Enough of this fantasy shit, Let's Play TIE Fighter: Collector's CD-ROM

[Fatso]

This is a game that hails from the days when you were expected to use every key on your keyboard to do something, and you had to buy an expensive flight stick to do all the things that wouldn't fit. It's my favourite video game of all time, and generally considered the very best of the space combat simulation genre (although to be fair it doesn't have any big-name competition outside of Wing Commander and Freespace).



Unfortunately for the purpose of LPing here there aren't many options in terms of viewer interactivity, so I'll mostly just be showing you around the game. I've recorded the entire first battle, but my upload is shit so it's going to take some time to get the videos all up. In the meantime,

IMPORTANT STUFF TO KNOW:



1. Center stage. My targeting box is green, indicating I have a good shot (it doubles as a lead indicator). Above the targeting box are three threat indicators. The left one will go red when I am being fired upon by enemy starfighters. The middle one will go green when I am being fired upon by any fixed emplacement (guns on capital ships, asteroids, or - most annoyingly - the backside of an Escort Shuttle). The one on the right blinks yellow when I am being acquired and steady red when the enemy has a missile lock. The Y-Wing in my targeting box is also in the CMD as my current target.

2. Sensors. A pair of hemispherical sensor displays - left is fore, right is aft. Imperial forces are coded red, Alliance forces green. Neutral or unknown forces are coded blue or purple. Space objects (this includes mines) are white, and warheads are yellow. Darker dots are further away than bright ones. My target is the one with a yellow box around it. Checking your sensors often is a crucial skill in surviving some of the later missions.

3. Combat Multiview Display (CMD). Most of the information you need about your target is right here. Craft type, designation, orientation with respect to your own craft, hull/shield/system integrity, distance, and cargo. The component you (and your warheads) are targeting is coloured yellow in the CMD view.

4. The green bars are my cannon energy reserves. The red numbers are my warhead reserves.

5. Hull/shield integrity display. The concentric rings around my TIE Fighter would be shields if I had shields. Dark red shields are verging on collapse; bright green shields are fully charged. You want to keep your shields double-stacked as much as possible if you get hit as often as I do. The craft in the centre, obviously, is mine.

6. Energy management display. E stands for Engine. It's the blue bar over to the far right. The higher that bar goes, the faster my craft is. L stands for Lasers. The bar controls laser recharge rate. There's also a yellow S bar for shields, but lolunshieldedcraft, and a red B bar for tractor beams, but I'm nowhere near far enough in the game to get beams. The laser, shield and beam levels will remain constant when the L, S and B bars are at half (2/4). 1 or 3 will slowly discharge or recharge, respectively, and 0 and 4 will quickly discharge and recharge. The engine level is determined by the L, S and B levels. Energy management is one of the most important skills in the game.

7. The top number is my speed in MGLT (Star Wars unit. For what it's worth, a 100-MGLT fighter crosses a kilometre in 6 seconds or so, which makes 1 MGLT ~6km/h). The middle number is my throttle as a percentage. The third number is the mission clock, which counts up from zero. Below that is the flight recorder, which is useless except when you want to record things happening away from your own fighter.

Basically that's all I have to say for now. Just finished annotations for the first video, so here we go!

First mission

[kultz]

I am already confused and intimidated.

WHERE IS THE QUICKTIME EVENTS AND BOOBIES?

[Psyentific]

I am already confused and intimidated.

WHERE IS THE QUICKTIME EVENTS AND BOOBIES?

And the quicktime events are when you fly too close to something. You have to hit certain buttons to avoid hitting it.

[Cataphrak]

Protip: Include mission briefings and cutscenes. It'd be nice to know exactly what you are doing, why you're doing it, and in what part of the galaxy you are doing it in.

That being said, nice work, carry on.

[Psyentific]

And the postmission stuff too.

[xlich6]

Where are my QTB, quicktimeboobies?

[Fatso]

Right. I don't have the option of recording mission briefings and flight in the same file (different resolutions), but I've got a bunch of screencaps left over from when I was going to do this as an SS LP. I'll see what I can do about getting those up now.

EDIT: Practically no screenshots for the first mission outside of flight, just this one showing the various objectives:



There are no bonus objectives for this mission, but if there were they would be hidden and I would need to discover them for myself (or check the FAQ like a pussy, or complete the mission and retry it in the combat chamber, also like a pussy).

Battle 1 is about tracing Rebels escaping from the Battle of Hoth.

Now: next mission!



This is the briefing officer. He tells you your primary mission objectives. In this mission I'll be on interception duty. TIE Fighters usually do not carry warheads, but I'm so special I get a pair of missile launchers. Almost every weapon in this game is paired in some fashion, except for the B-Wing with three lasers and three ion cannons - and the Missile Boat, with just one laser. But I'm getting way ahead of myself.



Actual enemy count: Two singleton Y-Wings, two FGs (one 5, one 3). One singleton X-Wing, one FG (three craft). One Lambda-class shuttle. Three Corellian corvettes. This is probably the only mission I'll be counting out the enemies for.



Oh hello there! This is the Secret Order representative, who gives you your secondary objectives and hints at some bonus objectives. Serving the Emperor above and beyond the mere line of duty will earn you advancement in the ranks of the Secret Order of the Emperor. The highest rank I've ever achieved is Emperor's Reach, which takes a fuckton of secondary/bonus objectives to attain.

Enough blabbering, let's shoot ourselves some Rebels.

Battle 1, Mission 2

[Fatso]

Oh, edits don't bump. Right.

SO: The medivac guys picked me up and I'm good to go again. And this is what I did:



Awesome.

[xlich6]

If possible, when you get to see some of the enemies, could you say something interesting about them?
I know nothing about these planes, and info like "they have cardboard for armor, or they are actually piss easy" will be great.

[Fatso]

BRP: That's a good idea, very good in fact! I sauntered into the Tech Room and took some screenshots of enemy craft (excluding capital ships). I'll continue to introduce new secondaries as they are introduced in-game. Perhaps capital ships as well, although the most important differences between capital ships are where the warhead launchers are (this is always your first target when taking out an enemy capital ship).



Lambda-class Shuttle (SHU)

Slow as shit. Not really dangerous, but decently shielded. Often subject to capture operations.



Y-Wing Fighter-Bomber (Y-W)

Also slow, but maneuverable enough to give you trouble if you really let it. Generally relegated to bombing duty.



X-Wing Space Superiority Starfighter (X-W)

About on par with the TIE Fighter for maneuverability, but better-armoured and has shields. X-Wings fly in practically every concievable starfighter role, from interception to fighter-clearing strikes to light bombing.

Now, let's move on.



BATTLE 1, MISSION 3



"Cargo-carrying vessels" is an extremely broad category. It basically encompasses everything in the game that isn't a fighter, capital ship, base, or mine. Fortunately, in this mission there are only two types of cargo-carrying vessel:



Transport (TRN)

Slow as shit, but usually a priority target. Transports serve two basic roles: a) getaway vehicle (so disable them) b) bombing/disabling (kill these ones)



Cargo Ferry (CARG)

Not much to say. Basically just a freighter, like any other. A lot of the cargo ships in this game act exactly the same way: move in slowly (and I do mean VERY slowly), pick up/drop off cargo, and run away just as slowly. The Cargo Ferry does have some defensive armament, though - four defensive lasers which can be a real pain in the ass sometimes.

Anyways:



This is my first mission in the TIE Bomber. There aren't many of them, because pretty soon the Imperials are going to realize just how truly shitty the Bomber is. And it is truly shitty. By far the worst fighter in all the game except perhaps the Z-95 Headhunter, which at least has shields.

Enemy makeup in this mission is mostly just the cargo vessels mentioned above, plus a couple of flight groups of Y-Wings.

There are no secondary objectives in this mission, so I don't get to see the Secret Order representative or hear his awesome voice. (Seriously. I'm considering recording one of the briefings at some point just for his voice)



One more thing before I sortie:



You'll note that I have loaded heavy rockets instead of proton torpedoes in my warhead launcher. This is because rockets are much better suited to hitting large craft than torpedoes are (torpedoes are mostly only useful against slow fighter-sized craft), and also because rockets are substantially more awesome (you'll see why).

Battle 1, Mission 3

[Fatso]

Happy post-Apocalypse everyone, time to kill some Rebel scum.



So while we were fucking around stopping the arms deal, the Rebels pounced on our base platform. Obviously, we want it back.



The Interceptor is kind of fun to play in. Reasonably tough armour, fast, well-armed. But no shields.



There are actually two new classes of enemy craft in this mission:



A-Wing Interceptor (A-W)

FUCK A-WINGS. FUCK EM HARD. They're the toughest adversary the Rebels can throw into battle against you for one reason: they're TINY. Speed I can deal with, and the flight AI in this game is a bit of a joke for anyone past their first or second playthrough (plus we'll be getting a REALLY broken weapon with a REALLY REALLY broken trick in battle, what, 5? 6 maybe, but again I get ahead of myself). But the A-Wing's hitbox is the only one in the game that isn't noticeably bigger than the model itself. Anyways, they're annoying.



Escort Shuttle (E/S)

Dangerous to unshielded craft. Target practice otherwise. Note that the rear turret can sometimes make getting warhead hits a pain.



So we're looking around for shit to ID. I can deal with that.



I pick torpedoes, but as you'll see I really don't need them.

Battle 1, Mission 4

[captaincommunism]

incidentally, when does this take place in the starwars timeline?

[Fatso]

This is immediately after the battle of Hoth. Subsequent battles take place roughly in the year or two between Hoth and Endor.

[captaincommunism]

ah, thanks.

[Fatso]

Here's a taste of some real action now:

BATTLE 1, MISSION 5

Also known as the episode in which I begin to cram a bunch of semi-advanced combat techniques down your throat. Don't worry, I'll review these on a regular basis as we go.



The basic mission objectives are just dogfighting. This I can live with.



I keep the missiles this time, handy for dealing with A-Wings and also useful as a fast-traveling dumbfire weapon in a pinch.



One new enemy craft type:



B-Wing Fighter-Bomber (B-W)

Tougher, meaner Y-Wing with a hitbox the size of a small planet. Tons of armour and shields make them a bit tedious to destroy, but they're no flight aces.



So yeah, are they stealing our shit or did we give it to them? Nobody seems able to make up their minds.

Anyways, I'm just a fighter jock. I'm not paid to ponder motives.

Battle 1, Mission 5

[Gaming]

Summer 2013:

View Calendar

There aren't any users online.