Dr Wookie

Thanks, it's one of my favourite photos from this year !

I don't know huge amounts about computers, but it might be loud due to its location, resulting from bad air circulation; is it jammed in a corner, right up to the wall? There should be plenty of space on all sides.Heh, I got yelled at last time I got a PC ! I decided to get a new desktop, and asked if an Alienware X51 would likely run Elite well. SO MANY people told me I was better off building my own system! But the thing had good reviews, and importantly was small and fairly discrete. Plus, I didn't want to faff. I did manage to change my graphics card later on though!

The Asp Scout had only just been announced; maybe you're thinking of the Diamondback Scout? Having said that, Frontier came out with a Diamondback Explorer in response to player feedback on the Scout; it is larger with more module slots, jumps further, but is slower and less manoeuvrable. A smaller, nippier Asp could be pretty badass! The DBS is billed as a combat explorer and is a fantastic little fighter, but has room for very little else than a fuel scoop and scanners. An Asp Scout might be a bigger version of this. Or it might go the other way, reducing weight to increase range ( inconsistent with existing ship names, and Diamondbacks are from the same manufacturer as the Asp). Either is good

This is my new pimped out ride I've been mining and having a blast! The ring is pristine metallic, meaning only a few chunks are needed to make a full ton, and there's lots of precious metals around. It's only 41 ls from a high tech station which has metals on high demand too! As well as mining, I did a bit of bounty hunting while I was there, helping other miners out. In my first trip out, I made about 150 k on metals (not really trying too hard), and about 250 k on bounties. Since I have class 3 turrets, I can blast pirates and carry on mining ! Frontier keep saying that they're intending to expand missions, and maybe they will in this update or next; the full release always has a bit more stuff than the betas. More complex missions would be very welcome, especially involving passengers that can generate their own mid flight. BREAKING NEWS: 1.5 (Ships) has an intended release at the same time as Horizons, and will bring the total ship count to 30 + Cobra Mk IV. In addition to the Federal Corvette, other new ships for 1.5 include the Imperial Cutter, Asp Scout, and Viper Mk IV! A new asp eh? Very exciting! Also ginormoships

I've been experimenting with a couple of lenses. I really like my 100mm macro lens (Canon F/2.8L), since it is great for portraits as well as macros. I did these for some of my friends before I left my last jobs, for work websites etc (all astrophysicists ) Then again I used the same lens to take these close-ups On the other end of the scale I also got a new super tele lens (Tamron 150-600mm) I have my best moon shot so far As well as wildlife in a nearby nature reserve

I've been messing around with smaller ships, and the viper is great... the only ship to give me red out with the docking computer ! I just swapped it out for a courier, which has insane shields and 3 medium hard points (and more power), too see how I like it. There's now a pretty broad range of small ships to suit various styles of combat. The contrast with the type 9 is huge... I almost drilled a hole in the floor when I first tried to land a courier ! Luckily I had those crazy shields (about as strong as a vulture or python). If you have a fuel scoop and a shield, the asp is pretty cheap to run (but I think the type n ships are cheaper). However, being free to buy all of the goods you want is very important too. Have you looked at the fan-made ship building site coriolis.io? It allows you to set up any ship with any parts, and gives you cost, jump ranges, shields, armour, price etc.. The only downside is that it doesn't include variations in speed. I've spent quite a few hours messing around with it. Apparently the clipper is the best ship for mining, probably because it is the fastest big ship, meaning you can cover a lot of ground. You need to be able to defend yourself unless you go way out. I learned of a system with pristine metallic rings and a high tech station recently (hip 21991 I think), so I am going to build a clipper and find out . A python and vulture combo is very potent. I moved away from those ships after a while because I felt that they were a bit too powerful to be interesting for me. The python is insanely good all round, even though I never flew it pre-nerf. My trade focused Python could also easily handle bounty hunting too, and I was never really troubled by interdiction, and it is the biggest ship that can fit on an outpost. The vulture is thought to be the best combat ship in the game so far, but at least the power restrictions make it interesting to kit out.

Congrats on making surveyor! From experience, a trade Python and battle Vulture plus wiggle room is about 90-100 million unless you find a nice discount. We don't know how much a cobra mk iv is yet, but I would guess a couple of million. In the mean time the diamondback ships are hardened explorers, if you want to try them out. Also, for 13+ million, I would use an asp for trading rather than a type 6, unless you are worried about insurance. It can carry as much, further, and with better protection and mobility. It's a pure upgrade . By the way the CQC stress test beta is available for everyone to play, with full release in 3 weeks

I did say "that I would use" ! I can think of manyEdit: damn it, of is a preposition, isn't it? *looks it up* yes it is!

As a professional wordsperson, I struggle to think of a sentence I would use that ends with a preposition!

According to the full Oxford English Dictionary, people have used jealous as envious since the late 1300s; the meaning of loss comes from the early 1200s so maybe people have fought your battle for 600 years . The distinction is not one I was aware of before, so thank you . http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/100952?redirectedFrom=Jealous&

If it were me, I would sell it at the first available outpost to be honest, since there's no CG on (one just finished). The only way of getting bonus cash right now is to get 10,000 merits in the Sirius Corp power (Li something something) without losing that data. It must be worth quite a bit now!

Supposedly, there's going to be longer range missions soon, but currently all missions are confined to ~15 ly from the mission giver. This isn't much further than my jump range. The cargo missions I take all give more money per ton than I would ever get from profits, and black market missions fine you on the true value of the cargo rather than the reward, so getting caught is only a minor pain. Having said that, I don't do weapons or slaves even when legal. Having said that, I'm in no hurry to make more credits, and consider any money left over after repairs/fuel as good progress (sometimes it's 650 k, sometimes it's 40 k). I'm trying to find a group of systems with a good balance of trades, pirate missions, and rep and once I find it, I'll settle for a while and rent something small and fighty. By the way, according to the latest dev update, it looks like the CQC beta will open up to everyone next week for stress testing

I finished off that guy pretty easily next time round, then finished the game; it took me about 70 hours. I'm very tempted by the idea of new game plus at some point, but maybe will check the expansion first. I know there's a bunch of stuff I missed, and a fair number of ways to play with the world state. I might also radically alter my build. Should be fun when I come back to it

I've now finished Chapter 1, and the gameplay is a lot more interesting now. I have a bunch of special abilities, some of which are particularly effective against certain enemy types, and other abilities solve puzzles. I'm not sure that a non fan would get this far though, as there is a heck of a lot of non interactive story, which would be really confusing

I just splashed on Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls, which takes place between 1 and 2, and involves completely different mechanics. There's still a lot (A LOT) of crazy story though! This time round you play as the sister to the protagonist from the first game (I think), and in the prologue / Chapter 1 there have been some good cameos from other games, as well as another larger than life bunch of characters. Rather than murder mystery, it's now a shooter/brawler, with stealth sections so far. I would say that even though the mechanics are completely different, it's probably not a great place to dip into the series, since if you had no idea what was going on, the story wouldn't make much sense, and the action isn't really that strong. As someone who loved the first two games, I'm having a lot of fun though . They made a weird audio choice for English speaking territories: the game comes with English only by default, and you need to download Japanese voice over if you want it. Furthermore, you can only switch language at the start of a new game. As a result, I've played the first hour or so twice.

HEh, I've just been bimbling around, not using trade tools: having something tell me what to do makes it feel like work! Even so, it's easy to make a tidy profit so long as you don't blow up too often ... I've made about 18 million in it, and lost about 4 due to very bad luck (oh yeah, mentioned above). In a particularly glamorous trip I took about 450 tons of poo from Abraham Lincoln station to a nearby agriculture world, since I got plenty of missions to take stuff there, and lots of demand for food to be gotten from there (Abraham Lincoln is orbiting Earth, is a service economy and only stocks hydrogen fuel and biowaste). The funny thing was that I still got a pirate after my juicy cargo

So I had a pop at fighting the main dude, got killed and am trying to muster up the enthusiasm to try again. I definitely agree with people who expressed earlier sentiments that the game should have ended at a particular early point. There were some fantastic missions early on, but I get the feeling that all of the really good stuff was front loaded. For example no other contract has been as satisfying for me as the Devil By the Well, where researching weaknesses meant the difference between success and failure. Similarly, none of the other characters seem as layered as the Bloody Baron, with the possible exception of Dijkstra (sp). Perhaps it's for the best, since more people are likely to see it that way.

I'm now nearing the end (I think, my main quest is called something like Final Preparations). Real Spoiler: . I honestly think that the question marks are a mistake, since they are so distracting and plentiful that I was super over-leveled for part of the main quest (and am currently still 4 or 5 levels above recommended level). I would prefer to find the events / locations more naturally through exploration rather than divert. I have been playing a very magic-heavy Witcher, with Quen, Axii, and Yrden almost maxed out (the alternative mode for Yrden is a great turret / anti missile defense, while the main version now saps significant health from all enemies in its grasp). I am thinking of doing new game + with a more combatty witcher instead. I'll only take Contracts from boards. Some quests are great, most are interesting, but one or two were really horrible, all the worse because one of them led on naturally from one of the fluffy ones; even in a war ravaged world with monsters and possible apocalypse (?) they seemed unnecessarily cruel.

Some random new stuff : A picture of the surface defence skimmers that will appear in the first Horizons expansion Also, we heard from lead designer Sandro Sammarco that the loot and crafting system will be added for everyone, but certain elements will be restricted to people with the expansion. I've been trying out trucking in a Type 9... I've been pretty lucky so far, but did take a 4 million credit hit after being jumped by an anaconda very close to a planet, and forgot I could just dump cargo . It's pretty fun flying in a completely different way

The Elite Dangerous 1.4 Beta arrived today, with 3 new ships and CQC. I had a quick blast of CQC over 3 maps, came back later, and had matchmaking issues. What I did play was about a million times better than the other ARENA where your COMMANDER hopes to prove their worth ! You start off getting a few hundred credits per match, and gain ranks by earning experience. This was the first time I attacked another player since early alpha, and it was fun; and there's no insurance to worry about. You have another rank for CQC; I am Helpless. The imperial eagle looks and sounds great.. it has a medium hardpoint + 2 small hard points and reaches up to about 420 m/s with boost. This looks like it will be about 100 k, but is free to any kickstarter backer that could take the imperial bounty hunter start option. There are now legitimate salvage missions (taking the form of e.g. finding a black box or personal possessions.

I'm kind of hoping that I'll be able to visit my old work place in game. I was in the more Harvard bit of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, near the big old telescope that was the largest in the world some time in the 1800s . It's a couple of miles from the Institute

Hey guys, the beta for update 1.4 should be released next week, after the bank holiday (so probably Tuesday). Here is the corresponding Dev Update (28th August): Hi everyone, Following on from last week's dev update our big focus at the moment is preparing for the CQC update beta and alongside it the Xbox One release. The CQC update is currently going through our internal QA pass and assuming this continues going well we’ll release the beta next week after the Bank Holiday. CQC Championship is the main feature of the update and that has changed quite a bit since GPP2 on Xbox One. We've been working on matchmaking to improve its speed and reliability. The Xbox One version uses Xbox Live’s functionality, but for PC we have created our own, which is one of the features needing hammering in the beta test. We've also added two new maps for the update: Ice Field and Asteria Point. Ice Field sees you flying through a dense asteroid field where skilled piloting of your ship is required and Asteria Point where the tunnels system in the main structure can be used to shake a tail. Customising ship loadouts is another great addition to CQC. As players rank up they'll unlock new weapons, abilities and internal modules that they can apply to their ships. Each item offers the player a different way to set up their ship so they can have it set up to match their playing style. When players reach CQC Rank 50 they'll be given the option to 'Prestige'. Prestiging allows the player to set their rank back to 1 where they will lose all of their unlocks, but in return they will be able to earn more credits for use in the main game, a permit to the Attilius Orbital starport in CD-4311917 and a new icon next to their name to show others that this pilot is not to be trifled with. A player can progress up to Prestige Level 9 where they max out the amount of credits they can earn and are seen as one of the best fighter pilots around. Players can earn credits for use in the main game when they play CQC. The amount of credits a player earns depends on their performance in the match as well as their ranking. The higher their ranking the more credits you can be awarded. When a player Prestiges they open up the possibility of earning even more credits as their rank, and reputation, increases. As always with a major update there’s also a host of tweaks and fixes and we’ll post the change log when we release the beta. Thanks!

I'm also really looking forward to No Man's Sky, but I'm not sure that it will be any more varied than ED other than visually. It certainly has looked fantastic in everything I've seen. In some ways I'm worried that it will be too simplistic; someone said gameplay was a bit like space minecraft, but that could very very cool.I don't know what Frontier have planned, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they did a similar thing next year where new players get everything for a bit more than existing players. Also, I expect steam sales. So both . If it makes you feel better, the amount that I pledged would keep me going for full price expansions until the mid to late 2040s

Some great games already mentioned. I'll add To the Moon . There are a few episodic games too that work work with a chapter per evening. I really like tales from the borderlands right now

I suspect that exploration will get a much needed kick up the arse in Horizons! On a related note, one of the differences between ED and Star Citizen is that Frontier have gone for astronomical realism, whereas Star Citizen are shaping their 'Verse in the name of interesting gameplay; distances and moon sizes are dramatically cut to what the designers find exciting. Both approaches have merit, and I'm looking forward to seeing what I can find out there too (eventually !) As for the pricing thing, the executive producer Michael abrookes said at the time of kickstarter that he thought the life time pass was way too cheap. If their 10 year plan comes to pass, that 85 quid buys the game and 9 years' worth of updates at least! One of the good things about ED being on Steam is that everyone will get the chance to play at the price they want eventually, even it is a year after everyone else. Another benefit to getting it later is that you can see all the content included and decide to buy it based on that; all we know about Horizons is that it will include landing on airless planets, and a crafting system.