Independence War: The Starship Simulator

aka: I-War, I-War: Enter Infinity, I-War: Rebellion im Universum, Independence War, Infinity Wars
Moby ID: 801
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Description official descriptions

The Indies, colonists from Earth, and the Commonwealth are engaged in a never-ending war in Space. As an officer of the Commonwealth it's your job to strip these rebels of their defiant natures and force them to re-join with Earth.

Independence War: The Starship Simulator is a space-sim with a twist. Instead of flying the usual fighters, you take charge of a 150-metre long Dreadnaught-class corvette. And all the goodies of a capital ship are included: big guns, big shields, lots of missiles. All the daily essentials for an officer of the Navy.

Mission times vary from 5 minutes up to 35 minutes without save point. If you have successfully completed the mission, the game will save. There are primary and secondary missions and, later in the game, you can change the sides from the Navy to the Indies. Later, the Dreadnaught become updated with more firepower, new missiles and a friend. The game has three endings.

Some of the missions require you to remote control other crafts, such as fighter, freighter, and more. Unfortunately, when you are controlling that ship, your own ship is flying with no one at the helm.

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Credits (Windows version)

50 People · View all

Design
Lead Programming
Programming
AI Programming
Music
Sound
Art Director
Briefing Animation
Integration & Game Test
Project Presentation
  • Jacqui Lyons & Marjacq
Voice Recording
  • M&S Music Tunstudio GmbH
German Voices
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 84% (based on 17 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 22 ratings with 7 reviews)

The way I wish X-Wing had been . . .

The Good
The graphics were quite good and full of nice touches. Some examples are, the fact that space is dark (although you can make it lighter in the options menu), the unobtrusive lines that tell you your direction of movement, and the trails left by other craft which tell you their direction of movement. I also liked the neutral backdrops with the planets looming over most of the on-screen action.

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The fabled "Newton-ish physics" rocked. I loved the way they worked this. Instead of the "point-and-go" physics of most space sims (in which you have absolutely no inertia) you have mass, which means you have inertia and because you are flying a corvette, not a fighter, you have a lot of it. Once you're going 1000 meters per second in one direction, it gets hard to stop. Although some gripe about this, I found true depth here. You can do many things with your mass and inertia that you simply can't do in a game like X-Wing.

Some examples:

-You can circle-strafe. By matching a large cruiser's speed and turning off the computer-assist (which tries to keep you going forward), you can use your lateral thrusters to circle around the enemy and make yourself hard to hit, as well as give you a constant target.

-You can get off more rounds in a pass. You get going towards an installation and turn off the computer-assist. Then you just kepp your nose pointed at the target, as your inertia keeps ou going.

-You can ram. Because you have a large amount of mass, smaller ships will crumple when you ram into them at high speeds. The usefulness of this is accentuated by your sheilds, which can be turned on in a single large burst, making you practiacally invincible for a second.

And before anyone complains about the speed of acelleration and turn, as well as other physics related gripes, please realize, this is the future. Just because our space shuttle can't acellerate that fast, doesn't mean that ships in 2500 can't.

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I liked the high speed travel model. It was a lot of fun just cruising past moons in NAV training 2, by using the LDS drive (which moves you at speeds from 1 km/s to nine-tenths of the speed of light.).

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The planets exist! You can run into them!

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It was a fun game to play, in my opinion, and that recommends it by itself.

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It has a great intro. It's a 14 minute long, 3D rendered monster, that I have watched more than four times. It is, basically, the entire first disk, minus the install.

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The FMV is spactacular all the way through.

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It's complex. There are a lot of things you can do with your ship, or you can leave them all alone, and still do well. For instance, you can have your engineering teams fix your weapons systems first, if you need to shoot back, but your guns are damaged, or your LDS

The Bad
The scripting is carved in stone. While this makes it easier to keep the story in flow, it makes some missions rather difficult to win.

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No multiplayer.

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You can only fly the corvette, although you can fly some others by remote control at certain points.

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The interface, although bare-bones simple, is a bit vauge. Also, the red "back-up" arrow disappeared when I used my Voodoo 2.

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There's no 3D support other than 3Dfx (that I know of).

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Weapon accuracy seems a bit low sometimes

The Bottom Line
A great play. Although not without its share of flaws, it was a heck of a lot of fun, and I'd recommend it to any simmer, or gamer in general. I really wish that the original X-Wing had had a physics model like this, because I found so much fun and depth in it.

Windows · by Clinton Webb (19) · 2000

Flawed

The Good
It's an intriguing idea - command a corvette-sized space vessel through a series of 'X-Wing' esque missions - and the graphics, although three years old, are still very attractive. Space is a wash of colours, and the sequences in which you zoom through asteroid fields are alarming. The attempt at making accurate, but playable space physics is commendably effective, much better than the ultra-anal 'Frontier'.

The Bad
On the other hand, it doesn't really gel. Your corvette flies like a bulkier Y-wing, and it only has one gun, so you don't get the impression you're in charge of a death-dealing arsenal. You can switch between multiple command stations, but there's no real point in doing so. The gameplay itself falls down hardest - space combat is a jousting match, in which the slightest damage results in you drifting off, out of control. The missions are very tightly scripted, too, and you get the feeling that you're just a cog in a giant FMV. Maybe as a 'Frontier'-style epic space trading game it would have worked better.

As for FMV, this was probably the most extravagant use of an intro movie ever. The entire first disc contains a long, dull sci-fi epic that most people will skip past after the first thirty seconds, and never see again.

The Bottom Line
An interesting idea marred by ill-thought-out execution.

Windows · by Ashley Pomeroy (225) · 2000

This is one kick-ass game.

The Good
Everything. It's unfortunate that Ashely didn't share my inthusiasm. As for the graphics, if you're play with a 3D acellerator, they can match or top modern day computer games. The flight being like a "Bulky Y-Wing" is because it's realistic. If you were to really fly a spacecraft that large, it wouldn't handle like ships in other games. As for the weapons, there are more than one. The stations do prove little use, but if you need to see the damage of your ship, a breifing document, weapon selection or things along that line, changing stations is useful. This fourteen-minute intro video was actually VERY interesting and I had to watch it multiple times as I played the game to figure things out that I hadn't been able to before. It also had superb graphics that toped some modern-day videos. As for the combat, it gets back to the control: This game is going for realism. If you were to be shot by a laser cannon in the right spot, you should be sent drifting. But the good part of that is that you can get up again and fight. If you look at the Engeneering station, you'll see that the Dreadnoght CNV-301 has four repair crews whom you can dispatch acordingly.
Sorry to gang up on you, Ashley, but maybe if you picked up the instruction book more than just to take it out of the box, you might have discovered the magnatude of this game.

The Bad
Very complicted controls; almost every key on the keyboard has one or more tasks. For some people, the plot may be a bit to deep (but I like it). Not much more that's bad, but if you're into realist sci-fi games and are willing to take some time to study the controls, it's a great game.

The Bottom Line
It's an interesting idea indeed. And I think that Partical Systems\Infograms did a GREAT job on this game and deserve two (or more if humanly possible) thumbs up.

Windows · by Kahlon Graham (2) · 2000

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Trivia

3dfx patch

There's a 3dfx patch that allows the game to use 3dfx 3D accelerators for improved graphics. This applies to I-War European release only, not the US release titled Independence War.

Editor

You can download the I-WAR developer's kit from the official website. It allows you to figure out the scripts and the events that goes into making a single mission, and create your own.

Version differences

The final mission of the game (Impeachment) was split in two missions for the western release (at the point were the Excalibur flees from the main navy fleet).

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • April 1999 (Issue #177) – Best Space Sim of the Year

Information also contributed by Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by faceless.

Additional contributors: Trixter, Maury Markowitz, Rebound Boy, Erwin Bergervoet, Kasey Chang, Joel Segerbäck, Independent, Patrick Bregger.

Game added January 27, 2000. Last modified November 16, 2023.