toblix

Elite: Dangerous (Kickstarter)

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Holy crap, I have had a super scary experience! I'm almost a week into a cruise, taking two sets of famous explorers to different natural wonders in my Orca. Just before I got to the second destination I had a horrible realisation as to what the name of the tourist spot meant... I didn't pay much attention before. It's called Strong G, and the beacon is on the surface of a 9.77 g planet! It's a good thing the Orca has good straight line speed, because at one point I was going over 1800 miles per hour ass backwards towards the ground! EEp!

It took a good while, and I fair chunk of hull, but I scanned my prize and set off for the final leg home.

 

On the plus side, it may havebeen in the first O star system I've been in 

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On 10/31/2016 at 6:22 PM, Dr Wookie said:

Very nice! I just splashed out myself, on a new paint job and ship kit for my Asp :)

aspkit.jpg

 

My Asp doesn't look quite that nice, but it looks ok (its my workhorse for cargo and stuff like that)

KQSJm4e.jpg

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I haven't spent any money on ship skins and only have the free ones they gave away in the last two years. However, I may eventually break down and get different colored laser beams once they start offering those.

 

The next bugfix patch came out today, fixing a lot of the critical bugs with the latest content patch release. I'm hoping we get a content pass on exploration and scanning after the end of season 2 content (capital ships, multicrew, aliens (assumed)).

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Good / bad news Doc, there are 7(?) laser colours available to buy right now!

 

@brkl... way back in the day I was completely against microtransactions of all kinds for Elite. However, one pledge made during the kickstarter was that the game would never have a subscription.

 

I now quite like cosmetic microtransactions because i) they do not upset the game balance at all, meaning that no player will be disadvantaged by passing on them, and the developers will not be tempted to mess with progress in order to boost sales; ii) they are persistent rather than consumable. I've spent maybe another $50 on paint jobs (and the asp body kit), but only if I think they look cool. I mostly play solo, so it's only to make me feel pretty :P.

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On 11/15/2016 at 4:48 PM, Dr Wookie said:

Good / bad news Doc, there are 7(?) laser colours available to buy right now!

 

DAMMIT, I am now going to have to get at least a few of these...purple so I can have shadow ship laser beams, and green because I like the way green laser beams look!

 

Edit: I guess I should like green beam lasers given my user name!

 

I bought all seven colors so I can do stupid things!

Edited by Vorlonesque

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6 hours ago, Vorlonesque said:

 

DAMMIT, I am now going to have to get at least a few of these...purple so I can have shadow ship laser beams, and green because I like the way green laser beams look!

 

Edit: I guess I should like green beam lasers given my user name!

 

I bought all seven colors so I can do stupid things!

 

The avalanche had already started; it was too late for the pebbles to vote.

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Picked up elite during the steam sale and am worried I made a mistake :/ The UI is really clunky, seems like they loaded it with options that really are not needed, especially for controllers. Why do i need to be able to toggle my ship lights? I feel like the controls only work some of the time, not sure if I just don't understand them or they are more context sensitive than I thought. Targeting seems especially weird.

Also didn't realize there wasn't autopilot, I like flight simulators, not really a fan of finicky fast travel and landing simulators. I will give the game another shot later, but I am pretty disappointed ATM

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Lights: Mainly useful for maneuvering in asteroid fields. You can honestly just leave them "on" all the time if you want.

 

Space combat and planetary landings are the more flight-simulation parts of Elite:Dangerous. The game runs on a Newtonian physics model with slight limits added on for game play reasons (no near-lightspeed acceleration outside of 'supercruise/hyperspace warp-like travel' being the main limitation). The default "flight assist" makes the ships feel star-wars-ish 'swoopy' but that can be toggled off if you want to get thrust vector maneuvering on (which is extremely effective once mastered).

 

There are docking autopilot modules you can fit into all ships to solve the docking issue.

 

Later edit: The other main critique about the game is apparent depth of procedural generated content. Frontier Developments chose a 'Minimal Viable Product' with continual content patches and re-iterating systems strategy which is why they've been live for two years and Star Citizen is "delayed until ready". If there's not enough content that you like, you have to make the call over whether to do a Steam return or just wait for more content to be released. Frontier is in it for the long haul.

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Having been away from Elite for the best part of a year, and having threatened to return to it frequently the last month or two, I finally fired it back up again over the weekend. I spent a good hour or two just sat in my cockpit working out what all the new missions and factions and stuff were all about, I still don't understand what declaring for a galactic power willdo (so I haven't)  and I've cursed just how much harder combat has become which had cost nearly 1.5million in insurance costs so far. I also picked up the Horizons expansion because clearly you miss out on a hell

of a lot if you don't have it. 

 

Questions. Does it matter if I declare for a power or not? What do you get out of it?

 

secondly, the engineers. Worth bothering with?

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Declare for a power: Not recommended at this time. It's designed to be an "endgame" mechanic and it needs another re-iterative pass right now which FDev says they're working on. In its current form it takes a lot of dedication to reap the rewards (specialized equipment, credit payouts).

 

Engineers: Yes. You DO want to find the engineers. This is the main ship power progression path right now if you don't want to do the basic trade/explore/combat part of the game. Just getting the "dirty drives" and efficient warp engines that can extend your jump range up to 50% is a major quality of life boost. Also, thermal/corrosive lasers make combat much more enjoyable.

 

Quicktip if you're coming back after a long hiatus: Dropping proximity mines behind you in trade ships is a nasty surprise for those NPC pirates.

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Made a mad dash to the community event selling consumer items in Tchernobog (I think) last night in an attempt to recoup some of my insurance costs since my restart. I was 120ly away, made it to within 2 jumps before the event finished and I was left with nothing. Irritating but I thought I was pushing my luck making it there in time. In fit of pique I traded up my well equipped Vulture for a less well equipped Asp Explorer. I may have needed to think that through a little better but still. I'm now dangerously close to my insurance limit and lacking all the decent kit to make a decent exploration vessel. I now need some 'get rich quick' schemes so I can get my asp properly kitted out for exploration. Is rare trading still viable or am I better off making friends with some factions and doing lucrative missions instead? At the moment I'm probably best set up as a weakly fire powered multi-purpose ship, but with a advanced stellar scanner and detailed surface scanner. Should I just start pulling in exploration data instead? This is my ultimate goal in elite since I started playing it really - just getting a decent exploration vessel together and then go and explore the great unknown. 

 

Many suggestions where to go from here greatly appreciated. I suspect the answer is partly 'do whatever you like' but I'm really not sure and wouldn't like to go exploring and find myself stranded somewhere in the middle of nowhere very quickly. Would the other 2 community events be a good option? Do you need to explore specific regions for those events? 

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Rare trading is still there but has been eclipsed by mission running. I think the long-distance haul missions, planetary base skimmer destruction missions, and passenger missions pay decent amounts. You may need to run courier missions at first to build rank with faction you want to stack missions with. Also a good time to just build rank with Empire/Federation.

 

Dr. Wookie may have more suggestions.

 

Edit: I looked at the community goals. It's always worth dropping off any accumulated exploration data at a nearby exploration data community goal site; free cash.

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Cheers. The 2 exploration community events will take any old data so I've exploited them a little to make up for my insurance costs the last couple of days :eyebrow:

 

looking at just running some some passenger missions for a bit. I could go exploring, just need to put a better fuel scoop on I think. 

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If you're interested in combat, this is probably going to be profitable (higher at better relationship ranks) for a time before they re-balance it:

 

 

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Ha interesting watch :) I can see some transport missions where I am at the moment that'll bring in a million or so for a 100-150LY round trip so I'll take some of those on next.  I'll get 700k minimum for "Exploiting" the community events, that'll help more an a little. My next foray into combat will be on a high spec fighter of some description with much reduced insurance costs. 

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Elite:Dangerous PS4 announcement for release Q2 2017. When asked about PSVR capability (the obvious question) Frontier Dev said " Obviously we care about it as we're a flagship VR game. No news to announce on that... today."

 

 

To their credit they appear to be using all in-game footage this time! (Edit: Except for some CG text and numbers for readability, and they're including features that aren't in the game yet but will be by the Q2 2017 launch date (asteroid bases, pilot customization, that new capital ship class (generation ship?)).

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Nothing yet no. Which is a shame really but I could see those with HOTAS having a very real advantage to anyone playing with a game pad at the high end PvP level.

 

there are a few interesting things in that trailer, including what looks like an asteroid base which you can land at (19seconds) and a mobile station under engine drive (a few people are speculating it might be a generation ship) at 50-52 seconds. It also seems to be hinting that the Federation / Empire war is coming. Although that might just be for dramatic purposes. 

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I'm not sure which is least likely, ED squeezing onto PSVR, or PC gamers getting full DualShock4 support :p! Both would be super cool though.

 

 Using the DS4 touchpad as extra buttons, as well as pinch and zoom in the Galactic map sounds cool, as does using the six-axis for headlook. 

 

When Horizons first came out, the minimum spec for VR was a GTX 980 or equivalent. It's true that the planet genaration algorithm is improved and more efficient (allowing Horizons on Xbox One); also, PSVR targets 60 FPS rather than 90 FPS (I think). I think that the probability for PSVR is non-zero, but fairly small.

 

From what I've read, it looks like the PS4 release will come after 2.3 (multicrew and player avatars), but before 2.4 (theme not yet revealed). David Braben said at the launch of 2.2  that many people are now working on Season 3 content, but that might not release for another year going on this year's pacing. It's not something I'm worried about, since speculation says that Season 3 includes walking around ships and stations, and that has to be interesting to be worthwhile (I'm looking at Star Citizen, No Man's Sky, X, Mass Effect here)

 

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Looks like FD are considering some fairly substantial changes to ships and combat as part of the beta they are currently

running:

 

Ship changes

 

which looks to be beefing up trading ships a little so they are no longer made out of tissue paper, and additional slots to Military craft so that they can take advantage of the Experimental shield changes they are proposing. 

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WOW! First contact has been made!

CMDR DP Sayre on XBox was the first report it, with XboX DVR recordings .

Apparently Scott Manley has the best footage so far, in his youtube video. which I won't post in case people don't want to be spoiled. But people in a certain region of space (probably easy to guess if you've been following along) should keep alert!

 

Also wow, I had to replace my PC, and got an Oculus Rift at the same time... absolutely stunning!

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I got over my initial annoyances with having to manually land and fast travel, those systems seem mostly fine, if totally unnecessary. (except for being unable to land at a station because a ship was blocking the pad but whatever.) 

PrvKed1.jpg

So what the hell do I do to get my feet off the ground? I did one courier mission, can't do the other one because its out of my range and can't mine because I don't have the equipment. How do I start making space money?

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7 hours ago, Cordeos said:

I got over my initial annoyances with having to manually land and fast travel, those systems seem mostly fine, if totally unnecessary. (except for being unable to land at a station because a ship was blocking the pad but whatever.) 

PrvKed1.jpg

So what the hell do I do to get my feet off the ground? I did one courier mission, can't do the other one because its out of my range and can't mine because I don't have the equipment. How do I start making space money?

 

When I started playing the game - slowly ;) 

 

i think I was stuck with the starting sidewinder for about the first 20 hours or so first time I played the game, but that was near release. 

 

Now however the missions system is probably the place to start - start doing those to build reputation with local factions and you'll get offered better and better missions with better rewards. It can be a little frustrating, but it's your best option at the moment. It doesn't really matter if you support all the factions rather than just one or two. The data delivery missions are probably your best option as they don't require any cargo capacity. 

 

That should get get you enough to get started, as soon as you can afford a cobra the game will open up enormously. 

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