PAX 2011: SOL: Exodus Resurrects "Dead" Space Combat Sims

[Vankraken]

Sooooo, take what X did and do the opposite?

I kind of enjoyed X, own several...but it just wasn't quite there. The artifical economy, the odd difficulty curve that had pirates in medium fighters firing capital weapons at me. The fact that paying for a capital ship was only really feasable with either a week of hard trading and station building or a cheat.

OT:
This game isn't doing it for me. What is it? GTA in space? is it more like X?
If its "open" and you can complete a mission any way you like, do you have a finite number of ships that dwindle? I mean, I hate games where you can fuck up and it only tells you 5 levels later.

If you can build new ships then you need an economy of some kind.

Or you could have neither and each mission is disconencted, which would be more true to GTA.

The space combat looks nice enough, the "blowing a hole in the ship and flying in" looks great, if its procedural. If its horribly scripted meh.

I guess the bottom line is I'm confused about what this game wants to be. Its nothing like eve, sounds like its going to play nothing like x in the grand scheme, so I'm a bit lost.

Basically
The idea is having a mix of Homeworld combat balance (minus the bloody missile frigate that directly counters every fighter and corvette) with a bit of freelancer random missions, X series multiple ship controls (but easier to do), and an economic system that accounts for the fact that there are BILLIONS of people in the universe and a single mid size corvette shouldn't throw the prices of silicon wafers into the dumper after doing a few trade trips.

On the topic of GTA in space I don't really see how this is possible unless you steal ships in port because the appeal of GTA is you don't have to worry about buying, parking, and maintaining cars because you can just steal whatever you need from basically anywhere. With space travel you can't hoof it so you are dependent on your ship and with that requires to you care about your ship surviving. You can't just hop out of your Tie Fighter when it starts to burn, run over to a nearby X-Wing, and throw the pilot into space netting you a new ride for the next 5 minutes before you crash that.

If anything the closest thing to the "do whatever" feel and simple controls that GTA thrives on would be a something like freelancer.

 

[Merlark]

the screen shots are pretty unimpressive, the interface is pretty ugly looking and the look of the game looks like something for 7 years ago.

At this point almost anything would be something, but there was a reason why the flightsim was top dog back in the day.

Go to Gog.com and download wing commander 1+2 or freespace, any of the old greats will do and you will see it, its not nostolagia these games are GREAT. they are great because they took time and care. Space was vast and empty, so it was the little things that made it perfect, wing commander was the heart of this concept and the REASON why anything that followed had to raise the bar or go the hell home.

They put you in the moment, from briefing room to cockpit. the ships and cockpits were well animated. I hear the baby's crying, WAAA the cockpit gets in the way! yeah, thats the point dipstick, visibility is a factor as much as laser cannons and top speed. no one does cockpits anymore because they are lazy.

Want a great space sim, you need people that are going to go extra miles to PUT you in that cockpit. its a different kind of game, stop trying to make it into an FPS as it won't work! burn on those pussy's that can't check their six.

Play the old games and you will see the magic there, damaged cock pits, internal damage, chatter from wingman, mission branching, great sound and exciting dog fights...not just WAVE after WAVE, meaningful battles that change the flow of your campaign.

Chris Roberts understood this before he went all Hollywood on us...god i miss him.

 

[Kahnmir]

Wow, so much hate. I mean yeah I know a lot of you guys remember some of the old space sims with a lot of fondness, but really? You guys have nothing to lose by supporting this guy, if his game is good and does well its win-win, it will bring attention back to the genre and more games in it will be made, even if this ends up being "gears of war in space" or "dumbed down" (both if which I doubt - it looked fairly standard for a space sim to me, - minus the annoying space trading? all the better)it will sill bring back attention to the genre, and maybe some of what you guys like in space sims will get made into new games as well. Honestly, I just see a lot of immaturity and Knee-jerk reactions to what this guy is saying, perhaps the space-sim genre died for a reason?

I mean, so what if he's dissing some decade old games?
They haven't necessarily aged well, and to those saying he lacks tact: think about it, this is a day and age where most game producers don't want to give it a second look if its not an FPS like COD. No tact? Maybe you need to think about where he said this: PAX. I think he has more tact then he's being given credit for.

 

[kurupt87]

Just change going nova to entering red giant expansion, that'd be better I think. It's easier to swallow messing up the calculation of how long our sun has left than it impossibly going nova.

It'd be like global warming on steroids (if you take liberties with speeding it up a bit). You'd also have changing conditions on Earth, something to play with in a story. Dunno how well it'd translate to rapture though, I s'pose the near instantaneous bang of a nova is needed for the rapture?

Maybe change it to a different Death Cult. Everyone on Earth are the ones who have been left behind and we should stay (deserve to stay) on the planet as it becomes hell-like. We are the fallen type thing. All the rapture people mass coolade-ed off?

As for the HUD; I know these things change on a near constant basis but damn, this game is supposed to be gritty right? That HUD and colour scheme is way too camp, how'd it even get created? Aqua?! Christ!

The actual gameplay I like the sound of. Weak points reminds me of Black Prophecy and it works well enough there. Bookmarked their site so I'll keep an eye on it, I'm always up for a space sim.

 

[Little2Raph]

Background music does actually remind me of the Battlestar Galactica reboot.

Also, combine X3 and X-wing and you'd get Best Game Ever.