X2 The Threat (yes, another thread, don´t auto lock!)

Griff its ok I lost all hope on elite 4 years ago <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> this game sounds amazing though....I´ve ignored most of the threads to do with it in the past because they tended to be speculati

The answer is yes to all of those questions. I have a GF3, 300 something ram and a pentium III, and it runs FINE on 1024/7 something absolutely fine, with shadows and antialiasing turned off. If the rolling demo lagged, its probably because of shadows. EDIT If any of you actually buy the game and are having trouble with something just PM or email me, its quite hard to figure out what everything is at first, and I´d rather the impatient people ask me than end up throwing the game out the window. Edited by - Griffon_26 on 10-12-2003 22:18:40

First, Griffon.... I like the effort, second, I appreciate it too now my point What do you mean with tough interface, and how exactly does it work, with the aiming of the guns and all, if you could enlighten that, I would appreciate it even more. and how about the learning curve, is it very steep or just normal 10% steepness __________________________________________________________ Oh, dear, How sad, Never mind!!-Battery Sergeant Major Williams Plus the newest addition!!-<img src=´http://www.planetgromit.co.uk/tlr/gromit.gif ´><img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

aiming of the guns? Hmm well, to aim the gun you just move your ship, unless your in a turret, and then it moves the gun itself. With a joystick. The interface...well, everything is accessed from a main menu, (not the main main meny, with start escape load etc) there are hotkeys though. So, if you enter a system and want to go to a station, you have to go main menu&gt;navigation&gt;sector map&gt;select the station&gt;target. After a while you will become used to doing this with speed though. This isn´t a fast game. You wanna dock? You have to establish communication with the station, request docking, wait for clearence, then stear into the station, then fly through the station and to an empty berth, as opposed to Freelancer click on station press F3 and done. Its far from a boring game though. As far as learning curve, well, put it this way. You leap into space, left is left, right is right, fire is fire, sheild, speed, hull, and energy are all on the hud, you can get flying straight away without even reading the manual, but what you gonna do when you want to buy a factory, and tell your freighter ships to trade somewhere? Also you have to set up defence for it, and monitor it (you can set up sattelites that have cameras that you can view any time) and you have to set it in a place that you will profit from it. To learn all this aint common knowledge is it? Thats what I mean by learning curve.

Damn this sounds good. So when you own more than one ship, can you switch between them or do you just employ NPCs to operate them for you?

well b*gger me with a tickling stick and call me F*nny, when X2 is released in Europe we´ll get the full version, with cut-scenes, improved plot? and AI downloadable plug-ins for ur fleets. About time we got some thing a bit better. Mind you, looking at the s´shots, some of the ship designs look awfully familiar.

*pulls out tickling stick* OY FANNY...Get over ´ere.... <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

Whaa, X2 has all that?! Now I´m realy gonna buy it <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Edit: Damn spelling. Daft Vader - I am your father. sS - Noooooooo! I demand a DNA-test. --------------------------------------------------------------- They call me spammer, but you may call me Master. It´s better to chase a rabbit then to catch a hare...

Grom, In older X games, NPCs would fly them and if you wanted to control another ship you could manually spacewalk over to it and take control. In X2, they have a series of windows that can give you a variety of viewpoints, including from other ships you own. I think you can control them remotely through these view windows but I haven´t tried yet (I thought I read that in the manual). The interface is definitely a lot of key pressing. Freelancer got me a little spoiled with its stellar interface, but there are some things the more complex keyboard design lets you do. For instance, not only can you communicate with bases to dock, but you can often communicate with specific types of people. If you wanted to hire a large ship to tow a space station you just bought, you can contact the pilot, the nav guy, somebody else, there is a short list. The list of ship types, upgrades, weapons, etc. is quite long. There are tons of different things you can outfit a wide variety of ships with. Of course, one of the draws of the game is the ability to own any number of ships and fly them all. The keyboard commands allow you to individually program turrets for ship defense, or hop in and control one if you like. Buy life support for your cargo hold and you can capture pilots who eject and sell them as slaves. A lot of little details like that. Control can be done with a joystick, mouse, or keyboard, although most people say the keyboard or joystick work best for piloting. It´s definitely cool to enter a space station and go looking for an empty dock, but if this bores you eventually, just by an autodocking computer, ask for permission to land, get to within 3 klicks and hit &quot;d&quot; (I think). Now if there are people on this board who don´t have a lot of exposure to space sims and Freelancer was their main introduction, let me make my recommendations to buy like this. X2 can have action, but it is definitely not as fast, furious, or numerous as Freelancer. Money takes more work to come by. There are missions to be had, but the most money can be made from trading, owning stations, and capturing ships to sell off. Essentially Freelancer was a space game streamlined beautifully to really accentuate the core play of a space sim. X2 is sort of the opposite. They go all out with a lot of details to make it more immersive. Every action requires a few steps, nothing comes with just a click of the mouse, but at the same time, I feel like it works better as a space &quot;sim.&quot; Bottom line is to really get all you can out of X2, you really need to invest a lot of time into it. The story helps make the initial money hump a lot easier to overcome, which was a big complaint of the earlier X games.

<font size=1 face="trebuchet ms"><BLOCKQUOTE><hr size=1 noshade>If you wanted to hire a large ship to tow a space station you just bought <hr size=1 noshade></BLOCKQUOTE></font><font face=´trebuchet ms, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica´ size=2> lol. how cool was that line <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> So tell me something, I don´t think that this has really been covered yet...what is the ultimate objective of X2? Are you trying to acheive a rank like in Elite? Or are you trying to build an empire like in a &quot;sim&quot; game? Or is there some other storyline going on....?

Well, in that sense its more free than freelancer. There are numerous goals. There are ranks, from _ to = to ^ (army sort of stripes) to X, which is sort of like Elite. People will respect you more if you have that rank. You can be recognised as a police with a police licence so that whenever you kill a pirate you get money. You can play &quot;economy sim&quot; by building a massive space trading empire and killing all the competition. You can play &quot;army sim&quot; by owning capital ships with many many other smaller ships docked inside them, and go take over the world. You can be a pirate, and shoot up ships till their pilot ejects, and then you can take over the ship and order it to go sell itself at the nearest shipyard. As far as commanding other ships, you CAN monitor them with smaller screens, but I don´t think you can control them, and you can only switch to them if you are both docked at the same place (or, if you dock with that ship or vice versa if its big enough) to tell it where to go you give it orders through the command console and then leave it to do it.

Yes. But to manufacture ships you need the resources, so to get the resources you need to command your freighters to either buy them from somewhere else or make a factory that makes those resources (solar power collectors, ore mines, n stuff) and get it from there.

Just for the sake of comparison, you may wish to peruse the following review; <A href=´http://www.actiontrip.com/reviews/x2thethreat.phtml´ Target=_Blank>X2: The Threat Review by Actiontrip</a> Mmm, there was another one at Gamespot, but I can´t find it. Odd. I am unsure about X2. I am a BIG fan of good plots, and the plot of X2 seems a bit mdiocre. I´ll probably wait until it gets really cheap. Well, it depends upon how bored I get <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>. Esquilax ============================================================ The above post is true, and by true I mean &quot;false&quot;. It´s comprised of lies, but they are entertaining lies and in the end, isn´t that the real truth? The answer is &quot;no&quot;.

I WANT THIS GAME! I went out to comp USA to but it and they hadn´t unpacked it yet! <img src=smilies/icon_smile_sad.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Dunno if this has been covered yet... you mentioned defending your station, does this imply thet ALL bases are destructable? Also same thing with your manufacturing competition. If you do really well do they leave the region? like, tow thier factories elsewhere?

Dude! I´m sure you got enough info there to make your decision! Find the rest out for yourself!

There is some problems with decreacing performence the longer you play, I think due to save game files getting bigger and bigger until they are rediculously large (over 100MB!) But! Unlike FL the devs are on it straight away and there is supposed to be a patch released this very weekend. I think the UK version will be already fixed when it comes out. Anyway, a cool feature of the game is that you don´t have to make all the money yourself. You can of course, but when you buy a new ship you don´t lose the old one. So, buy yourself a heavy transport and get the trader command software. Order an NPC to fly it on a trade route, and go off on your little fighter to explore or kill some pirates. This will take a while to rake in any serious credits, so make yourself a factory, and sell what it makes (Solar Power plants make energy cells, ore mines make err ore?, etc.) Is there another solar power plant in the place yours is, lowering the demand in the sector (economy is dynamic) take your fleet of Destroyers and Corvettes and blast the heck out of it. So many possibilities Patch is out <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Edited by - Griffon_26 on 13-12-2003 08:26:09 Edited by - Griffon_26 on 17-12-2003 04:53:45

More reviews for everyone! Hooray!!! <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> <A href=´http://www.gamezone.com/gzreviews/r19207.htm´ Target=_Blank>Review by Gamezone</a> <A href=´http://www.gamershell.com/reviews_X2TheThreatReview.shtml´ Target=_Blank>Review by Gamer´s Hell</a> <A href=´http://www.gamesdomain.com/gdreview/zones/reviews/pc/dec03/x2.html´ Target=_Blank>Review by Games Domain</a> Have fun! As I have said before, I think I´ll wait until it gets really cheap. Then I´ll give it a try. Esquilax ============================================================ The above post is true, and by true I mean &quot;false&quot;. It´s comprised of lies, but they are entertaining lies and in the end, isn´t that the real truth? The answer is &quot;no&quot;.