[Steam] Evochron Mercenary

[DangerMouse]

I've been watching this game for ages now and its now on Steam!

If you liked Elite, Elite2 or Freelancer, you'll love this!

Currently on special for $20 on Steam, also if you just want to try it out you can download a demo from the developer's site:

Freeform Space Combat / Trader and Exploration Simulator (PC Space-Sim) - Evochron Mercenary

[Brootal]

Any comparison to the X series?

[Justin Kace]

Well I bit.

I have only played through the tutorial so far. It looks promising!

Tonight I'm going to set up a server which I will leave running most of the time on my PC. If anyone is interested PM me and I'll let you know the details when it's up. I'll keep running the server as much as possible until both my interest, and the interest of any others, wanes.

If anyone does want to join in though, you'll need Hamachi. Takes all the hassle out of connecting over the internets.

[SJ777]

wasted alot of my early teens on Elite on C64 - nothing since has seemed the same

but I've grabbed the demo and will have a bit of a go. Thanks!

[Purg]

I had a gander when it came up as a special on Steam and I loved the early space games - Elite, Privateer, etc but I haven't gotten around to playing my X series games yet (and I bought the last one a couple of weeks ago). Will probably wait for more reviews before I buy another game I won't play..

[Genghoidal]

I've got the demo now too, but feel compelled to go all in seeing I put JK on to it!

[Justin Kace]

The tutorial and learning curve is pretty rough. I've lost my ability of youth, to memorise keyboard maps that utilise 95% of the keyboard!

Been struggling with it a bit over the last two nights but that's been more to do with my tiredness than the game itself. I see promise and I think when I get my ship upgraded a bit more and can get out and explore some more it's going to be promise realised!

So far I have killed myself by engaging the afterburner in a planets atmosphere, warped into a space station and a planet, and duked it out with nasty rats who tore me a new one very promptly after I killed two of their buddies.

I'm going to keep plugging away here. I swear I see something shiny...

[Speedy]

Independence War 2 spoiled me, I haven't found a space sim game since I liked.

What's the flight characteristics of this one?
Do they model Newtonian physics like I-War 2 or is it just the simple old ship only moves when engines are on?

[Justin Kace]

Nah it's pretty cool. You can turn the inertial system off and on. When it's on your ship will use thrust to auto adjust to go where you are pointing it as best as possible. When it's off you coast in the last direction you were thrusting in and can use attitude thrusters to align your ship to a different direction. Drifting fly-bys and all that. As you'd expect you only burn fuel when you are accelerating/decelerating or adjusting your facing.

[DangerMouse]

I'm enjoying it, I suck at the races though

I never got into the X series, I found them boring and long winded - I remember the first one and it took hours just to get a decent engine so you could jump around!