toblix

Elite: Dangerous (Kickstarter)

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Definitely play in solo mode until you get comfortable with the mechanics. And realize that unless you specifically dive 100% into combat, Elite takes exploration (space is big) and trading (Euro Space Trucker 3000AD) seriously. The game tends more towards realism in those areas (as real as we currently know about, with simplified mechanics for trading/smuggling for now until they release further content).

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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.

Oh no you didn't just call solo offline mode :P!

 

For what it's worth, I've been playing for almost 2 years with a gamepad, and that suits me very well. In horizons, the buggy is a joy to drive with a pad, but I'm not sure about other methods. I'm a lefty, so don't play so well with HOTAS, and I always used my right hand for mouse growing up, so mouse and keyboard is never great for me either.

 

The main thing I would like to say is to newcomers is take your time, and enjoy the ship you're in. That way, the grind disappears :). I've been playing the same character for almost a year (anniversary next wednesday), and I have about 255,000,000 credits in the bank, am ranked Master / Entrepreneur / Pioneer, am a Baron with the Empire and a Petty Officer with the Federation. I know people who have achieved far far more in much shorter times, but they made it sound like work, going for the highest possible credits per hour. People are even asking why bother going to planets because everything takes longer than visiting space stations! Don't be that guy :)!

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I gave it another go but the game has definitely taken more from me already than I'm willing to give. I just feel like I wasted hours to make myself feel frustrated. If it had saving and loading some of that could be taken out, but as it is I've lost hours of work several times already. At least half of the time I've put into it has disappeared because of random deaths.

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Sorry to hear that brkl. If it helps, combat should really be avoided in the early stages, uless that's your specific thing, an if you run and concentrate on escaping, you have a fair chance of succeeding. A big part of this is knowing that if you set your throttle to zero when inerdicted, you take no damage and the FSD cooldown is much shorter.

ELITE DANGEROUS: HORIZONS RELEASE DATE!

Frontier have announced a release date of 15th December for Horizons and 1.5, if all goes to plan. Given that Planetary Landings is the first of several updates to be included in the Season, they are calling it Early Access.

Here is a beautiful trailer:

EDIT: Anyone who has preordered Horizons without buying the first season can start to play season 1 content now :)

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Also, using the run silently button and relativistic physics buttons. With practice you can jet away at full speed, then go relativistic so you coast, then turn engines to minimum and turn on silent running. And finally drop heat sinks to keep you from overheating until the jump recharges.

 

Alternately, take your starting ship out, get in fights, and lose it a few times. Good to get used to it now so you're more prepared when you've got something to lose.

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I have actually been playing despite what I said. It was a lot more fun with my brother and I got some tips from him. Knowing that blowing up pirates at nav beacons is the easiest way to make money helps, although it's also a bummer because it's so out of proportion to trading and nav beacons make no sense at all. But I like the feel of the controls a lot and it's got a lot of atmosphere so that helps a lot.

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Great to hear :)

 

If you like blowing up stuff, and are getting good at it, then the different Resource Extraction Sites might be worth a look too; they come in Low Intensity, normal, High Intensity, and Hazardous flavours. Or you can choose a side in a civil war and go to combat zones to earn war bonds; these guys are professionals though, so expect harder to kill ships. Also Strong Signal Sources are designed for teams of players, and are often combat focused.

 

It might be worth your while finding a system in lockdown, because there will be a lot of pirate killing missions in nearby systems, and they stack. So if you have missions asking you to kill 2, 5, 9, and 16 pirates in the same system, killing 16 will satisfy all of those missions at once.

 

Trading drastically scales with ship size; once you have a big ship and can afford expensive cargo, you can pretty much print money. My anaconda has 100 times the capacity of the starting sidewinder, for example. Trading rare goods is a popular way to progress once people get into a Cobra class of ships; certain stations sell unique items than increase in value the further you get from that system, so you can often make 16000 credits per ton when 150 light years away; you can find optimised routes on line if that's your thing.

 

It's always worth activitating the discovery scanner every time you visit a new system, especially if you can splash out for an intermediate or advanced scanner. You can make hundreds or thousands of credits for each "discovery" that is new to you, with a bonus if you are the first person to ever scan it. You can sell this data at any station, but they only take info from systems >20 ly away. 

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Servers are down for today's launch of 1.5 and 2.0 :D. They are aiming to have everything up at around 4 pm GMT (11 am EST), but there may well be delays.

Here is the launch trailer for the game :)

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So...Horizons isn't an expansion, it's an entirely new executable? Also, what the hell was that 8GB patch yesterday? Or was that them adding in the Horizons data to my client so that If I buy it the game's ready to go?

 

Explain this to me, Wooks.

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I did the full 64 bit horizons install last night. It kept my HDD occupied and basically unusable for a couple of hours as it downloaded and installed. I really need to get an SSD.

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Also, is the 25% off a limited time deal? If it is, that's kind of shitty for existing players who paid full price for the game a year ago.

 

I don't mind $45 annually for a game as complex and evolving as Elite, but it seems lame to jerk around the folks who buy in early but didn't back at the beta level for lifetime free updates.

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So...Horizons isn't an expansion, it's an entirely new executable? Also, what the hell was that 8GB patch yesterday? Or was that them adding in the Horizons data to my client so that If I buy it the game's ready to go?

 

Explain this to me, Wooks.

 

 

That 8 GB patch was the 64 bit version of 1.5, which is the same as Horizons, but without permission to land. I reckon that Horizons is a separate install to have the opportunity to get all the revenue from people who bought Season 1 through Steam (Who take 30% of every in game purchase if the account is linked to Steam).

 

By the way, here is my super trippy planet in a nebula around a brown dwarf shot :). I am loving it so far, but PSA, if your ship doesn't have cargo space, you can't keep cargo picked up by the buggy- BOOO!

 

post-33997-0-94657100-1450356687_thumb.jpg

 

And here are a couple of shots from a lovely canyony ice planet I found

 

post-33997-0-06250400-1450356847_thumb.jpg

 

post-33997-0-22353600-1450356860_thumb.jpg

 

Also, I'm on the way back to try out a Cobra Mk IV... The speed and stuff aren't too impressive, but it looks tailor made for planetary exploration because it is a small ship with 8 internal slots, more than an Asp Explorer :D! It also has some lovely planet-themed paintjobs, which I shall model when I get back (40 or so Fer de Lance jumps to go)

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Sorry to hear that! Have you downloaded the new launcher? Also, you could try the 64 bit and 32 bit versions :).

EDIT: Frontier said that they had to make Horizons a separate game because of the increased minimum requirements

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In addition to making sure you have the new launcher (the old one just puts up a brief popup saying to download the new one, easily missable), make sure you have your graphics drivers updated.

 

Update: David Baraben gave a very diplomatic, classy end of year statement on the Horizons Launch: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=214169

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I don't play the game often enough to drop 45 on the expansion, especially if they include it in the price of the next one like they did here. I am one of the people who paid full price, but after it was released. I don't want to keep getting the worst deal. Will still enjoy flying around grinding though, but it just bums me out.

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I suppose you could wait a year and buy the next one when it comes. But get used to a new full price expansion every year.

 

Anyway, I've been playing the game enough to make my initial grumbling embarrassing. It does half of everything amazingly well and the rest in ways that infuriate me. I love controlling it with my Steam Controller. Using the gyros to look around incredible, especially when passing a planet. The interface is so well done. I bought the bloody overpriced expansion because I remember the feeling of cruising in the atmosphere of the terraformed Mars at 5000mph from FFE. But of course you can only land on rocky moons and dwarf planets. They didn't mention that in the marketing. Approaching the planets is extremely cool and very cleverly done. The technology boggles my mind. But of course I can't do the one thing I was looking forward to.

 

I hate the grind that comes from it being an MMO. Hate it. I hate the stupid missions that leave you baffled with no idea what you're supposed to even do. I hate that usually it doesn't even offer me any missions worth doing. I hate that I can't see Sol and can't really figure out how to get the permit. I absolutely hate the fact that I can't pause the thing. I can see it was designed for people who are determined to stay single, because playing it is very disruptive to my home life. And the bloody mission timers run out even if I'm not playing. Guh. 

 

Oh, and god I wish you approached star systems from far away instead of parking me right next to the star. I'd love to see the orbits reveal themselves as I get closer. I wish I could direct my approach so it wouldn't always take forever to get to the outer planets. It's extremely dumb that it takes ten seconds to jump 7 light years towards Alpha Centauri, but then to get 0.22 ly to Proxima Centauri it would take hours.

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I'm running the latest beta drivers for my card and I had an 8GB update Tuesday.

I'm tellin' y'all, it don't work.

But have you manually downloaded the new launcher? Also, if you have integrated graphics as well as an nvidia card like me, yo might need to tell nvidia to use the gpu

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I don't download the launcher--Steam does. At that point, Steam hands off the reigns to Frontier's launcher. Everything says it's up to date and the game files have been verified. It's just not opening.

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Ok, sone people who had trouble launching from steam found that I worked if they went to the folder containing the launcher, and opened it from there... Maybe that will work.

@brkl: missions are the only thing that put time constraints on you, and most of them can be done in 10-20 minutes, apart from searching for particular things or long range missions if you don't have a good jump range. The latest update saw a whole range of mission types added, and they ar improved with every other updat or so, but definitely need it! To access Sol you need to rank up with the Federation by doing missions for after aligned factions ( they appear in thebulletin board with the stars in a circle Fed logo), and doing special missions for the Navy; I think you have to rank up 3 or 4 times, and now there's a handy progress bar for rankings as of 1.5/2.0 :).

When I'm playing I usually listen to a podcast or music that lasts as long as I want to play for, from 20 minutes to a couple of hours, then stop soon after it finishes. Unless you're in a fight, or possibly in a planetary ring, it's safe to stop pretty much wherever you are.

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So I tried opening the launcher through Windows Explorer and it threw me a Visual C++ redistributable error. Googling this led me to an MS support page which suggested reinstalling MSVCR. I repaired both versions via installers in my ED folder and now, finally, the game will open.

 

What a frustrating, stupid journey.

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I'm not at all sure, but some of the blame might be attributed to Valve; I am not aware of any trouble with launching the game from the launcher downloaded from the frontier store

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I think this is a Windows 10 update problem, actually.

 

The problem was an MS VC++ Redistributable bad install. I hadn't played Elite since upgrading (and certainly not since SP 1 went live).

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I think this is a Windows 10 update problem, actually.

The problem was an MS VC++ Redistributable bad install. I hadn't played Elite since upgrading (and certainly not since SP 1 went live).

That sounds vaguely familiar; I upgraded to Win 10 from Win 7 a few months ago and had to do... something to get ED to work (pretty much the first thing I did :P)! Win 10 has meant that a whole bunch of components in my off the shelf PC behave like they are supposed to now: USB 3 connects at full whack, and my wireless card actually works.

I spent a good few hours doing planetary search and rescue for crashed escape pods, getting 90-200 k missions. All salvage on the surface is legal. High gravity worlds have a lot more crash sites than lower gravity worlds, for obvious reasons! The driving feels better on a ~1 g world than a ~0.1 g world, though the scenery is often less spectacular. I lost my first ship in ages thing to land on Achenar 3, which has a surface gravity 6.7 x higher than Earth, and I face planted rally badly.

I'm loving the Cobra Mk IV for planetary exploration, and am slowly heading towards the Witch's Head Nebula, getting distracted by honking and exploring landable planets. My ship has a pretty full load out, and gets a 19 ly jump range, not bad, but I think I might take an asp on longer treks

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