I love SciFi....... all my friends know this. So when some brand new Hi-Tech comes out I'm usually quick to investigate. Now some times times I regret my purchases but once in a while I come across something that is worth every Linden Dollar I spent. Sadly however.... not "so much" in this case.
The Icarus Transport comes in at a whopping $10,000 Lindens and when you first see it you are instantly blown away at how good it looks. This ship is really an amazing looking build with lots of nice rooms, working escape pods, impressive engine room, navigational radar room, hanger and bridge. The impressive athstetics is an instant selling point...... but why do I "sorta" regret buying this vessal?
For starters the scripting needs work. Now I'm no pro (not even close) to scripting... but what I do have lots of expert scripter friends and TONS of experience as a consumer and builder to know when something just isn't working right. The flight scripts in this ship are not bad but what I don't like is how the ship wanders when flying straight up or down. Because of its enormous size this can be a problem as you accidentally hit sim borders. One good thing though is any part of the ship that makes contact with the sim border will push into the ship. If you're paying attention you can correct your flight path.
Second because of the ships slow flight speed you will rely on the Warp Drive to jump your ship quickly...... but.... it rarely works for me. Now before I go on... this isn't always the case for everyone. A few of my friends have no problem at all... and others... experience the same issue I'm having. I contacted Moo Spyker about this problem and he got back to me pretty quickly. He said the warp drive was working for everyone else and that he didn't know why it wasn't working for me. I had a friend who owns an Icarus come with me to make sure I wasn't frakking up the commands....... I was doing it perfectly. Moo came to the conclusion that my avatar key must be "messed up". Now this bugs me.... and why? Because EVERYTHING I own works for me with no problem. When I asked one of the best scripters I know in SL about this he basically laughed and said "Your key can't break hun". Just as I thought.
One minor thing I need to point out are the poor poses in the basic office chairs. When you sit on them you looks like a robot that is recharging. Maybe I'm a little spoiled but sticking crappy sit poses in furniture is an instant turn off for me. The lounge chairs however do come with a good pose but I would have liked to see more seating options.
The Icarus has some pretty neat escape pods that you rez, sit in then get launched out of the ship. Very cool concept... however in many cases the escape pods don't derezz. Myself and the admins of SBA have had our fair share of Icarus escape pod clean up.
The Icarus has gone through about 5 updates since and the jump warp drive still doesn't work properly. But Moo did add something I really like..... Autopilot! The autopilot works by either programing coordinates into a note card that is installed in the ships HUD or by chat command. You can change the speed now as well which is a really cool feature. I love flying at 32 meters per second from the surface into the outer orbits of space.
In Summary the Icarus is a stunningly beautiful build with a few script glitches that can frustrate even the most level heads. If I were to rate it with stars I'd give it 4 with the 5th star on hold until the Warp Drive gets fixed.
So why did I say "not so much" at the beginning of this review? Well... with a sticker price of 10,000 Lindens I expected something that worked flawlessly. Which was not the case. However this is one of my preferred ships to rez when visiting SBA so for that...... no regrets...... sort of. ;)
