Posts by AkulaSharpe

For reasons entirely unclear to me, people in these forums don´t like the Reaper. I think because it lacks any real useable "special" ability. They need something flashy, that cloaks, or means they don´t have to aim, so they can escape having to actually PLAY the game and use real SKILL to get past the difficult parts. If you want some evidence of this just dig up the thread were we compared the Repear to the Shroud, I think it was. People are passing up on a good ship - the Repear is the best par-for-par Space Superirotiy Fighter I´ve ever handled in a Sim.

You can play through both Gamespy and through the MSN Zone. Though the Starlancer Game is no longer supported as a single lobby it is still possible to play through the TCP/IP connection.

It´s not true. Read my post. 90% of the time turning down the options will fix the game.

This is a common Starlancer problem. It´s an old game, and just isn´t up to kicks on most modern (XP) machines. Here´s my advice: Turn ALL The special Effects and graphics options to their lowest playable setting, ESPECIALLY 3D sounds. this is usually enough to get past the one (or two) missions that are giving you trouble. 3D sounds especially seem to be the cause of most system crashes. The game may not look as pretty but at least it´s playable. And IMO, this game still looks pretty awesome to me. I think it holds a card to modern games, even though they have flashier stuff.

I´ve actually got quite a bit of simple advice here, that people seem to ignore. You do not have to wait for Triggered Events to happen in the cut scene before you can do what they tell you to do. For example, WHENEVER I see a Capital ship floating around, I blow away it´s shield generator FIRST, and then it´s engines, and then it´s weapons. Why? Because often times a capital ship - or bombers - will arrive sometime later and ask you to do this for them so they can destroy it. Often times, if they arrive and this job is already done, it will die before being able to return fire. That being said, when I play this mission I simply run back to the Yamato as fast as possible, switch over to whatever my fighter is, and blow away the shield generators on the cruisers. It´s a simple matter from that point for the Yamato to destroy them, and I´ve had it happen before the cruisers (I think they are cruisers) manage to return fire. All that being said, if you KNOW what you need to do later in the mission, nothing is stopping you from doing it sooner.

Try this thread for solutions: http://www.lancersreactor.org/…tle=Starlancer&M=True I know its not the same mission, but it could be the same problem.

Well actually, I´ve discovered that if I just use the same callsign, and start a new campaign, it lets me play through the main campaign again with my stats and the new techs on like, mission one. I´ve also got saves from every mission (so I can play them at any time). The simulator for this game seriously needed an update, as did the multiplayer features, to let you replay missions you´d already beaten.

It may be possible to use the Ship Editor to create an invulnerable ship, but I have no knowledge of this for sure as I do not know what the Ship Editor allows, and have not used it for some time.

Okay...I swear I posted this already, but I guess not. Your best bet is going to be Amazon, where you will pay around 3 USD - 5 USD for the game, add on the same for shipping. It´s possible to get it for cheaper if you keep your eyes open. Also, a less reliable but speedy way of acquisition is to check your local Wal-Mart, Target, Office Deport, and COMPUSA for their $10 game racks, which have occasinally yielded copies of Starlancer to me.

I´ve got both a Saitek X75 and a Microsoft Sidewinder (Original) that I haven´t had any problems with whatsoever. I´ve never heard of SP2 giving joystick specific errors, but I don´t pay much attention to SP2 crap anyway. Are you sure it´s not just you´re settings that are the problem? FYI, if you´re looking for something cheap I always buy my sticks at Radioshack for around 20 USD.

Turn all graphics and audio options in the game to their minimum settings. ESPECIALLY turn of 3D Sounds. This is usually enough for me to get past spots like this.

For those less familar with Starlancer, let me give you some background here. Starlancer opens up with the opening manuvers of a solar-system sized war. As in, you are surprised, immensely, as the war starts. This means we are at the beginning of the Alliance Coalition War. The game ends with a major Alliance Oppoistion, at this point the Alliance is winning the war. They would have no reason to construct or even to think about Sleeper Ships. If you look at the Freelancer history, 800 years ago at the end of a 100 year war between the Alliance and the Coalition the sleeper ships are launched. Do the math there. Between the end of the starlancer game, which covers a year or two, at most, and the launch of the sleeper ships, there are aproximately 90 years of warfare between the Alliance and the Coalition, during witch the "upper hand" will change places several times. In short, there is no possible way anything from the Starlancer game will confirm or deny any rumors about the Freelancer universe.

Yes, you fly as the Americans, and yes, it´s against the Russians. They aren´t THE Bad guy, the game is played the Alliance Versus the Coalition. I always took it to be NATO versus the Warsaw Pact, so yes to your third question, too, there are other nations in the game. Japan, Britain, American, France, Italy, and Germany all have a role in the game (even if they just get mentioned once or twice during various news briefs). Lastly, there is not way "in game" to fly as the Bad Guys (the Russians). You can however, use the modding tools provided her at TLR to swap good guy ships with bad guy ships, if you had the time and the inclination. Also, on a side note, playing Starlancer before Freelancer isn´t really necessary - yes the games are connected, but there´s 800 years of history between them. They certainly compliment each other well, playing Starlancer explains nicely how the Freelancer universe is carried out, but both Starlancer and Freelancer stand up well on their own, albeit as differant sorts of games.

Two minor points, here. 1) Gamespy is not bad. It´s a great program for matchmaking players, especially in terms of old games. AND you can use it free. 2) It IS still possible to play Starlancer through the MSN Gaming Zone, while it may not have it´s own room, you can slip into the TCP/IP game area and Starlancer is still supported there for play.

Gamespy seems to be the general consensus around here. I´d like it to be the standard if that´s at all possible, but I don´t know if it is.

You´re talking about two very differant games here, friend. Freelancer is free-explore mode of a universe, Starlancer is a more traditional linear style military campaign. It just depends on what you´re looking for in a space sim. One more important limiting factor of Freelancer is that it doesn´t allow you the joystick, which Starlancer does. Starlancer is a great game though, as anyone here will tell you. The Graphics are fairly simplistic for their time period, but still hold their own today. The game looks quite good if you have a machince capable of running it, I highly recomend picking it up if you can. It has good single player story and great multiplayer, with the best feature being the ability to play throught the entire main campaign in cooperative play with up to six of your best friends. It´s definately worth the investment now. I found mine on a $10 rack in a gaming store, but you can also pick it up online (Though you´ll pay more for shipping then for the game itself).

Okay, gonna bump this again. This plan is back in the works people, I´ve had a bumpy go of thinks, including two re-wipes of my computer while it was in the shop so I lost everyones contact information. For anyone looking to join a Starlancer clan or just get some online play in a semi-organized way, contact "RC 427 Chief" on AIM (AOL Instant Messanger) or AkulaSharpe on YIM (Yahoo Instant Messanger) or email me over at: Mystery Mustang Squadron at Hotmail dot com I´ll be looking for the guys I talked to about this before for the next two weeks or so in the hopes of getting this ball moving.

Whoa. Some interesting replies here...first off, there´s a WC mod for the Starlancer game? I think maybe you were talking about Freelancer, Friend. There´s two Wing Commander mods for Freelancer (two that I´m aware of), but I don´t think there´s any for Starlancer. Unless you mean the WC ships you can import, but that´s not paticularly worthy of mention, in my humble opinion. The Colony Wars games...were decent. But they had several problems, none the least of which was their complexity. Those games are for the flightsim/scifi diehards, who have several months to kill mastering the game. The real differance between games like that and Starlancer is that anyone can pick up Starlancer in a few minutes of play. Mastering it takes a bit longer, but mastering something like Colony Wars takes a life time. Alot of people try to compare Starlancer to Wing Commander, or the X-Wing series, when really it is neither. Wing Commander had Five + 1/2 games to develop the same characters in, and to set the stage for their universe. The X-Wing series spanned 4 games, plus the Rogue Squadron spin off series, and was set in the backdrop of the most epic good vs evil better anyone could imagine. Starlancer does neither of these things, and so comparing it is a mistake. Starlancer is the nuts and bolts of a REAL frontier world in outer space. It´s about the darkside of the war, a civil war, really, when you think about it. It´s not about polotics, or mission trees, or who slept with who. That I think, is what makes Starlancer a great game. It´s about Starlancer, flying ships and shooting down the enemy. Alot of people feel it is empty because of the lack of character development, but Starlancer isn´t about character development. It´s about a very real war in a very real outer space, in a very real ships and very real combat. It took my breathe away when I saw that giant Coalition ship sitting outside the rings of that planet that mission (which escapes me at the moment). And you know what? Those graphics still look decent today, even compared with whats presently on the market. It took my breathe away when they killed the man in that pod, when Stiener was alive at the end. It´s my personal opinion and theory that people who say there was not enough substance to Starlancer are not reading the news posts and squadron data, and ace data, and watching the killboard on the ship. Or the short news clips that appear on the TV monitor over the bed every few missions. That REALLY gave me the impression that I was fighting a larger war, and that it was going on around me all the time and are ESSENTIAL to getting the right feeling out of Starlancer. So yeah, if you want character development, go play Wing Commmander (I happen to think highly of these games). If you want arcade epic good vs evil, go play the X-Wing series (I happen to think even higher of these games). But if you want to play a "down to earth" realistic future space combat game, and experiance what a war in our solar system would really be like, then go pick up Starlancer. ***** Okay, now that I´ve had my rant and said my piece, let me make a suggestion. This is a great thread. For the next five years we can play Starlancer alone on our PC´s and dream about a sequel, while we spend all day telling each other how much we love Starlancer. Or we can take this another direction, so to everyone who is going to post and everyone who already did, I issue this challenge: Don´t tell us that Starlancer is a great game. Tell us WHY Starlancer is great game. And just for fun, compare it to other flight sims you´ve played and tell us what Starlancer does better. Or what they do better. Or both. Back up your claims with examples, with evidence. Show us you mean what you say. And if you really can´t remember, then I think it´s time to dust off your joystick and see about catching me for a game or two when I´m on gamespy.

I´m at least 60% positive it´s not possible to get the Resolution up to 1024x768. The only thing to do is press escape at any of the non-mission screens and change the settings that way, manually. If there isn´t a 1024x768 option then I don´t think we can help you, unless there is a community patch out there somewhere for it, which I don´t know. I´m not very intimate with this community. Yet.

This is not paticularly hard to do, generally I´ve accomplished it by the tenth or so mission, about mid-game. I have to count, but I´m not sure it´s possible to catch up sooner then that. On a side note, after you´ve finished the game with max number of kills, you can play through the campaign again with the same callsign and have ALL the advanced tech available to you. It´s quite nice to play the early missions in a Shroud or a Reaper, and to have Solomons available.