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X2: The Threat gold


Spindoktor
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It is right on the money...

I have not even put my X2 disc in the cpu since I got BCM Gold...

and I cant even play really BCM yet; I'm still re-reading the manual and the Appendixes and trying out different combos of race/career/ship

Not one of my AE have made it till his first payday, but I am thoroughly (sp?) entrenched in it.

the TTD ot the TDD now which was it?

Just getting the major Abbreviations memorized is tough, but the investment is paying off...

(I really got a thrill when I got my first kills)

one was from a missle i fired and the other was one of my fighter pilots shots (and he sounded happy when he downed that enemy too!)

Which is a great example of the "extra" you get with BC...

I mean it could have just registered that the target was down, but instead you get a radio comm from the pilot in an excited tone of voice...registering the report of the kill.

That made me really feel like I was commanding a ship in hostile space...more so than the eye candy from EVE or X2.

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  • 2 weeks later...

i bought the game a few days ago. and since then, i didn't played ANYTHING else.

Here's my personal review, so far.

X2, like the BC games, is a game that requires you to put in alot of time to have fun. There's no instant action, and the ship you start with is total crap when it comes to combat.

The world is BIG, real big, i mean that big! While it does not feel alive like in freelancer, every ship that goes around has a purpose, and usually a homebase. Countless transport ships carry goods and equipment to supply their homebases, often over several sectors.

Combat is difficult at first, although the 1.2 patch that was released yesterday helps it. The controls are ... weird - but I'm starting to get used to them. AI tactics are unusual (involves alot of ramming, and ship repairs cost ALOT)

In X2 even if you fight your way around you will most likely have a factory or 2 around, with automated freighters buying resources and selling products, looking automatically for the best deals. Then you can buy fighters and corvettes and order them to escort your transports or patrol sectors. Or you can build up a fleet of fighters and warships and take out enemy bases (fleet command is made simple with "broadcast" commands). This is the best aspect of the game - the possibility to have a fully functional, and automated business/fleet.

Or you can go pirate and kill hopeless traders, loot them and capture their ships (i prefer to capturepirate ships though ). Or buy police licenses and kill pirates, getting a bounty for each kill. Or fight the threat.

The game does not have an hyperdrive. Instead, you have SETA - time compression. Not only this allows you to move around very quickly, you can use SETA if you are waiting for something (camping an pirate trade route for example) or leave the game on SETA when you sleep while your factories are running. You can set the game to run at up to 10x speed.

There are alot of ships to fight, fly or use. From the small M5 class scout crafts to M3 heavy fighters, from M6 class corverttes to MASSIVE M1 carriers or M2 destroyers, if you see it, you can own it. For a price.

Everything in the game costs alot, and the differences between small and large thing are pretty steep. A small barebone M5 discoverer usually costs 36k. A M3 Nova heavy fighter costs 800k. A M6 Centaur corvette is 6.5 millions. A M1 Collossus carrier is 88 millions (and even then, add about 15 millions in equipment and system upgrade costs). Of course when you own a military-grade destroyer or carrier there's little around that can stop you.

The interface in the game is pretty simple to master with multiple sub-menus and tons of options. A bit more complicated than the BC menus, but no biggie.

The downsides of the game .. the cutscenes for the storyline are horrible. Character animation is the worst I've ever seen so far. In some instances some people seem to be cross-eyed, others have retarded looks in their faces. Movements are sudden and everyone seems to have something in their underwears when they walk, or maybe they have severe arthritis.

In the intro movie you have you in the past running away from security in space, a hot pursuit that seems to be at 30 miles per hour with the police dude going "this guy is crazy on steroids!" because you are "close" to asteroids or something. I mean, maybe if it was as fast and deadly as the asteroid chase in one of the star wars movies i would understand ... but ...

Sounds are rather poor. Most of the time you hear nothing in flight. In first person view you don't even hear your own engine sounds. station have an generic ambient low frequency sound that annoys you quickly. When ships blow up you hear a single explosion effect that never match the visual of it.

Visual in the game are good, but freelancer looked better. Far better. There's practically no ambient lightning (only directional lightning) which causes most ships to be too dark, reducing the overall beauty of the game. A shame considering the awesome designs of several ships.

The game also has perfomances issues - probably related to AI processing. Despite having a XP2800 cpu, if there's over 20 ships in a sector my framerates go down the crapper - 15, 10 or less. Especially during combat.

Overall I'd say the game is very addictive and if you like micromanagement, you will be very pleased. The MMOG version (in the works) will DEFINITELY be a winner.

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Guest rtoolooze

Just because there are many sectors really does'nt mean its big. Each of those sectors are SMALL. Just compare one space region from the BC world with one from X2. There's no comparison. No wonder there are no Hyperjumps in X2. The second you activated it, you would instantly run out of room.

Crap, now I'm reminded again how I blew $40 dollars on X2. Its just sitting on the shelf laughing at me, grrrrrrr!

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quote:

Originally quoted by rtoolooze:

Crap, now I'm reminded again how I blew $40 dollars on X2. Its just sitting on the shelf laughing at me, grrrrrrr!

Why don't you trade it in at EB? That's what I'm doing with my copy of X2. I'll probably only get ten bucks for it, but its better than nothing.

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Guest rtoolooze

Ya, but is'nt that the way it really is in space, big? I mean space is huge. The BC world gives more of the feeling of space.

So, you mean they could'nt make the ships faster so they actually had to make everything closer to compensate? That don't seem right.

If you guys enjoy the game, thats cool. I just don't like the slow ships and tiny space regions. Just my opinion.

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The SC once said that creating areas so huge like the ones in BC isn't an easy Task and i dont remember very well but i think it would bring huge stability issues, so maybe there's one reason for building small areas.

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personally, I've never been fond of sectors millions of kilometers in size. The bigger the area grows, the more action becomes concentrated at the areas where there's something, and there's less and less action in between. In BC you don't really have a choice but to hang around stations, gates, ODS satellites, since you'd never get anywhere on standard engines. In X2 i commonly fly in the void and plant navigation relay satellites so they relay market data to me.

True, an area in X2, while not actually limited, is usually delimited by gates that form a square area 90x90 km. Most ships have max speeds between 100 and 250 meters per second. but most sectors have 10-12 facilities (factories, shipyards, trade station, equipment docks, etc), sometimes less, sometimes more. In BC you usually find a planet, a moon or 2, a station and an ODS system.

quote:

So, which is it Ep5?

On the one hand you're trashing everything in the game and on the other You're calling it a winner. From your descriptions of gameplay, sound, and graphics I wouldn't touch it with your Computer

Lol.

The "good" in the game outweights the "bad". And beside the dark lightning there's little to complain about graphics. I already said that ship designs are often great, weapon effects are varied, contrails are really cool, but the suns and the debris fields / nebulas looked better in freelancer.

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I've been playing alot of X2 lately as well. Its a great game but does require much micro-management. Especially when you have over 260 ships and 30 stations to keep track of.

There is no hyperdrive but there is a jump drive which can take your ship accross multiple sectors as long as you have enough energy crystals onboard.

As far as instant action goes, once you have enough ships to mess around with all you need to do is attack a base or cap ship and they will launch defenses to retaliate, so you can pretty much create your own instant action situations.

The carriers are really cool. They can hold as many as 150 ships in their docking bays!!Anything from the smallest fighters to transports and mining ships.

I was disappointed with the storyline as it was very short. (I did wait to start the missions until I had a pretty huge fleet, so that did contribute to the shortness.) Also, after the scripted missions are completed, the enemy ships are still around and they keep randomly popping in and out of sectors where you have stations and ships located. It becomes a real pain in the butt to keep your assets safe from attacks and pretty much requires a cruiser class ship in each sector where you have stations or ships operating.

Over all I've enjoyed playing X2 but I'm a bit burned out on it now.

Guess I'm ready for Universal Combat!

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quote:


Originally posted by Sebbish:

The sectors in BC are bigger, but that's because everything is farther apart.


Isn't that the definition of big? The sectors could still be bigger and the things within close together.

And by big, I was mostly refering to the size of the game world - not just an individual sector (since I already new that BC is much, much bigger).

Do try to keep up.

quote:


Originally posted by Cmdr_ Laracuente:

The SC once said that creating areas so huge like the ones in BC isn't an easy Task and i dont remember very well but i think it would bring huge stability issues, so maybe there's one reason for building small areas.


Creating the large areas is not the problem. The problem is in the technology required to run it. For one thing, the larger the area, the more likely you are to run into technologicaly barriers such as precision errors (I can't even use 64bit precision) etc

quote:


Originally posted by Andergum:

I've been playing alot of X2 lately as well. Its a great game but does require much micro-management. Especially when you have over 260 ships and 30 stations to keep track of.


whoa!! Thats a lot!

Anyway, FWIW, I liked what little I played of X2 but until they address the joystick controls issue and revise the AI dogfighting somewhat, I'm probably not touching it again. I can't imagine how they could possibly botch something as important in a sim, as flight controls. Boggles the mind really. I haven't tried the 1.2 patch yet.

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quote:


Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

Anyway, FWIW, I liked what little I played of X2 but until they address the joystick controls issue and revise the AI dogfighting somewhat, I'm probably not touching it again. I can't imagine how they could possibly botch something as important in a sim, as flight controls. Boggles the mind really. I haven't tried the 1.2 patch yet.


The latest patch has fixed most joystick issues but the combat AI is still the same.

Since I'm fighting from cap ships most of the time now it doesn't bother me as much.

I also found it inexcusable that they botched the joystick support so badly. Hard to imagine that no one tested that portion of the game.

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quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

Anyway, FWIW, I liked what little I played of X2 but until they address the joystick controls issue and revise the AI dogfighting somewhat, I'm probably not touching it again. I can't imagine how they could possibly botch something as important in a sim, as flight controls. Boggles the mind really. I haven't tried the 1.2 patch yet.

aah ha! i knew i was invisible.

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quote:

Personally, I prefer ships appearing dark with less ambient light, isn't space more like that and as such "dark ships" seem more realistic and less cartoonish IMO.

Maybe, but i DO remember a time that i almost collided with a Mammoth TL ship in Argon Prime .. and those things are HUGE

By the way Derek - the 1.2 patch did changed joystick control, mainly by added a sensitivity slider. However AI control didn't changed, and is hard to deal with (collision damage is high and the potential losses are sickening (30% damage on a nova heavy fighter hull? 240 thousand credits in repairs. Beta HEPT weapon? 265k. 25mw shield? 165k (and god those things are freaking hard to find!) And to think killing a M3-class enemy while you have a police license gives you a whooping 5k bounty. Whoop dee doo.)

Saving the game also uses an unusual concept. By design you can only save when you are docked at a station - unless you go to the goner temple and buy salvage insurance. For 3k a piece you can save while not docked (i.e. in the middle of unfriendly space).

quote:

whoa!! Thats a lot!

yeah .. you get so much money at that point that "mistakes" are not worth reverting back a savegame Just tonight someone i play with in PS made a mistake and instead of buying a 70k scout ship he bought a 7 millions corvette... no problem ...

personally I haven't gone past the *cough* 1 station mark with 3 transports working for it.

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I can't believe after so many space sims have been made over the years nobody still learned the lessons and took the best bits to combine into one game. And why is nobody mentioning Independence war I, and II. The system travel was handled well, the ship handling/combat awesome, but virtually no trade aspect, or ship damage/repair.

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quote:

Originally posted by Soback:

I can't believe after so many space sims have been made over the years nobody still learned the lessons and took the best bits to combine into one game. And why is nobody mentioning Independence war I, and II. The system travel was handled well, the ship handling/combat awesome, but virtually no trade aspect, or ship damage/repair.

I was always asking myself the same about flight simulators.

Is the problem perhaps the designers are not real fans or enjoy the class of game they are programing? (question not including SC or david braben... )

Only played I-war 1.While it was good it completely deceived me.It could be truly a reference but in the end it felt very "empty".

In my opinion it should only be remembered by its flight model.But since Elite model is the same/better I dont really see were it contributes to the evolution of the space sim genre.

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quote:

Originally posted by Sebbish:

quote:

Maybe, but i DO remember a time that i almost collided with a Mammoth TL ship in Argon Prime .. and those things are HUGE

Maybe you should turn up the brightness on your monitor. The game is quite dark, but not dark enough to not be able to see (at least not for me).


Here, let me show you.

Argon collossus in Argon prime

Light side

Dark side

by the way, bump mapping makes such a huge difference, i don't know why i turned them off

Without

With

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  • 4 months later...

quote:

Originally posted by Epsilon 5:

Here, let me show you...


That looks about normal. You get used to finding 'dark' ships by looking for self-lit features and occlusion (stars disappearing that shouldnt be) after a while. I actually like it.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Moved from a thread Kalshion should be for attempting to hijack.

quote:


Originally posted by Kalshion:

quote:

Originally posted by Shingen:

X2 was and is a sorry state of affairs. The game out of the box sucks! Pure and simple. They had the chance to make a killer game, and blew it.


Forgive me for taking the topic slight off SC

Uhhhh, question. Have you even BOTHERED to check the X2 board? Cause if you had you wouldn't be saying that

The next patch for X2 is suppose to fix a tone of issue's along with adding some new features to the game.

As for the game being worthless, have you even PLAYED it? Cause if you had you wouldn't be saying that either

The storyline is perfect, very immersive

The ability to build an empire is a second best thing of the game

The ability to fly capital ships is also a good thing about the game that most players like

"It's a privalage, not right", come's to mind

*decides to stop, doesn't want to speak for SC in case he make's a fool out of himself*


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  • 1 month later...
Guest Shingen

Has anyone had any luck with the new 1.4 patch? Did anything ever really change? I tried it for awhile, but got bored to tears before long, 'cause it takes so long to get anywhere without playing the "campaign".

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