Elite: Dangerous (Kickstarted Sandbox Space Flight Sim)

I picked this up recently and have to admit I'm pretty terrible at the controls so far. The dogfights are fun and probably more intense because of my lack of flight sim experience. Also, there is no handholding or guide of any kind which is nice. You just fly around and do whatever you want. My main complaint so far is the 'soft-lock' that happens constantly to me when engaging and leaving 'super-cruise'. For those that haven't played 'soft-lock' is pretty much the equivalent of a crash as you can no longer do anything in game (access menus, quit, etc.). Running-Dog do you have a solution to this issue?

Running Dog_sl said:

As someone asked in the other (closed) thread about piracy I thought I would copy what someone has posted about it in the Elite beta forums. Bear in mind that hanging around stations probably isn't going to be the best place for piracy in release, but at the moment there's no other easy way of doing it (and it isn't that easy)



On the last point, there's a couple of pirate players with bounties of over 100,000 Cr on their heads since beta 1 started two weeks ago.

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That's odd, the piracy in Elite 2 worked quite differently. If you opened fire anywhere near a space station, dozens of combat craft were sent after you.

GrizzlyCl_sl said:

I picked this up recently and have to admit I'm pretty terrible at the controls so far. The dogfights are fun and probably more intense because of my lack of flight sim experience. Also, there is no handholding or guide of any kind which is nice. You just fly around and do whatever you want. My main complaint so far is the 'soft-lock' that happens constantly to me when engaging and leaving 'super-cruise'. For those that haven't played 'soft-lock' is pretty much the equivalent of a crash as you can no longer do anything in game (access menus, quit, etc.). Running-Dog do you have a solution to this issue?

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The soft-locking is a known issue, I get it occasionally. Sometimes if you wait it does come back, like a minute or so (one very patient tester had the game start responding again after waiting 15 minutes). When you come out of supercruise it will try to find other players to drop into your "instance" and I think that's where it's getting stuck. In my experience I've had fewer softlocks at the less popular stations.

One guy posted that pressing CTRL and B displays networking stats so that might help track down the problem if its persistent. Another test might be to fly to the station in "solo" mode and see if that works.

The controls can take some getting used to. The single player combat missions really help, but they aren't balanced very well as the game has changed so much since they were introduced. The third mission pilot is the nastiest of the bunch. NPCs currently have suicidal tendencies as well and will happily ram you so don't get into a game of chicken until they fix this.

That's odd, the piracy in Elite 2 worked quite differently. If you opened fire anywhere near a space station, dozens of combat craft were sent after you.

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It's not yet working as intended, but different stations seem to have different tolerance for it. Freeport is in anarchy system and basically doesn't fire unless you shoot it, which is why it's a centre of PvP action. Different stations also have different no-fire zones, I think the more "civilised" you get the larger the NFZ is.

Police presence around the stations is very limited, I hope that will change. There's usually a Viper or two around non-anarchy systems but they seem to stay very close to the station. Given the, erm, erratic docking and undocking skills of the NPCs in this build, it's probably for the best we haven't seen swarms of police craft being launched.

Really thinking about picking this up, how are the controls? Can someone give me a rundown one what they use to play with?

I immediately regret my decision, I have no idea wtf is going on and I hate the controls.

I tried KB/M last night and was able to dock without crashing but was a bitch of a thing. I think it definitely needs the X52 hooked up to go with the TrackIR and Voice Attack, that should really cut down on the number of keyboard controls to remember and theoretically everything can be given a voice command if needed from what I've seen of some youtubers playing.

Controls should be fine with a HOTAS, just having to remember all the keyboard commands is what takes me back to the old days of good flight sims while just loading up and seeing the sidewinder reminds me of the years playing the original on C64. I certainly don't regret the purchase, and I have the peripherals, but I pity anyone playing on KB/M or controller.

I play with a PS3 controller and docking is no problem, you just have to do it a few times and you must set up your controls so they make sense. Once they are set up ok, controls (and the amount of options) are actually what makes this game shine, it's just been years since anyone has released a space sim and people need to get used to that kind of thing again. Apart from that, I have played Elite: Dangerous like mad a month ago and went from starter ship to Anaconda. The problem is: once you get an Anaconda, there isn't a lot to look forward to at the moment. So, once you hit Anaconda, you'll probably end up putting this game on ice until more features are released, like me. Up to getting the Anaconda the game was everything I expected it to be from an Elite game: trading, exploring space and outrunning pirates (which is way too easy, even with a massive "oil tanker" ship).
Combat is tough and tricky and you shouldn't bother without missiles, because you'll swiftly get your ass handed back to you.
Communitywise: there aren't many conversations online and there is the occasional PVP-griefer outside Aulin enterprises, farming noobs for tech tradegoods.
Game stability is impressive at this point in beta, there's daily downtime (patches, new features) so the dev team is "on the ball".
If you got an itch for classic space simulation you could try it out now, but I'd wait till more features are added. I played intensely for a week and enjoyed myself, especially with the Cobra MK. III (combat ship, which is a must-have if you are going for combat). All in all the game looks promising and the controls are spot on, and it makes me consider churning out 150$ for a very decent combat joystick too, something I have not considered since like 1996.

Hekotat_sl said:

I immediately regret my decision, I have no idea wtf is going on and I hate the controls.

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The first time I tried it I had much the same reaction I bought a HOTAS X and it's been a pleasure to use, although you can always do with more buttons in this game. I have an old USB numeric keypad that I put next to the throttle.

Control tips:
1) by design the yaw (left-right) controls are slow. The idea is you "roll and climb" (or dive) rather than go left and right. Think "WWII fighter in space" and you get the idea.
2) don't forget you have also up-down and left-right thrusters. These don't turn the craft at all and are useful for landing, and in dogfights. It's around this time you start to worry about having enough buttons...
3) there's a throttle sweet spot for manoeuvrability roughly in the middle, marked with a blue band. It's counter-intuitive, but coming to a dead halt isn't good for turning.
4) likewise there's a minimum optimum range for shooting, depending on the weapons you have. In the first Combat Scenario, if you find yourself missing the cannisters it's probably because you're too close to them.

The work-in-progress manual covers the controls but doesn't go into great detail:

http://www.elitedangerous.com/downlo...Manual_WIP.pdf

HOTAS is a must, the X52 seems to be a fairly cheap quality setup. I tried M/KB the first day and gave up quite quickly. A program like VoiceAttack is a bonus (or mandatory if you have an Oculus Rift you wear while playing) since it'll allow you to use voice commands in lieu of the keyboard.

Also usethisfor profit min/maxing.

People having fun learning the controls

Janx_sl said:

Highly recommend TrackIR to anyone that does any kind of "sim" type games. From DCS World to EuroTruck Sim 2 the thing is just awesome (especially if running multi displays). Great for games like Arma as well.

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Absolutely agree. Running triple's for ETS2, iRacing, FS-X and Elite and thought it was fine but once the TrackIR arrived I can't go back to playing them without it, just adds so much to impressiveness as well as quality of life with smooth left and right glances vs sudden 90 degree shifts with standard "look right/left" hotkeys.

Any sim-racer or pilot needs to get TrackIR, it's just as big a game-changer as shifting to a HOTAS or steering wheel and I think I actually prefer it to going with an OR since you can still see your keyboard or button-boxes and not have to go from memory for functions that voice-attack can't deal with (eg using a knob to fine-tune radio frequency or front-roll adjustment)

Running Dog_sl said:

People having fun learning the controls

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This video had me rolling and made me want to learn the game more. I'm going to have to research how to get the most out of my 360 controller so I can fly in this shit and just use my keyboard for landing/docking/lightspeed etc., atleast if that's applicable to do in this game.

Do we have any hardcore players from here willing to teach a noob?

I ran into that fucking space station like 12 times lol.

I use a logitech Extreme 3D Pro that I got for like $30 for all my flying games. Its not great but it gets the job done. I'd advise practicing straffing in this game. You can use the vertical thrust and then pitch in the opposite direction so you circle strafe in the z-axis (right?). and you can still move forward/backwards while you do this. Also, turning off flight assist is awesome. Make sure you do to get the most out of your boost. Can do all sorts of crazy stuff.

Unfortunately, unless they have patched recently this game may be unplayable for you because of the 'soft-locks' which happen, (60ish% of the time for me) when you enter or exit supercruise.

GrizzlyCl_sl said:

...
Unfortunately, unless they have patched recently this game may be unplayable for you because of the 'soft-locks' which happen, (60ish% of the time for me) when you enter or exit supercruise.

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They are experimenting server side with the network / islanding code. One of the devs made a post about how the "islanding" works:

This game architecture requires everyone in an island to communicate with everyone else, as well as the server - so for N players in the island, you need N*(N+1)/2 working network links. So an island with 32 players would need about 10 times as many working connections as one with 10 players.

Each machine tracks stats like packet loss rate, sizes of queues of messages to send, response times from other machines, and numbers of messages awaiting ack; it boils these together into a "QualityOfService" score that it sends to the server every few seconds. The Server averages the score for an island, to derive the island's "Health". If an island's health drops below a certain threshold (currently 70%) we do not add new players to it, but will create a separate island.

Yesterdays experiment seems to show that the island sizes were not being limited by the maximum size cap, but by this QOS health system: if there's someone in the island that's getting lots of packet loss, or slow responses from other players, adding more players to the island will only make things worse.

I'm working on further diagnostic tools for the servers so we can understand this better, so that eventually we can optimise the network to allow larger p2p groups.

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Note that islands are not instances, although the distinction is a little fuzzy. Technically everyone is on the same server farm; your island is like the beam of a searchlight that shows up nearby players. However, from the above explanation it would seem that if you're unlucky enough to get someone (or some people) with a poor QoS in your island, you won't see anyone else after them. It might also explain some of the soft-locking as the client struggles to sync up with people whose connection to YOU is bad.

Anyways, they are working on it. I have my doubts about how good it can get but maybe with better heuristics things will improve. At least they know what the problem isn't

After watching that second video I took another run at it and actually enjoyed myself a bit. I'm going to screw around with KB/M and 360 controller setups until I find what I like.

I've also decided I'm going to order an Occulus Rift for my birthday and look forward to trying it out with this.

I'm just looking forward to the release version where you can play solo offline. No real interest in multiplayer at this stage, wasn't needed back in my day, but might be ok after spending some more time with it.