I've done that before.

Just saved the game before each battle and loaded if I lost my escort or had high casualties. It may take awhile depending on how deep you are in. At least if you make it out that way, you will gain quite a bit of resources.

Great so far, can't wait to see more
Thanks Project 6014 Team, now get back to work!!!

hmmmm, not many crying eyes in the crowd I see  

No, No, No, Precursors have to be cow-like creatures which de-evolved themselves in order to...

? Ok well heres the deal Ace. Even with about 200,000 years of advances in our sspace travel technology, there is no way Intergalactic travel would ever be possible. The distance between the Milky Way and Andromeda, the closest galaxy is mind-boggling. Even the Precursors would not hvae had that kind of technology, its just not possible or practical. Even so it would take dozens or hundreds of years.

Hmmmm, someone didn't get my sarcasm. If you ever played Star Control 3 (which most people around here dislike and don't consider cannon), you'd get the joke. Also, since the main idea of this post was to bring about a worthy sequel, it's even more ironic.

P.S. It's just a game, don't let science get in the way of entertainment.

I had this really good idea for a plot. Ok, here goes.

Hyperspace breaks down one day, so you build another starship and travel the stars with this thing called a "warp bubble." Anyhow, you gather some races and fly off to this strange galaxy full of the dumbest races to ever exist. All the races get lost, so you spend some time finding them, building up resources, making new bases. You also find some other empire (this is where the stupid other races come together) that also has an identical ship with the "warp bubble" so they can fly around too. This whole time you get to do stupid quests (like fix the ultron.... AGAIN!!!) and find out what really happened to the Precursors. In the end, you have this really crappy battle against a bunch of weak ships and save the galaxy by mixing blood samples of a few races.... THE END  

How's that for a story?

Well, that part is easy.. you draw a line from one ship to the other, then make the center of that line the middle of the screen. You can make the zoom based on how far the ships are actually apart, but that still leaves the problem of controls and view.

If you make the battlefield too big, the ships are going to be too small to see and control. It's not bad in Star Control because it's 2D, but controlling a ship of apporixate size in 3D would be tough, that's why I suggested the ship forward view.

Controlling might not be too terrible, play games like Zelda and Mario on Nintendo 64 and Gamecube and you can use something similar. Of course, you kinda control the camera view with those games. With 2 ships moving around chaning the camera view, controlling your ship will be a little more difficult.

I could see it being done with a few different windows. Say for instance, a main overview window showing both ships in a battlefield. Also, you'd have 1 (or 2) smaller windows that shows the forward view of this ship to assit with controls.

What your suggesting is do-able, but besides the cool cinimatics, what would be the point? The player would spend most of their time looking at the flight control window while almost completely ignoring the overview window. This would also change the game from a melee style drastically.

This is actually sounding a lot like the old Star Trek video game from the early 80s. It had a top overview with a forward 3D view. It's pretty crappy, but this may be what your looking for:

http://www.klov.com/S/Star_Trek.html

I'm pretty confused here, but I believe what your proposing is either impossible to implement and control or has already been done.

If your suggesting something where you can see AND move in 3D yet still keep both ships in view (zooming in and out according to range), it's going to be tough to control and even see your ship(s).

If your suggesting something in 3D where you can see your ship, that's been done in most flight sims. Not sure the exact term, but it's something like "behind the ship view" where you can see a back of your ship.

Either case, your proposing a version of Star Control you move around in 3D which was suppose to be done (maybe not the same way ) in the non-finished game Starcon.

Har Har.... ABANDONWARE. That's the first time I've ever heard that phrase before. I've actually bought this game twice (sad eh). First time when it came out, the second time not too long ago on eBay (lost my first copy).

Anyhow, I'm not going to get into an argument about whether this is illegal or not, but I will say that your answer is in the manual (I just downloaded and looked through it).

It's in the manual.


Oh, you don't have a manual because you didn't buy the game. Guess your going to have to figure it out yourself.

I haven't played TW in quite awhile. I hated almost every new ship and the melee didn't feel right. Perhaps it has gotten better, but I remember there was no scaling in and out. All you could see was your ship and some arrows pointing at the enemy ship.

It's better to sell them something they'll pay you a full load of fuel for, and visit with 14 empty high-efficiency fuel systems.

You mean 16, right?

And yes, that is my favorite part of the game. I don't know which is better, the reaction of the Druuge or when I figured out a small weight on my enter key saved me from holding it down during the 5 or so minutes it takes to sell all that fuel  

Wasn't there a thought of how to make lots of money using crew. Like load your ship full of crew when they cost 3. Sell them to Druuge a few times so they cost like 20+ at the starbase. Then sell them to the Starbase before the crew start costing 1 (not going to tell how, but most people know).

This requires a lot of timing and resources to start with, so it's probably not worth the effort. It is a funny thought however.

Is there a list of keyboard actions (configuration) somewhere? There are some actions that I can't figure out. I did figure out most by hitting random keys, but a few I cannot discover. (Particularly, calling back the mine vehicle after its full of minerals)

I figured "setup" on the main menu of the game would help, but it just makes a fart noise like it's not available or something..

I believe the developers are working on this for the upcoming 0.4 release. Right now all you can do is edit the keys.cfg file. Personally, I like the default keys. I nearly wrote my own keyboard configuration program in VB, but never got around to it (besides, it wouldn't help those non-Windows people out there).

Anyhow, if you haven't gotten to it yet, the Escape key will get your lander off the planet.