Other space combat sims: Tachyon: the Fringe

While we're in the vein of other space combat sims,

Anyone ever played Tachyon? It's like all the best elements of the wing commander series scrunched together in one game, it's got multiplayer online capability (although good luck finding other people online) and it stars Bruce Campbell to boot!
 
I thought it was okay - nothing to write home about.

For my money the only really great Wing Commander runner-ups are the original two X-Wing games (fun for an entirely different reason than WC) and Archmedian Dynasty (submarine game with a nicely Privateer feel to it).
 
It was a mediocre game, but Bruce Campbell pushes it up enough for me to really like it.
 
If you think of Tachyon as a cheesy B-class game like the movies Campbell usually stars in, it's quite enjoyable in its own right. I liked some of the touches like the space casino and robot co-pilots.

As for other games, I've played some of Independence War, and I think it's a pretty valiant effort to do something different in the vein of Wing Commander (flying corvettes rather than snubfighters puts a rather different dynamic on things). I wasn't terribly impressed with the sequel, though.
 
I liked Tachyon, it was fun enough and had a story with SOME originality (in the space sim camp). It was funny, too, like in the mission where you have to pick something up at the crazy scientist's lab base.

TIE-Fighter is really good, specially if you get the version updated to use XWvsTIE's engine. I liked X-Wing Alliance too.

X-BtF was not bad, bu not really "finished", it seems like a project of a game. I heard that X2 was seriously bugged, but I'm not sure.
 
Edfilho said:
TIE-Fighter is really good, specially if you get the version updated to use XWvsTIE's engine. I liked X-Wing Alliance too.

Can you do that? :confused: :) :D I want to do that.
How do you do that?
 
Edfilho said:
X-BtF was not bad, bu not really "finished", it seems like a project of a game...

See, i would have said the same thing about X-Wing Alliance, wasn't the whole family storyline inexplicably dropped near the end of the game? Or did I screw something up?
 
Dyret said:
Can you do that? :confused: :) :D I want to do that.
How do you do that?
Just buy the last T-F game, CDs collection or something like that. (it came with X-W and XvT demo)
 
I've played around with it some. I bought it about a year ago in an attempt to find something close to WC. I've liked what I've seen so far and will finish it one day. It isn't bad, but it isn't WC either.
 
I'm starting to think that even if a new WC game came out, by now, it would be too different to feel like WC.
 
It would probably be done "wrong" in the eyes of hard-core fans. Here's a question: What would you consider the right way to do a new Wing Commander? Think of both your point of view and the point of view of any company thinking of such a game.

Serious question, here; no <sarcasm></sarcasm> tags. ;)
 
I'd like to see Wing commander three's choosing your ship and weapon/missile loadout customization in Prophecy's general mechanics, as well as MORE NEPHILIM! let us see into their culture the same way we got to know the Kilrathi. They seem like a very Nihilistic race for some reason.

The last thing i want to see is the game live up to its name. I mean- If you could assign the individual members of your wing to cover the points of the mission, (Person A goes to point B while person D flies on their wing, Person B goes to point A while person C flies their wing, Persons E,F and G stay home and fly CAP) that would be great! The mission success would lie not only in your skills as a pilot, but your skills at assigning each person to the job they can perform best!

Then you really ARE a wing commander!!!!
 
Micromanagement would be an interesting addition.

To a game producer, my suggestion would likely be insane. I do not believe any company that produced a game like I'm about to describe would be able to reap a profit from it. This is purely hypothetical.

Set in the beginning of the war with the Kilrathi, Wing Commander 6 would feature an star cast of talented actor/actresses in DVD-quality FMV. The singleplayer focus would be on telling a quality story and on gameplay. The game engine would need to be feature-rich, allowing for multiple gameplay modes (piloting a fighter craft is not enough anymore, I believe). I would say designing for operation of capship turrets (if not capships themselves), troopships, and for ground combat as well as the usual would suffice; the ability to switch between these modes quickly and fluidly would help, especially in the multiplayer department (I think if a new Wing Commander game were released without multiplayer, many fans would be disappointed, but would still buy it). A command stucture would be interesting, as the Colonel suggested. Fully establishing these modes as character classes with experience modifiers would pull in RPG fans. The graphics engine should allow for a large number of entities (fleets, debris, etc) and be able to render them efficiently. This would allow for the possibility of full fleet actions.

Imagine commanding an Exeter or a Manassas against Fralthis and Ralaris... or perhaps manning the guns or torpedo tubes on such a ship, or anti-spacecraft turrets. Of course, the traditional role of fighter or bomber would still be needed, but the added roles would prove both an exciting avenue and a terrible challenge to developers. How do we design a story around this gameplay? Do we have individual stories for Marines, pilots, etc? Or do we have a basic story for all characters? That's the one detail that really concerns me.

One final idea: What if Confed forces weren't the only playable forces? A full and dedicated implementation of playable Kilrathi forces would add immensely to the game. I personally would enjoy playing as a Kilrathi pilot, commander, etc. It would require a different mindset (pack mentality, perhaps?), but that variety and challenge would be welcome. Anyway, I've gone on too far. Tell me what you think.
 
Sounds like a WC version of BC3K. No thanks.

That being said, I disagree that all those other toys are needed. WC is, and always has been, about the individual pilots flying in wings (the origin of the "Wing" in WC, since commanding a carrier's entire flight wing didn't come till Armada). Trying to fit all that stuff into one game is, at best, an invitation to mediocrity, and at worst an invitation to a muddled mess.

And, besides all that, manning a carrier turret would be immensely boring, as the whole point is to keep the bad guys away from the carrier, which isn't generally all that suited to being in the thick of things, so to speak. There are "carrier defense" missions in WC, sure, but they're not the majority of mission types available. Being a marine aboard a carrier would be even more boring, given the rarity of ship boarding in WC (WC4[N] being the anomaly, which term also describes the BW's situation).
 
Fair enough. Reading over what I typed last night, it doesn't sound as appealing (as a Wing Commander game) as it did when I wrote it up. Also, I've never played BC3k, so I wasn't aware of a similarity.
 
I'd kinda like to see a WC ground action game. That carries two possibilities. One that you do some fighting on the ground like a troop...trusty sidearm at your hand. Perhaps the initial premise could be you get ambushed in space...wind up ejecting and the Cats capture you. Landing on a planet or station you bust some furry butt and escape in a capture Dralthi. You make it back to one of the colony planets who has come under assault from a Kilrathi Task Force. From there on your missions are a mixture of flying a fighter in atmospheric AND space conditions in addition you get to do some ground combat with the landlubbers. I don't think it would be that hard of a game to formulate with today's technology. Perhaps you could even get to pilot some Terran tanks as well. I've always been interested in what weapons were available to the Terran ground forces...I know about the marines but I'd like to know more about their actual occupying ground forces...wouldn't it be rather awesome if they had Mechs...but then I digress.
 
We do see a mech-style vehicle at one point in End Run... though the vast majority of armor has always been varieties of tanks.
 
Hi everyone, I was just checking the happenings of the board and ran across this thread.
I would like to chime in and say that first and foremost Wing Commander has been my most favorite game of all time. Since picking up WC1 back in '91 I have loved this series. I to pray that someday we will get to play another game. However I would like to see a game that would allow you to fly fighters in space, land, and jump out of said fighter into a FPS type game. Years ago I asked around to see if anyone thought this was possible and of course at the time the answer was no. Jump ahead a few years and now we have UT2004 with this ability, Half-Life 2 looks as if it will allow something like this.

I would just like to be able to clear the fighters from the Vesuvious(sp?) follow a landing party inside and jump out of the fighter to participate in a pitched battle against black suited crewmen or fly onto a Kilrathi carrier and sneak around the confines of said carrier attempting to retrieve a NavCon.

Anyway I have written more than I have in a long time good to talk with you guys again but I have to go back to work.
 
My ideal Wing Commander game would be a straight sequel to Prophecy with improved graphics (duh), which continued upon the established storyline, bringing back all of our favorites. I definately want FMV sequences, as it seems to be the new policy of things to just use the in game engines (graphics aren't THAT good yet).
 
i had played tachyon a lot when it came out. i liked it very much so. i had gotten pretty far in the bora storyline, but i couldnt continue because my computer could not handle the number of ships on screen at once. it would just stutter.

id like to find those discs, ive been playing a lot of older games as of lately.
 
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