Epsilon 5

last flight sim i played was IL2 FB, and i don't know how the game could be better (beside adding more content) ... so .. umm

quote:Originally posted by DREADA: quote:...Don't think that is trivial: right now, one million simoleans trades for $22 (£12) on the auction website eBay... ...Online economies can even intermingle with the real one. Last month, a court in Beijing ruled in favour of Li Hongchen who sued the operator of the online game Red Moon after his virtual money and weapons were stolen by a hacker. The court said that because the virtual goods had been acquired using his labour, time, cash and "wisdom", they belonged to him and had real value. Whoa!! At this rate, imagine what things will be like ten years from now! Most games usually end up not caring about players, but oftens because of players themselves. In neocron there was a bug where sometimes apartments would get emptied, contents of all cabinets would be gone, rare parts, rare weapons, high cost tools, shitloads of resources, etc ... but because some people deliberately emptied their apartments and asked for a "reroll" they stopped doing it :/ However, i have to agree that in online games, players i worked to improve for months DO have a value to me. I spent REAL time and money to improve the virtual skills and virtual possessions to virtual characters, so I don't want to lose everything.

we have no problems here with reviving old threads, we actually encourage it instead of cluttering the forums with new ones

Don't miss next week's challenge, kleenex vs. k-nex!

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.

quote:Originally posted by $iLk: Me and Epsilon5 played a mod for Battlezone2 that was pretty fun... can't remember what it was called though. Was it Forgotten enemies, dubbed the unnofficial expasion to the game? (the story is great, but damn it's HARD). They added new races, new ships, dozens of new maps for multiplayer, a bunch of IA scenarios, changed most special effects to make them more spectacular, added maps, weapons, a full storyline with added voice (i always thought that the ISDF commander sounded like Blades, but he denied that by saying he (the ISDF dude) didn't sounded like a real brit) I can't believe the bz2 boards are still actives. Makes me want to seach for the bz2 cd again and see what they were able to do. Last time the game has severe memory leaks. I wonder if they ever got the unnofficial 1.3 patch out... *sigh* i wish someone would make a bz3, or another rts/action game hybrid, since i don't think anyone else tried that. [ 01-20-2004, 05:08 AM: Message edited by: Epsilon 5 ]

and there it is the confirmation that online games bring the worst out of people. No matter what. Online games are populated by jerks and psychologically sadistic *******s A shame because you can always find good people in hell. As a sidenote, in planetside early december we had a server merger, and the konried server players (who would get merged with the big brother emerald) decided to have a cease fire and meet up on an island south of a continent nearly a hundred players from the 3 factions showed up, and respected the cease-fire, depite being a FPS game. Except for a group of 3 people that took a bomber and levelled out the place, friends and foe alike, and bragged about it on the forums. *sigh*

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 ComputerLol. 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.

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.

notice that they still display the BCG box

quote:Originally posted by rtoolooze: Heh, pats 2mb cable modem while smiling broadly. 3mb DSL here

quote:I will not single out anyone in particular, So please don't take offense at what I'm going to say, It is clear that the educational system in this country is failing, just by reading many of the posts in this thread, The spelling and grammatical errors are most evident. Ever heard of a dictionary? Or a Thesaurus? Two must have books for every student, no matter what level you have attained in school or out of school. Does the word Parse mean anything?Hahaha, it must not be me because most people don't believe english is my second language

Man, if only bush would cut some of the 380G$ military budget to boost the (AFAIK) 20G$ NASA budget maybe they could do SOMETHING .. within a decade. And to think that the TOTAL budget for Canada is 180G$ ... canadians (135G$ us) .. basically means that the USA DOD spends 3 times as much money as Canada spend for everything (for reference canada spends about 12G$ on defense) .. US spends about 18% of its total budget on defense while Canada spends 7% of it. Bah, I'm going OT.

you can always move into Canada

why use fish? here come get a smackin'

i cannot confirm, but i did hear sometihng about a iraqi/usa wargame simulation using probable iraqi armament, and in the end it resulted in the "iraqi generals" to sink the US carrier with scud missiles. Then the rules were changed so the iraqi must destroy all the escorts before touching the carrier Oh and i was fortunate enough to find an extract from one of Deus Ex's datapads using a Google result. In the game the datapad was found somewhere in Hell's kitchen, i think near Paul Denton's apartment. For those unfortunate enouhg not to have played the game, the context is based on the NSF that's attacking vaccine shipments for an epidemic that's killing many people everywhere in the US, and that destroyed (for the most part) the Liberty Statue. quote:Be Safe: Be Suspicious Terrorism has become an unfortunate fact of life not only in New York but the country at large, a direct assault on our communities and our way of life that leaves citizens struggling to find answers to difficult questions, not the least of which is "What can I do to prevent such atrocities? How can I help?" Quite simply, terrorism is successful because terrorists are able to pass unnoticed and unremarked upon - but they fail to count on the best intelligence network ever devised: the American people. How can you tell who might be a terrorist? Look for the following characteristics: * A stranger or foreigner. * Argumentative, especially about politics or philosophy. * Probing questions about your work, particularly high-tech. * Spends a greater than average amount of time on the Net. * Interests in chemistry, electronics, or computers. * Large numbers of mail-order deliveries. * Taking photographs of major landmarks. And those are just a few. If you're suspicious, then turn them in to your local law enforcement for a thorough background check. Better safe than sorry. You and your neighbors will sleep more securely knowing that you're watching each other's back.

Oh yeah the new mustang is the shiz, really freaking awesome! I think i prefer that to my current sportcar favorite, the chevrolet camaro 1996 (and every similar years) Perhaps the worse concept vehicle i have EVER seen is the Hyundai OLV

sounds more like the OFP map than tacops

indians also sell cheap cigs, not that i smoke, but people i knew would go to indian reserves to get cig cartons for 15-20 dollars each (can$) instead of i think 70 dollars (they increased the taxes on cigs alot lately)

he probably couldn't figure out how to type the name correctly

I hate alcohol. I can't even tolerate a COOLER. I worked for 7 months in a brewery yet i spit back anything i try with an alcohol taste, whether it was in-house or not.

i always found odd to have no nightvision on starships / fighters / shuttles, but hey, that's another topic

quote:The Bush administration may not abuse it, but can you imagine a Hillary Clinton administration with this kind of power?Why this statement doesn't suprise me coming from you? Seriously, I think democrats and republicans will/would/already did abuse their power as much, but to think that republican will not abuse any power, but democrats will .. is rubbish. quote:I don't trust any administration with this type of power in their grasp...except republicans?

and ME?

the media? the MEDIA? You expect media to concentrate on the good things and to forget the bad ones? or basically to stop exagerating? sheesh.