StarLancer #1 Fastest Moving Game On Windows Marketplace

I never got into Starlancer because it was so freaking noisey to play I couldn't enjoy it. For some reason the discs spun off balance or something I dunno, but it sounded like a freight train driving through my room and it drowned out the game sounds.
 
I should get it. I liked Freelancer once I got used to the weird mouse control system
still would have liked a joystick option
 
It's nothing like Pearl Harbor, it's more like overkill. The bad guy overran Earth itself for crying out loud. There's nothig let of any of the allied nations, only small parts of their fleets, with no home to come back to.

It would be like the Japanese Empire invading and taking over the US in 24 hours, with a few carriers and battleships trying to fight war in exile in the pacific.
 
I never had a problem with how "absolute" the bad guys had won in StarLancer (or BSG, which doesn't make sense either 'cause the whole point isn't beating the Cylons, it's escaping and finding Earth). What did you expect the allied fleet to do? "Oh the peace conference was a trick and now we're effed, we surrender!"
 
Mav23 said:
I never had a problem with how "absolute" the bad guys had won in StarLancer (or BSG, which doesn't make sense either 'cause the whole point isn't beating the Cylons, it's escaping and finding Earth). What did you expect the allied fleet to do? "Oh the peace conference was a trick and now we're effed, we surrender!"
Click to expand...

It's the other way around... The "good guys" got so fucking destroyed in the opening, that it's ludicrous how they manage not to be crushed soon after. Of course they're expected to resist, but they should be defeated... If 80% of your fleet and territory fall in the first two days of war, you ARE going down, dude. maybe the bad guys blew all their load on the first attack, who knows.

I do understand that it's all a plot device, but some writers take it too far. It's like painting themselves on a corner. They push the odds against the good guys too far. But that's a personal pet peevee of mine, anyway.

BTW, you just opened my eyes to something... BSG is not in the whole "Uncanny Comeback" thing at all. They turned tail and ran away...

If they suffered the "Uncanny Comeback" syndrome, they would just beat the whole cylon fleet with just the Galactica, and then rebuild the entire 12 colonies in 3 months. Like what happens in most space animes. and Super Sentai series. The fact that they would have all died if the took a stand makes a lot of sense.
 
It's the other way around... The "good guys" got so fucking destroyed in the opening, that it's ludicrous how they manage not to be crushed soon after. Of course they're expected to resist, but they should be defeated... If 80% of your fleet and territory fall in the first two days of war, you ARE going down, dude. maybe the bad guys blew all their load on the first attack, who knows.
Click to expand...

That's why Nazi-occupied France is such a problem today.
 
Well, in all fairness, the Free French fighters did have a lot of support of the British Empire at first, and later on the US. The problem with Starlancer is that there's no London for General de Gaulle to form a government in exile on.
 
Eh, this is just Ed being weird (and uncharacteristically smutty) about something.

Look at Iraq today -- the United States destroyed the military and occupied the country in a matter of days... and there's still a problem with resistance movements two years later.
 
Well, that would make sense, at least to me, because it's some kind of guerrilla or "asymmetric" warfare. The impression that Starlancer gave me is that the Alliance was too badly damaged to even maintain some sort of conventional, organized warfare. When playing it, I remember to wonder how the alliance could sustain any kind of prolonged effort when their home nations were occupied by the Coalition, and all that remained were a few installations on the outer solar system. Was enough people and infrastructure there to provide enough ships, supplies, manpower, repairs to maintain a war for months, even years?

Maybe I'm just nitpicking, it's just that Wing Commander always made much more sense to me in this regard. You were part of a much larger war: win or lose one sector, the war goes on elsewhere, just like the losing cutscene on Wing Commander I. Both sides had lots of systems and sectors to "trade". Even as things were going badly for Confed, as on WC3, it still had a whole lot of systems.
 
Well, that would make sense, at least to me, because it's some kind of guerrilla or "asymmetric" warfare. The impression that Starlancer gave me is that the Alliance was too badly damaged to even maintain some sort of conventional, organized warfare. When playing it, I remember to wonder how the alliance could sustain any kind of prolonged effort when their home nations were occupied by the Coalition, and all that remained were a few installations on the outer solar system. Was enough people and infrastructure there to provide enough ships, supplies, manpower, repairs to maintain a war for months, even years?
Click to expand...

Not necessarily -- holding your 'home nation' isn't a necessarily a huge advantage. Having a military without something to protect means you can commit all of your forces to the offensive... and at the same time forcing your opponent to split his forces to cover all of the newly conquered territories.

Think of the American Revolution, where Washington gave up the major population centers to prevent dividing up his army to defend them. During the Civil War, the Confederacy refused to do this and ended up keeping its most powerful armies tied to cities that it had no real hope of keeping. Look at Japan, which ended World War II with a massive intact army in Manchuria because it couldn't just abandon the region to the Russians to move troops to oppose the US elsewhere. War is a lot more complex than you're assuming.
 
~~~ guys

1) Stop comparing this to pearl harbor...if the doomsday attack of Starlancer had been employed by the IJN vs. the USN, we'd have not only lost most of PACFLT, we'd have lost Hawaii and most of the shipyards/naval bases on the west coast of the US. Think of the loss of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. and all that's left is the (at the time) smaller shipyards at Bremerton and Everett, WA. You'd have to start over, from scratch.

The point is that, in starlancer, the Alliance's opening defeat is so sweeping that they lose control of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, the Asteroid Belt, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus (I think). Where in the world were they going to get the fuel, food, people, ships, weapons, repair capacity, etc. to sustain the fleet in the months that followed?

2) You'll note, from the time scale, that they DO take back several key installations and resupply posts within the first 180 days...as well as retaking several large supply "take what's left and haul ass for the outer system" convoys that ran like the dickens from the inner system after the ambush.

3) We have no point of reference to tell us "how maintenance intensive are space craft in the game's timeframe?" "How advanced are the life support and food processing abilities?" "How do they harvest raw material and convert it to manufactured goods/weapons/ships/ammo/etc.?"

Without that information, this is a pointless debate... it's still fun to talk about it, though, because the game IS very engrossing...
 
1) Stop comparing this to pearl harbor...if the doomsday attack of Starlancer had been employed by the IJN vs. the USN, we'd have not only lost most of PACFLT, we'd have lost Hawaii and most of the shipyards/naval bases on the west coast of the US. Think of the loss of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. and all that's left is the (at the time) smaller shipyards at Bremerton and Everett, WA. You'd have to start over, from scratch.
Click to expand...

In small defense of the Brazilians, Pearl Harbor is clearly what the opening sequence is supposed to evoke from an *artistic* standpoint.

Their mistake is thinking that this means the story must be World War II in space to some absolute literal level.
 
Ok, I'm staying out of all the "real world" comparisons...
For two reasons:
a) I'm specifically talking about a plot device in fiction;
b) In this plot device, it's not just a matter of having the territorry occupied (like all those real-life examples). It's a matter of having the vast majority of your "country", your population, your production facilities AND your armed forces wiped out.

In all those examples you people gave (which are all correct in themselves), there were also other countries, for instance, or, in George Washington's case, he took his army along with him. He did not lose 90% of it in the first hours of war. And, seriously, people need to stop comparing every single first-strike in either history or fiction to Pearl Harbor.

LOAF, please note that I'm not arguing with you, i agree with your points. I'm just stating that I'm talking about another issue.
 
That makes even less sense, though, as you've now removed the single element of forced realism from the debate. If you're simply talking about how a story is set up, it's absolutely the job of such dramatic fiction to set the odds against the main character as long as possible -- so that the ending is all the more interesting. The fact that you're "complaining" means the setup did exactly what it was supposed to do.

Blowing up the home planet in StarLancer is everyone warning Odysseus about the things he's going to fight on his way home. You're *supposed* to go 'jeez, a monster *and* a whirlpool? He can't survive that!' and then be impressed when he does. You've just welded some pointless post-modern cynicism onto to how a good adventure story is told.
 
Games are about being fun, not about ridiculous comparisons to real-life. It's SUPPOSED to be impossible just like LOAF said. If you want a realistic story go read a history book.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
That makes even less sense, though, as you've now removed the single element of forced realism from the debate. If you're simply talking about how a story is set up, it's absolutely the job of such dramatic fiction to set the odds against the main character as long as possible -- so that the ending is all the more interesting. The fact that you're "complaining" means the setup did exactly what it was supposed to do.

Blowing up the home planet in StarLancer is everyone warning Odysseus about the things he's going to fight on his way home. You're *supposed* to go 'jeez, a monster *and* a whirlpool? He can't survive that!' and then be impressed when he does. You've just welded some pointless post-modern cynicism onto to how a good adventure story is told.
Click to expand...

Loaf, I'm sure you know that there is something called "suspension of disbelief".
One of its consequences is that there is a limit to how far you can screw the protagonists, without overdoing it. Cross that blurry, strange line, and it kinda spoils the whole shebang. Good writers know where the line is, even if it's unconsciously.

The Odyssey, for instance, is NOT a story about how Odysseus carried the ship on his back while flying and shooting lasers, as you know very well.

On the other hand, you have Macross: Do You Remember Love, where the enemy fleet is composed of literally MILLIONS of capital ships, while the good guys have one, and a very old and damaged one. And they are also the last humans alive, Earth is just a bare rock. And they win, by singing a love song... It's kinda over the top, you know.

I'm not talking about EVERY movie, book or game where the hero had lots of troubles, I was referring to a specific "sickness" that is present in a few, few works.

But, ok, you disagree, fine, whatever, I was just "ranting".

So, anyway, Starlancer... Those torpedoes are really pesky, aren't they?

I heard that the Dreamcast port was pretty good. Considering how good the PS2's Ace Combat series is, and how it plays a lot like a space sim, it's a pity we don't get more space sims on consoles.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top