselves don't work to good. I couldn't even watch the intro since it played so slow it looked like a slide show, but I hope it's just a beta thing and will be fixed in the final version. The briefings and scenes where you see pilots runing to their ships played smothly, however the speach was skiping a lot. The plot does start out good from what I could *hear* during the intro, but the lack of characters still disturbs me. There is no character interaction on the carrier other than seing your comander talking during briefings.

The graphics. They're simply great. The fighters, capships, and especialy shockwaves that are a result of blowing up torpedos all look very impresive. And I have the detail level set at medium. If you have a fast machine with a new video card you should be impresed with how the game looks like. On board the carrier visuals are also good.

The interface. User friendly, and again, similar to P2 (I can see Quarto's starting to cry right now

). When you go for example to check out the ships in the ITAC (which is basicly a database of everything in the game) you see nice little animations similar to the ones in P2. I like having all the ships stats, the killboard and your mission debriefings all in one place like the booth in Priv2, and SL delivers that. After each brifing you'll be taken to a 3D ship selection screen. At the begining there are only four fighters, but more will become available as you progress through the ranks. Each ship has several hardpoints in which you can place some of the missiles available, or extra AB fuel tanks. There are only 4 or so missiles available when you start, and something similar to the RP's from Prophecy. It's called a Screamer pod, and contains about 30 light damage rockets that are in fact my weapon of choice.

The sound. The voice acting and sound efects are average, but are better than what I've seen recently. The cockpit chater is quite good, and unlike something that was suposed to be in FS, it actualy works for the story. Like I said above though, the sound skips a lot during briefings wich I hope won't be witnesed in the final release.

I have yet to try the multiplayer part of the game, and will report on that as soon as I can.

Replayablity. Well, though it is a fun game the first time through, I doubt that it'll hold the replayability of the WC series. The story and missions are just to linear.


Now, overall the game is great, but nothing special enough to replace WC.

Ratings
Story: 3.5/5 (at least from what I could hear)
Graphics: 4.5/5
Gameplay: 4.5/5
Originality 3/5
Interface 4.5/5
Sound: 3.5/5
Replayability 3/5

Overall: 3.8/5 (let's just round that up to 4/5).

Rating of 4 is prety high in Earthworm's book, so you can expect a good game, but it definetly won't be the best thing you played.

[This message has been edited by Earthworm (edited March 31, 2000).]