Well said, I agree completely.

Except regarding point (6). Try flying mission 9 in a Dagger, or with the Rebalance mod loaded, or both. I guess you'll start thinking about tactics and such pretty hard.

It's a cakewalk in a Drake and I have enough money to buy and equip at least two of them, but there would be no point in using the Drake as I've already done so. Besides, it should be possible with the Dagger, damn it. I had three gens destroyed, still sufficient supplies of mines & flares and full (15/15) nanos/batts - yet from one second to another I turned into a ball of fire. There's just no margin for error.

(Update: found out why I died so quickly. An enemy fighter must have rammed me while my shields were low and punched through the tinfoil armour of the Dagger. Got rammed the second time, too, but the shield saved me.)

Mods like Michael Dan's Rebalance add a lot of stuff but what I do miss compared to Privateer/Wing Commander is the greater variety of missions. And the Kilrathi, of course.

Edited by - Sherlog on 29-05-2003 13:14:37

more ships will come in soon, then maybe you can worry aobut tactics..

for the moment, just aim and shoot and enjoy the graphics.

Juni : Did I ever tell you that people are change by circumstancecs?
Trent : uhh[!..No?..
Juni : Well I did. Babble..babble..bla..bla..bla..
Trent : (Ok...ok.. do I get to sleep with you or not?)

Yeah tactics, ... during the SP campaign I accidentally made it into Tau-37 in Defender (don't know how, but I was there - I wrote about it in other thread: "greatest odds you faced". It was around Mission 8 and I was lvl 10. When I was trying to get back to more civilized system I realized that up to that time I completely ignored several things about FL. I had to start to worry about where are tradelanes, where are enemy paths, what weapons enemies usually use, which should I use. I was hailing all outbound ships in hope for coverage for the trip out.
It looked I simply went where I was not supposed to go and if I had followed the SP Missions and did not wander around I would be saved all troubles.
In retrospective, however, it seems to be one of the best moment of the game, I was challenged, I had to think, use all resources avaliable, and even then had chance to not make it.
For that I probably praise the game, on the other side, the pity is, it happened by accident and no mission before or after came close to this experience in depth or involvement.

Had such moments, too. In the Tau systems with a Defender, in the Omicron systems with my big, fat Anubis (all they way to the system where Gammu is, and back to Kurile), in the Omega systems with my freshly-bought Humpback (thought using jumpholes instead of civilized routes would save some time), ...

Somehow, it feels like they took the game and watered it down until they had something that a casual gamer could muddle through in a weekend, without having to acquire more than the most rudimentary skills.

(a) equipment upgrades were removed except for shields and thrusters

(b) shield/weapon type efficiency differences were watered down to the point where you can go through the game without ever knowing that there are any differences (factors 0.8/1.0/1.2), especially if you use the over-powered graviton shields yourself

(c) price differences were increased to a point were you can earn real money trading in a fighter , and even the best of the so-called freighters has less than 4 times the cargo space of a heavy fighter

(d) you can 'win' many, if not most, campaign missions by simply being there and not dying; you may even be rewarded if you act against specific, direct orders of your CO (first part of mission 1, "Do not engage the pirates!" )

There are more things like that. But the most interesting is this: you can actually see that the game was different before. Some stuff is still in the game engine (and can be re-enabled by mods), dialogues in the SP campaign make it clear that originally the Anubis was not available before reaching Toledo, things like that.

If you never stray from the paved road then you have little chance of discovering the depth the game still has even now; for that you have to go where you are not supposed to be at that time/in that ship, or load a mod like Michael Dan's Rebalance.

One thing is curious, though. I guess everybody who has played through the campaign more than once will agree that all the campaign missions are actually rather easy, a real cakewalk if you use the right tactics and equipment. And I guess most people will agree that they found many of the campaign missions frustratingly hard the first time through, because the game lets you advance too fast (point 3 on your list). In most cases you have to take only one well-paid mission in order to advance to the next level and story mission (you can actually fly all SP missions back-to-back if you know how, but this does not pertain here); consequently, players are thrown into the next story mission without getting acquainted with their equipment first and learning how to fight well with it.

Fortunately, you can fine-tune the challenge to your liking by picking the right area & missions in multiplayer (at least until you pass the teen levels), or by using the right ships to beat the single player campaign. Currently I am using the Dagger (next stop: Alaska ) but I am also curious how far I can take the Patriot and the Dromedary. And then there's the Rebalance mod ...

Edited by - Sherlog on 29-05-2003 23:49:28

A note on the re-balance mod:

I thought the game turned into a cakewalk too, so I loaded up the rebalance mod, and took flight. I loaded an old saved game, (DO NOT DO THAT BTW, it jacks your game) and took on the "experimental ships" mission. Imagine my surprise, when the battleships started taking potshots at me 5k out, in the mine field. Oh well, I have been hit by Battleship weapons before, I figured I would just shrug it off... Riiiight... BZZZZT... Where are my shields? KLANK! Where are my wings? BLAMMOOOO!!!! (Look honey, a shooting star!)

So if ya think the game is easy, Grab yerself the re-balance mod. The difference is night and day.