X2: The Threat

Urban Ranger · March 4, 2004, 03:50

Supposedly this is the spiritual descendant of Elite. Anybody heard of it before?

game website

duke o' york · March 4, 2004, 06:21

I'd be very interested in new Elite, but this game won't let you use mouse control. I haven't used a joystick for many, many years, and can't see myself going back, no matter how much entertainment arcade games used to afford me.

Daz · March 4, 2004, 08:04

I swore i'd never use a joystick, ever, until I tried it playing Privateer: The Darkening. Now I prefer it.

Anyway, I'd love to play this, but my notebook won't let me. Says its not a pack-mule....

Skanky Burns · March 4, 2004, 08:55

I'm not going to buy new hardware, regardless of the game. Even an Elite sequal.

General Ludd · March 4, 2004, 09:08

Joysticks are a must for anyone who enjoys space or flight games.

Spiffor · March 4, 2004, 09:11

X2 is the game I'm playing right now. I enjoy it very much, because it is a beautiful game with many different ships and an excellent economic system (dynamic economic system baby!)

Also, you can own your own stations, you can own a fleet of ships scattered across the universe, and in short you can become an interstellar mogul

Besides, you can upgrade your ships with a variety of upgrades that make ship-tuning much more interesting than in previous Space games.

Lastly, the game is beautiful, and sends Elite2 back to stone age in this regard

There are a few shortcomings that make the experience different to Elite2 though:

1. The scale. Elite2 used realistic scales, and space was really fricking huge in that game. In X2, star systems are squares of about 100 km per side. Sure, you can go beyond the 100 km (actually, systems are infinitely big, there is just nothing save a few hidden bonuses past the boundaries).
Within this little square, scales are consistent. Stars and planets belong to the background, unlike Freelancer, so you won't navigate around tiny planets / stars that are 10 km wide.

2. No landable planets. Planets belong to the background texture. This is sad because scenario intermissions do happen on planets, and they are nicely rendered. Very frustrating

Aside from that, the game has serious control issues if you don't have a joystick, and it can be frsutrating for the non-fan to have to trade for many hours before getting a factory that belongs to you, or a real nice fighter ship: the average profit with the trade ship you get after Mission3 is 5,000. The cheapest factory is 150,000. A really good fighter ship is 890,000

There is another very serious issue for ATI users: their ATI will have trouble running the game as smoothly as it should. Nvidia cards are much less troubled: my GeForce4 64 Megs runs the game smoothly in 800*600 with all fluff removed (it would work in 1024*768, it's just that I never bothered to try).

Finally, there seems to be bugs, according to X2's forums (corrupted saves). However, I play on version 1.00, and I have no problem at all in this regard - apparently, the bug has to do with long player's and ships' names.

duke o' york · March 4, 2004, 09:11

I agree with Skanky. Mind you, I'd be tempted to pay an extra £5-10 if the game came with a joystick, but I wouldn't buy a joystick especially to play one game.

General Ludd · March 4, 2004, 09:15

I wouldn't want to buy a $10 joystick, either.

Get a good one, and you'll be amazed how much it improves any space or flight sim you play.

Spiffor · March 4, 2004, 09:22

I am on the verge of buying a new joystick, because of this game. Mine sucks badly, and since I have a laptop, I can't use my old (great) joystick that can only be connected through an plug on the audio card.

I intend to buy the sweet Joystick for Logitech, which I should use until USB doesn't exist anymore

duke o' york · March 4, 2004, 09:23

But I don't play flight sims so a decent joystick wouldn't be worth the money. I played Elite and then Frontier for days on end, but on "lesser" computers, for which most of the games needed a joystick, these days I'll get action games for the PS2, on which I can use the joypads, and more "cerebral" stuff for the PC, with which I only need mouse/keys.

It's a shame to hear that you can't land on planets - it took me ages to work out how to do that on Frontier, but once I'd cracked it, then I'd do it all the time just for the hell of it. The raw materials you could scoop from the planets' surfaces were pretty worthless, but it was cool to be able to land in a fight and see the other ships all crash.

Daz · March 4, 2004, 09:26

Quote:

I'm not going to buy new hardware, regardless of the game. Even an Elite sequal.

You will.... eventually

... so why not now

Spiffor · March 4, 2004, 09:49

Quote:

Originally posted by duke o' york
It's a shame to hear that you can't land on planets - it took me ages to work out how to do that on Frontier, but once I'd cracked it, then I'd do it all the time just for the hell of it. The raw materials you could scoop from the planets' surfaces were pretty worthless, but it was cool to be able to land in a fight and see the other ships all crash.

I just loved to discover pristine habitable planets myself. It was a shame I couldn't get off of the ship and have a pic-nic, lightyears form the nearest human

The only thing I really regret, is that I never bothered to take an Imperial Courier, put a hydrogen scoop on it, and go explore the great void, beyond what the telescopes could see

I just wanted to neme my own planets

The Rusty Gamer · March 7, 2004, 05:14

It's a sequel to X- beyond the frontier isn't it? Is it much improvement over the original?

DrSpike · March 7, 2004, 08:19

My mate was into driving and space games, and he got a force-feedback joystick and wheel. They were admittedly awesome but:

alva · March 7, 2004, 08:50

Are they still that expensive? I thought prices had dropped over the last couple of years.

Not buying a joystick to play a game either, did it once , never again.

General Ludd · March 7, 2004, 09:04

I've started play X2 aswell. Very good, and yeah, very impressive graphics - especially in the cut scenes. I don't know if it's just me, but there are alot of hilarious moments in the cut scenes too.

I haven't played the game much yet, but I like it so far - very open, 'real' and immersive from what I've seen.

Urban Ranger · March 7, 2004, 10:36

Looks good, but I am pulling a Skanky now.

Spiffor · March 7, 2004, 11:02

Does it mean you are getting drunk instead of playing games?

General Ludd · March 7, 2004, 16:06

Question:

I completed the first couple of story-line missions and got an argon mercury, so I set out at a snails pace to do some trading while working my way to an equipment dock so that I could upgrade my engines. During that long, slow, flight I got to thinking about my old ship that I left behind - might aswell send it out to do some errands while I'm hauling stuff around, right? So I access it's command console remotely and tell it to dock to another station... a couple seconds later, it's destroyed. By the Teracorp HQ. Why?

Thinking back on it, I guess it may of been because it didn't have a docking computer, so maybe it nicked part of the exterior as it left, or something, and the HQ opened fire on it for 'attacking' - or maybe it just rammed itself against the interior untill it blew up

But I don't really know why it happened.

Spiffor · March 7, 2004, 17:01

Quote:

Originally posted by Osweld
I completed the first couple of story-line missions and got an argon mercury, so I set out at a snails pace to do some trading while working my way to an equipment dock so that I could upgrade my engines. During that long, slow, flight I got to thinking about my old ship that I left behind - might aswell send it out to do some errands while I'm hauling stuff around, right? So I access it's command console remotely and tell it to dock to another station... a couple seconds later, it's destroyed. By the Teracorp HQ. Why?

Thinking back on it, I guess it may of been because it didn't have a docking computer, so maybe it nicked part of the exterior as it left, or something, and the HQ opened fire on it for 'attacking' - or maybe it just rammed itself against the interior untill it blew up

But I don't really know why it happened.

This is a problem I didn't suffer from myself, but I read on X2's forums that it happens. Your ships may collide stupidly with stations or asteroids. It is a bad idea, because these stations will actually declare war on you.

I strongly suggest you to take a previous save back, because this previous ship will be useful, and you don't want to waste 80,000 into buying another.

Aside from that, you can buy the important upgrades (speed, rudder and cargo, as well as softare) at Terracorp. I trade almost only in Home Of Light, so it's very convenient

General Ludd · March 7, 2004, 21:56

Quote:

Originally posted by Spiffor

I strongly suggest you to take a previous save back, because this previous ship will be useful, and you don't want to waste 80,000 into buying another.

Aside from that, you can buy the important upgrades (speed, rudder and cargo, as well as softare) at Terracorp. I trade almost only in Home Of Light, so it's very convenient

I was relying on autosaves at the time, and it was too late to reload by the time I figured out why my ship had disapeared from the roster, so I just restarted - I hadn't done much, and I'd made alot of other big screw ups anyways. Like leaving some fairly valuable cargo on the loaned express ship and forgeting to sell it before returning it to Teracorp.

And yeah, I kicked myself when i realised that I could've upgraded that mercury at Teracorp HQ - after I had already lugged to a couple of station and through a jumpgate.

Spiffor · March 8, 2004, 03:51

And press J to accelerate time tenfold. Extremely convenient when you travel. It cancels itself as soon as you press a key or touch your joystick a tad strongly.

General Ludd · March 8, 2004, 09:36

Quote:

Originally posted by Spiffor
And press J to accelerate time tenfold.

Oh, I knew that atleast. I would've quit and uninstalled the game if I didn't have the time accelerater for that mercury.

Spiffor · March 8, 2004, 10:02

Besides, when you're wealthy, fix that Mercury in the nearest shipyard. Unless you've done it already, you only go at 70% of the max speed

Sharpe · March 8, 2004, 23:26

I was thinking about getting this game, but the issue with the ATI cards (I have a Radeon 9700) worries me...

General Ludd · March 9, 2004, 08:23

I have a 9700 PRO and it runs perfectly.

Skanky Burns · March 9, 2004, 08:49

Quote:

Originally posted by Spiffor
Does it mean you are getting drunk instead of playing games?

I'm still wondering exactly what that refers to.

General Ludd · March 9, 2004, 09:28

I'm pretty sure he means that he's pirating it. Not enough to make a euphemism for it, he also has to lay the guilt on someone else.

General Ludd · March 9, 2004, 09:57

By the way - is it just me or do the rudder optimisation upgrades become counter productive? Right now the controls on my discoverer are so sensitive I can barely manevour it without it flying out of control... of course, maybe it's just because I've gotten use to the slow and steady mercury.

Spiffor · March 9, 2004, 12:14

Quote:

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
I'm still wondering exactly what that refers to.

To that thread where you said you eventually preferred buying Bourbon instead of a game.