I just dl'd SW tonight and am trying to play through the Tutorial. I haven't got very far, but already I'm totally stuck. At one point, early on, you are instructed to navigate (move) to a Navigational Beacon that is highlighted for you. Well, the problem is... my ship wasn't highlighted at that time, which is necessary to tell it where to move... so I had to click on my Pilot portrait to select the ship. When you do that... the beacon becomes UNselected and now has totally disappeared! Since I'm going thru a tutorial, I'm not familiar enough with the game to know how to continue. I did find the Radar key (TAB). But no luck... the beacon is NOT on the radar. The only thing(s) on the radar are my ship, Ace's ship, and the Firing Range. No beacon, so I can't continue the tutorial! Anybody have a clue? I've flown around for about 30 minutes hoping I would stumble on it again. I hope the rest of the game isn't this buggy!

UPDATE: I started the tutorial over, and managed to complete it. I had to be very careful not to click anywhere except on the buoy when it first shows up. Kinda weird.

I also ran into another "situation" that I couldn't complete. I think this was in Part 2. You were supposed to repair Ace's ship. I could not click on anything to get Ace to repair it. You were directed to click on his portrait and select a repair action. Well, that action is dimmed and can't be selected! I finally found an icon in the top-left of the screen that basically skipped that step. I wonder if that icon would have skipped me past my first problem?

The tutorial is a bit of a monster. There's a few "you touched something you weren't told to, so now everything's broken" traps built into it, the text is sometimes overly vague, and in some cases the terminology used doesn't match the names of the various HUD elements. Use the Quest and Log liberally, or just skip the tutorial entirely. Chances are you'll figure things out on your own.

The only not-very-intuitive thing the tutorial shows you, is how to form wings. You do this by dragging & dropping pilot portraits on top of each other to form wings, and dragging the portraits out of their frame to detach pilots. If you understand this, skip the tutorial.

Anyway, to your problem: look at the pilot portraits down in the lower left corner. Above each pilot's portrait are two small icons. These are buttons. The one on the left is for wing commands/combat roles. The one on the right is for special stuff that particular ship or pilot can do.

What you're looking for is Ace's repair nanites. These are one of Ace's specials, so it's the button on top right of his picture you want. And of course, they're not called anything you'd be likely to guess based on the tutorial info. They're called something like Trolls, I think. Anyway, there's only 2-3 things to pick from and clicking the wrong ones won't break anything.

Excellent! Thanks for the explanations. I haven't played this game lately and didn't get very far before. I'm not much of a "trooper" in the figuring-things-out-by-myself category, or just lack the patience to do it alone sometimes. Did you finish the game? Did you like it?

I can get into games with a good tutorial and get frustrated and quit when there's a bad one. I almost prefer NO tutorial to a poorly written one, because it spoils the experience and I tend to wander away to something else.

I finished it several years ago. I decided to (re-)play the series from the beginning now, since I never played the other games. So... Yes I've finished it, and yes I like it a great deal.

It's fairly linear, though there's frequently an optional thing or two to do during missions. The story isn't anything special, but the game has a kind of humour that works very well with the horrific voice acting and slightly crap translation, so it's pretty entertaining throughout.

It's also pretty difficult. Save often, in multiple slots, and expect to get wiped out a lot. Yes, it starts out easy enough. But the last half or so of the game gets kind of brutal. And kind of puzzle'y. Past a certain point, the focus sort of becomes about how to trigger the next leg of a mission without getting wiped out. That's pretty meta-gamy and probably not for everyone, and I'm guessing it's the reason it didn't get the greatest reviews back when it was released.

So the game is better than the tutorial? Because this tutorial is horrible.

Yeah, I think it's pretty decent, and enjoyable. Other than this broken spot in the tutorial, the rest of it is basically designed just to get you used to the basic controls. If you played through SW and enjoyed it, but wished it were bigger, and had more freedom and less linearity to the story/plot, I would definitely recommend picking up Star Wolves 3. Hopefully GOG will get it here, but in the meantime, it can be had on GG. There are also some nice fan made mods that can be picked up on 1C's website under SW3's forum. SW3 ended up being one of my favorite space strategy games, along side Homeworld 2, SOTS1, and Sins. I recommend playing through SW1 first (or at least until you have the gameplay down pat) to pick up the jist of the game, before SW3...it'll make SW3 all that more enjoyable.

Yeah I got frustrated with the tutorial and just started the game and ended up loving it. The combat was great, and setting up my team to prepare for it was great too. Too bad GOG doesn't have the rest. What is 1C's beef with GOG anyway?

yeah....I don't know what the story with SW3 between GOG and 1C is. I gotta think it would be beneficial for both if they brought it here. Ohh, I forgot to mention, don't bother with SW2, unless you're a masochist. It's a real mess, and nothing but a huge frustration to try and play. Shame too, because it had a few nice ideas for game play, but the execution/scripting was a real clusterf*#k. 3 is awesome though :D

Daw, too bad about SW2. Though I feel like with the power of CheatEngine I could make an unbearable nightmare into an entertaining experience.

I've read elsewhere on the forums that 1C doesn't like GOG in general for some reason. Maybe in a few years (or less) they'll quit thinking that everyone around the world wants to buy buy Steam only?

Star Wolves was pretty much everything I wanted from a tactical space combat game, just too short.

That's strange, cuz GOG does have a few other 1C games...but who knows what's up? 1C actually has quite a few other games I wouldn't mind seeing on GOG...guess time will tell.

" Star Wolves was pretty much everything I wanted from a tactical space combat game, just too short ."

You're gonna LOVE SW3 brother! ;-D