Imaginary games that you plan on getting (in your mind) this year

[OB1]

But you move with the keyboard and aim with the mouse... sure the objects don't move exactly like Descent, but its close enough that I see a resemblance! A big part of the fun of flight sims is controlling the ships with a joystick, after all... Freelancer doesn't have that. It has mouse/keyboard, and a simplified flight system.

The developers of Freelancer actually wanted to do something new with the combat in the space sim genre, and they did an admiral job with it. No more joystick control, but the actual combat is the best there is.

I've played the best ones.

The best linear ones, maybe, but that's not saying much.

So instead of taking seven years they take 21?

My point is that linear space shooters ... aren't exactly short.

Yes they are, you just haven't finished them because you held off for seven years!

That comment wasn't really serious.

Of course not.

For that first paragraph. No way in the world. Sure, in both you spin around and dogfight and try to get behind the enemy so you can shoot them... but X-Wing just has so many more layers of depth.

Lets see... 1)power management (% to shield/lazer/beam; transferring power between systems to boost weak ones) 2)shield management (front/rear/center) 3) lazers (not overusing them, waiting for them to recharge...) 4) fairly complex flight systems (other than power management) 5) the nice dual-circle radar system.

I said take away the power management and consider the actual raw combat. Ooh, there's a radar system! That makes it so much... easier, actually.

#3, the lazers, was something I REALLY noticed in Freelancer. You don't have to worry about firing -- you can do it forever and it'll never run down or overheat or anything... sure that's simple, but its far less fun! And that's just one way that completely removing power management made Freelancer's combat so simple.

Yet again you show your ignorance towards this subject. Your lasers (the correct spelling, BTW) do overheat, and that's one thing you have to be careful about. You have to buy better lasers and cooling systems to get longer fire life.

Now... sure, removing X-Wing's power management would put it close (not quite down to Freelancer's level, due to X-Wing's joystick-driven combat and better flight models, but a lot closer)... but that isn't relevant, since the power management system is the core of the ship systems! Removing it would be like removing jumping from a Mario game!

No it wouldn't, as the power management was put there to make combat seem complex. The flight models are not better and the actual combat is far simpler than Freelancer's. I have played both games extensively, you have not.

Oh yeah, and I'm not really simplifying Freelancer's combat at all to say this. It really IS that shallow... the only depth that's there is the fact that you've got to pay for your missiles. Controlling the ship itsself? Very simple... just turn and fire. You can even hit anyone on the screen without turning much with some weapons, making precisely lining up with your enemy less important and removing even more depth...

That's a complete and total lie. Just because it's easier to fire on enemies doesn't mean that the combat is simpler. By that logic you could say that a FPS with poor aiming would be more complex than say, Half-Life. Aiming and flying isn't slow and clumsy like it is in most space sims, so you have to worry about outsmarting the enemies rather than outsmarting the crappy controls.

You cannot talk about combat without power management because the power management is absolutely central to every phase of the game, combat and non-combat...

That's the only thing that makes the combat somewhat deep. It's a cheap way of making it tougher.