Some observations
 

I played the demo for a bit Last night and will play it some more before deciding on whether I will buy this game or not. A number of things bothered me. Hopefully these things can be addressed by modding or someone more experienced with the game can post some workarounds.

Immediately after starting the game I noticed the outrageously quick turning rate of my ship. The ship certainly doesn't look like a super light fighter...? Acceleration and deceleration seemed to be instantaneous. Is this game purely arcade style? I'm hoping later ships will have slower turning rates. The instant speed changes are unacceptable.

My first fight (not counting the lone fighter in the very beginning) was against a pirate destroyer. After several exchanges of fire I was behind the destroyer and appeared to disable his engines (maybe "killed" it). The ship should no longer be able to accelerate or decelerate. It actually comes to an instantaneous stop and I crash into it. I was laughing out loud but that's not really a good thing. There's no sense of immersion if the game does not even make the most simplistic attempts to emulate realistic motion. I'm not looking for perfect Newtonian physics, but this is just way out there.

Obviously it is easy to simply stay out from directly behind a ship but the whole sequence was laughable compounded by my ship's phenomenal ability to make near instantaneous turns.

This was just after jumping into the Genesis system on an escort mission. I was a bit skeptical when the mission briefing simply said Genesis system without giving a specific rendevous point. I guess the ship will hail me when I get there. Nope. Well ok, I can cycle through friendly targets. Nope.

What kind of escort mission is this? Perhaps this was meant to be a find the lost ship mission? What was its Last known position? Pretty ridiculous but I'll try the mission again tonight and see what happens.

When looking at ship components various strengths/weights of armor have the exact same icon. Not even subtle variations to indicate the differences between them. Differing sized honeycombs on the hexagonal plates would have been good perhaps with differing colors as well. This is only a minor grievance but the simple addition of variant icons would greatly add to the ship dock's ease of use. This I hope is modable.

Is there no ability to set nav points?

The premise of Starfury is excellent! I really want to like this game. So far it seems like it has a great deal of potential that has not been realized.

I hope that some of the issues are only due to my brief exposure to the demo and after spending more time with it I will find the missing features and learn to add additional icons. Can anyone shed any light on these points?

Re: Some observations
 

I too was jolted by the turn rate of the destroyer. Larger ships turn more slowly, rest assured.

I agree with your points, I am afriad to say. I think perhaps Malfador may be relying on the great modders in this community to make it more in line with what you were expecting. I have looked at the possibilites, I think every one of your points can be addressed in a mod (except perhaps nav points http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif ).

The bad news is that SESF cannnot please everyone. The good news is that in a few months, there will be several mods that could turn it into several different games. One of them is likely to be the game you and I are looking for.

[ September 23, 2003, 19:33: Message edited by: Wydraz ]

Re: Some observations
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That raises my hopes. At this point I'll probably spend some time trying to determine how easy modifying the game features I am most concerned with is. The game concept is too appealing for me to give up on right away but I'm definitely going to hold off on buying it for now.

Are there any mod resources for Starfury? Perhaps old guides from SE4? Are the demo files representative of the full game's files? I do realize the demo is not designed to be modable but I'm wondering if looking inside its files will give me some insight into moding the full game.

Re: Some observations
 

Definitely look at the files in the Campaigns folder. This is where the heart to the engine can be tweaked (such as turning rates for ships).

So far there is no real guide for what these files do. Give it a few weeks. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ September 23, 2003, 19:46: Message edited by: Wydraz ]

Re: Some observations
 

Ive also checked out the folders in the game. It seems to have a ton of areas you can change around.

I myself had an encounter with an asteroid, and a planet...ramming that is. Its not like they sat down and wrote out a guide to playing..at least not yet hehehe. What im trying to find is mining equipment, however im sure thats all in the full verson.

It is fun to play around with the demo though. I agree about the turning radius, destroyers are sleek and fast but not as nimble as a figher.

Re: Some observations
 

I was more than a little underwhelmed by the demo. Dated (crude?) graphics in a strategy game are acceptable because much of the game occurs in your mind and imagination. The ubiquitous 'fan fiction' with SEIV serves the purpose of filling in the details of the story. But with a real time game, what you see is what you get. Blocky graphics and the physics peculiarities impair the ability to suspend disbelief and get into the game. I, for one, could not.

In its present incarnation, Starfury reminds me of a weak, and rather unstable, Freelancer clone. I am not likely to buy it. I would have rather seen SF as an add-on to SEIV that would set up combat that occurs on the tactical screen and allow the player to 'live' the battle as the captain of one of the ships.

Re: Some observations
 

The pirate cruiser may have hit the boundaries of the system - that will bring a ship to a very quick stop. If I recall correctly, then I think ships will damaged engines do slow down, not instaneously stop. I don't think it's really necessary for the ship to continue based on inertia, but it might be interesting. I'll mention it in the beta thread.

I do wish that Aaron would add some help to find the escort ships, that can make you bonkers sometimes. Nav points are also something that have been mentioned often...

In regards to graphics, they're not that bad and some of the ships are quite decent. I think it's the 3d engine that needs some work really to streamline the animations and stuff - it really hurts Users on the lower end of requirements.

Re: Some observations
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It is in line with SE4 physics, though.

Newtonian physics can be done fairly well in a mod.
Just give the ships infinite top speed, and zero acceleration / turn rate. Then give the accel/turn abilities to engines.

Re: Some observations
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I believe its actually intended as a preview to the combat and possibly the ship modling engine for SE5. imagine the game scaled up to hundreds of ships in combat, and empire managment rather than ship piloting as the focus.

Re: Some observations
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Perhaps we're being a little harsh here. It isn't as if there's a huge company out there, with money to burn, and tons of programmers to satisfy our every whim. It's one company with a (comparativly) small workforce.
Personally, I think the demo was great, and I'm looking forward to my pre-order arriving sometime, hopefully soon.