Allegiance is a great game, and it's a free online tactical flight sim. The idea is very innovative however be warned that the learning curve is virtually nonexistent. Here's the description from the website.

"Allegiance is a team-oriented online multiplayer space combat simulation with real-time strategy (RTS) elements. It could be described as a much-improved "X-Wing vs. Tie-Fighter." Whereas most multiplayer online games have a very simplistic concept of teamwork, if any, Allegiance distinguishes itself by having a strategy interface that demands teamwork in order to accomplish anything. Despite all these advancements, Allegiance still works great on a Pentium 2 computer with a 56k modem.

Allegiance can be played exclusively on LAN or internet servers. While it offers a multitude of gameplay modes with up to six teams, by far the most popular is the two-team conquest mode. In this mode, each team has a designated commander who oversees the asteroid mining operation, invests in the tech tree, buys and constructs new bases and commands the team in a semi-RTS like fashion from an overhead 3D map. The gameplay area is several sectors of space filled with asteroids on which the bases are built. There are roughly five tech-trees to pursue, resulting in a vast variety of different approaches to winning the game, including but not limited to: behind-enemy-lines teleport attacks, fighter raids, bombing, capturing enemy bases, stealth attacks and big capital ships. Typical games consist of 20 to 30 players per side, but big games can support up to 200 players simultaneously.

Allegiance was released in 2000 by Microsoft. Unfortunately, it was let down by some serious bugs that took too long to iron out, a pay-per-month scheme, and lack of developer support and marketing. The game used to be hosted as part of Microsoft's Zone gaming service, but was eventually abandoned. Not to be defeated, a group of independent Allegiance players spearheaded the effort to keep the game alive and running. What eventually became the Free Allegiance Organization (FAO) kept the game operating by hosting its own lobby and game servers and by writing their own bug fixes for the game.

In February 2004, Microsoft released the source code for Allegiance, and cited the devotion of its hard-core players for doing so. Now at last the game is truely free, the bugs that crippled the initial release have been fixed, and the game development is continued by the community. It still remains the best team-oriented multiplayer action/sim game on the internet."

If you're still interested please visit the following links for more information:
http://www.freeallegiance.org/
http://www.freeallegiance.org/login.shtml

And also please register for a forum account, as well as to read through a bit of the crash course on alleg academy
http://www.alleg-academy.org/

If you need any help feel free to pm me on the boards, my freeallegiance board nick is kalveth

If you see me in game, feel free to ask for help, my callsign in game is
kalveth@SRM

edit: this game was released in 2000, don't worry about system requirements, it can probably run on a p2 :P , a broadband connection would help but lotsa people play on a dial up connection, also a joystick is not needed, I'm a keyboard and mouser myself.

seems like a promising game. Good find.

o.O looks good, maybe i'll try it out

I tried that game a bit back. VERY CONFUSING.

Like I said the learning curve is straight up, but once you learn everything and understand the game it's fun. This is not a jump in and play game, I highly recommend you read the crash course of the alleg academy, play all the training missions, and than play a few games in the newb server before hopping into the dn alpha server (or which ever has the greatest amount of players).

Do you have to download it or can you play it off the internet? Im not sure because this isnt the same game I thought it was.

Downlaoded it, played it, not the game for me.

For the training missions it went directly to the game screen, and nothing happened. I tried pressing buttons and etc and for a few minutes nothing happens until finally the tutorial started. I must say teh tutorial sucked since it was slow (transitionally) and I lost every time I tried to destroy a enemy unit, which was hard auto focusing the target since it moved everywhere and took me a while to find the target and died.

This game isnt really what I thought it was, but its okay for people who like flight simulators (tactical fight) if you like to move alot.

heh heh heh, you ground huggers don't think enough in 3 dimensional space :shifty:

I dont mind the 3 dimensional space. its the gameplay that disappointed me. I expected better mobility and view and alot of other goods, but this doesnt really meet my standards.

I dont mind the 3 dimensional space. its the gameplay that disappointed me. I expected better mobility and view and alot of other goods, but this doesnt really meet my standards.

The goods and such are only accessible in actual online play when you have an actual commander buy you things, or when you play comm yourself (which is not recommended when you're learning the game), however even in the beginning of the game when the tech is just getting researched by the comm there are plenty of things to do such as nanning, scouting, probing, miner hunting, miner defending, constructor defending, constructor defending and so on and so forth, the game is very complex and it'll be a little boring at first. The training only serves to get you familiar with the controls. Also if you read the advanced section of alleg academy, it's not advised you use the default keyboard set up (and don't fly with arrow keys!, fly with the mouse, it's under game options and "virtual joystick" aka mouse). Of course there are certain times when the lead indicator is not available (although it is a researchable option under certain factions and only under special circumstances) but you get used to flying without it, besides lead indicators are for wusses :heh: . Drop me a pm and I can find a time on the weekend to play with you and familiarize you with the more exciting stuff or you can just try out a couple of games online. Also people may find the game boring because they're not familiar with the game and end up flying around wondering what to do even though there are many things which can be done (I've personally seen newb's flying around in circles in light interceptors (which have the worst scan range in the game) in an unoccupied sector with nothing going interesting going on and when there were advanced fighters already researched complaining about how boring the game is :huh: , needless to say they got a pretty good dressing down by the comms and the vets).

I play this game sometimes, I'm pretty useless since I don't play it very often and I pretty much just do fly around and not do much until I get ordered to do something, I also have a nasty habit (gained from playing Freespace 2) of using my afterburners as if they regenerate.

yeah, first flightsim I played was fs, than fs2, but now I can barely play fs2, no side thrusters really suck