My perspective on FE2 and FFE

[Kerrash]

LaveCon got me in the mood so I booted up GLFrontier this morning.

Just like to point out that I just lost my Auto Pilot, I have 39.2% hull and am 9AU from the nearest base.

22 pirates later and I have just flown and landed on the surface manually, I feel damn satisfied about it .

It is possible, just not immediately obvious that it can be done

 

[stephen_usher]

I found FFE to be incredibly immersive from the outset. There really wasn't any game that I'd played before it that could match it for scale or evoking my imagination to the extent it did. But the awe factor wore thin pretty quickly and I tend to agree with your sentiments above. The two things that spoilt it for me were the Newtonian flight physics - something I just couldn't squeeze any enjoyment out of, and the stardreamer which basically turned what should have been a game of journey and adventure into a point and click 30 seconds hop from system to system, station to station.

I agree totally. If you add to this the awful mouse control system (no damping, jumping all over the place) and the fact that joystick operation either didn't work or was unusable it made both FE2 and FFE hard to like.

Talking about the mouse control, it would have been far better, in my opinion, to have had it as a virtual analogue joystick, in the same way that Microsoft Flight Simulator in the late 1980s did.

 

[Kerrash]

I agree totally. If you add to this the awful mouse control system (no damping, jumping all over the place) and the fact that joystick operation either didn't work or was unusable it made both FE2 and FFE hard to like.

Talking about the mouse control, it would have been far better, in my opinion, to have had it as a virtual analogue joystick, in the same way that Microsoft Flight Simulator in the late 1980s did.

Yeah it really could've done with some smoothing for sub pixel accuracy.
I wonder if I could modify the GLFrontier source to improve that? :S
Would anyone be interested?

 

[Joe nose]

LaveCon got me in the mood so I booted up GLFrontier this morning.

Just like to point out that I just lost my Auto Pilot, I have 39.2% hull and am 9AU from the nearest base.

22 pirates later and I have just flown and landed on the surface manually, I feel damn satisfied about it .

It is possible, just not immediately obvious that it can be done

Yeah... And surviving such a journey feels way better than accomplishing something similar in the original elite. Much more tense too. And I do still love the original btw.

Groundbreaking game in every way.

 

[Simon Brewer]

LaveCon got me in the mood so I booted up GLFrontier this morning.

Just like to point out that I just lost my Auto Pilot, I have 39.2% hull and am 9AU from the nearest base.

22 pirates later and I have just flown and landed on the surface manually, I feel damn satisfied about it .

It is possible, just not immediately obvious that it can be done

Right on Commander!

 

[SAB380]

Interesting article. If that is a fair representation of the games, then..

Well, frankly then those two games sound absolutely dire. I'm not seeing the upsides that make the article conclude in a positive light at all - there's almost nothing to do, nowhere to go to, combat is a joke and all flight is on autopilot/clicking-destinations.. Watching sunsets/sunrises and flying close to spheres... well, that's either 1 minute's work in Blender, or any of the million spacethemed screensavers...

Well its just wrong to say there was nothing to do.

I remember the background graphics being very pretty but I never floated around watching things.

Doing missions for independents, federation and empire took up my time and were my directions for how and where to explore the universe.
And then within those we had transporting both people and cargo and assassinations/bounty hunting
Piracy and trading were a big part of it as well and using those funds to always try getting the next best ship (and parts for the ship)

Pretty much everything that makes Elite elite.

 

[FrogsFriend]

Assassination missions where the target was at a spaceport were my favourites.
Fly in with just enough time to locate the target's landing pad, land, refuel then lift off and land again just outside the spaceport.
Waiting, fingers poised, for the target to lift off. You had to be quick to launch the moment he did and start powering in (fast but not so fast that you rammed him) guns blazing and launching missiles. Careful not to hit the port itself.
As he exploded I'd pull up sharply and full speed for space. Watching in the rear view as Vipers started appearing from their hangers, while listening to the angry shouting from the port control about illegal weapon fire.
Trying to navigate the comms menu to pay the fines before I reached hyperspace range.
Happy days

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

I'm an original Elite player, and never played FE2 or FFE

Nice write up - I too was an original Elite player, also on the Spectrum, and hadn't ventured into FE2/FFE either.

 

[Susimetsa]

Just like to point out that I just lost my Auto Pilot, I have 39.2% hull and am 9AU from the nearest base.

22 pirates later and I have just flown and landed on the surface manually, I feel damn satisfied about it .

It is possible, just not immediately obvious that it can be done

Did you not need to land manually in any case if you landed outside of spaceports? I used to do that all the time, back in the day to take screens of my ship on high cliffs and other "beautiful" locations.

 

[Geraldine]

Assassination missions where the target was at a spaceport were my favourites.
Fly in with just enough time to locate the target's landing pad, land, refuel then lift off and land again just outside the spaceport.
Waiting, fingers poised, for the target to lift off. You had to be quick to launch the moment he did and start powering in (fast but not so fast that you rammed him) guns blazing and launching missiles. Careful not to hit the port itself.
As he exploded I'd pull up sharply and full speed for space. Watching in the rear view as Vipers started appearing from their hangers, while listening to the angry shouting from the port control about illegal weapon fire.
Trying to navigate the comms menu to pay the fines before I reached hyperspace range.
Happy days

Yes I did that too, although you could have saved yourself a lot of fines by buying a Hyperspace Analyser and following them when they jumped to a new system and ambushing them. If you jumped at the same point they left from (right next to their departure cloud), you would arrive at their same arrival point, sometimes even before they did if your ship had a greater range than your target's ship.

 

[Darren Grey]

Yes I did that too, although you could have saved yourself a lot of fines by buying a Hyperspace Analyser and following them when they jumped to a new system and ambushing them. If you jumped at the same point they left from (right next to their departure cloud), you would arrive at their same arrival point, sometimes even before they did if your ship had a greater range than your target's ship.

Yeah, that's how I always did the assassinations - much less hassle. And a Viper with a class 3 military drive can outjump anything.