Hi Shant

Thanks, just trying to do my part. Just wanted to make a specialized site that focused on all space games in general and build a good community on that. Off to a good start and have a lot of game knowledgeable people here and some devs that hang around as well.

So have fun Shant and look forward to chatting with you in the forums.

Thanks again mate. So how many members are you currently up to here? How long has this site been up? Shame I only discovered it today, based on something you posted at an I-war 2 forum. Had I not chanced upon that, I may have never found this place.

Welcome aboard!

Hey, are you the same Shingen who helped me out on the I-war 2 forum yesterday??

Yep.. 😀

Small world! 😀

I dunno if you saw my reply there but let me just repeat, thanks again dude! I'd been trying to get help with that damned issue for several days and haven't been able to play the game during that time. I tried 3 seperate I-war 2 websites/forums, all ghost-towns.

Do you ever use bittorrent? I've got invitations to a couple of private sites I can give out.

Well the space-sim world is pretty small, that's for sure.. and I've been floating around it for many many moons now 🙂

Yeah... the Iwar2 forums have been dead for quite awhile now. They used to be pretty lively, but that was a long time ago. Glad I can help though. I've played that game prolly 6-7 times straight through. Once you learn all the perks and glitches, you can play the whole game through pretty fast.

Torn-Stars and Unstable Space are a few mods that add to the whole Iwar2 longevity, but both are still alpha, so you get what you play for.

I guess that would depend on what type of "private" sites you are referring to... 😉

That just means they no longer allow the general public to register, you'd need invitations from current members. If you're into music, I've got invitations to www.megauploads.com. Hit me up with a PM if you'd like either.

I just finished that mission btw, but I am getting creamed now. I just started the mission where you have to steal a reactor rod. Well soon as I get close a few ships lock onto me and launch missiles and within literally 3-4 seconds I'm done. How the heck do battles go in this game? Am I supposed to run away and come back and do hit & run tactics or something?? Maybe I need to spend the next week upgrading my shields before proceeding to the next mission...:/

Kewl.. well send me a PM and I'll check them out

That's a stealth mission. You can't fight all of those ships in your little Storm Petrol. You have to sneak in with engines off/thrusters only and watch their patrol patterns. It takes a little time and patience to complete that mission. Just remember that 5.0 km is the distance they will attack. If you stay outside that range they won't notice you.

Also you can bring along those disruptor missiles that you got in the last mission, but they won't help you against all 9 ships patrolling around that reactor.

That's the hardest mission in act 0, and they get a lot harder after that one. 😉

Ah...well dang how's anybody supposed to figure this stuff out! 😆

So lemme get this straight, if they see me, it's game over? Or will they see me regardless and I just have to get out of there fast? And is it just me, or are ships very fragile in this game?

Also, how did you control the ship, with the keyboard or controller? I read somewhere that a key component to being succesful in this game is being able to strafe left/right, but unfortunately I can't do that and hold the controller at the same time.

Well, it's not "game over". 'cause you can always run, scatter them out, and take them out piece-meal using your disruptors and rapid-PBCs. However, the easiest way is to sneak in, keeping a least 10k between you and the patrol craft. It's very possible, but time consuming because you have to time your move with their patrol pattern.

When they get close, just back out, keeping a minimum of 7.0-6.0km away.

Well, I've always used a Keyboard / Flight-stick for that game. However, you can re-configure the command keys for whatever controller you are using in the flux.ini file.

How did you strafe, ie lateral thrusters? I know you have to hold down Alt for that, but how do you do that and control your ship with the controller at the same time?

strafing is A - D keys, W is thrust and S is reverse on the keyboard. Classic WSAD controls. Flight-stick for Yaw, pitch, roll, target and fire. N turns on and off the inertial computers

I don't use the Alt key for anything.

So you got your left hand on WASD, and right hand on fire? And what, when you had to pitch/yaw, you moved your hand from the keyboard to the controller and back and forth?

Are you using a gamepad or a flight-stick?

I once tried to play this game with a gamepad.. it doesn't work.. get yourself a good flight-stick

Yeah, I'm using a control pad. Never tried a flight stick before. So what are the limitations of a control pad? Never played a game that I couldn't make a control pad work for. Actually I can't imagine playing any other way, although this game may be the first exception. Space battles are unique in this game, they seem much more realistic but more awkward at the same time.

There really isn't any way that I could figure out to set a gamepad to work with this game.

First, it's too hard to configure the key commands unless you know the exact code to write in the flux.ini file that relates to the specific button on your pad.

Second, Iwar2 is ABOUT combat! That's pretty much the whole game.

The only way to advance in the game is piracy and combat. The only way to get new weapons, armor, ships, systems, ect., is through piracy and combat.

There is no other way to trade cause there are no "credits" to earn. You go out a steal cargo pods and then exchange them for weapons, and ship upgrades.

If you can get you game-pad set where you can control most everything from that one pad, then fine.

However, this game uses pseudo Newtonian physics. Speed and vector are both just as important as weapons and armor, which means your flight skills are going to be just as vital as your firepower, if not more...and to make matters worse, you're going to have to start out using an old beat-up tug against multiple advanced patcoms, corvettes and fighters if you ever wanna kitted out advanced Patcom of your very own!

So, you ain't gonna have time to switch back and forth from your game-pad to your keyboard when you have 5-6 ships up your ass trying to reduce your old beat-up tug into component parts. This game is a hard-core, combat flight/space sim.

The game was designed as a Flight-stick / keyboard combo. One hand on the keyboard, one hand on the flight-stick. There is a patch around that will turn in into a keyboard/mouse combo (sorta like Freelancer), but the handling really suck for combat.

You can look around the Iwar2 forums for any info on rewriting the flux.ini file for gamepad, but it ain't likely you'll find anything.

Have you heard of a piece of software called pinnacle profiler? It allows you to map all the keys on your pad to anything on the mouse/keyboard. It works really well. http://www.pinnaclegameprofiler.com

You wouldn't believe how advanced it is, you can do all kinds of ridiculous stuff. You can map out cycle commands where you hit A on your control pad 4 times in a row and it will fire 4 different keyboard commands in a row on a loop, or double commands where if you press a button you get one command but if you hold a button down, it will fire a different command.

I've estimated that when used properly, you can squeeze well over 30 different commands onto one control pad. You can even set it so that if you push the stick up, you get one command, down another, left & right other commands still. I usually set it up so that the right stick rolls when I push left or right, and up and down is throttle. That takes care of 4 commands right there.

You should check out the Pinnacle forum, it's got tons of members. Unfortunately not many space sim players. The way it usually works, if you install a game on your computer that doesn't have controller support, like say Call of Duty. You can go to the Pinnacle forum and download a COD profile that another pinnacle user made and uploaded. You import the profile, and joilla, your controller works. With the space sims though, invariably I end up having to make my own profiles as I'm one of the only guys who ever posts profiles for these games.

Anyway, I'm thinking it wouldn't be a problem to create a profile for I-war 2. I would just need to know which commands are most important to incorporate into my profile, and which I can leave for the keyboard. That's where you come in...

Well I would never use a game-pad to play this game... it just wouldn't feel right to me... So, you'd be better off playing it yourself and finding out your own best combination of commands.

But surely some are going to be indispensable, right? F6 obviously, for instance. Nearest enemy is usually important but it may not be in this game, I dunno yet.

What I really need to know is whether I will strafe much, and whether you'll use the one where you turn off engines and float in one direction, but you can still turn and fire at the enemy. I think they called it 'sliding' in the game Tachyon.

And what about reverse thrusters? Do you ever use 'em?

In combat, I use them all. Actually, in Iwar2 I hardly go anywhere in "assisted" mode.. it's always "engine's off", unless I need to control velocity to approach a station or some other mission objective.

Strafing should become second nature in Iwar2. The auto-pilot keys (F5,F6,F7,F8) are all indispensable. Also the camera keys (F1,F2,F3). Reverse thrusters, main thusters, undock key.. target enemy, target objective, cycle target, cycle weapon, ect., I use them all.

I guess the most important 20 commands would be:

Pitch

Roll

Yaw

Thrust

Reverse

Strafe Left

Strafe Right

Fire primary

Fire secondary

launch countermeasures

Target closest enemy

cycle targets

cycle weapons

Starmap (which requires Up,Down,Left,Right keys and mouse /m-wheel to pan/zoom)

AP disengage

AP approach

AP formate

AP dock

undock

LDsI

...then you have wingman commands as well..

...not to mention all the multimod GUI commands

BTW, I also have Tachyon. Great game. Bruce Campbell rox! 😀

Yes Sir! Couldn't find anybody else who'd played Tachyon while I was playing it a few months back. That game was truly excellent. There never seemed to be a dull moment, and I really liked the way the control mechanics felt. Sliding was really important in that game. I went from Tachyon to Freelancer and remember being very disappointed at FL's controls initially. No sliding, couldn't even roll the ship. Tachyon felt just right. I'm thinking about doing that one again it was so much fun. Maybe next time I'll work for the rebels instead of the corporation. Any mods for this one?

BTW thanks for listing the most important controls, that will come in really handy. I just need to figure out the best way to lay them out, and where to put the strafing. BTW, how do you fly with engines off? There are no afterburners in this one, right?

The game uses pseudo Newtonian psychics, so an object in motion, stays in motion until acted on by another force.

There are no "speed limits" in IWars 2. As long as you press the thrust key, you accelerate. However, that means that if it took you 5 mins to get to 100,000 kms, it's gonna take you 5 mins to come to a complete stop. All the inertial computers do is try to keep you at a set speed, heading in a forward-facing direction.

The flight model isn't arcade like Freelancer or Tachyon, it's Newtonian like FFE or Terminus.

Well, if I recall correctly the default model for IW2 is partially assisted Newtonian, which you can disable at will should you wish to do those crazy turns. Don't remember what the command is.