We’re just talking about gaming here, lighten up. Calling me a baby man is purely infantile on your part.
Potentially, but there’s a factor of speed. And I’d probably dispute that the secondary devices are more precise than a gamepad’s secondary axes.
The biggest issue is scale. Consider the time it takes for you to move a joystick from hard left to hard right - now compare it to the time it takes to move a thumbstick over the same range. It’s a big difference!
Now consider how the secondary axes on a joystick or HOTAS function - there’s either twist on the stick (which is constantly corrupting your X/Y input as you are steering, because you just can’t help it as you wrench it around) or using a rudder, or a big slider - which is super sloppy and again, very slow. On a gamepad, that axis is separate and again very fast to alter.
Maybe there’s some theoretical precision in terms of the range - more distance to travel means that you can be more meaningfully precise in where you place the stick - but when you compound motions (rolling/yaw/pitch) it becomes hard to do those things simultaneously without messing up the other inputs. So if all you need to do is just point at one thing and do nothing else, then it’s easy to imagine that precision is useful. But when you do a lot of things at once, it quickly gets ‘noisy’. As soon as you twist that stick your X/Y is impacted.
Triggers too - on a gamepad those are analog, and with a stick they’re binary - on or off. You can’t lightly squeeze off a shot, you have to fully depress the trigger.
Then there’s the lack of tactile feedback after that ridiculous patent. No rumble! Which is meaningful feedback that you don’t get.
Now compound that with the fact that there is no standard to button numbering, so you can’t provide useful onscreen control reference between devices, and hoo-boy.
Actually, put it even simpler. Try to imagine using a flightstick to move a bipedal character around in third person and how precise that would be.
Anyway.
I have nothing to say on this topic. I am controller agnostic. Although I am surprised that Brian didn’t go catatonic when Travis dissed Freelancer a few responses back.
Heheheh.
I’ve got an easy solution, mute thread and come back closer to release.
Shockingly, I know a decent amount of people who dislike Freelancer.
I think I would have enjoyed Freelancer if it wasn’t mouse and keyboard only. I just didn’t enjoy the moment to moment gameplay as a result of that. So even though I enjoyed the rest of the game, the actual moment to moment mouse and keyboard combat was how I spent 90% of that game, so it’s hard to remember it fondly as a result.
Unskippable cutscenes…
I remember not liking Freelancer nearly as much as Descent Freespace, but I also had a joystick that I used with a number of games at the time.
Nowadays I keep thinking about getting Freelancer to play again… specifically with the Star Wars mod. I am a sucker for a good Star Wars mod.
Same reason I keep wanting to pick up X Albion Prelude for it’s Star Wars mod, even though I have, in the past, not enjoyed the X series combat at all.
That’s fair. The X games have never been about combat. You should look up Discovery Freelancer too. Likely the best iteration of the game at the moment. That Star Wars mod is coming along nicely
You’re right, I’m sorry, I’m just insanely passionate about this and I was not caffeinated as of yet.
Starfleet Command.
You’re welcome.
Not a space sim. A “well at least they tried pretty hard” conversion of SFB, turning it into a pausable RTS.
Yeah, not at all a space sim. More like real-time tactical starship command.
Klingon Academy would be a better candidate, though it’s keyboard controls are serviceable.
Amazing, every word of what you just said … was wrong.
Not an RTS. Not pausable. SFC3 was no longer based on SFB. They did a great job. And if Rebel Galaxy is a space sim, then so is SFC.
Have you actually played Starfleet Command? Maybe you should swing by GOG and look at SFC1, then swing over to Dynaverse.net, and look at SFC2/SFC2:OP to see if they match that imaginary game inside your head. They are certainly pausable 3D representations of SFB, which is a very, very, very turn-based game. SFC boils down to an low-count RTS with units that have a ton of micro.
I’m thinking you’re talking about the * Academy games, of which there were two, not three.
Well I guess if you count that checkov expansion pack there were three? Maybe?
Bahahahaah noooooo
I just think someone has a very wide range property for the space sim object.
I mean, we throw SFC in there, we may as well throw in, like, Homeworld.
edit: but then I think about those weird games like Starpoint Gemini and stuff. Space sim?
Maybe this isn’t that important of a point to argue about, as is, say, what a fucking disaster KB and gamepad controls are for space sims and how if you lot were true gamers you’d have at least a HOTAS hanging and around and now just get the hell off my porch!
Dude, Conquest: Frontier Wars was THE BEST space sim.