Starfury going retail

[DeadZone]

Press Release

[Captain Kwok]

It'll be interesting to see how it works out.

[Q]

I wish MM the best, but I think he should have made one more patch before this release. The lack of in-game help and some major bugs like the hardware effect on the ship speed (see my "demo problem" topic) make the game difficult to play at the beginning. And the standard game IMHO is not balanced and at least for me as a beginner it is almost impossible to survive the first jobs of the game without cheating. There are to many enemies around that are much stronger than you, even at the "easy" level. This may frustrate most players and make them turn away from the game. Modding the game can correct that, but that may be something not everybody wants to do.
Just one example from the demo: the escort the Beaumont mission. The ship is coded to appear "anywhere" in the system. Therefore the hardest part of the mission is to find the ship and frequently it will be killed before you find it! It is easy to change this in the job file and make the Beaumont appear at the warp point your ships enters!

From the sales point it would be quite disastrous if the reputation of MM with the clients of the same store that will sell SE V would be damaged.

Starfury is a great game in my opinion but it seems unfinished or at least unpolished to me.

[Gandalf Parker]

This is an interesting event. For StarFury it might work. I wouldnt recommend retail for a new game no matter how good the author thought it was. And retail offers an awfully long wait for profits. But SF might have slumped to the point that he can forego those checks while waiting for the retail market to re-boost SF's audience. Plus its good timing as a booster rocket for the launch of SEV.

He definetly switched to rolling bigger dice. Bigger gambles in hopes of bigger returns. I wish him luck.
Gandalf Parker

[mottlee]

Dang! $20.00!!!! can I get some of my $ back???

[Hugh Manatee]

^I actually though that too.... I wonder if this might mean another patch, or perhaps expanded content....

[Phoenix-D]

"Just one example from the demo: the escort the Beaumont mission. The ship is coded to appear "anywhere" in the system. Therefore the hardest part of the mission is to find the ship and frequently it will be killed before you find it! It is easy to change this in the job file and make the Beaumont appear at the warp point your ships enters!"

I don't think you -have- to win that mission, actually..and the full version does make missions like that easier by pointing out the ship on your map.

[douglas]

You think that's bad, just wait until you get the mission, in campaign 2 IIRC, where you have to escort a destroyer (don't remember the name). As an armed warship, it absolutely insists on charging at every enemy in sight. Granted, it can help fight the battles, but a lowly destroyer has no place in a fight between battleships, and I had to reload several times before it managed to survive once. Then, once the mission was completed, I amused myself by destroying it myself and laughing at the incredibly short memory of the game when I got back to base and was congratulated for "saving" the ship.

[Q]

douglas said:
You think that's bad, just wait until you get the mission, in campaign 2 IIRC, where you have to escort a destroyer (don't remember the name). As an armed warship, it absolutely insists on charging at every enemy in sight. Granted, it can help fight the battles, but a lowly destroyer has no place in a fight between battleships, and I had to reload several times before it managed to survive once. Then, once the mission was completed, I amused myself by destroying it myself and laughing at the incredibly short memory of the game when I got back to base and was congratulated for "saving" the ship.

That is exactely what I meant.
Jobs should have a reasonable success chance, at least at the "easy level" if you don't make obvious mistakes. Otherwise players might get the feeling that this a game of chance and turn away. Yes, in the full game the target ship for escort missions seem to be visible. But again the placement is random and before I could even reach the ship, it was destroyed. My point is, that this is not an unavoidable flaw of the game but it could have easily been scripted better.
My impression might be wrong, but I had the feeling from this forum that Starfury so far was not very popular and commercially successful. Now here almost all buyers know MM and are fans of the SE series. With strategy first as distributer this might be different and starfury might just in it's present state not be the best publicity for SE V.
I hope that I am completely wrong, but this is my fear.

[Phoenix-D]

Well, getting out of the save/reload trap would help. Both the escort missions that have been complained about here are -optional-, and failing them is perfectly all right..make sure to check in when you fail a mission, the campaign may continue on anyway.