@Biomechanoid,

Please stop being rude to people.

You've quoted him out of context and he was referring to Frontier back on the Amiga.

That was a long time ago and it's the same for most of us. We devoted time and effort to it back then but don't expect everyone to remember every detail of everything perfectly after 10 or 15 years have passed.

Andy

I said "The Combat does Suck" because that's how I feel about the combat.

"The games do cheat" because Frontier etc did cheat (spawning in ships close enough to you and moving fast enough to intercept is cheating).

"The game is not Fun" - isn't something I said. I said that "just because it might be possible to win an engagement does not make it fun or enjoyable to do so.", which is the truth. 

You might find the combat fun or enjoyable, but lots of others do NOT. Therefore that statement is true which is why I wrote it like that so that there was no ambiguity.

I love playing Pioneer, that's why I spend so much time writing code for it to improve the rendering, the world generation, wrote the factions system and have contributed to modelling a station and rewriting the docking system, and supporting DDS texture loading as well as the original texture compression, along with hundreds of other contributions.

For me combat can be fun, I play a lot of FPS games, loved Elite, Frontier, the Descent series, Freelancer, I-War, etc etc etc and I work in the games industry.

The combat in Pioneer can, and will, be much improved in time but right now I just find it irritating. Irritating like the random encounters in a lot of JRPG's where there is a mechanism to victory but no enjoyment in it.

You enjoy the current combat? Really?

With ineffectual missiles?

Hopeless peashooter lasers?

No warning of ships on an intercept course?

No space dust to indicate motion?

No augmented reality to show you shield or other information?

No other weapons to choose from?

The game is set 1200 years from now and all we have are weak pew-pew lasers and missiles slower and less maneuverable than the ships that they're chasing?

If you're attempting to defend Pioneer's combat because it's a "simulation" then the weapons should be much better simulated too.

There should be an appropriate gamut of offensive weapons covering the kinetic spectrum and not just lasers, defensive shielding, armour, decoys and countermeasures not to mention stealth coatings and equipment to avoid combat entirely.

That's what I've said and feel.

It seems that you want a hi-res Frontier clone - Pioneer would like to be the game that Frontier would have liked to have been but couldn't be due to technologies limitations at the time and not _just_ another Frontier clone.

Yeah... Pioneer's combat sucks... I've been source diving a little and trying to figure out where to start on a "Tactical Mod" to explore more combat options but it's beyond me... I've floated the idea before I think, maybe now the time is ripe?

Frontier and FFE were made at a time where the WSAD / mouse controls for your spaceship was not a standard control mode, like one can see in Freelancer, Parkan, etc. in games after 2005. Such a control mode would have given much more combat sense and "Situational Awareness" to the players, but just using some keyboard commands makes the combat part almost unplayable and not enjoyable at all. The right mouse button pressing for ship maneuvres is just ridiculous.

This should absolutely be changed in Pioneer :haha:

I fully realize that this is easier said than done ! (i wish I was a coder, with more than just macro and batch programing skills.)

A good example would be the control mode of the Starwraith games (Evochron Mercenary) where Newtonian physics are also implemented, but where such a control mode can be switched on or off for combat as you like WITHOUT neglecting the laws of physics.

It makes no sense to take over the flaws of FE/FFE if something new could be done.

When I said it "sucks" that was for sure a hard language for a game which I liked (and still like a lot), but I wanted to bring it to the point. IMO the control mode is the game's biggest flaw.

XenonS

:scenic:  :lazy:

I understand the thing about "sucks", ...but i don´t see any problems in the FFE Control Mode!!??

 

What I mean is: In most space games from 2005 and after,  the flying direction of a ship can be controlled by simply moving the mouse which is so much easier.

I must say that it's now a long time that I'm not using a conventional mouse anymore, but a trackball mouse. Also I rarely use a Joystick, I will only use a Saitek X52 (with separate throttle) when playing flight simulations like Falcon 4 or similar where 10 or more actions can be programed.

As for Pioneer being a sequel to Frontier: The devs almost made it! They still have to implement the Military Factions with the corresponding missions. But you realize that this is not a walk in the park, say: easy, do you?

Currently, I'm very busy with The Precursors for which I try to fix the framerate issue on ATI cards, I always go indepth with problems like that... but I'll follow this thread closely. Will get in my game archives to find the combat tips from Alioth.net for FFE, the best you can find. Eventually I will upload them (this fan site isn't active any more).

XenonS

P.S.

Hi Tourist, do you take a break with Genesia 🙂

Elite Style, and it´s not dangerous 😉

ah, i like this one. David Braben should plan to incorporate Frontier II as a minigame in Elite Dangerous :mole:

XenonS

http://elite.frontier.co.uk/

http://elite.frontier.co.uk/

Bio Shutdown ? 

Pease Bio , integrate theses data in your bank : http://spacesimcentral.com/ssc/topic/3434-removing-elitefrontier-content/#entry36810

Pioneer took a different way from Frontier since a little time ago ( very sorry for these bad new ).

Good news for you must be bad news for others ^^ ( but this topic is closed now , i have made Genesia for the posterity ^^)

Question about keybindings: are there some keys to toggle the rotation dampers without clicking the icon, and to toggle the navigation tunnel without passing through the settings screen?

If there are, I'll add them to the wiki page 🙂

Tichy... On the control setup screen it lets you assign a key to it, the default is "r" I believe.

Tichy... On the control setup screen it lets you assign a key to it, the default is "r" I believe.

Rotation damping... found it... 😳

Thanks 😳

Don't worry 🙂 I only found out because I always use WASD for lateral and vertical thrusters, R for forward and F for back. I kept spinning out of control seemingly at random and then one day I finally noticed the toggle... I'd actually forgotten about it until yesterday when I finally grabbed a native linux version and had to reset all my controlls 😀

can anyone please help a newbie and tell me how to sell a ship. i cant believe there wouldnt be an option for this. i know how to sell equipment. Im not a fan of the start ship, the wave or whatever. Ive been changing the price value of the lunar shuttle to a dollar so i can start with a nice ghetto ship with no equipment and only a hundred bucks. I like to work from the bottom up in a sand box game. Just my preference. Also i read an early post about someone who wanted a light on their ship. Has this been done? Another thing that would make the game more realistic would be atmospheric magnetization, which makes our moon and sun alot bigger than they are, like how we see them from our planet. Or does this happen? Im continualy blown away by this game its got me so addicted to space stuff. haha. I wouldnt change much else (maybe a more realistic date(3200 is pretty damn far in the future to be "pioneering" space)). One more inquiry, can you actually slingshot?

Go to the shipyaar and it's the bottom option, you don't sell the ship you trade it in for another 🙂

Trading down to a shuttle should give you quite a bit of cash!

We haven't got a light on the ship since we don't really support it in the renderer right now.

omg thank you. ill try now.

wait a second i dont know why im failing at this. All i could see was a go back option. I went into shipyard, do i click on anything else?  what does the trade button look like? thanks ill keep looking.

Erm, F4 to open comms, shipyard, buy-or-trade ships.

If there's no ships then accelerate the time and it won't stay empty for long.

I'll try and reply more later just heading out now.

all i see when i click shipyard is ship equipment, repairs and servicing, and new and reconditioned ships. i click on the latter and see no option to trade. and when i click view on the desired ship theres only a buy this ship option. ive looked up down. I have the latest game, but  i couldnt figure it out before either. ... thanks

i also hear people talking on this forum about different kinds of ships that i dont have in my pioneer version(eagle, talon...). is it possible i have a different version. i download it off the pioneer site every month... i dont know im just speculating.

When you buy a ship you're effectively trading because you can only own one ship in the game. If the ship you're buying is cheaper than the one you currently have then the difference in price is added to your money.

There are two main ways to get those other ships.

One is to download Pioneer Genesia. http://spacesimcentral.com/ssc/topic/3443-new-game-total-mod-pioneer-genesia/ It's a totally separate game, based on the older Pioneer modelling system. There's some really cool stuff in there. Tourist has done a great job with it.

The other is to download Scout+ http://spacesimcentral.com/ssc/topic/3229-new-game-mod-pioneer-scout/ which is a mod for Pioneer and goes in your mods folder.

I suggest you read through the entire topics before you try them. It can be a bit confusing at first.

@vbishop91,

Buy == trade, sorry now I understand the confusion.