I must say I love the space flight of this game. Though I find it lacking in any type of character life outside the hanger. I was just wondering is there any plans in the works that you will be able to leave the hanger at space stations and interact with other players at the space station. This game reminds me of Origins Privateer and even back then I so much wanted to see a Privateer type online game. I sure hope there are plans to make this game more then just spaceflight being able to land on planets and roam around spacestations would be cool.

what is Privateer?

/whois Privateer
Chanserv: DENIED

no seriously, got some linkage to it?

Privateer was a space flight game that also included planet and space station missions that where not just space flight alone. You could actually leave the hanger as a pilot and walk around the spacestation to like the bar ect.. Privateer was made by Origin, Richard Garriott's company back then, and was made after the Wing Commander saga. Where talking about 15 years ago.

Basiclly just do a Google search for Wing Commander Privateer, and ya can read up on it. Also looks like the Privateer 1 is freeware now, ya can download and play it.

Privateer was a good game. I would love to see a kind of 'bar' interface beyond a chat tab added to stations. It doesn't need to be overly complicated, just a 2d avatar and a room or 2 would suffice for me. It really helps you to feel as though you've docked somewhere and gotten out of your ship. As it stand right now I feel more like I'm always sitting in my ship and just getting drive-thru style service.

Ya be cool to as you roam the space station visiting the shops and such, you find a shady character that will give you a mission that you will not find on the stations mission computer. These will be the unsaction missions. Heh Smugling goods.

Yeah Privateer!
or "privater" as the old dos box refers to it.

Walking around stations is a long ways off, and landing on planets is further than that.

I'd much prefer some "epic" plot mission trees as good as Privateer's storyline before the addition of character avatars, and I'm pretty sure that's how the devs feel too.

PS: Did anyone play through the Righteous Fire expansion pack? I couldn't get into it, I was just so pissed off my alien gun got stolen :P

-Cam-

No...never got to it... or rather, forgot about it. Now that i got dosBox running the way I want to, I should probably reinstall it and just start from righteus Fire.

To date, I am unaware of any plans to allow players to leave the ship, or to land on planets (which are merely part of the skybox and are not reachable). The player's avatar is the ship.

to be more clear in privateer...and for that matter its distant cusion, "Freelancer" (published by microsoft funny enough but produced by digital anvil.) when we say (walked around the station...

basicly this is refering to the menu system that was more graphicly pleasing to the eye. instead of clicking on a button, repair my ship...you would click on the ship hanger area and be shown a different back ground and then a collection of options to do from this place.

if you wanted to go get missions, you clicked on the right place and went to a bar type background with crazy music playing in the background and other guys kicking around, where you could talk to them or check the mission computer for missions.

basicly its the same system that vendetta has...but it has life and personlity to it...something i wouldnt mind vendetta having myself but its not anything typicaly specail. All wing commander games like to have that "universe" effect to them. its has made the series legendary in a few ways, but its not like you hopped off you ship and guided an avatar around.

just thought i would bring this up.

oh, and just to make your brains hurt...the graphic engine for the first privateer was not 3d, but in fact an imageing trick making it the first 2 anda half D game. ;)

Sounds a little bit like the interface of Schleichfahrt (Archimedian Dynasty). Man I loved that game. The physics of Vendetta remind me a little bit of it :)

You had animated 2d backgrounds with names pointing at people or locations. Clicking on them brought up a window to talk or in case of the weapon dealer buy or equip stuff.

Terrible screenshots here:

http://www.massive.de/gfx/sf_screens/games_sf_screen_neo.html
http://www.massive.de/gfx/sf_screens/games_sf_screen_pad.html
http://www.massive.de/gfx/sf_screens/games_sf_screen_equ.html
http://www.massive.de/english/games_sf_screens_eng.html