Parkan II, like Elite meets Starflight meets BC3000 (without the suck)

[Thrag]

The Space Force II thread ended up being about this game, so instead of continuing to jack that thread I decided to start a new thread for this game.

Parkan II is basically a combination of arcade space combat and an FPS wrapped in a Elite or Space Rangers 2 like game. There is an overall plot, but (so far) it seems you aren't forced into it.

There are two halves of the game, space flight/combat for flying from system to system to trade, pirate, raid, do missions, etc. and a FPS engine for when you board enemy ships, land on planets or dock with stations.

So I can get back to actually working at this point I'm going to cut and paste some info from the other thread, so forgive me if it isn't organized very well, a lot of it was in response to questions in that thread. There impressions are based on only a few days of play.

I've moved out of the starting system and have been exploring the local cluster of star systems. It seems that you can go as far as your fuel can take you. I don't know if there are special areas or encounters to reward random exploration. You can go down to any planet and check out the port, factories, and other facilities (which are cookie cutter structures so far) and you can grab any equipment you find so that is a minor reward for exploring. You do suffer a penalty to you relations with the clan the base belongs to if you do steal, and of course on bases where clans are already hostile to you, you will be attacked on sight.

You can make a decent profit raiding enemy bases, however missions are probably more profitable. Missions are what you'd expect of generated missions. Take this to here. Destroy enemy ships there. There are more interesting missions, like ones where you must fight some ships, land on the planet, have a ground battle, board an enemy ship and get something or upload a virus (which means stand in the command spot and hit x after killing all the enemies).

You have your ship to upgrade, with power plant, engine, sensors, shield modules, and various weapons and special modules. Plus you have your battlesuit to upgrade, with it's power plant, exoskeleton (analogous to your ships engine), shield, sensors, weapons and special modules.

You can take over planets, and it appears you can build factories and make stuff, but I haven't done any of that yet.

Your ship can carry drones (fighters) that assist you in ship combat. There are also "warbots" that assist you in ground combat. There are flying warbots, walking warbots, tanks, etc. It is pretty cool to land, run to cover and command the ship to drop the warbots and watch the battle for a few seconds before engaging (though sometimes you want to run out by yourself and land some missiles on the large defense turrets that will shred your guys if you drop them too soon, and then have them drop to finish off enemy forces, a lesson I just learned the hard way).

There are random encounters in space. Enemies will often attack, but sometimes give you missions to get in their good graces. Neutral and friendly ships can be traded with, they will also have info (things like navigation maps and planet info for other systems) and missions, just like planets as bases.

Like everything I've experienced in the game the encounters are pretty cookie cutter, so far I get one of a handful of greetings in a cheesy droid voice (good cheesy though), and then you either fight or you have access to the trade, info and mission menus in the UI until you or the other guy leaves the area.

Mouse and keyboard work fine. So far I haven't bothered to knock the dust off my stick and throttle. Combat is arcade space combat, no inertia. When you take your hand off the throttle you slow down. You can thrust left, right, up and down in addition to yaw, pitch and roll. You have an afterburner as well.

The commands for drones and warbots are pretty simple, "follow me", "attack my target" type things. They will of course engage on their own as well.

My only major gripe is the slowdown when you are on your own ship in a boarding action or on a planet/station. It's weird, I get >100 fps sometimes, but in that situation it goes down to 12. Thankfully the only thing you generally do on your own ship is walk to the transport beam which is never far away.

My minor gripe is the cookie cutter nature of the universe. So far every spaceport I've seen has the same layout. I think I've seen a couple of different layouts of planetary factories, so I imagine there is some small variety in the structures.

[Thrag]

Here are some impressions from another person in the SR2 thread.

Parkan 2 tripped my what-the-hell buying circuits. I've played a little bit of it so far, basically through the tutorial sequences. The translation has its good points and bad points. On the plus side, it's pretty funny, like my favorite thing your AI narrator, Airene (of course) has said so far, "Every system is broken. But everything else is okay." or something like that. It's good to keep that kind of perspective in the face of personal misfortune!

The voiceacting is, of course, horrible. This falls mostly on the positive side of the balance sheet, especially when you factor in the death-cries of enemy robots.

The downside of the russglish comes from needed information to progress sometimes getting garbled in it. There was a bit of the tutorial I was flatout stumped on for a bit, needing some ship geegaw to perform intersystem jumps. It was only after visiting every planet in the starting system that I found what I was looking for--and in retrospect was able to parse the info it was trying to get across.

One crash so far, due to the engine choking on some kind of scripting error, and the framerate is really jerky when docked to an enemy ship, but inside yours.

Does support up to 1920x1200, but it's one of those games without scaling UIs, so the text is nigh-unreadable for my bad eyes at that, so had to kick it down. Further, there didn't seem to be any lower-res widescreen settings, so sideboxing it went.

Money is fuel is money, which is an interesting minor abstraction. Fuel seems to only get used when jumping from one system to another, not flying from planet to planet within one, and for purchasing. You can also manufacture personal packs of rockets for your secondary rocket launcher weapon in FPS mode at your rearming station.

Apparently later on in the game, you can use it to upgrade and build onto planetary bases that you take over.

The easiest way to win all ship-to-ship combat is to not even try, just get close enough to an enemy long enough to trigger the autodocking. Whereupon you can board and blow up the robot crew on the ship; as the last one goes, the ship enters into an extremely generous self-destruct timer, which gives more than enough time to run around, steal whatever bits of cargo you can, and undock. All the other enemy ships will have been politely waiting their turn for you to then do the same to them.

The universe thus far is very sterile. I randomly met one neutral trader (which knocks you right out of autopilot to talk with him), and a pirate trying to get me to take over friendly planetary bases. Aside from that, I haven't seen any NPC traffic whatsoever.

Planetside feels a bit better--the bases have a small handful of robots roaming around, at least. Of course, when you're in good graces, you never need to step outside your ship when you land, as you can contract all business from inside it.

It's similar to Battlecruiser only inasmuch as it does quite a few things at once, none of them particularly well, but with a certain earnestness. All in all, the things it does, while not done particularly well, are still done rather better than Battlecruiser. Unknown whether the developers are insane or not, though.

[flyinj]

I tried to buy this off of GamersGate last night. They only accept paypal payments... and because it's an "overseas" vendor, I have to wait 4 days for my payment to clear. And they don't clear payments on weekends. So, I have to wait until Monday to play the game.

Kind of defeats the purpose of digital distribution.

[Thrag]

I tried to buy this off of GamersGate last night. They only accept paypal payments... and because it's an "overseas" vendor, I have to wait 4 days for my payment to clear. And they don't clear payments on weekends. So, I have to wait until Monday to play the game.

Kind of defeats the purpose of digital distribution.

They don't only accept paypal. I paid with a credit card. Since they are using the PayPal system for all payments including credit cards (PayPal bought out that business from Verisign a while ago) that option is more prominent on the pages. Take a second look.

[Angrycoder]

I just bought it with paypal and within 5 minutes I was downloading the game, I'm not sure what is different about your account.

[Saxman_72]

Ditto here with paying via credit card. I've only spent about an hour with the game so far, though, so I can't really make any comments other than the intro VO being wretchedly laughable.

[Drastic]

The intro was something else. I assume it made more semblance of sense in the original language, and if you played Parkan 1.

They could send me back in time...but only exactly 17 years and 4 months. Er...that's good? Or that's bad?

As was fairly mentioned in the other thread, one of the dissimilarities between this and Battlecruiser is that Parkan's GUI is perfectly useable and relatively well-thought-out. There's minor quibbles like inventory just being a big unsorted pile of icons that aren't immediately clear (and with lengthy gobbledygook descriptions), and the log is a similar giant pile of messages, but the piles are easy to get into and work with.

[Thrag]

I finally figured out equipment when I realized that in the part numbers, like SPH-1D or SPH0-2B, the only thing that really matters is the one integer that represents the tech level. So I can figure out most things at a glance now. I still have no idea what to do with the "nanocatalysts" and the blueprint things.

Also, I figured only last night out that 'tab' for afterburner, is also sprint in FPS mode. Very helpful.

The best news of all, I finally upgraded my ship and the ridiculous slow down on my own ship in boarding/landing seems to have gone away.

[Drastic]

Equipment also is broken into tiers, each clan having better stuff. Yoinked from an OO thread (http://www.octopusoverlords.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=50463&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0):

For example, tho' you're in Hammer clan space initially (weakest ships, weapons and equipment), you start randomly getting jumped by Dagger clan pirate ships. You can find D-class weapons and equipment as loot aboard these ships to upgrade your ship and battle-suit. Of course, Dagger ships and droids are harder to beat than Hammer (your ship and suit are initially equipped with H-class stuff). There's a progression of ship/equipment classes based on the clans: H, D, O, X, M, A. One cruiser class per clan, several different weapon/missile types per clan, one set of equipment upgrades for ship and battle-suit per clan (shields, armor, sensors, generators, etc). Also any equipment, no matter what's its class can be installed on any class ship, i.e., you can install X-class weapons and equipment on an H-cruiser. Of course, that upgraded H-cruiser will be less powerful than an X-cruiser, but it will own D and O cruisers. Usually, you'll end up with a mix of weapon classes on your ship and suit.

[SirTomster]

Hmmm. Might have to get this.. but finaly broke down and purchase Space Rangers 2 yesterday.. Downloaded and ready to launch when I get home.

Keep talking about it :)

These games making me want to hop in my time machine and get my Amiga 500 and play Elite.

[Thrag]

Equipment also is broken into tiers, each clan having better stuff. Yoinked from an OO thread (http://www.octopusoverlords.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=50463&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0):

Cool, thanks for the info.

[Bee]

This looks very intriguing to me, but I'm a little concerned about the crashes being reported over in the OO thread for those with Nvidia cards plus onboard sound (since I have that combination). Anyone with that combination not having problems?

[Drastic]

So missions are pretty straightforward so far--except for this "industrial espionage" one I've got sitting in my queue.

They say they want a specific kind of missile--which I just happen to have a pack of in my hold from some random pirate kill. They'll pay a good chunk of fuel for it. But I go to where they say the destination is, and there things just don't happen. Just selling it to the planet's trade center in the usual drag-and-drop fashion only gives the stock price, not the huge bonus.

Also, I only just realized there's a pdf manual with the game. It has a backstory, which is gloriously garbled. Behold:

At the same time, the pilot had lost not only "Parkan", but also its supercomputer, so he could no more pilot ships of that class. For it is impossible to adapt the brain of the man to function with another AI of such level--the formed synapses are impossible to rebuilt (at best, it will finally result into a the mental disorder).

It does vaguely make the time travel throwaway line make more sense. Sort of.

[AaronSofaer]

That backstory is gloriously garbled, but it's readable.

[Drastic]

That's where the glory comes in. Lots of bad translations can do unreadably garbled, but this one is readable enough that the garbled just enhances the funny.

Further tips: I found out the [ ] keys cycle the upper left/right displays of your target and your ship/battlesuit's damage display, between iconic, just status bars, and none. I've found the middle setting of just the status bars more useful, as it gives a better indication of just how close your hull is to giving up--at least at the starter tech levels I'm at, shields go away quickly, especially in FPS mode, and the state of your hull/armor is more indicative of when you need to consider being more cautious.

[Igor Muravyev]

Didn't this game come out very long ago?

[Drastic]

Two years ago in Russian. It just took its time getting an official release in passable English.

[Thrag]

So missions are pretty straightforward so far--except for this "industrial espionage" one I've got sitting in my queue.

I'm pretty sure that you need to find the blueprint for whatever device they want, not the device itself, but since I haven't managed to complete one of those missions yet I'm not positive.

[Thrag]

I'm in Oberon space now, things are getting much tougher. Enemy ships are fast enough that getting a good lock on to board is getting very difficult. Fighters are an absolute necessity for most space combat (and often a joy to watch, if there's one wounded enemy left I'll just sit back and watch the dogs finish them off). Ground combat is getting really tough and you absolutely need some decent ground forces to back you up. My favorite tactic right now for ground combat is to run like hell for cover as soon as I drop (maybe launching a few guided missiles at a nearby turret on the way if practical), lure the enemy toward me, staying behind cover and only doing an occasional pop-up with the jet pack to get a few shots off until they close on me. Once they have closed I drop my warbots which will typically be behind or right in the middle of the enemy, was three seconds to the enemy to start paying attention to my backup, and then go in to join the battle. Thankfully I've been able to find some 3O and 4X equipment so the area is getting a little more survivable.

[Henry Wilson]

They could send me back in time...but only exactly 17 years and 4 months. Er...that's good? Or that's bad?

It's wonderful. If they could send me back 17 years and 4 months, I'd be in my physical prime. I'd carry back with me many years of painfully gained experience in the art of talking to women. I'd know when to dump that Red Hat stock.

[krayzkrok]

Well that sucks. I hate Paypal. It simply refuses to recognise my credit card (techinically a credit / debit card combined), and they also refuse to help me find the problem (other than "try another bank" which gets them a great big "Fuck you").

[hong]

This is the first I've heard of Parkan 2. Any links for to be enlightened?

[flyingelvis]

So is this Oblivion in space?

Just kidding...

[Sebmolo]

This is the first I've heard of Parkan 2. Any links for to be enlightened?

Try this (http://www.google.co.nz/search?q=parkan+2&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a).

[Aszurom]

I bought it when I was getting the SOTS expansion. Thus far, I'm not impressed in the least. I'll try to like it again later.

[Marcin]

Terrible space combat, makes me want to install X3 just to see if it's gotten any better. The rest is interesting though - I like the big inventory, seeing my cargo in the actual ship, and getting out and walking around on planet.

Yes, singular planet, I've only tried it for an hour so far :P Going in again now, but that combat really turns me off. My projectiles travel at walking pace, the bad guys have no inertia whatsoever, and if I accelerate towards them they turn 180 in an instant and ram me. Repeat. :/

[Drastic]

I've found it helps most to not think of the space combat as space combat. It's really just a very simple FPS with no walls, floor, or ceiling--if you aren't spending most of your time going sideways instead of forward, it turns into jousting ramming speed 3000.

Also, getting a pack of combat drones helps to de-suck the space combat considerably.

[Marcin]

Yeah, I keep forgetting that I can (and should) strafe. It just completely destroys the feeling of space combat though. :/

[Thrag]

The base mechanics of the space combat don't change of course, but it seems combat is intentionally easy in the starting area. Later on it gets very hectic. Follow the plot out of the starting area until you get to a place where you start getting your ass kicked. If you spend too much time just easily boarding or destroying Hammer ships you'll get bored.

[Marcin]

I think I'm missing something with regard to capturing bases. It seems like I've been to 3 planets that should have allowed me to do it by now, but everytime I stand in the command center it tells me Access Denied. If I stand there while there are still bad guys around I get AIrine telling me so - but after I clear them it's still Denied with no further prompts on how to remedy that ...

I'm still in the noob portion, trying to get you-know-what back. I just found the NET jumpdrives, if that makes any difference ... is it still too early for base capturing, or am I just doing something wrong?

[Drastic]

Base capturing requires you to have a mission specifically to do so, picked up in the same manner as the "deliver cargo here" and whatnot. Otherwise, yup, the only thing to do is to blow up every robot there ("aaagh" flatly-read still cracks me up) and steal all cargo that's lying about.

On occasion, you'll randomly meet non-hostile pirates who'll offer you the access codes and missions to take over friendly bases, too, if you're of a mind to be piratical.

[Xemu]

Argh, finally get around to playing this damn game and it reliably bluescreens my machine as soon as I blow up one of the tutorial dummy targets. There's basically zero tech support for this game either. I guess I could bitch at GamersGate and try and get my money back... :(

[Quitch]

Yeah, I keep forgetting that I can (and should) strafe. It just completely destroys the feeling of space combat though. :/

I would have thought space combat would be all about strafing... though not in the inertialess way Parkan 2 handles it :)

[Robert Sharp]

Yeah, I keep forgetting that I can (and should) strafe. It just completely destroys the feeling of space combat though. :/

Why's that? In space, there's no friction or drag, so you can go whatever direction you want. Only inertia limits you.

(there...stock answer to make you feel better about the cheezy combat)

[Idar Thorvaldsen]

Argh, finally get around to playing this damn game and it reliably bluescreens my machine as soon as I blow up one of the tutorial dummy targets. There's basically zero tech support for this game either. I guess I could bitch at GamersGate and try and get my money back... :(

Probably some sound issue; others have reported the same. Try messing about with sound settings in dxdiag.

[Marcin]

Argh, finally get around to playing this damn game and it reliably bluescreens my machine as soon as I blow up one of the tutorial dummy targets. There's basically zero tech support for this game either. I guess I could bitch at GamersGate and try and get my money back... :(

I had the same thing. Go into dxdiag and turn your sound acceleration from Full to Basic. Be warned, it doesn't "stick" after rebooting so you have to turn it down again ...