Turret Mode! Turret Mode!
What a fantastic game - I haven't been this addicted to a game since Deus Ex.
I'd done the SP game mostly in cockpit view, 1st person, as a straight shooter with just enough trading to be comfortably off in fighters and gear, and I was starting to get into the SP "aftergame". I'd tooled around in the Anubis, making a few lucrative trade runs, levelled up to 26, done the Xeno thing so most nasties were neutral. I was beginning to get a bit bored, so I decided to explore more of the possibilities of the game and do some serious trading, so I got the Dromedary at Mactan, and since I realised I'd now have to, I started exploring turret mode.
Words fail ... the feeling of immersion when you've got an all-round view is amazing, you really get a sense of SPACE all around you, and suddenly the game opens up to a whole new level, like being in a film.
1st person view is still great sometimes, but one of the problems with it is that the feel of the game can tend to become a bit 2-d, where you're just trying to get the circle round a red cursor on a flat screen. But turret mode really makes you feel like you're in a film, really out there IN space, with a sense of what's going on all around. Before, when I'd been thinking about how the plane of the game was a bit horizontally flat, I'd thought it would be difficult to implement more 3-dness (up/down), but now I see that it could be done, even 3-d maps could be understood, when you have a sense of space around you like this.
I'm 44 years old and this game has really re-awakened my old childhood love of space and s-f and all the rest of it. It shows that true 3-d space sim is possible. I know there's not as much complexity as some would like, but that will surely improve with the next FL game, which I'm now very much looking forward to.
Anyway, please excuse my ejaculations As you were ...