Wanted: a good Space Epic / Sim

[uethello]

X3: Terran Conflict. Any news? Does it fix the awful menu system? I really want to like this but x3 Reunion disappointed me so bad. It's like an old girlfriend came back and she's like "no, really, I worked on my personality, I'm pretty inside now too." Is x3 the same creature it always was or more x2?

I'm going to look up the demo now, if there is one, but what is Techimos' opinion? Any other suggestions for good space sims / space operas?

[ShyguyXPC]

I haven't gotten much into X3:TC, and I can't say much on how it is compared to X3 Reunion, as I never got into that one as much either.

X2 I always had problems with the damn Starforce or whatever it was Protection stuff, never let me get into the game, and when I did, finally after one of the patches, I had already bought Reunion, so since X3 has a bit better graphics I was figured I'd skip X2.

but I can say in X3, from what I experienced, I had to resort to using some, um, ahem, *cough* cheats *cough*....

to get going in the beginning, even on easy setting I always seemed to get into a furball with some pirates or something, and my ship had little to fight back with, slow as hell, and could barely hold anything.

so I modified it a bit. but also found how to spawn things in like asteroids, etc, including larger ships (figured I'd try that and Hijack one, make it my own), not realizing once they spawn, you leave them for too long and they start to take off, LOL so eject from your ship to far away and you could be peddling vacuum back to your ship sometimes LOL.

anyways, I found the menu's to be a bit annoying at times, so maybe that was me, but then again, maybe thats what you were talking about, like I said I never got far or even barely out of space dock on X3 Reunion, mainly had the same troubles as TC, with getting blown out of space before I could even do anything decently.

BUT, I do love the graphics in the game, and the Epic size of TC, just wish it was a little easier to make cash early on in the game to get some spending money.



I think there was talk of a Trilogy like Release of the game eventually with X: Beyond The Frontier, X2: The Threat, And X3: Reunion, maybe it included TC also, but not sure what ever came of that.

I know X3:TC is one of the best of the series, and one of the Best Epic Space combat type games out there.

but another possibility is this game if your interested, a bit dated Graphics, but it harkens back to the Old Elite & Privateer games, that the X games are loosely based off of.



Wing Commander - Privateer Gemini Gold


It actually plays decently on an Intel Atom equipped Netbook, though runs better on a regular laptop or desktop PC.

but its an option, there's some other projects in the works using this Open Source game engine, if i remember right, there's a Star Trek one in the works, and some others.

Vega Strike - Home



its some other choices to look at, that might hold you over some more.


I miss my Wing Commander and FreeSpace Games so much, I really wish someone would pick up the Licenses and make a couple games worthy of the Franchises.

Even The Independence War Games that were more popular over in the UK and Europe than was over here, would be good.

[uethello]

OMG Privateer! I played the heck out of Privateer. Then Privateer 2 - it had its limitations but as far as clean, ahead of its time graphics and epic dog fights all running smoothly on a 386.... fond memories. I second the WC and Freespace comments.

d/l ing the x3 demo.... rolling demo? does that mean non-playable?

[ShyguyXPC]

yeah, its non playable, its just to wet your appetite for the eye candy, and used as a benchmark as well.

its still pretty to watch, and the music is nice as well.

at the end, I won't spoil it, but the space station/dock, gives you the scale of some of the structures in the game, when you see the two dock workers and it pans/zooms out

I saw that for the first time and nearly wet my pants, then found out you really don't get to go IN it, just fly around it, etc LOL.

still, I use the demo for benchmarking when building the occasional higher end PC for myself and others.

unless you've got some really good hardware, don't run it with AA settings higher than 2x really, though 4x is where it really starts to look nice.

AS filtering at 8x is more than enough, More Dynamic Light sources will lag it good, and More Ship Color Variations will add some lag as well, probably at medium texture and shader quality too.

Automatic Quality Control can help a bit.

but with everything on highest settings, the demo can even bring my Mighty GTX 285 to its knees in some parts, especially since I run at 1920x1080.

its still a nice demo, even if not playable.

[uethello]

OK, the game is pretty nice and has a much better menu system. Still has a pretty steep learning curve, however. Egosoft seems almost proud of the inaccessibility of the game. Lacking even a basic tutorial I found some excellent resources on the Egosoft Forums.

The game runs *much* smoother than the demo, I have a 9800GT and the graphics are at 4x, 8x, 1680x1050 and everything else "high". I've never seen even a single hitch or slow down graphics related, regardless of number of ships on screen.

For anybody who runs across this thread and is in the same position I was:

The Ultimate X-Universe resource. GO HERE BEFORE YOU GIVE UP ON X3. This is a great source for anything X. The devs may not be big on tutorials but the online forum looks very helpful.

[ShyguyXPC]

yeah, I noticed that too, when I first tried the Rolling Demo, It ran pretty good on a single Radeon 4870 1GB, but when I tried the game it did run smoother, I just assumed the Demo was made with an earlier build of the Release version of the game.

even on a GTX 285 there's points where you get some hiccups in the demo, but playing the game, much less so.

I've never tried on anything less than a 4870 through, only tried the Demo on a G80 320MB 8800GTS, G92 512MB 8800GTS and 512MB 9800GTX, but not the game itself.