SpaceSimCentral

Hey All,So, while musing over the years on what my "ultimate space sim" would be, I've often thought, "wouldn't it be great if it had the xxxx from game A, but the yyyy from game B!"If you could make a game that featured the best aspects of existing space sims, which would they be? Here's my take. My ultimate space sim would have bits from these games:- Evochron: the awesome graphics from the Evochron games, that get better and better with each release- Frontier First Encounters: lots! the "real" galaxy star data, the trading, minimal alien involvement, the freedom, the political entities, and that sense of awesomeness when you land on an unknown planet and slowly watch the sun come up through the moons of a ringed gas giant... - Freelancer: the strange and slightly spooky nebula clouds hiding unknown artefacts, the nations based on "colonies from old Earth"- Privateer: the nifty background music when docked; the different types of space station and planet- Tachyon: the great voice acting during the missions.- X-Wing series: the combat!- Star Wars Galaxies (gasp!): Amazing as it may seem, there was something great about the space sim aspects of the "Jump to Lightspeed" expansion from this doomed MMO. Namely: the fact that your spacecraft was useful! You felt it was fitting into a real galaxy economy - you could transport other players, you didn't have to pay for travel, etc- Privateer II The Darkening: lots, again, since this is my favourite space sim!: the FMV acting and cast, the great plot, the random encounters, the mercenary wingmen with their distinctive personalities, the slick interface, and the little FMV sequences that played as you came in to land.I'm sure I've forgotten some!auryx

DWK wrote:
I would also add the economy of X3, along with its ability to own vast fleets. That, in the Frontier "real" galaxy would be incredible.
You beat me to it :)Building stations would be awesome in frontier too. Or just a more dynamic feel to the 'real' frontier galaxy.

auryx wrote:
- Privateer II The Darkening: lots, again, since this is my favourite space sim!: the FMV acting and cast, the great plot, the random encounters, the mercenary wingmen with their distinctive personalities, the slick interface, and the little FMV sequences that played as you came in to land.I'm sure I've forgotten some!auryx
FMV NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Much as I actually enjoy paying games with FMV (being playing JedI Knight Dark Forces 2 and there’s some wonderful bad acting in it ) I much prefer games to use some decent CGI now days. Some thing I would like to see are Being able to get out of the ship and walk/drive and fly vehicles on the planet and walk about the stations as in Precursors, Parkan, Sundog, Space rogues ect.I would have the graphics of X3, the size of ships and station is one the thing X does well.The big universe of Frontier.A story like Freelancer/Privateer 2 because I’ am fed up of these games where you charter is some brat fresh from space academy who returns home to find that his parent, siblings or dog has been killed by space aliens. Then going on a galaxy hopping trip, upgrading his ship to reek terrible vengeance on for mentioned dog killing aliens. The energy manipulations of the old Star Trek games IIRC I-War has it as well and the ability to fix ship functions as in Sundog.

PINBACK wrote:
FMV NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Much as I actually enjoy paying games with FMV (being playing JedI Knight Dark Forces 2 and there’s some wonderful bad acting in it ) I much prefer games to use some decent CGI now days.
Hah now that's interesting - I would really almost always have FMV in a game than CGI cutscenes. How on earth are you supposed to empathise with a bunch of characters made in Poser or something? Of course, for Privateer 2, it helped that most of the acting was actually pretty awesome, and the production values were high.Actually, another game that springs to mind where the FMV really enhanced the atmosphere was Hardwar. No famous actors, but it really pulled you into the story.auryx

I will have to disagree there Auryx you can absolutely connect with cgi characters and story. Perfect example of the best CGI movie you will see and is awesome is Final Fantasy: Advent Children (Complete) Watch this sucker on 1080p and you will think the are real at times I am a sucker for a good story so I do think cutscenes and dialog is a huge part of a game to build up the connection to the character/avatar and the game world itself. I do love the big huge ships of the X series and would like a planet surface element like a STO, Precursors, Parkan II. To make a base/port that I could call my own would be excellent.

Hardwar good But most FMV games are terrible. Speaking of Privateer2 I never got that far into it because of the bug where you can’t kill the pirate as your weapons are not powerfully enough to destroy the ship before his shields regenerate. Is there any patch for that.

c0mas wrote:
I remember I did finished it without any patch ... I think I still have the original CDs
IIRC the problem in Privareer 2 was that you can not jump out of a system untill all the enemy ships have been destroyed, and if you can't destroy the ship then the game send you into an endless loop.I do remember trying to go a different way and the same thing happening,so I assumed it was some sort of bug or it may just have down to my lousy combat skills.

Yeah, to be honest I agree, that issue was a pain! I don't think it was a bug as such...just bad design.Since I played it a lot, I soon learned to quickly upgrade to either (a) a very fast, very agile ship, so that I could keep the enemy in my targets at all times and wear down their shields. or (b) a ship with powerful guns and missiles. I also found it silly that space wasn't really quite properly 3D, so if you accelerated quickly, you would "bounce" off the other ships :)Anyway still my favourite space sim ever :)auryx

Think I will have to dig out Privateer 2 and have another go at it.