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BCM First Impressions!


Supreme Cmdr
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WHOHA!!!

Manual, keycard, poster and music.... Awesome!!!

First thing I did was to try one of the supercarriers. While I was in the middle of a jump to Gazer1, a raider shows up. The raider jumps to Gazer1, passes my ship, and while I am in transit, Gazer1 transforms the raider into tiny particles. Really cool how much faster a small ship is compared to a huge.

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FedEx guy and I just missed each other yesterday. Instead, my system got very ill (brain to self: keep your virus checker more up-to-date. self: yeah, yeah. shut up or I'll stab you with a Q-tip) leading to a particularly painful bout of reformatting-and-reinstalling.

But tonight I came home to the package resting against my door. I was worried at first because the box felt lighter than I'd expected--was thinking a heftier manual. Looks just fine, though. I'm just very fond of physically brick-like tomes; f'r'instance, Falcon 4.0 was a fully justified purchase to me because of its manual alone.

Installed on my partially-back-to-okay system. Gaudy SafeDisc screen? Check.

Main menu? Check. Interesting to see all the options actually selectable.

Targetting by clicking on the dots in the bridgeview radar and NID--this is a fine and good thing. Discovering that led me to try to click on things in the actual views. Oh well.

All four pilots chorusing "spacebound, spacebound!" at once when getting back into orbit is highly amusing.

I like the music. The new tracks I heard were nice and soothing, brought The Orb to mind. (This is a good thing.)

The particle contrail effects work much more nicely then they did for me in demo 2. In general, a first impression of a lot more general polish. Minor shame demo 3 was cancelled; one based on this code would likely move a few more boxes. But my box was moved, and that's what counts.

To all a good night.

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I already posted my first impressions on the ISS boards, so I'll share them more publicly here. I made a list:

All those new officer messages: "Marines engaging in combat on deck three" Cool!

Why are my systems still damaged?

I have to tell my flight engineers to do their job myself?!

All right, what happened to the debris fields?

Hmmm, auto land system: *beep* *bang* Weatherlight smashes into the ground, flips a few times, then falls into a lake.

Famous last words: "Hey, that flux field is fluxing, that means it must be safe!"

Intruders are acutally a threat.

Wow, eight fighters!

Only eight pilots?

"Are we there yet?!" "I told you, this is a slow ship, I can't make it go any faster!"

Is it really necessary to tell me I have 3 minutes of air left when I'm on the bridge of my ship?

Wow, vagrant missiles are so cheap...

I'm out of radine already?

presses CTRL-E for auto-destruct: ship explodes What, no two minute countdown?

So many options, so little time...

Love the contrail FX.

[ 11-29-2001: Message edited by: Urza ]

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Well , my impression he

I was jumping to venus with my mk3.

there i jumped in a shuttle to fly to the planet to do some shoooting with my wristlaser

as soon as i was in my shuttle , a stormcarrier and a firestorm jumped in , i quickly made my escape to the planet , but when i looked at tacops i saw my ship got ripped apart by beams oooh noo , game over !

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Well here it goes,

I waited a couple of days to post my first impressions beacause I spent the first day just ahem...(home sick).

When I loaded the game for the first time, everyone in my house was in bed, I turned all the lights off in the room ( I prefer it dark, when I play space sims)and just kind of sat back and waited. I figured i wouldd take training run, newbie and all and, can say is that the muted background sounds with the music ( i cant say enough about the music)over top sent a shiver down my spine... man it blew me away. The atmosphere is perfect, its eerie, just like i imagine space would be, quiet, dark and colorful at the same time. I loved it and spent the first three hours just flying around with a silly grin on my face doing nothing. So then I parked her at "0" and started to frig with the ship systems, after another three hours the depth and detail once again blew me away. I immediatley realized I was in over my head shut her down and went to read the manual.... again (LOL never did that before).

SC I have returned more games in my time in less than two days than you would care to imagine, (Empire Earth the latest). In two days with this game on my wifes laptop, of all things, you have me pricing new comp. systems, I bought a new joystick ( LOL almost the size of the laptop). I have a good feeling this is the game I was hoping every game would be for the last 5 years. The potential depth of what you are creating here is scary.

You have my eternal thanks and gratitude. Well done, very well done. I can't wait for whats next.

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First time with BCM......

I get home, after reading the manual through four times at work. Train is cancelled, everything is conspiring to stop me from playing BCM......

Install DX 8.1, install the game, install the patch, install recommended video card driver......reboot reboot reboot reboot......argh I want to play! But I want to play it at its best......

Start the game...logo...menu...New button works!

And so I play my first game. And I die, quickly. So I play another game, and I die quickly. What's going on? Play another game, die quickly. I am beginning to get disillusioned when......

I play another game. And this time I stop trying to do everything at once. Yes, Battlecruisers CAN go atmospheric, but in a real world, would they ever? No. And the commander wouldn't pilot them unless there were execptional circumstances. He would get his minions to do so. So I stop playing Kirk, and start playing Picard. All of a sudden, the challenge of organising a mining operation from an orbiting spacecraft becomes better than flying the shuttle there myself.

While my shuttles are deploying their drones, the klaxon sounds, and an enemy cruiser is heading for the system's starstation. I'm military, and it's my job to defend these people. But I can't just abandon my people. So I assign a fighter to defend the shuttles and I head for the station. The fight is short - its a complete mismatch. Another shuttle tows the enemy cruiser to the station and I get experience points.

I head back to the moon to collect the mining drones. I laugh out loud when I see one is full of diamonds! Dock at the base, trade, buy some spares for the trip.

But I don't go mining again. All of a sudden I feel like I am letting my people down if I don't do what I am paid for. I fire up the navitron and set a course for another system - perhaps I might be needed there.

The ship starts to wend its way to my destination. Meanwhile, I check my shuttles and sure enough one has been damaged by the plank marine that was flying it, so I assign some engineers to repair the damage......

......and then I save the game and go to bed.

I was so nearly disillusioned, but the problem was not the game, it was me. Once I started to believe, it all flowed so naturally.

What a fantastic game. There simply is no other experience like it on a computer.

All the best, SC.

Smiley

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Smiley, I like your style

I like a commander that knows his duty and does not abandon the people he is sworn to serve and protect. It sounds like you've got the makings of a good commander. I would be glad to have you in Prime fleet serving alongside me.

Email our personnel officer at [email protected] if you are interested, or if you have questions. Tell him I reccommended you. Our website (perpetually under construction ) is at www.primefleet.com

Fight the good fight, Smiley!

[ 11-29-2001: Message edited by: Badgerius ]

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Badgerius - thanks for the offer.

Unfortunately, I am rather taken with the idea of playing a non-Terran race, since this is a fantasy after all.

At the moment I am playing Droidan Military. I don't think there is anything even close to an organised fleet for me.

But I have two systems to protect, and there seems to be a lot of gauntlets being thrown at my feet.

Out of interest, are there any guidelines written down for creating correctly formatted BattleCruiser Universe signatures. I've had a go below.....

And yes, I did search the board, and there appear to be lots of messages saying "search the board!" on this topic.

[ 11-29-2001: Message edited by: SmileyMan ]

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Well, I'm not sure exactly, but I think it's pretty loose for UCV. Ship name, for sure, and race/caste, need to be there. Check out the Indie section of the forums for examples. If you follow the indie layout, you should be fine.

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Smiley,

I know this is not the thread for this but since it was mentioned. Click on the Intercorp/El Dorado link in my sig. This is a Corporation being set up to help non fleeters with all sorts of in game resources and provide an extra dimension to mp gaming. Also, go to the miscellaneous fleet discussion section to see more indie stuff.

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quote:


Originally posted by Badgerius:

Smiley, I like your style

I like a commander that knows his duty and does not abandon the people he is sworn to serve and protect. It sounds like you've got the makings of a good commander. I would be glad to have you in Prime fleet serving alongside me.


I have to agree

....and as if on cue, here comes the recruiting machine.

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quote:


Originally posted by SmileyMan:

I was so nearly disillusioned, but the problem was not the game, it was me. Once I started to believe, it all flowed so naturally.

What a fantastic game. There simply is no other experience like it on a computer.

All the best, SC.

Smiley


Well, glad you stuck with it.

And believe me when I tell you this, given time, BCM would have been at least 25% better than it currently is (mp aside) in terms of features.

Is it hard to imagine that I couldn't possibly chuck anything else in it and made it better?

Just wait for the XP add-ons and you'll see.

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Well, I've been playing for a few days now, and I can honestly say I haven't had a game experience quite like this one, ever. I unfortunately missed out on BC3K, so BCM was a bit of a godsend. Although a bit of a steep learning curve, once I got used to it I was able to hold my own and start having real fun. In my latest game, I took my Gammulan Stormcarrier on a tour through Sol and Alpha Centauri, wasting every Terran spacestation on the way and finally ending up in Earth space. I managed to capture Galcom and Genesis within the first day of that career

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Let me start with quick intro...my name is Barron Morris.Im 30 YO..from south Texas...near Courpus Christi..I have been a member of the forum for about 6 months or so, have not done much posting but done a hella lot of reading, more so in the last 2 weeks. The game is truly outstanding..it is what I always wanted.. thank you SC. I do not have a credit card..and there is no EB games around here that im aware of..so I had friend order it on his for any extra 20 bucks and had it overnighted on top of that.

I know there are other ways of obtainng the game..and though tempted..after reading the SC's post on this forum every day for the last 2 weeks..the man does deserve his money for such fine work...to me the game is worth its weight in gold....thanks again SC for such outstanding work and dedication.

Oh yea...Due to my profesion im online(broadband) 12 to 13 hours a day, so expect to see alot of me.

Barron out

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Okay, this isn't a "first impression" of the game. Not technically anyway, since I've had the game for over a week, played the demos before that, and had BC3k before that. But I did just notice something that blew my mind away...

I made planetfall over Centris with my Battlecruiser Mk3. I went VTOL and basically hovered around 10,000 kilometers up. I wanted to play around with TACOPS a bit and practice launching shuttles, deploying troops, deploying mining drones, etc. While looking at the planetary map I saw the usual yellow squares surrounding important locations - but for the first time I decided to actually zoom down to one of those regions and take a look.

I zoomed into a city, rotated the camera a bit. Overall I wasn't incredibly impressed, the city looked more or less how I imagined one would. So I zoomed out and then zoomed in at a military base. Again, not immediatly impressed... until I saw a few things moving. I zoomed in and saw a vehicle driving through the base. Zoomed in two another part - two marines were walking somewhere. That alone was cool, but it was even better when I zoomed in on another base and then another and there was activity going on at all of them.

And to be honest, despite all of the (very cool) neutral, friendly, and hostile traffic flying around in space it never really occured to me how dynamic and "living" the game universe really is. I keep finding more things to love about BCM - Great job, SC.

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OK. My first impressions.

Before I begin, let me state that my job is a industrial machine programmer. I work with programmable logic controllers, stepper/servo motors and design and implement electrical systems for factories. In addition, I am our companies system administrator, firewall manager, mail server administrator, data base administrator and web master. I can program in PHP, Perl, C++, and Unix/Linux shell scripting. I also am an avid reader of books on astrophysics, quantum physics and superstring theory. WWII history is also a favorite of mine.

Why do I feel that this is important? Well, because I am going to be critical of the UI. I have read in the past, statements by both Mr. Smart and other players that if you cannot figure out the UI, that you are not intelligent enough to play the game.

That said, I'd like to make a few comments.

I was one of the "lucky" ones that purchased BC3000 back in I think it was '94. And I like to say that I am impressed with the progress the game has made in the past few years. Excellent work, Derek.

But, I am also disappointed in the progess of the UI.

1. Why can't I order a crew member to change locations in Perscan? If my ship has been boarded, I have to make multiple clicks, leave perscan and go into tactical (or is it logistics?) to add more marines to the hunt.

2. If I am deep into the tactical computer, and I need to get back to the bridge, it takes multiple clicks to get back out.

3. The FPS keymappings are FUBAR. Shift+W to run? I know that some of these can be remapped, but c'mon. Shift+w?

4. The particle effects emanating from the engines of most ships are great, but a few look kind of corny. I believe one of them is the N-fighter with the rainbow colored exhaust.

5. The woman who says "more power" on the bridge over and over is pesky. I remember her from the first iteration of BC3000. Also, the voices of the marines are a little TOO enthusiastic. But these are just little things.

6. If I so much as click on Miscon, I CTD, but that is for another forum.

7. Can we please get some sort of audible cue that the turrets controlled by the PTA are firing?

Other than that, I'd like to say that you did an excellent job on the documentation, Derek. I only wish that the manual included specs on the ships that I'd expect to encounter in space. I guess I'll print out the appendix HTML page.

Heh, I realise that I am still new to BC:M and I still have yet to figure out how to turn on the tractor beam, but I'll get it all worked out eventually.

Summary: Great work, Derek, but the UI needs some work so using it isn't, well, work.

[ 12-03-2001: Message edited by: Estevon ]

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Those are your opinions, and you are entitled to them, but some of them are not very inteligent. For example you saying that if you are deep into tactical computer and it takes multiple clicks to get out to the bridge, all you need is one click. You hover the mouse over the tab in the upper right corner, menu comes down and you choose "log off" or you can just press F1. So just based on that I am doubting your credibility of complaints, because it's different when you have an opinion about something you know and don't like, or something that you don't like just because you don't know how to use it.

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quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

Thats nothing. There's more. Seek and ye shall find.

Just wait until I put in the forests, vegetation and animals (land and see) in the XP1 add-on.

Cool Any chance well be able to, um, process said animals into trade items (furs, meats, etc.) at some point?

It'd be fun to organise a little safari with the bridge crew while waiting for your mining drones to fill up. And watching Resnig get eaten by various semi-sentient floura and fauna would open up a whole new dimension of entertainment.

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I mean't Tacops, Soback. It's impossible to be "deep" in Tactical. Drilling down is simple, but reversing back up w/o completely exiting tacops is a pain. That is all I was saying.

Strange that you say that my opinions are not valid because I am not "experienced", especially when this is the "first impressions" thread. Not the "after playing for a month" thread.

I was merely giving my first impressions as Derek requested.

[ 12-03-2001: Message edited by: Estevon ]

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No don't get me wrong. Even if you are in TACOPS, press F1 and be on the bridge right away. So that takes care of one problem you dislike. SC might look at the rest and see if he thinks that it would be worth changin anything. That's why I said, it's if you don't like something, make sure you fully understand how to use it and how it works, then speak and then it's the SCs decision in the end. Didn't mean to be rude or anything. Sorry if I was.

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quote:


Originally posted by Estevon:

OK. My first impressions.

1. Why can't I order a crew member to change locations in Perscan? If my ship has been boarded, I have to make multiple clicks, leave perscan and go into tactical (or is it logistics?) to add more marines to the hunt.

2. If I am deep into the tactical computer, and I need to get back to the bridge, it takes multiple clicks to get back out.

3. The FPS keymappings are FUBAR. Shift+W to run? I know that some of these can be remapped, but c'mon. Shift+w?

4. The particle effects emanating from the engines of most ships are great, but a few look kind of corny. I believe one of them is the N-fighter with the rainbow colored exhaust.

5. The woman who says "more power" on the bridge over and over is pesky. I remember her from the first iteration of BC3000. Also, the voices of the marines are a little TOO enthusiastic. But these are just little things.

6. If I so much as click on Miscon, I CTD, but that is for another forum.

7. Can we please get some sort of audible cue that the turrets controlled by the PTA are firing?

Other than that, I'd like to say that you did an excellent job on the documentation, Derek. I only wish that the manual included specs on the ships that I'd expect to encounter in space. I guess I'll print out the appendix HTML page.

Heh, I realise that I am still new to BC:M and I still have yet to figure out how to turn on the tractor beam, but I'll get it all worked out eventually.

Summary: Great work, Derek, but the UI needs some work so using it isn't, well, work.

[ 12-03-2001: Message edited by: Estevon ]


1. Because PERSCAN was not designed to do the job of Tactical. It is a view only system for tracking personnel in real time. You don't have that in Tactical.

2. You must be kidding. Either press F1 or move your mouse to the top-right corner, drop-down menu shows up, you log off.

3. W is walk forward. If you want to run, toggle the mode using BACKSPACE. If you don't want to use SHIFT+W, don't. That mapping was designed to work with the swim mapping.

4. I fail to see why this is an issue. I designed those for variations. Considering the number of ships in the game, I was lucky to have come up with that many variations.

5. You're right, they're just little things. Dunno why there were important enough to be mentioned though.

6. Not here. In fact, MISCON is a vital system and if it had that bug, it would have been found and fixed by now.

7. No. Even then, you won't be able to hear them, due to their proximity from the bridge (some crafts). And the fluctuating PTA indicators on the bridge are indication enough that they are firing. You talk about minor annoyances, but how many people would want to hear 10 turrets firing - all at once? You won't hear anything else even if the volume were increased in order to compensate for your position on the bridge.

As for the manual, that sort of info belongs in an appendix - which is exactly where I put it.

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