Cheers,
Steel
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Tutorial.
No, don’t panic! This isn’t some kind of step-by-step instructions; it’s an introduction to another feature of X2 that is worthy of its own description. You see, in previous games you had to explore far and wide and gain reputation and those all-important credits, before those sought after ships and technologies were added to your roster. Now, while you are still going to have to prove your abilities before that elusive kilometre long ship becomes yours to pilot, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to “try before you buy?”
Yes? Good. Thought so. The main game menu features an option aptly called “Tutorials”. This is split into three further levels depending upon ability. Beginner, Advanced, “Buck Rogers” (OK, I made the last one up), but these three each contain a variety of “missions”.
The first (and easiest) gently introduces you to the flight dynamics as you navigate through a series of “hoops”, but then moves on to a little space walk in your environment suit and climbing aboard another ship. Tip: Don’t look at the sun(s) while in your space suit because the dynamic lighting in the game will reflect off the helmet visor!
You get to shoot up a few cargo pods, load some into your cargo bay and so on. These missions are backed up with textual instructions and a spoken dialogue. Btw: This spoken stuff is currently for test purposes, the real voiceovers haven’t come back from the studios yet and it sounds like Arnie (“I’ll be back”), which coincidentally is exactly what one of my fellow testers CJ sounds like, but he denies any involvement!
Still, they do the job for the testing and a debate long ago revealed that we all wanted a female voice telling us what to do…….y’know, like they do in fighter aircraft today? Well, that’s our excuse and we’re sticking to it!
I digress. The later tutorials involve some exhilarating scenarios. Controlling a large capital ship with its fighter escort in the midst of battle and deploying your own factories and so on. Nicely balanced to introduce you to the various aspects of the game. These missions can be played over and over and satisfy the need to sample some of the later features available while practising and honing your skills. They play in a self contained Universe, specially designed for the mission and have no effect on your real-time game. I’ll briefly describe one in a little more detail but really this will also give me the opportunity to introduce another ship!
The scenario loads and I am once again in the pilot’s seat, instrumentation lights and monitors flickering away. Outside, to my left, is the partially obscured, nearby planet. Like Jupiter, but in shades of blue instead of red’s and brown’s. Dozens of asteroids slowly tumble; the background is a wispy mist of light turquoise on distant stars. I pan to my left, past the planet and come across a local nebula. A vast sea of dense gas with flashes of light that appear and fade away, bringing thoughts of lightning in a storm. Through the shifting mist, I spot the blinking lights of a station or two, hiding their presence from any marauding pirates. The engine trails of fighter ships make patterns in the void as they twist and turn. The ambient music adds to the moment, it’s truly hypnotic.
But I must continue my description of the ship that I am in, with some numbers first for those that are interested. It flies at 230 metres per second out of the shipyard, but can be increased to 324. It can carry a single shield, but a whopping 125 MW one (that’s big). It has a cargo bay over four hundred units which can be enhanced to over eight hundred and can hold the large, XL class containers. It has a single front firing weapon mount and two turrets, one on the top and one below. All of these can carry a wide variety of lasers, including those only found on the larger capital ships (my personal favourite is to mount a large, energy guzzling weapon on the front and four fast firing, but low power lasers in the turrets).
It can carry the station busting, Hornet class missile. It can even carry a small, light, fighter class ship attached to its outer hull! The downside? It turns like a battleship, well actually, not quite that slowly, but this is not a ship to go dog fighting in. This is the new M6 class; each race has their own derivatives, each with their own unique features. Referred to as a “Corvette”, this particular one is called the Split Dragon!
http://www.egosoft.com/x2/sotd1/(11).jpg
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