Rebel Galaxy Outlaw - A True Successor To Privateer

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Rebel Galaxy Outlaw - A True Successor To Privateer

chaosapiant: Oct 10, 2012; White Line Fever

toasterwarrior posted:

Fine, what is the fundamental difference between Privateer and Freelancer? You old fuckers

Having played Freelancer I remember all the forum threads back in the day basically doing the same thing as the old Morrowind vs Daggerfall debates in 2002: the older game was better because it had more more more. The aesthetic for Privateer was more chunky space-garbage trucks than Freelancer, but they both shared so much of the same DNA it was uncanny at the time.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 16:25

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# ? Jun 10, 2024 13:02

Nemo2342: Nov 26, 2007; Have A Day; Nap Ghost

Mechafunkzilla posted:

You can run but you need to dump full power to the engines AND use the afterburner, and even then it'll take a little while to get out of range.

I had tried splitting power between shields and engines since I was getting torn up, but it didn't really seem to work. If I run into anything else heavy before I can upgrade ships I'll see if full engines does the trick.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 16:29

Mad Wack: Mar 27, 2008; "The faster you use your cooldowns, the faster you can use them again"

toasterwarrior posted:

Fine, what is the fundamental difference between Privateer and Freelancer? You old fuckers

this is well documented in forums of yore - here take a post from lancersreactor forums user chandraskarlimit

# ? Aug 14, 2019 16:34

toasterwarrior: Nov 11, 2011

Mad Wack posted:

this is well documented in forums of yore - here take a post from lancersreactor forums user chandraskarlimit

...ah.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 16:38

Gort: Aug 18, 2003; Good day what ho cup of tea

You can fun away really well with the top level afterburner. Even the platypus goes 900 with neutral power settings.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 16:42

explosivo: May 23, 2004; Fueled by Satan

I think I'm submitting a refund request for this one. I like the general atmosphere of the game but the flying around and combat just isn't grabbing me like I thought it would. I am going to keep an eye on it because I didn't hate it but I don't see this getting its hooks in like I wanted from the outset.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 16:46

Ash1138: Sep 29, 2001; Get up, chief. We're just gettin' started.

toasterwarrior posted:

Fine, what is the fundamental difference between Privateer and Freelancer? You old fuckers

dunno i never played freelancer because i thought the art direction was crap and i was more into shooters at the time (early 2003 would've been battlefield 1942 and its mods).

# ? Aug 14, 2019 16:47

DoubleNegative: Jan 27, 2010; The most virtuous child in the entire world.

Do any stations actually keep goods on hand to trade? A tip that the one station in Texas is selling gold way below market doesn't matter much if they don't have any gold on hand to sell you. It feels like there's no way to do any space trucking because nobody's selling anything.

I have a garbage scow, let me haul stuff in it! :mad:

# ? Aug 14, 2019 16:47

Mailer: Nov 4, 2009; Have you accepted The Void as your lord and savior?

Fired it up. It's... not great.

* Tried pool, CPU was a shark, not doing that again. Restarted game to get my money back.
* I like how all the animations are skippable, but wish they'd have an option to skip them automatically.
* "Buy an afterburner!" Ok, I'll spam these local deliveries.
* "Buy a tractor beam!" Ok, I'll spam more local deliveries. I'm glad this is on an SSD.
* Used the warp speed mode once. Decided to use the normal mode (the WC-style autopilot) after a couple of minutes traveling what would have otherwise been a half second cutscene.
* Check controls multiple times but they're confusing. Eventually figure out that the controls are simple but their retro CRT aesthetic looks bad. Do first two combat missions without knowing how to lock on.
* The tractor beam is activated by noticing that a small icon in the upper right is spinning when you're near cargo. I only noticed because I was pressing everything I could and switched to third person, which made it stand out.
* Ok I'll just afterburner towards the station destination and ***INCOMING UNSKIPPABLE PLOT COMMS*** crash into it I guess.
* "Buy a jump drive!" Look you redneck gently caress that's 20k and you haven't paid me poo poo. Quit game instead of doing more local deliveries.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 17:15

Gort: Aug 18, 2003; Good day what ho cup of tea

DoubleNegative posted:

Do any stations actually keep goods on hand to trade? A tip that the one station in Texas is selling gold way below market doesn't matter much if they don't have any gold on hand to sell you. It feels like there's no way to do any space trucking because nobody's selling anything.

I have a garbage scow, let me haul stuff in it!

Almost everywhere (exceptions I've seen include the casino and places that sell a ton of one thing) sells about three things. If you bought the things for sale they take a while to restock though.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 17:16

Quicksilver6: Mar 21, 2008

toasterwarrior posted:

Fine, what is the fundamental difference between Privateer and Freelancer? You old fuckers

Freelancer is more of an ARPG, kind of Diablo esque experience in Space. More equipment, ship and role granularity, levels, generally easier to get into and explore. Combat is not so much pure reflex.

Privateer is the old school of space sim, a 90�s FPS in space. Combat is frenzied and enemies are unforgiving, with hull damage being potentially crippling instead of a minor nuisance.

No heals mid-mission, area difficulty is entirely by equipment, less options overall but drastic differences between. Generally much harder than Freelancer by default.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 17:21

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

Mechafunkzilla posted:

Radar question: what does ability to "lock" mean -- is it just for missiles, or is it for L2 tracking as well? Also, what is IIRM or whatever it's called that's on the higher tier radars?

Radars with lock let you lock missiles but also use the "lock target" button (locks the thing under the crosshairs which is super useful in combat to pick targets that you can shoot right away).

The main thing that normal start gives you is a radar with both IFF color and locking. Standard features that no game of the genre has ever had the idea to take away from the player before now.

Nemo2342 posted:

I had tried splitting power between shields and engines since I was getting torn up, but it didn't really seem to work. If I run into anything else heavy before I can upgrade ships I'll see if full engines does the trick.

IMO diverting power to shields is much less helpful than it sounds. Shields recharge real slow, add power and they're still slow. Even maxed out the shield recharge can't keep up with sustained fire from enemies that are on par with you. Also note that the higher-level shields take longer to recharge. The main thing you are improving is the capacity.

Meanwhile your afterburners draw from the same power pool as the weapons, so if you cut that to nothing you run out of go-juice.

Here's how I've had some decent success getting away from fights I can't win:
1. Make sure I'm pointed to a navigation marker.
2. Notch the engines up once or twice, to a point where my battery is still slowly recharging while running the AB.
3. Fly away with some evasive-type maneuvers. The idea is to tilt around just enough so that shots land on quadrants other than the rear, but still be running away.
4. Because the rear shield is still taking most of the hits, dump power to shield when possible.
5. Jam on the sublight button.

Sometimes I can get away, sometimes there are a couple speedy assholes who can keep up. In that case maybe I can open enough space between the speedy assholes and their friends to kill them.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 17:31

toasterwarrior: Nov 11, 2011

Quicksilver6 posted:

Freelancer is more of an ARPG, kind of Diablo esque experience in Space. More equipment, ship and role granularity, levels, generally easier to get into and explore. Combat is not so much pure reflex.

Privateer is the old school of space sim, a 90�s FPS in space. Combat is frenzied and enemies are unforgiving, with hull damage being potentially crippling instead of a minor nuisance.

No heals mid-mission, area difficulty is entirely by equipment, less options overall but drastic differences between. Generally much harder than Freelancer by default.

Cool, thank you. TBH I was kinda dreading this, but I do hope that customizing the guns and ships themselves is actually pretty deep?

# ? Aug 14, 2019 17:47

Insert name here: Nov 10, 2009; Oh.
Oh Dear.

Zigmidge posted:

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw - Literally Privateer 3

change the thread title this freelancer poo poo is for all the twenty year olds

I don't even know if I'd call it Privateer 3

It's such a knockoff that it's more like Privateer 1, 2.0

# ? Aug 14, 2019 17:55

fezball: Nov 8, 2009

Klyith posted:

The main thing that normal start gives you is a radar with both IFF color and locking. Standard features that no game of the genre has ever had the idea to take away from the player before now.

That's a direct callback to Privateer (as is the rest of the veteran loadout).

# ? Aug 14, 2019 17:56

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

toasterwarrior posted:

Cool, thank you. TBH I was kinda dreading this, but I do hope that customizing the guns and ships themselves is actually pretty deep?

It is not. It has vastly less variety in weapons, equipment, and ships than Rebel Galaxy 1 had.

edit:

fezball posted:

That's a direct callback to Privateer (as is the rest of the veteran loadout).

Ah, I did not actually play Privateer 1 when I was a kid, only Privateer 2.

Klyith fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Aug 14, 2019

# ? Aug 14, 2019 18:01

Ichabod Tane: Oct 30, 2005; A most notable
coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality.

https://youtu.be/_Ojd0BdtMBY?t=4

Privateer was made in 1993. Maybe making a direct translation of a 1993 era game into the year 2019 isn't the wisest.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 18:01

fezball: Nov 8, 2009

Glenn Quebec posted:

Privateer was made in 1993. Maybe making a direct translation of a 1993 era game into the year 2019 isn't the wisest.

Depends on who you're selling it to - I played Privateer back when it came out, and I've been waiting for ages to see a game like this again. Going for the nostalgia crowd can be a smart move for a smaller indie developer.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 18:13

Vasudus: May 30, 2003

Klyith posted:

It is not. It has vastly less variety in weapons, equipment, and ships than Rebel Galaxy 1 had.

Considering how anemic the first game was with customization options that's a bit disappointing.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 18:21

Just Chamber: Feb 10, 2014; WE MUST RETURN TO THE DANCE! THE NIGHT IS OURS!

How is Freelancer in 2019? Is it worth going back to?

# ? Aug 14, 2019 18:24

Hannibal Rex: Feb 13, 2010

Despite my reservations, I pulled the trigger and bought it. I was pleasantly surprised it's only �25.

Getting a hang of the controls without any kind of tutorial was a bit rough, but that might also have had something to do with that I barely ever play on gamepads.

I'm enjoying myself so far. I lost about five games to a pool shark until I got the hang of it and won a Tracer.

As for the Freelancer comparison, no, it isn't the Freelancer successor I wanted, but it's still pretty good. The gameplay itself is much more interesting, the things I miss from Freelancer are the elaborate faction system, the world building and lore, and the unique environments. But the core combat gameplay loop isn't even a contest.

For reference, this is a pretty good and fairly recent article on Freelancer, that really gets what made it so memorable:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ypxvbm/freelancer-was-the-original-open-world-space-opera

quote:

Freelancer is small, tiny even.

Open-world space sims often use procedural generation to put some notional big number on the size of their galaxy: No Man's Sky's "18 quintillion" planets spread across seemingly countless star system. Freelancer has 50. In Freelancer, every star and planet is an authored place with its own history and role. They're much more like the towns and villages in Skyrim than they are like the relatively anonymous planets of Elite: Dangerous.

This is a very deliberate choice, and not a technical one; the original Elite of course had a procedural universe. It had to, in order to save space. Freelancer instead had hand-designed content for its entire universe, itself a technological luxury of the CD-ROM era. Coming about a year after Morrowind, it was part of the ushering in of large, hand-built video game universes that players could explore and get lost in. Every single planet in Freelancer has its own texture map, giving them all different colors and aspects. Each star system has its own skybox, and different regions of space are somewhat color-coded; it's not unlike how in Skyrim, the color palette shifts from autumnal oranges in the south, to cold blues and whites in the north.

Because of its compact size, Freelancer can feel like a toy universe. The scale of the planets and stars is comically unrealistic, with small planets being seemingly only a few hundred times the size of your one-seater spaceship. This smallness leans into the "wagon train to the stars" conceit of the space opera genre. Planets and space stations are all individual places you visit for your own purposes, and Freelancer clearly isn't interested in making each planet more than a village; it wants you to get back on your ship and fly out into space.

quote:

What is Freelancer, then, besides all the things it's not?

It's a game about space dogfighting, but only in the same way Skyrim is a game about swordfighting. It's a game about exploration, but more in the way of Dark Souls than No Man's Sky. It's an open-world exploration game that only happens to take place in space. Consider that the "space" of Freelancer is comically crammed full of stuff. On most star systems, the main travel paths are narrow roads surrounded on both sides by forbidding fields of ice, asteroids, or space junk.

Freelancer's universe is connected by a network of jump gates and hyperlanes that let you zoom around from star system to star system. But you can go off-road, into a forbidding iceteroid cluster or debris field. Those places are essentially the dark forests of Freelancer, filled with pirate bases and buried secrets. Following the routes that pirate, bounty hunter, and scavenger ships take through the systems, you can find smuggling routes, abandoned battle sites, even hidden treasure. You can become a smuggler, dodging the space police to sell space drugs and alien artifacts at fantastic prices; you can become a scavenger, combing through the remains of battles to find useful items; you can even become an archaeologist, searching for the physical remains of the setting's backstory.

Freelancer has a whole hidden, parallel transit network connecting its star systems. By having a clearly-marked set of socially acceptable paths, it makes all the paths outside them so much sweeter and more enticing. It's built to produce the dirty little thrill of getting away with something. What sets Freelancer apart is found in that moment when a pirate base finally lets you dock, or when you scavenge powerful weapons from a lost battlefield, or when you find a space wreck of historic importance.

In that way, it's surprisingly different from something like Skyrim or Far Cry 4, where your role in the world is that of disruptor. In Freelancer, you're never waltzing into a pirate base and razing the place. You're trying to integrate yourself, not leave a trail of destruction. Places in Freelancer relate to one another in implicit ways, forming economies, networks of exchange, histories; there is a lot of careful, deliberate worldbuilding. You can visit the sites of old battles, littered with dangerous debris; in some remote ones, you might even find weapons left behind in the hulks of the dead.

If Freelancer was released for the first time today, we'd be noting that as a surprisingly Souls-like touch, with secrets hidden away in the form of dead things you can scavenge. I played Freelancer originally long before coming to Dark Souls, and it's interesting to me now to make that comparison the other way around; in truth, a lot of what I love about video games, a lot of what interests me, has percolated from my encounter with that game so many years ago. It's an important document which, with the distance of time, now looks a lot like a crossroads, pointing to paths that were taken and paths that were not taken.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 18:32

Ash1138: Sep 29, 2001; Get up, chief. We're just gettin' started.

desire for a modern privateer is what got me roped into star citizen. luckily i got out before the refunds stopped.

30bux for a space western version of what i wanted is a steal, really

# ? Aug 14, 2019 18:42

Quicksilver6: Mar 21, 2008

fezball posted:

Depends on who you're selling it to - I played Privateer back when it came out, and I've been waiting for ages to see a game like this again. Going for the nostalgia crowd can be a smart move for a smaller indie developer.

I�m just so happy to see a Wing Commander-esque game again that�s complete and fun.

Unlike the other game by the guy credited for making wing commander

E: f, b

# ? Aug 14, 2019 18:42

Spun Dog: Sep 21, 2004; Smellrose

Is this out now? Don't see it on gog.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 19:08

Complications: Jun 19, 2014

Spun Dog posted:

Is this out now? Don't see it on gog.

It's epic store exclusive for a year.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 19:08

Spun Dog: Sep 21, 2004; Smellrose

Complications posted:

It's epic store exclusive for a year.

Oh thanks. I'll check back in a year

# ? Aug 14, 2019 19:09

toasterwarrior: Nov 11, 2011

Klyith posted:

It is not. It has vastly less variety in weapons, equipment, and ships than Rebel Galaxy 1 had.

...poo poo. That's not good.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 19:20

Just Chamber: Feb 10, 2014; WE MUST RETURN TO THE DANCE! THE NIGHT IS OURS!

Have the developers come out and said this was in beta? I feel like it needs a few updates to really feel good especially in regards to the controls and UI. I wonder if them signing the deal with epic forced them to rush the release whereas if this was a steam game they could have released it in early access and slowly finished the game with patches. I don't really know how easy that is if you're on the Epic store.

Just Chamber fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Aug 14, 2019

# ? Aug 14, 2019 19:28

Sandepande: Aug 19, 2018

Doesn't feel like a beta to me. But they did do a bunch of patches before release; they probably didn't have a massive QA team, so some things must have slipped because the devs know the game inside out.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 19:34

Mordja: Apr 26, 2014; Hell Gem

Just Chamber posted:

How is Freelancer in 2019? Is it worth going back to?

There's a bigass mod called Crossfire that adds a slew of ships and weapons as well as a huge map/story expansion. Buuuuuut I never got to that new campaign stuff because I always felt that the underlying Freelancer gameplay was always a bit repetitive and like I said, I'm a Freespace guy.

A question on RGO. Is there interesting, authored side content? Because that's an issue a lot of open-world space games have, it's usually a single campaign and a bunch of generic, repeatable missions and activities. That's one thing the Escape Velocity series excelled at; there were always a bunch of smaller storylines, one-offs, and minor factions as well as the generic fetch & bounty quests.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 19:42

Nemo2342: Nov 26, 2007; Have A Day; Nap Ghost

https://twitter.com/RebelGalaxy/status/1161658198190972928

Now if they'd just do something about pool.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 19:44

Quicksilver6: Mar 21, 2008

Mordja posted:

A question on RGO. Is there interesting, authored side content? Because that's an issue a lot of open-world space games have, it's usually a single campaign and a bunch of generic, repeatable missions and activities. That's one thing the Escape Velocity series excelled at; there were always a bunch of smaller storylines, one-offs, and minor factions as well as the generic fetch & bounty quests.

There are indeed side story questlines. Usually these are offshoot mission lines from people you met and worked with on the main campaign - for example, the opening mission guy, Richter, has a side story where you help him start his own company. Misadventures ensue.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 19:50

Mischievous Mink: May 29, 2012

I'm not necessarily super worried if the content is a little thin, early access or not, isn't the game going to have some fairly decent modding support for that? Sure, there'll be no workshop for mods for a year, but there'll be a mod nexus for it or something.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 19:51

Hub Cat: Aug 3, 2011; Trunk Lover

Thats funny. In my first and probably only game of dice poker I immediately rolled a straight and won an auto cannon so clearly I'm the best 100% win percentage!

# ? Aug 14, 2019 19:53

KirbyKhan: Mar 20, 2009; Soiled Meat

Is there a map or spreadsheet of systems and stations? I have brainworms and I need that information for... Planning

# ? Aug 14, 2019 20:01

timn: Mar 16, 2010

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw - Rolled a straight in dice poker, won an autocannon

# ? Aug 14, 2019 20:02

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

Just Chamber posted:

Have the developers come out and said this was in beta? I feel like it needs a few updates to really feel good especially in regards to the controls and UI. I wonder if them signing the deal with epic forced them to rush the release whereas if this was a steam game they could have released it in early access and slowly finished the game with patches. I don't really know how easy that is if you're on the Epic store.

Nah they've been working on it for plenty of time. And Epic isn't telling people when to launch. It doesn't feel like an unfinished game, it feels like they took a different direction. I think that some of what this game has and doesn't have is explained by the reactions & critiques that Rebel Galaxy got. They concentrated on the stuff that people didn't like and fixed it.

RG1's main plot was justly criticized for being short and not very interesting. The meat was in the random missions. There's way more plot and authored content this time around. Note that authored content takes way more work for devs.

People complained about the difficulty in RG1, either that it was too easy or too hard. (Both could be true: the early game had difficulty spikes and the gear gotcha, but if you kept playing it turned into a cakewalk.) Less variety in weapons and items could be a way to make difficulty more tractable. It feels more uniform, though also more difficult, to me.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 20:34

DoubleNegative: Jan 27, 2010; The most virtuous child in the entire world.

I feel a bit better about the trade system after I found the Merchant's Guild. I still think it's a bit dumb that no station has any goods to sell, but I can also make so much more money just carrying other people's crap across the map for them.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 20:35

ZorajitZorajit: Sep 15, 2013; No static at all...

My garbage truck was getting chewed up by missiles last night. Is there a reliable way to find them or are there flares or flak available to deal with them easier than hoping to find what direction they're coming in from before they hit?

# ? Aug 14, 2019 20:36

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# ? Jun 10, 2024 13:02

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Klyith posted:

It is not. It has vastly less variety in weapons, equipment, and ships than Rebel Galaxy 1 had.

Ouch.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 20:37

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