BioWare's Star Wars MMO To Have Space Combat 122
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the just-in-case-they-weren't-busy-enough dept.
from the just-in-case-they-weren't-busy-enough dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Big news for Star Wars fans looking forward to BioWare's upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG — space combat has been confirmed for the game. Players will be able to fly around the galaxy in their own personal starships, avoiding asteroid belts, landing in dangerous territory and battling other vessels. The initial news makes it sound like a cross between Mass Effect's galaxy map and a traditional space fighting game, where players will have to find 'hotspots' on the galaxy map in order to enter a particular zone."
Star Wars Gaming (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Flashbacks to X-Wing ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up!
Why LucasArts never released a modern version of these games is beyond me. Utterly brilliant. Back in the day, I bought an MS Sidewinder Force Feedback joystick primarily for XvT. It used to clunk when you picked up a cargo container. Those were the days...
Re:Flashbacks to X-Wing ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Co-op Capital Ships (Score:3, Insightful)
Be careful what you ask for. Your "etc." could translate to Jar-Jar Binks...
That said, they can't do much worse than their honorable competitor franchise, Star Trek did. Phaserfest is so not what Star Trek is about.
Re:Co-op Capital Ships (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with everything but the spacing.
A) Unless you're going to model interior ship combat as well, there's no way to justify that certain people are spaced, some killed outright, taken prisoner, etc.
B) Consider both actual gameplay mechanics and player response. Sure, it may be funny to you, but what happens to the person being spaced? Are they respawned back where they started from? Where they were going? Nearest planet? Does it have differing effects than other methods of character death? Can it be used as a form of griefing?
No, if you're allowing raids on ships, then either have the crew taken prisoner, if it's a guild/clan PvP thing, and then players need to escape, or have them "escape on life pods" and show up on the nearest planet.
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
If both ships are travelling at ".5 above light speed", then the ship that turns tighter takes less parsecs to make a turn, and thus would arrive at the finish sooner.
Yes, but not necessarily sooner than a ship that actually went faster but couldn't cut corners as well.
Which is why "distance traveled" is a stupid way to measure performance in a race that's about arriving sooner, and a stupid way to brag about how fast one's ship is. If your ship is equally fast as every other ship, but more maneuverable, you say that. Nobody is going to report race results as if all ships are precisely the same speed when they clearly aren't; the Falcon escapes from ships all the time in a flat-out race in open space. It's a fast ship.
There's another explanation where he's referring to the degree of length dilation due to Special Relativity, which would directly relate distance and velocity. Except the SR equation doesn't apply to velocities over c, and gives imaginary answers if you try. At anything c or less, 12 parsecs is still over 30 light years so Han would have spent most of his life running the race with no time left for becoming a smuggler.
Though it's still less ridiculous to imagine Relativity somehow applies to Star Wars light speed engines than it is to figure that race results are reported in distance traveled and not time to reach the finish. Do people do that for actual rally races? No, because that would be dumb.
There are pretty much only two explanations that make sense:
1) Han was talking out his ass, and was just bullshitting to try to impress what he thought were a pair of country bumpkins.
2) Lucas was talking out his ass, and didn't know what a "parsec" was except that it sounded futuristic and space-y.