Lucasarts Space Flight Sims

[Alinestra Covelia]

I just dug out an ancient but good-as-gold copy of XWing vs TIE Fighter and couldn't get over how good it was.

I was wondering whether anybody out there still plays, and whether anybody knows if a message board exists for chatting (rather like Apolyton sprang up for TBS games).

[ZargonX]

I used to play those games, and still think they're great. It would be nice if Lucasarts would just do a newer version of one of them. They were nice, straightforward, and fun to play. That style of play just isn't done anymore; it's all Rogue-Squdron-esque stuff now (which is stil good, mind you, just different.)

[Kc7mxo]

my favorite lucas arts game was tie fighter. Something about not having shields really made life interesting.

and then i found freespace 2. . . . . mm mm good.

[Alinestra Covelia]

TIE Fighters were the craft of choice for the real skill player. It's always great fun to fly one against a newbie Rebel pilot who chooses an X-Wing and believes that it will automatically enable him to give you a beating.

Lack of shields is more than made up for by a very small cross section and an amazing maneuverability.

I also loved the plot for TIE Fighter. It blended in well with Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy and the missions were great fun.

[Craig P.]

LucasArts put out X-Wing Alliance a couple of years ago. The storyline was open-ended enough to suggest designs on an expansion, but there's been nothing forthcoming.

[Alinestra Covelia]

The storyline for XWing Alliance also looked, sounded, and smelled like it was written for a prepubescent male audience on the early side of attending high school.

XvTIE, TIE Fighter, and XWing before it had plots that were increasingly mature and balanced, showing the Imperial side of the matter as well as the Rebels. XWing Alliance has you playing a teenage boy who is surrounded by "America's Funniest Family" (TM) characters, spends his afternoons flying around nonchalantly blasting the Imperials, and coming back home in time to try to date his female fellow pilots.

Yech. I can almost smell the acne-encrusted sweaty tostesterone from here. Give me XvT any day.

[Frankychan]

I used to play X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter! Awesome game!

I loved the Interceptor. I played against my friend who was flying an X-Wing. It's soo cool how you can see them trying to run but end up behind them, shooting your laser's at 'em.

Go Empire!

[mactbone]

You guys are getting me interested again.

2 questions -

1. Are there any packages to buy most of the games together (I have X-Wing on CD and Tie Fighter on floppy, not to mention they both required boot disks on my old, old, old computer)?

2. Is it a good idea to get a joystick? How about a really old and cheap one (that I have)?

I liked the progression of the missions but I remember losing data or something and having to restart getting all the medals.

[Kloreep]

Hmm, I should play some of these games again. I've only actually completed TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance (I abandoned X-Wing after deciding the Trench Run was impossible), and I haven't tried TIE Fighter on Hard. Haven't played XvT much; it just doesn't seem suited to single player, and I haven't tried MP.

I only visit a few sites occassionally, but I think the community for these games is dying. Try X-Wing Legacy. Also XWA Upgrade, a project to produce updated, more detailed ship models for X-Wing Alliance.

Originally posted by MacTBone
You guys are getting me interested again.

2 questions -

1. Are there any packages to buy most of the games together (I have X-Wing on CD and Tie Fighter on floppy, not to mention they both required boot disks on my old, old, old computer)?

I believe there's a package of X-Wing Alliance, and the updated windows versions of TIE Fighter and X-Wing called the X-Wing Trilogy. Strangely enough, I don't think XvT is in it.

2. Is it a good idea to get a joystick? How about a really old and cheap one (that I have)?

Yes, you could say that's a good idea, considering the game requires one. But any old two-button one should do.

[Alinestra Covelia]

TIE Fighter and X Wing did not require them but playing with a mouse was very tiring - your shoulder was always moving the mouse to get your ship to turn.

Try to get a good joystick for the game - one that has a good range of precision movement (comes in handy for getting the lock-ons with lasers that the Mouse makes so easy but which joysticks don't).

I remember there was a modding tool for the game a while back. I might try to find that and use it. Some of the stats for the ships make no sense and the ships are very poorly balanced. A few changes I would make include:

Reducing the hull strength of a B-wing and increasing the Y-wing's hull strength.

Increasing the payload of a TIE Bomber, which at present is the same as a TIE Advanced or A-wing.

Disabling any warheads at all for the TIE Fighter and TIE Interceptor models. (Their immense agility and speed make up for this in dogfighting and they are not meant for starship heavy attack anyway.)

Thoughts? Comments? Supercharged ion cannon blasts?

[Swiss]

God I remember tie fighter... erm.. yes I still have a copy... and of x wing vs also... but the latter is pretty rubbish and the former has no compatibility with my newer joysticks...

However I still have a few old 2 button ones that might run it fine... don't ever remember it having multiplayer though. Shame that. I was so much more pleasant than rogue squadron... ghh.

[Alinestra Covelia]

The multiplayer one that you're thinking of is the sequel to both, called X Wing vs TIE Fighter. It was ahead of its time, back in the days when online play and multiplay was in its infancy. Understandably, players grew disgruntled as their hardware couldn't cope with the demands.

But now the game is very playable on most computer systems and it's great fun to boot.

Right now I have found several mission editors online and am trying to learn how they work.

[Thrawn05]

QUOTE:
___________________________________________
Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
The multiplayer one that you're thinking of is the sequel to both, called X Wing vs TIE Fighter. It was ahead of its time, back in the days when online play and multiplay was in its infancy. Understandably, players grew disgruntled as their hardware couldn't cope with the demands.

But now the game is very playable on most computer systems and it's great fun to boot.

Right now I have found several mission editors online and am trying to learn how they work.
___________________________________________

The strongpoint of XvT was it's ability to easily add custom single player missions, unlike TIE Fighter and XWA, which require you to finish the main game, and in XWA in particulary, building custom missions (NOTE: NOT the ingame editor) requires you to download custom models for the Gunboat if you want the player to fly it.

Now if LEC would take XWA, and make an XvT version complete with a FULL editor to build missions outside the game (since the jerk who made the XWA editor is charging money, guess he learned how popular his XvT and BoP editors were), and also brings back the SLAM system for the Missile Boat, and restoreing the original speeds on the T/A and T/D fighters (145MGLTs and 156MGLTs respect.).

If LEC would do that, I would forgive them for making some of their latest hack job games.

[Alinestra Covelia]

I think LEC did an astonishingly bad job in balancing out the craft. The TIE Bomber, for example, is practically useless as it is outclassed by every single other Imperial ship in some way or another.

I'm in it for the gameplay and I hope to be able to even out some of the kinks in the design.

I have XWA and the single player mission appears to be aimed exclusively at the "fourteen year old boy" age group. Such a pity - the games before that were pretty good and didn't insult the player with a predictable plot and tedious family missions that one could not give a womprat's ass about.

Update: I have found out that MXvTED doesn't work on my version because I have to get updated versions of both my XvT.exe file and the editor itself. More on this later in case anybody is interested.

[Boris Godunov]

Uh, I don't recall XvT having much of a plot at all. The expansion, Balance of Power, did, but it still was far less than its predecessors. I think Lucasarts basically admitted it was a dry run for the MP features of X-Wing Alliance.

TIE Fighter is still the best space sim I've played, and probably stands as the best SW game ever made.

[Alinestra Covelia]

TIE Fighter was indeed amazing, especially as it managed to incorporate so much of the plot of the original trilogy, and the Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn.

I have found a few tools that can convert TIE Fighter missions to XvTIE format, and I might one day give it a try at converting the whole thing.

Remember that one mission in TIE Fighter when the Emperor was ambushed on his way to the Super Star Destroyer?

Well, with the capacities of XvTIE, SSD battles are a distinct possibility.

(Although that having been said, I don't recall the SSD itself as putting up much of a fight in any mission...it just sits there and gets hit.)

[Boris Godunov]

There wasn't any SSD in TIE Fighter, IIRC. It wasn't introduced to the games until XvT, and only then in the Balance of Power expansion.

I would LOVE to convert all of TIE Fighter into XvT format, but would you still have the story in between missions?

The SSD isn't really supposed to do much, actually. It's a command ship, and was never really meant for ship-to-ship combat. That's what the ISDs are for. That's partly why Ackbar ordered his ships to hit the Executor in RotJ. They knew it was far too unmanueverable to contend with an onslaught of smaller, faster rebel cruisers.

That being said, the SSD has an amazing amount of turbolasers, and will easily take out a single Calamari cruiser that engages it. At least, I've seen it do so in the custom missions I've made for XW: Alliance

[Alinestra Covelia]

Yes, the main difficulty that the game has is that the starships have very poor anti fighter defences. In fact, the lowly frigate is the main starship of choice because of its ability to bring a large amount of firepower to bear on an enemy while keeping itself to a low profile.

I think XWA rectified this slightly by having ships of different sizes do different damage. The cannons of a capital ship of MC-80 size or larger would do more damage than a smaller ship and far more than a starfighter.

In XvT the cap ships only come armed with a few warhead launchers and a few beam weapons (mostly jamming) and almost no ion weaponry. In most pencil and paper SW RPGs I've played, the cap ships come equipped with the full complement of ion/warhead/beam weapons, and thus are extremely dangerous.

SSDs don't have to be maneuverable - their design is such that the cannons A) can't be targeted and destroyed by warheads, and B) can fire at pretty much any visible foe across a 180 degree arc. Imagine some poor bugger of a starship facing the prow of the SSD - you've automatically got around 16 square km of lasers targeting you, from all four horizontal quadrants!

I think there was some code in XvT that weakened the SSD in the single player missions and training missions.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Just a brief bump and I'll let this thread sink to forgotten oblivion. I've discovered the pizza delivery easter egg in the warhead interception training mission and I'm still laughing at it.

To accomplish it:

Choose to fly the Assault Gunboat instead of the TIE Bomber. Launch pairs of Advanced Missiles at each of the transports, except one. Tell your wingman to ignore it, and disable it instead. If this transport is ever destroyed, a new wave of fighters will hyperspace in and attack the Interdictor, giving you a major headache. By disabling it, you stop it from attacking, and by not killing it outright, you prevent the fighter backup from materializing.

Now comes the waiting game. The Interdictor Cruiser should progress steadily towards the Shipyard. Watch your wingman TIE Bomber. When it gets to the Shipyard and turns to go elsewhere, tell it to wait (Shift W).

Now wait until a load of Muurian Transports hyperspaces in. Tell your wingman to attack them and you join in too, destroying all but one with your missiles. Disable the one you don't destroy, and make sure that your wingman doesn't destroy it.

Repeat this with every wave of craft that comes against you, destroying all but one of their number, then disabling the survivor. After the Interdictor Cruiser finishes its mission, sit back and watch the Pizza Delivery Easter Egg!