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Terminus, a space sim with a novel idea
RoyceSraphim
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Okay, Terminus. This is a space sim with newtonian physics made by small group of people and released for all 3 computer operating systems, in one box. Kind of special.
But that isn't why I am here in this thread. I am here to praise a novel idea they had in this game that i would love to see in more games. I can it the "fuck it, let someone else do it" concept or FI.
Now in this game, you would tool around on missions based on what factions you chose, two let you pay your way through the game and two did not. Now in the course of your missions, you would occasionally get paged for a special mission. You had 1 minute to bring up a menu and answer the page, and 3 to 5 minutes to get to a station for it.
Here is the beauty of FI, well really the only point of FI, you don't have to do the mission. If you ignore the mission, if you get there too late or just go to the station and turn down the mission, you will see the other ships on the mission take off and fly away and do it. Are you getting screwed over every time and want to see someone else play it, watch them, OR NOT! The story moves along with or without you and those first, stupid, TEDIOUS tutorial missions can be ignored and allow you to shoot what you want or fatten your bank account.
Whats more, you could start a story campaign, say FI to the entire campaign for your respective side and do your own thing while the game's universe goes on its merry way.
An example, early in the story, a civilian luxury liner is hijacked and is liberated by a united front by two militaries. You could participate on either side or you could not. Or, playing as a merc or pirate, you could ignore the first couple missions, mine your way to wealth and happiness, and then come roaring out of the nearest jumpgate, scream "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD" and massacre everything in sight, sadly, I couldn't bring the liner down the last time I played but it will BURN!
Now, some of you will say this is nothing special, but I assure you, it is really great. How many sandbox/sim/open world games force you through the same hoops every time you start without any real way to bypass this. How many of you want Emperor Septim to meet his painful end a hell of a lot faster or have his severed head come flying out of the sewer after you take a very quick shortcut and bypass all that tutorial cap?
I personally want a Fallout 2 mod that gives me all the xp and items of the freaking Temple so I can get out quicker.
FI is a glorious thing that I really, REALLY loved and wish it let me bypass those escort and "Supply Run" levels that make me pull my hair out.
That is all
But that isn't why I am here in this thread. I am here to praise a novel idea they had in this game that i would love to see in more games. I can it the "fuck it, let someone else do it" concept or FI.
Now in this game, you would tool around on missions based on what factions you chose, two let you pay your way through the game and two did not. Now in the course of your missions, you would occasionally get paged for a special mission. You had 1 minute to bring up a menu and answer the page, and 3 to 5 minutes to get to a station for it.
Here is the beauty of FI, well really the only point of FI, you don't have to do the mission. If you ignore the mission, if you get there too late or just go to the station and turn down the mission, you will see the other ships on the mission take off and fly away and do it. Are you getting screwed over every time and want to see someone else play it, watch them, OR NOT! The story moves along with or without you and those first, stupid, TEDIOUS tutorial missions can be ignored and allow you to shoot what you want or fatten your bank account.
Whats more, you could start a story campaign, say FI to the entire campaign for your respective side and do your own thing while the game's universe goes on its merry way.
An example, early in the story, a civilian luxury liner is hijacked and is liberated by a united front by two militaries. You could participate on either side or you could not. Or, playing as a merc or pirate, you could ignore the first couple missions, mine your way to wealth and happiness, and then come roaring out of the nearest jumpgate, scream "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD" and massacre everything in sight, sadly, I couldn't bring the liner down the last time I played but it will BURN!
Now, some of you will say this is nothing special, but I assure you, it is really great. How many sandbox/sim/open world games force you through the same hoops every time you start without any real way to bypass this. How many of you want Emperor Septim to meet his painful end a hell of a lot faster or have his severed head come flying out of the sewer after you take a very quick shortcut and bypass all that tutorial cap?
I personally want a Fallout 2 mod that gives me all the xp and items of the freaking Temple so I can get out quicker.
FI is a glorious thing that I really, REALLY loved and wish it let me bypass those escort and "Supply Run" levels that make me pull my hair out.
That is all
RoyceSraphim on
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It's like this. In WoTS (which sounds exactly the same, but I can't be sure), situations present themselves (i.e. a peasant being bullied, a girl being kidnapped), but they never force you to make the decision of helping the girl or helping the kidnappers. And if you don't do anything, the situation is resolved without you. There are also two different samurai clans fighting for control of the area, and you aren't forced to join either side. You can play through the entire game without every interacting with anyone (which is totally boring, but an interesting concept). Basically, instead of the story moving at your pace, it moves regardless of what you choose to do.
Yes, if you don't do it, the world moves on. The war continues and pirates get paid. No "Infinite Imminent Doom," you don't do it, it happens without you. Forgive me if it sounds silly but it made the open world a hell of a lot more fun to know that I didn't have to hit all these freaking story triggers to make the story progress and be able to see two carriers and some corvettes duke it out and salvage the losers.
WotS works so well because it's such a short time frame. There's always something to do somewhere since there are dozens of storylines going on at the same time but this is because the town is so small and the time so short. Makes it easy to bump into storylines.
I never asked for this!
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
I played the original Falcon 4 a long time ago on a system that really had no business playing it, and never picked up the re-issue, so it's been a while and my memory may be faulty. But the idea is simple.
War has broken out on the Korean peninsula. There are three scenarios of how the war starts which basically define the game's difficulty level.
Easy: The North attacks, and manages to bungle it so badly that the South actually gains a lot of ground on it's counter offensive. The goal is to take the fight to the badly weakened North and topple the regime.
Medium: I forget how it starts, but it winds up in basically a stalemate. Your role is to defend the South, and attack the North.
Hard: The North attacks with a devastating combination of artillery and an armored blitzkrieg offensive, sweeping across the entire peninsula. The South and allied forces are completely unprepared, fall easily, and are unable to regroup in any meaningful way. Eventually what's left of the South Korean and U.S. forces falls all the way back to form a perimeter around Busan. That's like the U.S. being invaded, and the military being forced to fall back to a perimeter around Southern Florida, while giving up the rest. The goal of this is to use air power to bring the fight back to the enemy, and help the allies hold out until U.S. and U.N. forces can arrive in-theater. It's really a worst case scenario that doesn't involve WMDs.
You are an American F-16 pilot, and you start with one of those scenarios. You're tasked with missions. Escort, Combat Air Patrol, strike missions, interdiction, interception, etc. If you never hit start, or even if you do, there is a whole war going on around you. It's like a MMO, where every player is computer controlled. And nobody is a tool.
The only thing is that it's definitely designed and developed as a sim, not a game. The manual almost reads as "here is how you fly an F-16" with footnotes to tell you the six ways the game differs from the real thing. I'm exaggerating of course, but it's in no way a casual pick up and play type game.
This makes me want to play it, but I have no idea where my copy is. / :
Be warned though that the story missions are impossible. The 4 sides are also great, because there is so much propaganda! If you play as the martians, they blame the terrans, the terrans blame the pirates, and the pirates blame the terrans, it never ends. The story is a joy to discover from the 3 sides.
All in all, it's different, not perfect, but still a good game I'd recommend.
edit : Really cool realistic gameplay #1: Your ship has a limited amount of energy. The physics are newtonian, so if you have momentum, you don't need to power your thrusters. On really long trips, what you do is give yourself some momentum, and then disable EVERYTHING but basic life support. Your ship will be completely quiet, no interface, slowly moving across the dead of space. Then when you're close, you reactivate your navigation, thrusters etc and dock. It's the only space game that gave me fright and total immersion. For example, when your ship is half damaged and you barely manage to balance out your ressources for a desperate flight home, and you're leaking oxygen, there's nothing like seeing the space station in sight!
The way that the "follow along" story works is like this : There's a game clock. Every optional mission you play takes time off this clock. Sitting around the space station takes time off. Sometimes, you'll receive a pager announcing a new world development. You have 2 hours to reply to it. If you do, the story mission happens. If you don't, you miss out the story mission, and later on on the galactic TV you will hear of what happened in the solar system and the latest political developments.
I actually need to play this game again, so immersive. But again, be warned, extremely hard.
Also pirates, mercenaries have free reign. The classic privateer, freelancer game.
Martians, terrans (both humans) are military careers, you must follow what your superiors tell you to do, your ship is given to you etc Less fun in my opinion.
Sounds like my experience with Wurm Online: fuck your sword-wielding warriors straight out of the box, you're a commoner, so better get to cooking or you'll starve. In a few days, you may manage to make a mallet.
In other words, awesome, and I will be following this closely; hopefully it won't require Leopard.
Okay, here's the kicker. Say you actually did want to do those missions and such that you get paged for. Considering how short of an amount of time you have to accept it and get to a station, how easy is it to fail to get one that you really wanted to do?
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
You only have the time to do like 1 optional mission, maybe 2 while the timer is on. I remember some close calls where I was mining for example and trying to squeeze every last minute out of the timer before I accepted it.
Renegen, did you ever go with a positive or negatively charged beam, its been so long that I cannot remember trying those out.