Elite: Dangerous (Kickstarted Sandbox Space Flight Sim)

Just a heads up;

They are giving away a pack of skins for the Cobra, and 50% off on most other skinns until monday as a Black Friday sale. Just visit the store to grab the free pack

I am a huge fan of Freespace 2. Is this game worth buying?

Tearofsoul_sl said:

I am a huge fan of Freespace 2. Is this game worth buying?

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At this stage I'd say a qualified Yes:

- the skeleton of the game is there and working but in many places there's not much flesh on the bones. If you trust Frontier to keep developing the game after release, as they've said they will, then this is less of an issue. You may want to wait and see. So far they've been pretty good at issuing updates.

- it can be hard to tell what's implemented and working and what isn't, since the game does very little hand-holding. For example, the reputation system with the various factions in the game seems to have issues especially with bounty hunting, and until yesterday I'd have said there was no way to gain rank with the big factions (Feds, Empire, Alliance) yet - then someone posted a screenshot proving(?) otherwise, saying they thought it had taken gaining Friendly status with about 20 sub-factions but of course they couldn't be sure.

- the network code was my main worry, but that's come on leaps and bounds. However, grouping with friends is still a problem and will likely still be the case at release AFAIK. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Additionally, in gamma everyone started out at a semi-random location spread throughout known space, so even if grouping was fixed you might find yourself a long way from those you'd like to group with. No idea if that will be the same at launch.

Running Dog_sl said:

since the game does very little hand-holding. .

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I wonder if that's a nod to the original - I mean, alright, it was 25+ years ago, so my memories are a bit fuzzy, but I seem to recall a total lack of instructions, in game help, anything on the C64 version. You got stuck in your ship outside of Lave with 100 credits and that was that.

I do believe this launched today. Anyone in on it with some Day 1 thoughts? Apparently there is some kind of monetary reward for the first players to reach Elite status in the different categories, something that I am sure appeals to some folks here.

This is something I will check out eventually, likely a few months down the pike, for nostalgia's sake if nothing else. And to try to dock with those damn space stations one last time.

Its pretty fun if you take it for what it is, a remake of a 25 year old game with nice grafix. The multiplayer is not even basic yet, the universe is huge (400+ billion stars to visit) and empty, yet its pretty fun if you liked the original game

How playable is this with a mouse and keyboard ? I don't see myself going HOTA & shit.

If you have the patience to set up your controls it's not bad, but have fun with that shit. There are so many fucking options.

I heard this game is basically empty with hardly any features.

Draegan_sl said:

I heard this game is basically empty with hardly any features.

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The galaxy is huge, outside the starter areas you will seldom see another player. Features.... well its Elite, you make your own way. If you expect storylines, being a central person in the history of the world and so on you could say its empty. If you like trade strategy, exploring shit (as in going there, scanning the hell out of every object in a system noone has ever been to and sell the data), Bounty hunt, Pirate... well its a good game.

Currently there is not much more to it then the original; make credits, upgrade your ship, make even more credits. They have included 15 (I think) ships you can have and there are another 15 comming so you could say its space-doll-house where you get the ship you like, upgrade every system on it like a boss then go out and do your thing. Multiplayer is not even basic, you can sorta log into the same instance and for example mine ore together with one miner and one hauler but since you cant actually trade credits you need to go around the system by, for example, buy gold then meet your friend and jettison the cargo so he can pick it up then go sell it for his share of the credits. Do not know why they pushed the multiplayer part of this so much considering you cant even "group up" to travel together and so on.

Faith_sl said:

The galaxy is huge, outside the starter areas you will seldom see another player. Features.... well its Elite, you make your own way. If you expect storylines, being a central person in the history of the world and so on you could say its empty. If you like trade strategy, exploring shit (as in going there, scanning the hell out of every object in a system noone has ever been to and sell the data), Bounty hunt, Pirate... well its a good game.

Currently there is not much more to it then the original; make credits, upgrade your ship, make even more credits. They have included 15 (I think) ships you can have and there are another 15 comming so you could say its space-doll-house where you get the ship you like, upgrade every system on it like a boss then go out and do your thing. Multiplayer is not even basic, you can sorta log into the same instance and for example mine ore together with one miner and one hauler but since you cant actually trade credits you need to go around the system by, for example, buy gold then meet your friend and jettison the cargo so he can pick it up then go sell it for his share of the credits. Do not know why they pushed the multiplayer part of this so much considering you cant even "group up" to travel together and so on.

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Agree with this and am fine with it, spent 5+ hours a day for years playing Elite on my C64 so don't feel the need for any story elements, grouping, pvp etc and am fine with just flying around the place like I do with flight sims or even ETS2. There are things you can do to set your own goals though, go outside and look up at the sky with a star-tracking app and randomly pick a star up there then go and make your way to it, explore what's around our little bit of space and just enjoy the trip while also managing to be able to fund your journey through trading, bounties/piracy or just scooping fuel so you never have to stop.

Games like non-mission based flight sims (XPlane, FSX) and Elite to me are just about picking a direction and seeing what it brings and to be honest, that's all I need at times.

Found a nice trade route that's giving me just over 100k per round trip in a type 6. Slowly working up to a type 7 now.

As an example of what players can do, there is an player run "event" in the Lugh system right now where they try to blockade, pirate and mission their way to changing the system from one faction to another. No idea if its going to work, how it works or what they are doing, but there is a lot of info about it on Reddit for anyone intrested.

Skanda_sl said:

Found a nice trade route that's giving me just over 100k per round trip in a type 6. Slowly working up to a type 7 now.

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I have yet to find a route that gives me more then 800cr per ton :/ I must be doing something wrong...

On the other hand I have found a station that throws up a "Give us 2 imp. slaves and we give you 47.000cr!" every 30 min.. considering the slaves costs about 10k (and they are sold at the same station.....) each its slowly building up mah moneh while I raid in destiny lol.

I used a couple of programs to help me maximize. Google for EliteOCR and EliteOCRreader. You take screenshots of the market in a station and the first program will use OCR to read the shots and convert them into .csv files. The second will read the csv files and create a nice little database of station markets for you to refer too.

Faith_sl said:

As an example of what players can do, there is an player run "event" in the Lugh system right now where they try to blockade, pirate and mission their way to changing the system from one faction to another. No idea if its going to work, how it works or what they are doing, but there is a lot of info about it on Reddit for anyone intrested.

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Each station and outpost has 3 or more factions, and each system is under the control of one of those factions. If you undertake missions for a faction you can boost their influence in the station / system, and sometimes decrease the influence of the controlling faction. In theory, if you can get a lower influence up past 50% - or maybe just higher than the controlling faction - then the system can tip into civil war.

(simple trading also affects things although you have to do a *lot* of it)

It's not been seen yet; part of the problem is it takes a concerted effort over a period of time, and the other part is by announcing it a bunch of players have jumped in on the other side to make sure it doesn't happen. And there's always the chance that it isn't working.

There's also some people out at Jita:

[Event] TEST:MH Are moving to Jita

In the meantime, I ponder if I should've shot him...

Skanda_sl said:

I used a couple of programs to help me maximize. Google for EliteOCR and EliteOCRreader. You take screenshots of the market in a station and the first program will use OCR to read the shots and convert them into .csv files. The second will read the csv files and create a nice little database of station markets for you to refer too.

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Thanks for the tip!

I just went and checked out how much this game was. It's $60. Holy shit. I was expecting $30ish. Guess I should of backed it. Oh well, this game doesn't seem to be worth 60.