Elite: Dangerous (Kickstarted Sandbox Space Flight Sim)

Friday · Jan 12, 2015

When I first started I happened upon a navigation beacon and noticed that a lot of ships frequent it. I then noticed that police would start shooting at stuff. Thats when I learned to scan ships, and after scanning, you can see their weapon layouts.

After that I tended to only attack ships that were sidewinders like mine, or ships that were already heavily damaged from the security. After I saved up some cash I bought a new ship with more weapon hard points and killing got easier.

Running Dog_sl · Jan 12, 2015

Drajakur_sl said:
Anyway, its all good and I'm enjoying the game basically. I just sometimes look at things also from a wider perspective and wonder at some of the design decisions (which, to be honest, seem made to intentionally turn some people away from what is a pretty good game. I just find that odd).

The lead developers seem to be pretty old school in their thinking. In some ways it's a refreshing change and in others very frustrating.

The missions I would be careful about accepting are:
- assassination of named targets (until you've got a combat ship you've spent several million on)
- anything which asks you to fetch a commodity you don't already know exactly where to find, because those can be an exercise in frustration as you travel to stations that should sell the goods but turn out to sell everything but.
- any mission from a station asking for illegal goods. Outposts are fine for these because you'll almost never get scanned, but if you're caught smuggling stuff into a Station it can literally be more expensive than it's worth.

nuday · Jan 12, 2015

I find it really refreshing that the game doesn't hold your hand through everything. It's something I really didn't notice until I started this, but I'm kind of tired of constant tutorials.

Ender4212 · Jan 12, 2015

I agree on the hand holding. I bitched and moaned and probably will still do some at times, but the more I play, the more I'm liking this.

Mist · Jan 13, 2015

Quinloe, are you still in Hors? How's that system working out? I finally got the permit.

Quineloe · Jan 13, 2015

It seems random in every single RES. That part really feels beta. I left before 1.04 though, I'm now working on my Brothers of Forculus faction.

Dyvim · Jan 13, 2015

Drajakur · Jan 13, 2015

So had a pretty cool experience that inspired me to go and buy at least a shitty joystick. Was delivering cargo in some system but got interdicted. Since I've been looking for a fight ever since I got destroyed by that Anaconda I decided to intentially drop and see what kind of pirate it was. He had a better ship than mine (I don't know what kind) but he was marked as a Novice. Hmmm. Novice is pretty close to Harmless (me) so I decided to go at him. After a spate of complete incompetence, we whittle each other down to 52% hull. Then I fuck up and basically let me pund the shit out of me. 9% hull left but I do some mind-boggling evasion to get my shields back and running. Too late to run so I accept me fate. Only...wait! What's that!? Frame Shift Signatures! Its the Federales come to save my poor broke ass! Two ships drop in, thank me for helping them, and proceed to provide just enough of a distraction for me to get weapons up and destroy the fucker attacking me. Didn't even die and earned a cool 6K bounty for my efforts.

Good.

Fucking.

Times.

That's exactly the game I imagine they envisioned when putting this together. Here's hoping I'm on my way to more cool experiences. Glad I stuck with it so far.

Will upgrade to HOTAS if deemed necessary

Only joystick available near work was Logitech 3D so I'm going with that + keypad for now...

Quineloe · Jan 14, 2015

So why is this in Other Games, exactly, and Roberts Star Citizen is in MMO?

Faith · Jan 14, 2015

Quineloe_sl said:
So why is this in Other Games, exactly, and Roberts Star Citizen is in MMO?

Think it is because from the start it was meant to be a single player game with co-op/multiplayer tacked on, then switched to a semi-MMO.

Quineloe · Jan 14, 2015

it's a full MMO now in open play. Meets every sane criteria.

Running Dog_sl · Jan 14, 2015

For those interested in how the factions and stations work to control a system, and how that can be changed by the players, the devs had a busy day posting on the forums. The summary is here:

Mercs of Mikunn results after 3 weeks of effort - Also a request for documentation, in game and out - Page 13

Bugs:
- there are two known bugs with the background simulation where the queue of changes is stalled for systems, and some changes to faction influence are being applied in the wrong systems.

Control:
- In order to control a system, the controlling station must be controlled by your faction. Control is taken through civil war with the current controlling faction, which can be triggered by change in influence
- The controlling station is usually the largest one
- You need to capture any smaller stations of the faction first before getting the controlling station
- Civil wars are local to stations, and not system wide, and have a cool down period (so you can't trigger a second one immediately after the first)

Influence:
- Successful missions increase the influence of issuing factions
- Trading makes a big boost to the influence for the faction that owns the station. There's a display bug where the market description may be wrong (so it may not look like the faction owns the market, but it does).
- Missions and trading influence only carries influence in one system for the faction (so if it has spread to other systems the faction's influence in those systems is unaffected)
- Population size effects the change of influence, just not directly

Misc:
- Economy types of stations aren't changed by the background simulation as they're tied to the planet type, with the possible exception of terraforming [Terraforming economies are out on the fringes of human space].
- Stations cannot be added by the background simulation automatically (so colonisation is controlled by the developers, until further notice)

Faith · Jan 14, 2015

Intresting.

A bit dissapointing that the simulation does not add stations. It would be logical that super rich mineral systems and such would pop a station or three once enough survey data has been handed in.

Dandain · Jan 14, 2015

I think the hard part about making that decision is just how fast do you allow the expansion. Would the game be better served by having a 1000ly bubble of stations vs 500 or an ever increasing bubble? I'm not sure that's good for the game - it still is going to take the time it will take to traverse the bubble.

Getting players to travel 500 light year's is about giving a real incentives. Alien sectors seems like a far more compelling approach to encourage the player base to mass migrate to distance locations. The near nebula's seem to be targeted for some of that at some point. There are at least 7 permit required systems in the Pleiades - hopefully they have alien stations or worlds that can be fought for over the course of weeks and swapped into human hands.

Additionally - the galaxy is massive - I think if human occupied space just crawls out in an ever expanding giant sphere it doesn't take advantage of the scale of the galaxy at all. I think a space war with some 1000+ly distance between influence bubbles or inhabited space would be awesome personally. Located hopefully at stellar points of interest - like nebulas or exceptionally unique stars. One more random station faction isn't required.

We are all training to be the last starfighter.

Faith · Jan 15, 2015

Well one possibility would be to award the first discoverer of a system that the simulation populate with a station get a heffty credit bonus, as in the millions. That would spur people along, maybe even add the players name to one of the stations/outposts that spawn?

Aliens are needed tho, I agree with that. Besides the issue of having to design ships for them, it surley cant be that difficult to implement? Seed a system or three and let them expand if not stopped.

Quineloe · Jan 15, 2015

1.05 is getting put out now, mostly a bugfix patch

update 1.05 is incoming. The servers will be closed at 11am GMT to apply the update and will be down for up to 30 minutes. Here is the change log for this update:

- Fixed crash when launching limpets
- Fixed some system meta data mismatches between client and server
- Memory use improvements and fixes on server
- Fix assert when someone manage to select 'declare bankruptcy' button before UI receives proper data from the game
- Optimise mission template list selection
- When switching servers do not disconnect during the transfer
- Added telemetry for when a player dies to help identify cause of death when players explode near stations
- Added further telemetry to trace failed resource loading
- Fix large quantity missions using "light cargo" text
- Fix salavage coms lines
- Correct reputation on abandon branch of pirate missions
- Fix incorrect destination for massacre branch money collection
- Fix salvage mission branching
- Change order of mission contracts in massacre missions
- Change data that is displayed to players in massacre missions

Added server updates to the original post:

- Fixed some issues that stopped some Commanders logging into the Companion App
- Stopped wars and civil wars in starsystems with only 1 minor faction in that state
- Added ship discount to Founders World
- Various reliability and performance improvements

Michael

Running Dog_sl · Jan 15, 2015

Faith_sl said:
Well one possibility would be to award the first discoverer of a system that the simulation populate with a station get a heffty credit bonus, as in the millions. That would spur people along, maybe even add the players name to one of the stations/outposts that spawn?

I think they've talked about wanting to add something like a "discovered by" tag to planets and systems. AFAIK there's no tracking in game yet of who first discovered anything, other than the threads on the forums. Naming after players can be a problem, just ask Jack Schmitt, or the infamous case in beta where they had to rename Cox station (to Pippin) because someone apparently got offended.

Faith_sl said:
Aliens are needed tho, I agree with that. Besides the issue of having to design ships for them, it surley cant be that difficult to implement? Seed a system or three and let them expand if not stopped.

The Thargoids are out there...

Thargoids - Elite Wiki

The obvious place for them will be in a currently inaccessible part of the galaxy, probably one or more of those nebulae.

One of the developers also talked briefly about rogue AIs that managed to escape from some kind of AI purge in earlier human history (which is the explanation for why people are flying spaceships and not computers).

Faith · Jan 15, 2015

Oh I know about the Thargoids ofc, but we need more then one other race in the 400 billion star-system world

Dandain · Jan 15, 2015

All they need to do is put an alien race 1000+ly away from known space - require players to be part of the supply effort to get traders involved. This way you can have the supplies in deep space to actually have say naval fleets with repair docks - or some other story based reason for deepspace combat repairs. Reward explorers for making runs to target systems or regions. The cleverness is that you get combat, traders, and explorers all engaged in the same overall task. Let humans take over alien systems with time and concerted effort - and for the next 6 months that's what people will do.

Running Dog_sl · Jan 15, 2015

Frontier Development plans

1.1 ("new way to collaborate with players") in Feb, 1.2 (Multiplayer/ Wings) in March

Hi everyone,

Following up on my post last week I will provide more information on our process moving forwards and dates for the next two major releases. As you've seen since the game's initial release we have issued a number of point updates, the latest being 1.05 this morning. These are typically restricted to urgent and/or low risk changes and will continue on a regular basis as they allow us to respond as we need to. These aren't scheduled in the same way as the major updates, but will be ongoing.

More significant updates allow us to add new features and content (as well as sweeping up a host of fixes and tweaks that haven't been deemed suitable for the intermediate point releases).

Currently beta testing will be available for those who already have beta access for the main game. For players participating in the beta tests there will be a separate mechanism for playing so testing does not affect your game and that you can continue to play the retail version as well. Options for players currently without beta access to be able to purchase beta access will be available. Details will be made available nearer the time.

Depending on how the update Betas go in test, we expect them to be released to everyone a week or so after the Beta release.?

As you all know we're also working on paid expansions for the game and these will have their own beta periods as well, we'll again make details available of how this will work as we near their release.

The first planned significant update will be 1.1 and will enter beta in the first week of February. We'll be talking next week about how 1.1 will introduce a new way to collaborate with other players in the galaxy in preparation for 1.2's major Wings update. We have some some good news for planners of long journeys - V1.1 will also have a significant increase in the maximum distance for the route planner. We're currently looking at extending this to 1,000 light years!

Looking further ahead there will be a 1.2 update which is planned to enter beta testing in the first week of March. The focus for this update will be Wings and other multiplayer goodness. I'll provide more detail in future updates.

Thanks

Michael

Development Update - 15th Jan

*edit* from other dev posts, they plan on fixing the landing pad hologram vanish bug in 1.1, improve NPC AI, and allow a small tolerance for friendly fire on non-targeted NPC ships

Elite: Dangerous (Kickstarted Sandbox Space Flight Sim)

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