Have we talked about Dark Wind yet?

[squirrel]

A turn based driving game? Are you people serious? I downloaded the client, and played it for about 2 minutes before realising that I was entering the land of bird watchers and the National Paint Dehumidification Surveillance Association.

That was my first thought as well. But try and forget that it's a computer game, and play it for what it is. A 3D rendered board game about post-apocalyptic car warfare. I only played for about 45 minutes last night, but to be honest I quite enjoyed myself, and I appreciate the dev's making it turn-based because it was obviously a conscious trade-off to deliver a game that they could build with a certain feature set. It's really quite good for what it is.

Would i like a real time car wars on my Xbox? Fuck yeah. That's not this game. This game is what it is and I like it enough to probably keep playing for a bit anyway.

Drivername: squirrel
Gang: Straw Dogs

[Engels]

Ok, that makes more sense. A computerised rendering of a PnP game. I must have skimmed over that part, and of course, with a name like Car Wars, one expects a wiz-bang action game. My apologies to any ruffled plumage.

And Hoax, I'm not exactly the only soul that finds WoW/Warhammer graphics a bit cartoonish for their taste.

[Hoax]

No you just have a really shitty way of saying it.  When VG is your proof that something else sucks your logic fails.  I dont care what your trying to prove.

[Modern Angel]

Ok, that makes more sense. A computerised rendering of a PnP game. I must have skimmed over that part, and of course, with a name like Car Wars, one expects a wiz-bang action game. My apologies to any ruffled plumage.

And Hoax, I'm not exactly the only soul that finds WoW/Warhammer graphics a bit cartoonish for their taste.

It's not Car Wars. But it is. Honestly, I hope Steve Jackson is in a forgiving mood if he finds out about it because it really is the rules set right down to the velocity to turn ratio per second/turn stuff I remember from way back in the day.

[Falconeer]

Sam Redfern was saying in lobby chat a few days ago that he talked with Steve Jackson about this. Apparently SJ liked the game but, of course, didn't agree on any kind of connection or direct reference to the Car Wars license, which he's very jelous of. Anyway, I'd say it's a big green light for Dark Wind.

[Falconeer]

NECROH!

The game is STILL very good and unique.
Countless improvements in the last year and a half, including but definitely not only replays and pedestrians!

You can now leave the car (before it explodes, for instance) and use your handguns and handguns skills to save your arse close and personal, engage in fistfights with other pedestrians or shoot down wilderness creatures in the unlucky event of a breakdown when out hunting. Comes in handy since your characters grow over time but tend to (perma)die a lot, so it's like having a second chance when your car is about to become a screaming ball of fire.

All in all, this game is a miracle. The GUI is the biggest letdown being a mix of standalone client, java crap and web browsing, and the visual and sound department are pure retrogaming, but it's still more than worth it.

[Modern Angel]

Was actually considering checking this out again. I did love it for my three month run last year.

[WayAbvPar]

I somehow just heard about this game. Anyone still playing? Thinking about checking it out when I am less zombied (need to get my ass to bed).

[Ghambit]

It recently had some "oomph" added in.  Few upgrades, some more marketing, etc.  I registered a few weeks ago but havent logged in.  Just like Car Wars, it's fairly in-depth.  If you're not into tabletop strat, I wouldnt recommend it.

The Torque adaptation is really nice though.  I'd like to see more PnP/wargame adaptations of it.  Just not necessarily Car Wars.  And yah, Steve Jackson is a douche.  He's not even relevant in gaming circles these days, so he should've rubber-stamped the game instead of keeping it a generic clone.

[WayAbvPar]

Anyone have a referral ID I should use when I sign up?

[WayAbvPar]

Signed up as Knights of the Round Tire. Did the tutorial but my car died before I could kill the other guy  Am signed up for a Death Race now. We'll see how I do. This has potential to be really entertaining- love the turned based combat!

[Ghambit]

Signed up as Knights of the Round Tire. Did the tutorial but my car died before I could kill the other guy  Am signed up for a Death Race now. We'll see how I do. This has potential to be really entertaining- love the turned based combat!

Let us know if you end up liking it.  I might get vested in it if it's worth it.
I dont plan on being heavy in the RP like some of the folk in there seem to be though.  Hell, most of the lore is player-created.

[Falconeer]

I used this thread to reinstall it, plus emails telling me my gang was starving and dying of radiations and malnutrition were starting to make me feel like a bad leader. This game was great enough when it was only deathracing. With all the content and the additions of the last two years it's absolutely awesome. I am still sad it's not all working from the client (I hate having gang management in your browser, and racing/chatting in the client), and the learning curve of the MMO part is still steep, but nonetheless a great game. The addition of Tactical Darkwind (which allows you to set up any scenario with any vehicle you like and invite your friends for mindless pvp battles) is such a great bonus.

It still lacks accessibility to me, too many things only work only if you are a dedicated player. With a proper GUI, this would be such a hit. Which is probably what I said two years ago. But seriously, the turn-based game alone is so great. In multi, with some friends, can be exhilarating.

P.S: I have a deathrace coming up n 15 minutes, WayAbvPar is in it too. This is going to be fun...

[WayAbvPar]

I am a little lost on what I should be doing. I subscribed, but should I just be running races/accumulating money for now?

[Falconeer]

Coherently with my previous posting, I am one of those NOT dedicated enough to deal with the whole persistent part of the game. I understand that you can earn money, enlarge your gang, buy own customize and design plenty of cars, partecipate in different events based on where your characters are residing, scout wilderness for random fights and encounters which can grant you loot and rare parts/vehicles, buy, sell and transport good from and to different cities. I think there are missions too now, and you can put bounties on someone else's characters head (the game has permadeath). In a nutshell,  think you can do pretty much everything you can do in similar games, Eve being the closest one I can think of. So yeah grow, expand, get better and kick asses using skilled up chars, powered up cars and so on. As far as I know, you can't buy or own structures, yet.
I am sure I am missing a lot, but the Wiki and the Forums seem to be plenty of info and guides. Scouting seems to be where the money are, even though I never really got into it. Nothing is more enjoyable than a deathrace to me. EDIT: A good primer at what to do with your gang of characters.

That said, Way, you didn't show up in yesterday's death race you were signed up for. I raced against other 3 guys and ended up 4th after botching the LAST corner losing my hard earned second place. Shame on you for chickening out.


EDIT:

Faction System
Feb 18th, 2010
We have created a system of inter-related Factions, including major factions such as the Merchants and the Anarchists, as well as minor ones such as the Mutants and the Evan Reds.

Your in-game actions will now have consequences in terms of how members of these factions will treat you, as well as how the towns themselves will see your gang in terms of fame and reputation.

In-game consequences will be far-reaching: will an Arena gang adhere to your resignation or try to kill you? Will a town provide protection for you if you're fleeing from a pursuing enemy - or will they hate you to such a degree that they actually mobilise the local Militia to attack you as you arrive?

Cool.

[WayAbvPar]

I think I got stuck doing something work-related and forgot about it.

[WayAbvPar]

Still playing and having fun, although last night just about made me put my fist through my monitor. Went out on a scout with my brother and Furiously. We retreat from the 4 incoming cars, turn around and set up to fight, and then all hell breaks loose. I retardedly brought a pickup, and ended up getting targeted by at least 2 of the pirates. I get off one volley, then get hit by rockets and then get turtled. One of the pirates drives around me taking shots while another is filling me full of lead from farther away. I closed the session when my truck caught fire a turn after my gunner lost her leg and both her and the driver were stunned and unable to escape. I learned later that one of them survived but couldn't drive, so Furiously had someone drive what was left of my truck back to town (they even had a return engagement!).

I sold the scraps of the chassis and bought a brand new Mercenary. Hopefully I can keep it rightside up long enough to actually deal some damage before I expire next time.

[Furiously]

I lost a truck last night attempting to see how shitty the are.

[WayAbvPar]

Major drama regarding a monetary exploit. Even better is that the primary perp is a complete douche who I already hated. Boy do I feel justified now! 

[Furiously]

The exploit was people were able to create custom events that gave crazy payouts to drivers other than the first place winners.

One person apparently took about 4 billion dollars and bought everything off the market, then relisted it for 1$. He also paid all the npc corps to hunt down various players he didn't like. Which had the side effect of giving these npcs huge bounties when you kill them. Basically the economy is totally screwed ATM.

[WayAbvPar]

Sneaked down to BL to build myself an Apache. Got stuck in a bugged wilderness encounter that required Sam's intervention. He took the map offline to debug it, and I ended up getting to my destination a bit sooner. All in all not a bad deal =)

Can anyone give me in depth info about the skills and how to raise them efficiently? I just discovered that traveling is really good for raising scouting, for instance. Any other hidden gems like that?

[WayAbvPar]

Survived a scouting ambush last night in pretty improbable ways. 3 of us v 5 NPCs. I hightail and drag 2, then 4 after me in my fishtailing POS Windsor II, while my teammates thrash the 5th guy. 2 closest to me continued to chase me while the other 2 turned back and demo'ed one of my teammates in short order. Thankfully the MM chasing me ran out of rockets, so I could run a little longer to buy them some time, but they were having all kinds of trouble.

 I was seriously contemplating surrendering to try to save my 3 gangers, but eventually said fuck it. I noticed the Chaser following me was really coming fast as we started down a hill. I slammed on the brakes and spun around to face the MM, and the Chaser went flying on by and was out of the combat for a few turns while I demo'ed the MM. The Chaser came back toward me as I moved his direction to engage him. Got him demo'ed too (and pumped him a few more times for some blue text to try and lower the rest of his buddies' morale), but the MM had been plinking away at my side armor and had slightly scratched one of my gunners. I then hear from my surviving teammate that an Antagonist was headed my way, just as I was thinking we might get out of it.

I turn to start heading back toward the Antagonist, when it turns tail and runs. The MM continued to chase me and shoot when it could turn its side guns on me. I didn't dare turn either side to him (I had a single point of armor on each side), and all my weapons were in the front. I told my teammate to head my direction (we were quite a ways apart most of the fight) as I led the MM back up the hill on the road. When my teammate got within 100m or so I veered off to the side. One well placed volley into his grill and the loot screen popped up.


Only MM was driveable, so we got jobbed on the loot. However, my teammate's gangers lived through the fight (I have no earthly idea how), and we even managed to get his car back safely. If I wasn't hooked before, this did it. It was among my most memorable sessions in MMOGs.

[Ghambit]

If I've got time tonite I'll finally get through the tut.  I'm tired of the sidelines for this one and at the very least it'll give me some inspiration for a similar game design I had (that I never saw through of course).

[WayAbvPar]

It takes a bit of time to get through the kludgy interface and unforgiving nature of combat, but it is worth it. I am having a blast with it. Best part is you can do gang management stuff on the web at work and then play when you get home!

[Sutro]

There are definitely some of the most epic things ever to be seen in a MMO accomplishable here. I was reading a thread on the forums about a guy's first scouting mission where his teammates are getting banged up by a truck that's had its engine killed but it's still firing rockets out the front.

So, since he's pointed the opposite direction from him, he *sends his gunner out of the passenger seat* to stroll across the bullet-filled wasteland with his shotgun and put two loads into the driver's face, killing him. He then proceeds to hop in said truck, fire one round of rockets, and flip another car that was laying waste to a squadmate's rear end.

Considering the skill levels of new drivers/gunners, that's the MMO equivalent of being queried who that chick was you left the club with last night and saying, "Oh, some chick with a funky last name... I think it was Kardashian? Some shit like that. It was a good time. She let me stick it in her dumper, too, which was a plus."

[WayAbvPar]

This game is just hideously unforgiving (much like EVE, which is probably why I like it). Was running a simple race (no weapons) yesterday with my best mechanic (which is the highest skill I have out of any character). Overpowered cars, so we were really running fast. Went sliding into a hard right turn and skidded into the car next to me (which was doing the same thing). Bang- impact broke my mechanic's neck, and he was paralyzed from the neck down. He will be recovered by 12/13/2010. REAL TIME.

I now have to keep him in my gang that long just for bragging rights. He was also ready to be named (you can nickname characters when they get a skill high enough). My brother suggested "Sip n Puff" or "Numby"...I am thinking about "Wheels". Any other thoughts? 

[Ghambit]

I now have to keep him in my gang that long just for bragging rights. He was also ready to be named (you can nickname characters when they get a skill high enough). My brother suggested "Sip n Puff" or "Numby"...I am thinking about "Wheels". Any other thoughts? 

Mechaneck.
Fucks sake I have yet to find time to play this btw.

[Furiously]

I now have to keep him in my gang that long just for bragging rights. He was also ready to be named (you can nickname characters when they get a skill high enough). My brother suggested "Sip n Puff" or "Numby"...I am thinking about "Wheels". Any other thoughts? 

mañana.

[Abysmal Horror]

Hey, WayAbvPar, you greeted me in the lobby last night, but I didn't see it until a few minutes later, and I guess you were AFK by then.  (My DW player name is "Snidely Carmichael.")  Please excuse me, I didn't mean to be rude.  I'm afraid I find the game client to be a bit ... busy, and I'm still getting used to it.

So, I signed up a couple nights ago, made my gang, and ran the tutorial, which wasn't bad.  Afterwards, I hit the tutorial button again, hoping there was a second stage or something, but it was the same sequence again, so I quit out of it.

Last night I logged in and saw that a Deathrace event was about to start, so with a bit of fumbling around, I managed to join it.  The cars were simple Asp IIs, with one forward-mounted machinegun and an oil dropper in the rear, but it was on a dirt track.  This was a bit of an issue for my first event, as there was a hellacious amount of dust in the air, especially at the start of the race, and the cars didn't handle too well on the dirt (of course, the oil didn't help).

I found the turn result announcements to be confusing, with the big list of drivers and their actions scrolling by.  Some of the gory bits caught my eye, what with all the torn flesh, concussions, toes blown off, and whatnot, but I couldn't easily tell what I was doing or what was being done to me, much less what was going on with the rest of the race.

So I'm oversteering all over the place -- my lap time was about double the race leader's -- and as I was closing in on the finish line, going about 60 or 80 mph, I rear-ended a car that in hindsight was obviously moving much slower than I was, if not stopped.  (If you're not watching a car move from turn to turn, you won't know its speed unless you click on it.)  For all I know, the driver may have even resigned from the race.

After I finished the race, I scrolled back up through the turn results.  One announcement stood out:  "[driver x] suffers a major impact, which snaps his spine! [driver x] is dead!"  I said to myself, "whoa, heavy," closed out of the race window, and went to count my winnings.

It wasn't until this morning that it occurred to me that it was probably me who killed that driver.  I wonder if there's any way I can find out.  If I saw someone kill a resigned driver like that, I would blacklist them, noob or no.  Oh well, I guess I should've run the tutorial again after all. 

[WayAbvPar]

I remember greeting you, but missed your response- I go AFK a lot and play Civ or surf while I wait for things to get going. As for killing the other driver- it was most likely a guy from an NPC gang (who are fair game as far as I am concerned). Traditionally PCs signed up for the same event offer a truce to each other and just take overt action against the NPCs. You can tell if there are PCs in your event by the list of gangs in the upper right corner (that shows whether you have finished your turn or not). If anyone but your gang is up there, then it is a PC gang. If not, feel free to murder everyone. Especially those fuckers from Dirge!  

This list of damage has a small arrow/line leading to the car suffering the damage, so you can track who is getting hit. It is harder to keep up with on the event chat screen.

In an event, push F2-F4 which will toggle different info about the car (like mph, gang name, car name, etc).

I am getting a better feel for things, so let me know if you have any questions.

[Ghambit]

WAV, I've started to attempt to understand this game (I gotta say, the combat was way more entertaining than I thought it'd be).  Any chance there's some kind of alliance we can join for help?
Also... do you use DW's vent?

Oh, I'm ingame as "Phantom Phreak" (aetherpeeps)

[WayAbvPar]

I don't use the Vent, but may in the future. As for alliances, there aren't really enough players to divide them up into alliances are far as I can tell. You can align with one of the NPC factions when your reputation with them gets high enough. Best thing to do is to hire a few gangers, run through a few arena events (to get used to the controls and the physics, as well as earn some money), and then drop a whopping $20 for a 3 month subscription (use  24993 as a reference if you sub an I can get a free month!). That gives you $50k seed money, as well as allows you to buy and sell things on the marketplace and to own cars and equipment. Once that is done, rent a car (I would suggest the Antagonist- definitely stay away from the pickup), keep an eye out in the lobby for a scout starting, and then join up. Warn everyone that you are a n00b and they will cut you a lot of slack, and some of the rich vets might even through a car or something your way.

Once you get scouting, you can sell your loot (or fix it up and drive it or sell it), and get some more money rolling in. DO NOT go scouting alone. I did once (because everyone does, despite the warnings), and I got abused and lost a car and a couple of gangers. I think I could do it now with better cars, better gangers, and a much better idea of what I am doing, but I am afraid to risk my best characters 

[Falconeer]

As a side note, I am absolutely against the truce between human players against the NPCs during deathraces. Personally, I think it completely breaks the mood of the game. I, as COE of Evaporate Inc, haven't accepted such truce not even once so far and the results have been, allow me to say this, exhilarating.

[WayAbvPar]

Deathraces are almost always just someone trying to skill up a new character. It is tough enough to keep them alive as it is...why add to the hassle?

If someone denied an offered truce, I would do everything I could to red their gangers.

[Ghambit]

So yah, I like resigned twice with starter gangers and they both ended up dying... in a normal Race also.   One of which was an event I didnt even technically start, but somehow was still listed as playing, so furthermore I couldnt participate in another because it thought I was racing. 

Can you GET OUT of the car and like "run away?"  'Cause there are times when a game is bugged, someone fails to join, have to leave the game, etc. and it's not logically to just simply let a character die.