Re: smugglers 5 background stories first part released
Well that is the reason to upgrade your ship, so you can take on tougher targets. this is particularly true when you get your corvette and can start bounty missions as well as invasions, and when later on you get to do things like attack pirate outposts and have fleet battles.
With smugglers 2, The problem is there is nothing detectable via the graphics, no hospots or links or anything, they just exist, so you'd need ocr or some way to relabel all the upgrade screens. I don't even know if Nielsbauer still has the source code to the game either.
To be honest though, the first three games really were expantions.
The first game just had five ships you could buy and very basic equipment, combat was also very static, and didn't feature too many interesting upgardes or changes. IN addition there was only one star system and travel was pretty basic.
The second game had more star systems, a propper travel screen and different ship classes which ch anged the game as well as equipment, but the equipment was all fairly basic, no weapons with interesting effects or ranges, only one missile at a time, and no real way to customize your ship. It also had only two factions, federation and outer rim, but you would always start off as federation and could only work for outer rim if you changed sides, likewise, the syndicate was basically just a way to pirate ships and get away quickly and the coalition was just an upgrade you could buy to get more cash when trading.
I'll also add that the trading interface in s1 and s2 is something of a pest, sinse it has loads more different commodities to look through and huge columns of buttons.
S3 was the ultimate of that series, it had a propper travel screen (which s2 didn't), and of course the first immergence of four factions, different ships and combat upgrades.
Then you get to s4 and things start again.
Even in terms of game timelines, as far as I can gathe r S2 and S3 both happen at the same time during the Secession war, though it wasn't until s3 that the full identities of the syndicate and the coalition were revealed as actual factions.
~S5 Secession is essentially an upgrade of S4 (it was originally going to be s4.5), though I am not sure whether the games are set at the same time as S3, or slightly later on after the Secession war has been going a while, sinse the manual for S4 (in a passage replicated in the S5 manual)does talk about the war dragging on for years.
So, if you want the full chronological story you could probably get away with playing S5 Secession followed by S5 invasion, (which is likely why the two are sold together and why the descriptions of the outer rim and coalitionin Invasion tell you to go and play Secession if you want to see either of those faction win the war , though possibly Smugglers 3 comes first, although to play correctly you'd have to retire in S3 before t he civil war finishes.
S5 Invasion of course is the direct sequel and what happens after the Secession war, and judging by what is revealed in the Aftermath side quest, the next full game (presumably s6), will take place after the Jalkath war, it might even feature four factions again, though we'll see.
In general while I am glad I bought the smugglers pack to support a developer who has done such a lot for access in essentially a graphical game, and while I have spent many fun hours with s3 and s4, these days the S5 games are just so superior to both I would miss a lot of features.
The only thing I can see as a distinct advantage in a past game is the S3 addon which has probably the single largest number of ships, not to mention the ship baqttles tournament minigame on gameris. Though I do very much hope more addons to the S5 games might add more ships back into the mix, ---- I'd love to see the Storm crow, , Cariage, Firestarter and Gladiator again, though sinse a lot of the s3 equipment that didn't make it into s4 such as mines and Zulu Torpedos is back in S5, I'm hoping we will see some of the ships again too in later expantions.
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