Orbiter tutorial

[Nigel_Strange]

If anyone plays Orbiter, here is a nice tutorial. A guy gives us some idea of what all those little buttons and lines do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtVlAriy ... re=related

Maybe I'll try to play it again. Ah...the days before fulcrum drives, when people had to sail on gravitational fields the way ancient mariners had to sail on the ocean currents.

[Marvin]

It also makes Mercenary's intertial system seem like a walk in the park.

[Nigel_Strange]

Yes. I have always leaned toward more realism, but without sacrificing gameplay. There is no point, though, at which everyone is happy. Too much orbital mechanics, and then you're totally incapable of fighting in space. Not enough, though, and you feel that it's not realistic. The real litmus test, though, is how much you want to play it.

I have tried Orbiter and found that it is very dificult to do much of anything without knowing ahead of time exactly what you are going to do. Thankfully, there are scenarios built into the game that start you off with everything pre-programmed. Without those, you'd be totally lost, and in space, being lost is forever.

There was a scenario that I tried that was fairly automated. I just sat back and watched the autopilot do everything. You're orbiting the earth, and then, you blast the rockets and shoot off into emtiness. After days of travel, you see the moon moving into view, and just as you're about to whip past it, you are captured by the moon's gravity. It felt like hitting a moving dartboard from 300,000K away. You can see how easy it would have been to have miscalculated and just gone off into deep space, never to be seen again.

Makes me want to write again... I need to get back into the habit.

[Marvin]

Vice spoiled Orbiter for me. After all the time and work and all those calculations getting from Cape Kennedy to Mars ... only to land on flat "terrain" ... then to load up Evochron Legends and seamlessly go from space to a planet with real mountains. There was no comparison.