X2 - The Threat

[DrDivad]

Anyone played this??
Looks like a hyped up version of Freelancer?

Contemplating an aquisition.

[DOGG]

I've been playing it on/off for the past 2 weeks.

It's ok. Like freelancer. But more FREE. You don't have to follow the plot. Go out and do your own thing. Has a 'dynamic' economy althought i can't tell just how dynamic it is.

It's a bit hard at the start. Every key on the keyboard does something. There are menus and sub menus. Eventually you learn to use the shortcuts. And it's all a breeze.

I don't even pilot my ship anymore. You can buy things like navigation computer, fight computer, etc. So you just give it orders and it does as you say. Ofcourse you can pilot it manually but it's a bit hard. The ships have inertia and the controls aren't the best. If you want to get places fast, there's a 10x time compression thing you can buy for your ship too.

It will take you what seems like forever to make a 10k profit. You will be discouraged when docking into a shipyard to see that the biggest ships cost 7+ billion. Don't give up. Once you have a transport, you can make nice profits running energy cells. Your job will be easier and profit will come at an ever increasing rate as you upgrade your ship with faster engines, bigger cargo space, and trade extensions. Completing cargo missions for stations will give you even bigger profits with a nice bonus on top should you complete them ahead of time.

Eventually you will save enough for some expensive asteroid drilling equipment, only to find out that it won't fit your ship. Some trading later, you will have enough funds to buy a transporter which can handle the mining equipment.

Blasting asteroids and collecting their remanis will make you a happy man (provided you have the extension which will auto collect the ore for you). Nothing like 500 units of free silicone which you can sell for 500 a pop.

Making 20-30k per asteriod, you will soon be able to afford your own station. Study the market. For bad placement of a station can lead to nothing but frustration. No use mining silicone where there is no demand.

After manually getting the necessary supplies for your station for some time, you will be able to afford another transport. The transport will take over the task of gathering supplies at the cheapest rates. You will be free to wander the universe once again, while your station is making profits little by little.

In due time, you will build more stations, giving you more profits, faster. Getting sick of station building, you look forward to the day you can afford a decend fighting ship.

Well, that's the path i took.

I've been playing for about 4.5 days total (dont forget that 10x speedup).

Besides my own ship, i now own:

Ore mine
Silicon mine
Crystal Fab
6x transports
$500,000

This game requires a fine blend of patience and beta nvidia drivers.

[aiken drum]

Dogg, you have successfully made this game sound really fucking cool. Now to find an evaluation copy somewhere....

[DOGG]

The game stutters horribly without the beta drivers. Not bad FPS. But complete pauses, over and over. I just checked the nvidia site and it appears they've WHQL'd them. I havent installed them though, as the beta ones aren't causing me any problems.

It's not a game for everyone. I strongly recommend an evaluation copy. You can find an 'evaluation' ;) here:

http://xdcclist.dyns.cx

1.1 gigs

[DrDivad]

yay! dogg convinced me not to give up

also gald to know the stuttering wasn't just my system,
i got scared when a p4 2.4ht couldn't run it O_O

[DOGG]

You still get stuttering?

How are you going in the game? I'd be happy to give some advice. I nearly cheated at one point. But then i got a mission which made me an easy 100k early in the game and i was set.

Correction: i realised i said the best ships cost 7+ billion. its more like 70+ million.

[BlueBoy]

This game sounds pretty fucking awesome. Is it a MMORPG?

I'll track it down when I'm back in the home town.

[DOGG]

I think they're planning to make online play. But that will probably happen when the european version is released.

[DrDivad]

i've so far only travelled through the first agete, due to not having much time,

ive downloaded 53.03 but haven't tried it again

oh wait yes i did, it still stuttered, but it was less bad, instead of 800*600 with no shadows or AA i could upgrade to 1024*768 with no shadows or AA anymore nadit stutters annoyingly, it has me quite annoyed,

hopefull a patch will fix it

[DOGG]

Hmm manually travelling through gates is quite boring yes. Just aim for the gate and hit J (time compression). Also in the menu, make sure you set it to 10x compression as it's lower when you start a new game.

I can't comment on those drivers as i still have the beta ones. But they allowed me to enable bumpmapping with no noticable performance hit. My stuttering is mostly gone. The remaining pauses are due to the heavy load the game places on the computer.

What kind of CPU/ram/gfx u got?

[DrDivad]

P4 2.4Ghz with HyperThreading, 512mb of DDR400 ram and GF4400Ti :P

the occasional stutter is less of a bother than the constant desktop crashes, which i don't seem to be able to prevent, and they've be less annoying if i remembered to visit space stations and save, grr

[DOGG]

Well, your gfx card is better than mine... shouldnt have much of a problem there.

There is a bug in the asteriod field region. Not sure if it's called that. It's in the sounth west, below cloudbase southwest i think. don't go there too often.

I get the desktop crashes too sometimes. Dont know why :(

Every time you visit any station, it autosaves. When you click load, keep going down all the way to the bottom and you will see the autosave slot.

[DrDivad]

i get them all over the show,sometimes after coming through a gate, sometimes totally random