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GOD DAMN MUSE MAKING ME WRITE INSTEAD OF WORKING arghargharghargh.
Anyways.
I'm reasonably certain that there is exactly one member of my flist who is going to have even passing knowledge of what I'm talking about here, so I'll be generous in the background.
I love space economic sim games. This is a genre that stands on the mighty foundation of Privateer and EV Nova. By and large, you tend to start with one dinky ship in a vast universe and have to go about making your fortune by trade, bounty hunting, piracy, etc. There are a number of games in this genre at this point (and one MMO, EVE), and they vary pretty heavily in the specifics, but the general concept is the same.
There are two that I have a particular fondness for and have played to excess: Freelancer and X3: Reunion. Freelancer is a much older game. I picked it up in highschool and played it obsessively for...more than a year, I think. Let me tick off a few features that are relevant to the comparison at hand:
- You get one ship. You can buy new ships to replace it and customize it to a pretty healthy degree, but you only get one at a time, ever. Also, you are restricted to fighters and freighters. There are a few capital ships strewn about the game, but they're just for looking.
- When trading, prices never vary. A station that buys a product at a given price will always buy it at that price. Same for selling. Supplies never run out.
- The game is not at all to scale. Planets are laughably small, distances are very short, and when crossing them you have two boons: Cruise Drive (a mode where your weapons shut off but your speed triples) and Trade Lanes (set routes that allow you to traverse large distances at a speed approx. 3.5 times faster than cruise drive). This is not counting between-system jump-gates, of course.
- Physics are, at best, fanciful, and there is sound in space.
Now let's talk about X3. X3 is bigger, badder, more complicated, and doesn't have a learning curve so much as a vertical wall. By comparison:
- You can only FLY one ship at a time, but you can own as many as you can afford. You can also own EVERY SHIP YOU SEE IN THE GAME with...four exceptions, I believe, three of which are the inhuman alien menace of the plot and one of which is an easter egg flying saucer. Furthermore, you can build your own space stations.
- Prices run on a very well-executed supply and demand model. Each space station produces something and requires something to produce it. These quantities are finite, and the rate of production is more or less set. Prices for buying resources will vary depending on how much the station already has, and selling price will depend on how much the station has in stock. You can do all kind of fun economic manipulations by constructing stations that take in various resources, making them rarer and thus more profitable in an area.
- The game is to scale, and you are insignificant. You never get closer to planets than high orbit, but they are appropriately vast. You never get ANYWHERE near stars. Even ship scaling is impressive, the largest ships are literally over a kilometer long, and the smallest are only a couple dozen meters. Yes, you can fly things in that scale, and often dock the smaller ones in the larger ones. However, you have no way to cover distances quickly, other than to jump to another system. So, you can cover the map of all the star systems fairly quickly, but within a sector you're restricted to your ship's top speed, usually not faster than 100-200 m/s, sometimes covering distances over 100km. Luckily, you have "time compression," which makes it so you don't spend as much real time traveling, though lots of in-game time. Also a useful economic trick, since production cycles take time.
- Physics are closer to accurate, but for some reason there is still air resistance in space (you slow down when not actively thrusting) and some, though less, sound (usually only explosions and ship-to-ship contact).
When I first got X3, I compared it and Freelancer thusly: Freelancer is like playing with a lego space shuttle, X3 is like playing with the real thing. Lately, I've felt like legos, and have started freelancer again. It is laughably simple compared to X3, but I've owned X3 so tremendously the only thing I really have left to do is start a new game and see if I can reach the apex of wealth and combat power faster. Or get X3: Terran Conflict, which is bigger and better still....which I may do when I have moneys again. Then, of course, there's EVE, which puts X3 to shame, but I'm resisting that until I have some kind of social life.
OK, that wraps up my random burst of writing. Now maybe my muse will shut up and let me get something DONE.
ETA: Aw, fft. Realized I no longer have a good excuse for not getting Terran Conflict, and I need to go shopping anyways. Oh yeah, now I'm gonna be REAL focused at work.
ETA 2: Aaand I asked the nearest Gamestop to hold on to Terran Conflict for me. I'm going to have to get everything remotely productive done before I dare go get it -_-;
Anyways.
I'm reasonably certain that there is exactly one member of my flist who is going to have even passing knowledge of what I'm talking about here, so I'll be generous in the background.
I love space economic sim games. This is a genre that stands on the mighty foundation of Privateer and EV Nova. By and large, you tend to start with one dinky ship in a vast universe and have to go about making your fortune by trade, bounty hunting, piracy, etc. There are a number of games in this genre at this point (and one MMO, EVE), and they vary pretty heavily in the specifics, but the general concept is the same.
There are two that I have a particular fondness for and have played to excess: Freelancer and X3: Reunion. Freelancer is a much older game. I picked it up in highschool and played it obsessively for...more than a year, I think. Let me tick off a few features that are relevant to the comparison at hand:
- You get one ship. You can buy new ships to replace it and customize it to a pretty healthy degree, but you only get one at a time, ever. Also, you are restricted to fighters and freighters. There are a few capital ships strewn about the game, but they're just for looking.
- When trading, prices never vary. A station that buys a product at a given price will always buy it at that price. Same for selling. Supplies never run out.
- The game is not at all to scale. Planets are laughably small, distances are very short, and when crossing them you have two boons: Cruise Drive (a mode where your weapons shut off but your speed triples) and Trade Lanes (set routes that allow you to traverse large distances at a speed approx. 3.5 times faster than cruise drive). This is not counting between-system jump-gates, of course.
- Physics are, at best, fanciful, and there is sound in space.
Now let's talk about X3. X3 is bigger, badder, more complicated, and doesn't have a learning curve so much as a vertical wall. By comparison:
- You can only FLY one ship at a time, but you can own as many as you can afford. You can also own EVERY SHIP YOU SEE IN THE GAME with...four exceptions, I believe, three of which are the inhuman alien menace of the plot and one of which is an easter egg flying saucer. Furthermore, you can build your own space stations.
- Prices run on a very well-executed supply and demand model. Each space station produces something and requires something to produce it. These quantities are finite, and the rate of production is more or less set. Prices for buying resources will vary depending on how much the station already has, and selling price will depend on how much the station has in stock. You can do all kind of fun economic manipulations by constructing stations that take in various resources, making them rarer and thus more profitable in an area.
- The game is to scale, and you are insignificant. You never get closer to planets than high orbit, but they are appropriately vast. You never get ANYWHERE near stars. Even ship scaling is impressive, the largest ships are literally over a kilometer long, and the smallest are only a couple dozen meters. Yes, you can fly things in that scale, and often dock the smaller ones in the larger ones. However, you have no way to cover distances quickly, other than to jump to another system. So, you can cover the map of all the star systems fairly quickly, but within a sector you're restricted to your ship's top speed, usually not faster than 100-200 m/s, sometimes covering distances over 100km. Luckily, you have "time compression," which makes it so you don't spend as much real time traveling, though lots of in-game time. Also a useful economic trick, since production cycles take time.
- Physics are closer to accurate, but for some reason there is still air resistance in space (you slow down when not actively thrusting) and some, though less, sound (usually only explosions and ship-to-ship contact).
When I first got X3, I compared it and Freelancer thusly: Freelancer is like playing with a lego space shuttle, X3 is like playing with the real thing. Lately, I've felt like legos, and have started freelancer again. It is laughably simple compared to X3, but I've owned X3 so tremendously the only thing I really have left to do is start a new game and see if I can reach the apex of wealth and combat power faster. Or get X3: Terran Conflict, which is bigger and better still....which I may do when I have moneys again. Then, of course, there's EVE, which puts X3 to shame, but I'm resisting that until I have some kind of social life.
OK, that wraps up my random burst of writing. Now maybe my muse will shut up and let me get something DONE.
ETA: Aw, fft. Realized I no longer have a good excuse for not getting Terran Conflict, and I need to go shopping anyways. Oh yeah, now I'm gonna be REAL focused at work.
ETA 2: Aaand I asked the nearest Gamestop to hold on to Terran Conflict for me. I'm going to have to get everything remotely productive done before I dare go get it -_-;