toblix

Elite: Dangerous (Kickstarter)

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Seeing SRV combat and shields makes me feel better about trading my ship for a space tricycle. I wonder if turreted weapons would be ideal for summoning ship backup.

 

Congrats on the Anaconda! Been busy IRL and haven't gotten out mining for the last week. I almost have enough for an Imperial Clipper now, but I probably won't get back to Elite until mid-November due to proposal and manuscript deadlines. The joy of science.

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Heh, proposal time one thing I definitely don't miss! October and March used to be ridiculously busy!

 

Anothier thing to sneak in, more footage of a base attack (40 whole seconds this time!) This time, one SRV is coming to rescue another one who is definitely in a pickle! Skimmers, turrets, huge base o my :D

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BETA DATES ANNOUNCED!

This week's live stream was a q&a with David Braben. It kicked off with the all important beta dates: 1.5 for the week of November 9 (I.e. Next week), and 2.0 on November 24.

There were some very nice video clips, repeated in the last 5 minutes, showing planetary star ports, with ships taking off, and also the SRV deploying from inside a Cobra.

Random bombshell near the end of the steam... There are other alien races besides thargoids!

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This week's livestream was very exciting, because it introduced an entirely new mechannic, and also showed off the new ships available in 1.5, and playable in beta some time this week.

 

NEW MECHANIC: SYNTHESISING MATERIALS FOR REPLENISHING AND BUFFING YOUR SHIP

 

The concept of Materials will be introduced in 2.0, as a precursor to the loot and crafting system to be introduced early next year:

-- Players will be able to find and store a whole range of materials on the surfaces of planets, ranging in quality and rarity

-- Using a new module, players will be able to synthesise resources to e.g. refuel the SRV, or stock up ammo for kinetic weapons or the repair modules

-- However, we will also be able to e.g. extend the jump range for one jump 

-- High quality materuals will give bonuses to the things they affect; jump range increases will be higher, ammo will get a damage bonus, and modules repaired with high quality stuff will be more damage resistant than normal

-- The effects produced by these materials will be scientifically reasonable

-- While materials are restricted to planets in 2.0, other materials will be available, opening up the loot and crafting mechanics to everybody

 

SHIP VIDEOS

 

Federal Corvette: similar size to Anaconda, but more combat focused, including 2 huge weapon mounts

Bonus Corvette video: a tour of a Corvette from a SRV

 

The Imperial Cutter: again, similar size to Anaconda, faster but less maneuverable. I want one in my life!

 

The Keelback, which is based on the Type 6, but more combat leaning. I also want one of these, bags of character!

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The Cobra Mk IV, more combatty than the Mk III, but slower. Much better weapon placement, and an extra weapon mount.

 

Viper Mk I, similar story

 

Asp Scout, cut down version of the Asp Explorer , with fewer weapons but more maneuverable. MOre like the classic Asp.

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The Federal Corvette and Imperial Cutter fills gaps in the Large Ship category, very welcome. The others will provide a lot of variety and better stepping stones up to larger ships. I can see that Asp scout being the new smuggler ship of choice if it can go toe-to-toe with the Cobra MkIII.

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The 1.5 Beta is now live, and I've had a bit of a play around, mostly trying out the Cutter. It looks amazing, has HUUGE cargo capacityand it's fast for a big ship (360 boost), but the FSD range is not great compared to the Conda. I think the Conda is the work horse, while the Cutter is for play time (but it will be a looong time coming).

Edit: coriolis.io has been updated with the new ships, and I found a very nice multi role cutter build that I only need another 50 million or so for :P

The important thing for me is the MASSIVE mission overhaul. When it goes live, all missions will be reset. The new stuff includes

- Multi stage missions

- Missions obtained from space

- Timed missions (ie meeting at a particular time, such as delivery rendezvous)

- Missions where you fail if you die

- Missions where you fail if you get scanned

- Distress signals

- search and rescue

- Missions which require specific cargo

FInally, this week's sneak peek is amazing! A SRV tour of the Cutter, then a trip INTO A BASE. There's also a functioning wave scanner for detecting materials!

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The Horizons (ED 2.0) beta is due out this Tuesday, although some builds have not gone to the servers until very late in the evening UK time.

 

David Braben stated earlier this week that it will only run on 64 bit versions of Windows, with Direct X 11; according to their statistics, 99.5% of players are running on 64 bit Windows; however, a few thousand are not. The base game will continue to support 32 bit for now. If anyone who has pre-ordered Horizons has 32 bit Windows, FD will refund them.

 

The beta will not be available through the existing launcher, but through the Frontier Store; people will have to log in, and select the Horizons launcher from "My Downloadable Products". 

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Reading this thread is so much easier than reading a long-winded email each week.

 

Maybe one day I'll come back to this game. I enjoyed the time i spent with it, but it wasn't as engrossing as I hoped for.

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Elite:Dangerous is a game in it for the long haul. You could easily come back in 2-3 years and it may have enough depth for you. That being said I'm hoping to actually get some space time in starting next month. Need to get into an Imp Clipper so I have a holder for my space coffee while I mine and smuggle.

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I was going to say the same thing :). For starters, there is a substantial overhaul to missions in 1.5 that adds to the core game. In 2-3 years, there will be loads more, and much of it will be cheap / free. I think a lot of people have trouble connecting with the game when there are no visible people to interact with. We know that players will be able to design their own characters during the coming year, so hopefully that will pave the way towards more human interactions

 

I've just passed 300 hours on steam, meaning that I probably spent at least 600 hours on my character, having started afresh a week before the official launch when it was clear that there would be no wipe from Gamma. I have almost 250 million credits, which plenty have people have amassed in a much shorter time, but I have not been grinding :). I am working towards bumping up my imperial rank so I can get the Cutter. This means I have bought a mining clipper and a combatty Courier to supplement my all purpose anaconda; I have chosen a place in the empire to settle for now. I know that military ranks now heavily favour combat missions, but I only do pirate killer missions or assassinations of wanted criminals/ terrorists. 

 

The Horizons beta is officially delayed for several days; furthermore, Frontier have taken the opportunity to upgrade their test servers, so the 1.5 beta is currently offline as well for now.

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The new target for Horizons beta release is now next Monday, November 30. Interestingly, DB has requested that Horizons beta tester clear their save at some point during testing, in order to try out a new surface based start location for new players.

 

I've found (i.e. looked up online :P) a nice pristine metallic system in empire space, so I spent an hour or two and a couple of hundred grand moving my three ships over there, so I can focus a range of activities in that area; maybe I'm just spoiled but the  common metal rich rings found in my previous base of operations only brought in a 150 k for my mining clipper... not good enough :P!

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Pristine metallic ring systems with nearby trade and combat opportunities and a high tech shipyard are the way to go if you're putting down roots for a while.

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THIS IS SO FUCKING COOOL!!!!!

Ahem. The latest tease video shows the act of going from super cruise to orbital cruise on approach to Europa. I LOVE how the extra elements just come in as necessary.

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I have had a fantastic time with beta so far, notwithstanding crashes/ UI bugs etc! I have been using a gamepad all this time, and it makes driving the SRV a joy. I had no bindings at all to start with, so there was some faffing around in the controls menu working out what goes where, which was pretty fun in itself (but there really should be a default profile).


Here is my favourite screenshot so far; it is taken on Mitterand's Hollow, now famous for its eclipses every ~2 minutes. Getting to this spot was fraught with difficulty, because the moon goes so fast it can run away from you in supercruise, meaning that you have to head it off instead. Then there was the matter of finding a good landing spot for my ginormous Anaconda. But it was so worth it!
 

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There's plenty of new missions to do, including targeted raids, rescue missions, strictly timed missions, no-scan missions etc. There's also planet specific missions, involving disabling bases etc; unfortunately I could not get this to work, possibly because the way to interact (some sort of data sensor thingy) is not working for me. 

 

There are points of interest that pop up in normal flight as blue circles, a bit like USS, but you have to investigate in the buggy using a wave scanner to detect anomalies, which is fun. I've found wrecked ships, mining platforms, secret bases, and rocks containing Materials, which are used as buggs in the first installment of the loot and crafting element. 

 

They did another couple of livestreams showing how everything works, which I would recommend watching if you have time

 

 

 

 

CAUTION: The requirements have bumped up significantly, and my 970 struggled with 1.5 x supersampling at highest setting, so I dropped down to 1.0 supersampling, and everything is fine ish (50 fps). Lots of people with less powerful / older pcs are clocking single digit frame rate on planets (which are rendered in real time and 1:1 scale,  quite a feat)

 

Also, keyboard and mouse users are having a bad time with SRV controls right now

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CAUTION: The requirements have bumped up significantly, and my 970 struggled with 1.5 x supersampling at highest setting, so I dropped down to 1.0 supersampling, and everything is fine ish (50 fps). Lots of people with less powerful / older pcs are clocking single digit frame rate on planets (which are rendered in real time and 1:1 scale,  quite a feat)

 

Time to turn everything down to lowest settings. I was hoping to wait until next fall to upgrade my CPU/GPU in order to take advantage of the 14/16nm FinFet GPU die shrink.

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Time to turn everything down to lowest settings. I was hoping to wait until next fall to upgrade my CPU/GPU in order to take advantage of the 14/16nm FinFet GPU die shrink.

Judging by the 1.5 beta, the base game will be available in 32 bit and 64 bit versions, so people won't stop being able to play

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I just started and it was running GREAT on my far from cutting edge setup but has suddenly started lagging. Just the base game, not the beta. Might need to have a look.

 

Also, I think I am very slowly falling in love with this game. I've just done a few courier missions so far, landing my spaceship and hanging out.

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I bought Elite on sale a week or so back and man this game makes you work to get any fun out of it. The first contact with the tutorials was so deflating I took a few days off. When I started playing, apart from liking the look and feel of it, the game doesn't really let me do anything. Most stations don't offer me any missions, trading is pointless with the starter ship, combat impossible. So there's nothing apart from looking at places and grinding. My brother says it's more fun with friends, but it's difficult to get excited.

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Hey, it seems like you're trying to run before you can walk :). There is a heck of a lot to learn

I strongly suggest you spend some time in the training missions, which go through the basics of combat, travel, and docking; there are YouTube links in the training section and some people think that they are the only thing in there.

If you find a well populated system, then you might have better luck with missions. Many missions have minimum rank, friendliness, or reputation requirements, so at the beginning these will be closed off. However, they might be the best chance for quick cash. I recently bought a second account to mess around with, and got a 32000 CR mission straight away. Soon, update 1.5 will come out, the same time as Horizons, and that will bring a much wider range of missions, so your chances should get much better.

Trading is can give you a good start if nothing else is available, and you pay attention to what you're buying. However, smuggling missions will be your best bet for cash if your conscience allows it :P; the sidewinder is a great smuggler because of its low profile, but you need to learn to be stealthy

For combat practice, I recommend going to a nav beacon or resource extraction site with plenty of security around and targeting wanted criminals. The security will help you out, and you can rack up a decent amount of bounties. Combat gets a lot easier with gimballed weapons, so I would get those before getting a new ship.

I strongly recommend that you seek out a community, on the official forums, Reddit or elsewhere. The official forums has a newcomer section with loads of useful information. Also, people let you know if a community goal will hand out easy money. Fore example, one event gave 3 million to anyone who could get 1 ton of metal to the system.

Youtubers like Chaos Wulf and Obsidian Ant have great tutorial videos. Here is a good place to start

Good luck o7 !

In other news, the Minimum commercial VR specs for Horizons have been released: a GTX 980 or better, 16 GB Ram, and an i5 3770k. Eep! I suppose these will be commonplace soon, but early adopters will have to shell out. I really want to be an early adopter :P!

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My recommendation? Play in offline mode. The AI is less aggressive than your average player and it gives you some room to learn the systems and mechanics of the game. I have put more than 100 hours into Elite and other than meeting up in a private group a few times, it's all been solo.

 

Also, my enjoyment of the game was directly tied to the amount of money I spent on peripherals to play it, but I knew that going in. Playing with a decent flight stick and throttle made all the difference, for me at least.

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