Sun Oct 02, 2005 4:57 am
Thats because there is no real economy in FL, it caters for arcade fighters instead of any real trading. Within a day, you have no variety in trading, so all you are left with is the combat... which itself is also incredibly stale too. No variety either!
X2's combat is fine for me, I personally like it - its alot more difficult to combat well in X2 than FL - and when taking on a fleet of M2's with an M6, it is a real challenge. The diversity of the community shows that combat and trade are equal focuses for its players alike - many people do focus on combat more than trade (its how they make their money).
However, against combat, there is a severe lack in choice of weaponry or shielding (bog standards only). From what I have read about X3 though, this will be addressed to a certain extent (I doubt we will see FL volumes of weapons!).
The main issue for X2 that I found was the simple fact that its universe was unengaging. It was fine if you were just tradeing and shooting, but not if your exploring... because all the stations show on the sectors as you fly within radar range (large radar ranges), leaving nothing to discover (but discovering stations aren't that exciting either!).
There are no wrecks, no hidden treasures - and although they have pirates in the game, they don't act or behave like pirates. There have been mods to address the this aspect (pirates behaviour) - and some for genral action and fighting.
There is one reason why a majority of scripts focus on the trading though - instead of combat. When you are not in sector, the game engine uses a forumlaic calculation of the stats of your ships to decide the outcome etc. When in sector, it plays it out in "real time" - with the AI trying to outdo itself. However, most of the combat that is undertaken is in the first person - it is you, flying your ship - and attacking. There are no scripts to improve your own fighting, just like there are no scripts to improve your own trading. The scripts are nearly all aimed at your items that work independantly of your commands - such as your trading ships. There is nothing they can do script wise to make your OOS combat better, its the way its done - but there is one heck of a large amount of improvements that can be made to your traders - both OOS, and insector. They were dumb AI until the scripts came along and basically implemented player like decisions to be made.
It was awkward to manage large amounts of stations, it was awkward to mine, it was awkward to make loops and trade route specifics (something I still find). If you didn't have a station, then you had to get your AI Trader ship to go where you told it to go, then when it arrived, you had to buy the commodities, then tell it where to sell it - and wait for it to get there before selling it. The commands for your traders lacked any real AI about it, it required your input near always - which meant you could do little else.
The scripts made for the economy in X2 were made to release the player from having to tell each ship what to do when it landed somewhere - what to buy, to find out if the price was still the best in the sector, or whether it had risen. Now you can have a huge empire where you do nothing, but before all of this - after you had 20 ships you would be going insane by constantly trying to get them to buy/sell items, check all the prices manually and more.
The scripts didn't address the trade because it was a trading game - but because the AI was so hopeless in the trading, that it cocked up all you wanted it to do! IMO that is why you find the concentration of scripts on trading, because it addressed that issue to make playing more pleasurable, and less of a hair pulling out experience.
moving forward though, I really hope (although the beta teams are being rightly tight lipped
) that they have expanded upon the factions, increasing the diversity -, because the pirates on offer were merely cannon fodder only, and meek cannon fodder at that. I do know that there are more ships, more variety of weapons and improved AI - so they are also addressing the combat side of things where it was lacking. I also think that they maybe adding a little more substance to the space itself - so its not just stations and ships, but hidden items an treasures, jumpholes, gates not in predictable places etc.
Whether it lives up to my hopes I don't know, there is alot of effort on the interface, graphics and improved AI. Here is hoping that they didn't miss the small details too
Edited by - Mike G on 10/2/2005 6:01:10 AM
X2's combat is fine for me, I personally like it - its alot more difficult to combat well in X2 than FL - and when taking on a fleet of M2's with an M6, it is a real challenge. The diversity of the community shows that combat and trade are equal focuses for its players alike - many people do focus on combat more than trade (its how they make their money).
However, against combat, there is a severe lack in choice of weaponry or shielding (bog standards only). From what I have read about X3 though, this will be addressed to a certain extent (I doubt we will see FL volumes of weapons!).
The main issue for X2 that I found was the simple fact that its universe was unengaging. It was fine if you were just tradeing and shooting, but not if your exploring... because all the stations show on the sectors as you fly within radar range (large radar ranges), leaving nothing to discover (but discovering stations aren't that exciting either!).
There are no wrecks, no hidden treasures - and although they have pirates in the game, they don't act or behave like pirates. There have been mods to address the this aspect (pirates behaviour) - and some for genral action and fighting.
There is one reason why a majority of scripts focus on the trading though - instead of combat. When you are not in sector, the game engine uses a forumlaic calculation of the stats of your ships to decide the outcome etc. When in sector, it plays it out in "real time" - with the AI trying to outdo itself. However, most of the combat that is undertaken is in the first person - it is you, flying your ship - and attacking. There are no scripts to improve your own fighting, just like there are no scripts to improve your own trading. The scripts are nearly all aimed at your items that work independantly of your commands - such as your trading ships. There is nothing they can do script wise to make your OOS combat better, its the way its done - but there is one heck of a large amount of improvements that can be made to your traders - both OOS, and insector. They were dumb AI until the scripts came along and basically implemented player like decisions to be made.
It was awkward to manage large amounts of stations, it was awkward to mine, it was awkward to make loops and trade route specifics (something I still find). If you didn't have a station, then you had to get your AI Trader ship to go where you told it to go, then when it arrived, you had to buy the commodities, then tell it where to sell it - and wait for it to get there before selling it. The commands for your traders lacked any real AI about it, it required your input near always - which meant you could do little else.
The scripts made for the economy in X2 were made to release the player from having to tell each ship what to do when it landed somewhere - what to buy, to find out if the price was still the best in the sector, or whether it had risen. Now you can have a huge empire where you do nothing, but before all of this - after you had 20 ships you would be going insane by constantly trying to get them to buy/sell items, check all the prices manually and more.
The scripts didn't address the trade because it was a trading game - but because the AI was so hopeless in the trading, that it cocked up all you wanted it to do! IMO that is why you find the concentration of scripts on trading, because it addressed that issue to make playing more pleasurable, and less of a hair pulling out experience.
moving forward though, I really hope (although the beta teams are being rightly tight lipped
) that they have expanded upon the factions, increasing the diversity -, because the pirates on offer were merely cannon fodder only, and meek cannon fodder at that. I do know that there are more ships, more variety of weapons and improved AI - so they are also addressing the combat side of things where it was lacking. I also think that they maybe adding a little more substance to the space itself - so its not just stations and ships, but hidden items an treasures, jumpholes, gates not in predictable places etc.
Whether it lives up to my hopes I don't know, there is alot of effort on the interface, graphics and improved AI. Here is hoping that they didn't miss the small details too
Edited by - Mike G on 10/2/2005 6:01:10 AM
Egosoft's blurbs say absolutely nothing about making their engine easy to work with, so I have to assume that it's a pain in the rear.
