There still is alitlebit in vanilla (unmodified) X3. There were alot of micromanagement in X2.
#X3 REUNION MAP KM TO M HOW TO#
I remember playing X2 for a very small amount of time but I just couldn't get into it because I couldn't figure out how to do anything, and it seemed like I had to micro manage moving my materials around, which sucked. Eliminating the guys who were nuts enough to think that people would want to play a modern King's Bounty (and if you don't believe this is even a little bit nuts, go read the HOMMVI boards, where people are grousing about HOMM being turn-based, and how they couldmake it more like Halo Wars and bring it to the Xbox) essentially eliminates your entire pool of potential developers and leaves all of us with only Iwar, Freespace, and fond memories of blaming accidental deaths on that goddamn Logitech Wingman always drifting in the wrong direction (Sidewinder 3DPro ftw).
#X3 REUNION MAP KM TO M PC#
If we go with the theory that a hard space sim is more or less confined to a pc by its very nature, who do we have that only develops for the PC anymore? the answer, unfortunately, is not very many companies aside from the random Russian studios, CDProjekt RED, and the indie auteurs, there is effectively no developer that is willing to develop for the market we need them to develop for, the PC. It would certainly be possible for someone to put out a proper joystick for a console (see Ace Combat 6), but try picturing yourself playing spaceBlackshark over XBL would they sell more than a handful of copies, if that? Mild ad-homs, aside, I don't believe you've addressed the root point: hard space sims are, almost inherently, PC-centric. I will admit to being amused that the GESC's very own Captain Brusque has seen fit to chastise me with regards to tone, however. When they keep the scope manageable, and polish what they have until it shines and is a fun game, then I don't know that there's any non-MMO genre that's out of reach for a small developer. When low budget games fall down it's almost always because they overreached their capability and end up with a game that feels unpolished and unbalanced.
Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be upset if some company wanted to dump $100m into a space sim with a ton of voice acting and shiny ships, but I don't think that level of investment is necessary to make a game that satisfies the cravings that the lack of space sims creates. There also weren't super complicated missions that would be difficult to re-create. There was nothing about the mechanics of managing or flying the ships in Tie Fighter or Freespace that was particularly complicated to understand. You talk about the old games being super complicated, but that was mostly because all game UIs sucked back then, and you had to do just about everything with an unlabeled keyboard command. Jakal, I just don't think it has to be that complicated or big a production.