Observations from a VS Noob

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rdodd
Atmospheric Pilot
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Joined: Fri Oct 01, 2010 9:45 pm

Observations from a VS Noob

Post by rdodd »

Hi:

I mostly play Privateer Gemini Gold, which being almost exactly like the original Privateer I don't really have any comments about except to say that I really enjoy it, and I wish that there was a more expanded version, in the spirit of the old Privateer but with more ships. I would love a Privateer MMO but I am not holding my breath. ;)

I gave Vega Strike itself a try and have the following observations:

1. It takes way too long to get anywhere. I understand that this is being corrected with something like the Privateer autopilot in a new version.

2. The upgrades interface is not user-friendly. When you go to buy ship upgrades, upgrades that are not applicable to your ship should be hidden by default, with an option to show them if desired.

3. Navigating the bases is unnecessarily complex. Everything you need at a base should be at most two clicks away from anything else you may need. Finding the hot spots to enter a particular feature of the base is unnecessarily finicky.

4. The map mode when you are flying is cluttered and difficult to use. When I was at Serenity base it took me forever to find where Atlantis was for instance in the clutter of nearby objects. Additionally there was a bunch of text stuff cluttering the view.


5. Some of the graphics were decent, especially the in-flight graphics. Others were abominable, like the graphics of the fixers in the bar. Base graphics were generally okay aesthetically, but not so good functionally.

I only mention these things because I am a huge fan of Privateer and want Vega Strike to succeed as well, because the space sim community is in desperate need of a new and improved space combat/trading sim.

Thanks :)
charlieg
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Re: Observations from a VS Noob

Post by charlieg »

There is Privateer Universe which is like an expanded Privateer, and worth investigating:
http://pu.wcjunction.com/

It is, of course, based on Vega Strike.

Did you try the 0.5.0 version of VS or the SVN version?

There are lots of ways to improve VS, but it just needs willing contributors to be doing it. At the moment there's only really 1 contributor and everything else is somewhat ad hoc.
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