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Elite: Dangerous (Kickstarter)

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PC Gamer got another exclusive, this time looking at the Wings update in 1.2 due in the first week of March (same week as PAX East, coincidence?). The whole thing is here http://www.pcgamer.com/elite-dangerous-12-preview-flying-together-with-wings/

 

Wings will allow up to four players to act as a single unit, with info on shield and hull statuses, targets etc of wingmen on your HUD. While every player is autonomous, they can lock onto any other member of the wing and automatically enter and exit supercruise when they do. Players can share bounties, and more dangerous scenarios will be popping up. You can enter or leave a wing at any time, and can split up in different systems..... if you need help your wingmen will see and might be able to jump in and help you.

 

This all sounds pretty tasty to me :).

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I'm very, very slowly starting to understand things. I've done a couple of courier missions, but those are a bit hard to find in the systems I've been to, and making a profit from trading with 4 cargo space is not easy if you're not willing to stick to a trading route, so I still don't have cash to improve anything on my ship.

 

How do I get more money from selling cartographic data? I've noticed that I got around 1000 credits for some systems, but only 200 for others. 

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The value of cartographic data depends on the number of bodies scanned, and the importance of those bodies. Ice worlds and M stars are plentiful and low value, O stars, black holes, Earth-like planets, etc are far more valuable. However, when you start exploration data is more of an added bonus as you journey between systems, because the equipment needed to make serious money is expensive.

 

One thing you might like to try for a bit of a boost is to go to the Old Systems (Lave, Leesti, Diso), pick up 4 tons of rare items (these are yellow and include Diso Ma Corn, Lavian Brandy, Azure Milk and Leestian Evil juice). Then take them to another populated system about 150 ly away. These will give you a profit of about 15,000 per ton even when the original price is about 300 cr (which I think Diso Ma Corn is). You will probably have to go through a lot of systems meaning that you are likely to get a bit of cash from the exploration data too.

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A good starting rare item loop is Lave/Leesti/Diso hub <<<150LY>>>> 39 Tauri/Fujin hub. They're about 150LY from each other and each system has rare items to pick up and sell. With only 4T cargo, you'll only have to stop in 1 (max 2) systems to fill up completely and go to the other hub.

 

I ratcheted up to a basic Lakon Hauler (~45k credits) and then to a Cobra MkIII (~250k credits) using rare trading. Of course, if combat's your thing, you can easily get a well equipped Viper for the price you pay for the Cobra.

 

Note: Be sure to buy a fuel scoop for your Hauler/Cobra if rare trading. You can fuel up within 3-4 minutes coasting at low supercruise around a sun and heat at ~90-95%. Much faster than stopping at a station just to refuel.

 

I just picked up a tip: when planning a navigation route your route line goes dotted when you won't have enough fuel in your current tank for that jump. A big stress eliminator for planning routes.

 

The Jacques station was a bit of downer for me when I realized it was a placeholder for later events, but I'm willing to wait it out. I did get the 10% discount at Yembo for taking some metals for the station build though. Time to get an Asp for exploration and a Viper for dogfighting.

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This week's newsletter isn't as action packed as some of the previous ones, since the main thing is reiterating the stuff about wings already shown in PC Gamer. It does have a screeny of the cockpit for the Vulture which is coming in 1.2... I'm not entirely sure what this ship is to be honest, but it looks like a biggy! Apparently it's goinf to be a heavy fighter with 2 large hard points and 4 utility point, and be rubbish at everything that isn't fighting (according to designer Mike Evans)

 

vulture_cockpit.jpg

 

NAME A SPACE STATION

 

The first community-sourced space station is now being built in the system formerly known as HIP 101110, now called New Yembo. In order to commemorate this, the community has the opportunity to name the station. You can suggest a name here: http://elitedangerous.com/namethestarport    . The name will be chosen by Frontier staff after the call for proposals is shut down on 2nd March. The first stage is in the system right now, I visited it yesteday :)

 

11starport1.jpg

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GREAT NEWS... 1.2 UNLOCKS DEBUG CAMERA FOR PLAYERS!
 

For a LOONG time players have been badgering the developers for the ability to take screenies outside our ships  such as the one below...  Now we will have limited access to external views like this one

 

1fdbb0a5-d891-4733-9c70-d3753795730c.jpg

 

WINGS HUD

 

The latest newsletter has given a peek at the HUD for the wings... player will be light blue, with quick and easy info to hull and shields of all your buddies

 

Peek.jpg

 

ED 1.2 will be available for beta testing tuesday next week, with access to everyone hopefully a week later

 

PAX EAST

 

I've been chosen to be one of three player ambassadors for ED at PAX East, so come over and say hi! It looks like we're on the way to the Indie Megabooth.

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Well, Phil Spencer just announced that Elite:Dangerous will be coming to Xbox One this year. Considering that the xbox controllers work just fine in the PC client, not surprising.

 

I'm wondering if MS paid for a partial exclusivity deal and if this was the reason it didn't get on Steam (Aside from Braben's assertion that he wanted to "retain  control over the servers and that it was technically difficult to be on Steam", a confusing statement to me.)

 

Still, welcome Xbox One Commanders! There's plenty of celestial bodies to explore for everyone.

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This is from the Frontier forums, from CEO David Braben

"Hi everyone,

When asked, I’ve said we’d be mad not to consider bringing Elite: Dangerous to console. Well, that madness is about to end! Today we’re announcing that we will be bringing the full Elite: Dangerous to Xbox One this year. Xbox players have supported Frontier well over the years, and thanks to games like Zoo Tycoon and ScreamRide we know the hardware well, so Xbox One is a natural fit for Elite: Dangerous’ console debut.

Elite: Dangerous on Xbox One will be the complete and authentic Elite: Dangerous experience. It will not be "dumbed down". We’ll be working with an all-new audience, but that doesn’t mean a change in direction for the game, and nor does it mean slowing development on the PC version. The second of our updates – Wings – is being beta tested by some of you right now, and the third will be coming in the spring, free of charge. We’ll be talking more about the third major update – Powerplay – soon!

More players across more formats means we can devote more resources to development. The more players we have, the better the game will become. Elite: Dangerous is a living game and it will keep growing on all our formats so long as people are excited to play it. 

I’m also pleased to announce PC, Mac and Xbox One players will all share the same overarching narrative and galaxy state. That means even more players contributing to the wars, power struggles and Community Goals across the galaxy. 

If you want to keep up to date on our Xbox One release you can sign up to be kept informed at http://www.elitedangerous.com/xboxone .

With the new Mac and Xbox One players joining us we’ll see new faces on the forums and we hope you’ll make them feel welcome. The Elite: Dangerous community has always been strong, and I’m sure it’ll be even stronger the more it grows.

Thanks for playing, and Right On, Commanders.

David"

 

The more the merrier, I say!

 

In other news, many of the digital rewards from the Mercenary pack and Kickstarter are now available... just go to store.elitedangerous.com, log in and go to the My Downloadable Products bit. The artbook is still in production, but there are ringtones, themes, wallpapers etc for mercenary edition commanders, and copies of the official sound track and the novel by Michael Brooks for those who pledged to the right level.

 

In other, other news ED 1.2 has gone into beta this week, and should be available next week for everyone. The headline feature is the "wings" grouping mechanic, but another really cool feature is the "debug camera" that is probably a stand in for a drone cam... when in this mode, you lose control of the ship so there's no combat advantage. Here are a couple of pics I took for a taster (not replicating those in the screenshots thread)

11046951_10153753883234152_5810743992076

 

10980177_10153753883124152_6147964046896

 

10986443_10153753883139152_5085393933250 1410808_10153753883484152_50771042137730

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The remote camera feature is going to sell a lot more paint jobs and be good for screencaps, that's for sure.

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David Braben has confirmed that ED is also coming to PS4 after a period of exclusivity on XBone! Also, ED won the audience choice at GDC

Day 1 of PAX was amazing, and brutal... I'm looking forward to Day 2 now

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RE: console version

 

The same state of the universe + community goals across platforms implies synchronized patches etc. Warframe attempted this but they had to abandon that idea. Now the console version lags behind.

 

If they keep it in sync I wonder if you can use the same pilot across platforms.

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It would be great if you could load in pilots across platforms. The only reason I could see to separate the Open Play by platform is if one's control UI has a significant advantage over the others (usually PC > consoles), and pilot cross-loading would effectively fix that problem and maximize social interaction.

 

More platform releases is nothing but good for the game. Increases user base and cosmetic purchases for further development.

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RE: console version

 

The same state of the universe + community goals across platforms implies synchronized patches etc. Warframe attempted this but they had to abandon that idea. Now the console version lags behind.

 

If they keep it in sync I wonder if you can use the same pilot across platforms.

Hey Razor, I don't think that's quite right.... the community goals, and other bits of background simulation are just accumulations of numbers  at the most basic level.  For example, the community goals I have participated in have involved trading goods to a particular station, or selling exploration to a station; I think combat ones are determined by the amount of combat vouchers cashed in from a specific station too. These goals are very basic at the moment :P. The volume of transactions matters rather than the value of each transaction: when building the starport, I got the same credit for selling 1 ton of silver as I did for 1 ton of gold. Hence, even if the values of the transactions differed across versions, the volume contributions would be the same.  Did that make sense? I hope so!

 

Having unsynched patches would only prevent cross-platform instances as far as I understand it. I seem to remember the devs saying that you could use the same commander for the pc version and Mac version.

 

Pax was amazing, though my feet are now killing me, and I now have no upper register in my vocal range... it's really wierd! I had less than an hour's free roam of the PAX floor thanks to the constant flow of people throughout all three days, but I saw enough that I really want to attend PAX properly some time!

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Since Solo Play contributes to Open Play economic models and community goals, I expect all of the different clients (PC, Xbox, PS) to do the same, whether in solo play or open play, segregated or not.

 

Glad you had a good PAX Wookie. Hope the crowd was pumped about the client. I'm actually interested about what questions were asked most, or what features they hoped were coming.

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Yeah, the crowd was stoked! I would say that at least 90% of the people had never heard of the game before seeing it at the show, but they still queued for an hour anyway. The queue went all the way round the booth, sometimes lapping itself

 

 

10997468_10153769210484152_9029257381552

Probably the most frequently asked questions were "when's it coming out?" followed by pleasant surprise that it is in fact already out, and "how much are those sticks?" :P. We were using Saitek X52 Pros (about $200).

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Yeah, I don't think many people know about this game at all. I only heard of it from the Crate and Crowbar guys talking about it at length. I saw some ads for it on twitch after I bought the game but they don't really convey what the game feels like or what makes it cool.

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Elite Dangerous 1.2 (Wings update) went to servers today, adding the aforementioned wings mechanic, a communications overhaul, two new  ships (Fer de Lance and Vulture), and a debug camera for views outside the ship... complete changelog is here:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=123776

 

My favourite comment: "Remove a spurious "Is Critical" flag from docking computer modules, you can no longer kill a ship by tickling one with a laser" :D

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I'm using the cheapo $30 Logitech stick with a voice attack profile and doing pretty well in game, so no need for the Saitek Pros. I still want one, however. And a way to easily use free look on the fly for combat and space tourist reasons.

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I picked a copy of Elite up a few days ago and have been finding it to be pretty fun so far. Flying feels great, especially since I got my joystick configured, and I think I've got a decent enough handle on the basics (docking, plotting jumps, simple trading). Is it weird if I find getting started in some of the other professions a bit intimidating? Trading seems like the most accessible, but least risky. I'm naturally drawn to exploration, but I feel like the cost of getting started is way higher. 

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I picked a copy of Elite up a few days ago and have been finding it to be pretty fun so far. Flying feels great, especially since I got my joystick configured, and I think I've got a decent enough handle on the basics (docking, plotting jumps, simple trading). Is it weird if I find getting started in some of the other professions a bit intimidating? Trading seems like the most accessible, but least risky. I'm naturally drawn to exploration, but I feel like the cost of getting started is way higher. 

Welcome aboard :)! If you fancy joining a PVE group, try MOBIUS- it has >5000 members, and players will not attack you unless you are on the opposite side ina conflict zone.

 

You can have a fair stab at any profession in any ship, although some will be much more successful than others. Your best bet starting out might be to find some courier missions from the bulletin board if you can... these offer pure profit so long as you complete them in time (missions are in real time so can expire while you're logged out if you're not careful). Stick a fuel scoop in your sidewinder and (maybe) upgrade your frameshift drive then you're good to go exploring. As with any of the professions, upgraded ships and equipment will give you better returns, but there's nothing to stop you  dipping your toe in. And with the newly added external camera, you can make some VERY pretty pictures :).

 

Frontier have just put out a video that demonstrates the Wings mechanics 

 

And Scott Manley gives a very nice overview of some of the other features available in 1.2

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I've been finding basic exploration (no added equipment to my basic Sidewinder) to actually be quite lucrative for someone just starting up, in a simpler way than trading. I'm less than 10 hours in and, after taking 2 ou 3 hours to figure out the basics, I've made enough money to buy myself an Adder (and a fuel scoop as soon as I find a decent one). Next step is either going for a Cobra or upgrading my Adder with surface scanner/intermediate discovery scanner/improved FSD. 

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I've been finding basic exploration (no added equipment to my basic Sidewinder) to actually be quite lucrative for someone just starting up, in a simpler way than trading. I'm less than 10 hours in and, after taking 2 ou 3 hours to figure out the basics, I've made enough money to buy myself an Adder (and a fuel scoop as soon as I find a decent one). Next step is either going for a Cobra or upgrading my Adder with surface scanner/intermediate discovery scanner/improved FSD. 

Nice work :)

 

The thing I love about the outfitting system is that you can benefit from the upgrades while saving up for the next ship... by the time you max out one ship, you should easily be able to afford the next step up. So I definitely recommend upgrading the adder before getting a cobra 

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Can someone explain exploration to me? I would like to do it, it just hasn't clicked like combat/mining. 

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Can someone explain exploration to me? I would like to do it, it just hasn't clicked like combat/mining. 

When you start the game, you already have information on the planets, stars etc in a few systems, but the vast majority (>99.99999%) are marked by your ship's computer as unexplored. It is possible to buy this information for some systems, but usually you have to travel to that system and find out for yourself what is in it.

If you perform scans of unexplored systems, you can sell the data so long as you're >20 ly from the system you scanned, by going to the Universal Cartographics section of a station menu. If you are the first person to ever scan that data and sell it, then you get "First Discovered By" credit in the game forever, and a 50% bonus on the data you sell.

You can search for planets, rings and moons in a system using a discovery scanner, which is assigned to a fire group so you can do it as many times as you like as you fly around a system. The basic scanner detects everything within 500 ls, the advanced scanner detects everything full stop, and the intermediate scanner is something in between (1500 ls I think). However, it is often possible to identify planets by eye even when the detector can't get them (if they move relative to the background stars as you fly along), so you can get them by flying into range.

You make detailed scans by flying to a star or planet then targeting it; if you are close enough the the scan will start. Buying a detailed surface scanner gets you extra information that can get you bonus credits.

One of the key skills to develop when exploring for profit, rather than fun, is to judge whether or not it's worth taking the time to make detailed scans of the things you find. Things like M dwarves and icy worlds are not worth much, but black hole, earth-like worlds and metal-rich worlds are worth far more. If you look at the system map after doing the discovery scan then you can tell from the rough pictures of the stars and planets what kind they are.

On the most basic level, exploration gives you extra pocket money as you move between stars that are more than a few jumps apart, but you can spend hours or days flying away from civilization, seeing what's out there then coming back a different route in order to sell the info.

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