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Elite: Dangerous


radiofloyd
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You don't need to start fresh. All your stuff will be there. It'll have wiped your time played though, I noticed it did that to mine when I started on the Pro.

 

You'll barely feel the transition to getting your space legs back either. Took me maybe a session to feel right back at home. It's like riding a bike, you go through such a trail learning how to play that it bakes into your muscle memory. There's been lots of tiny improvements as well, they might only be incremental but they make playing so much nicer.

 

I'd struggle to think of a game that could be as hands on or off as this. It's perfect as the casual game once you get over the huge learning cliff, you can play it and be social but all be doing different things, or you can wing up and take on bounty hunting right from shooting fish in a barrel right up to having a fully engineered wing capable of blasting Thargoids into pieces.

 

Also looking back on posts like this...

 

On 7/5/2017 at 2:24 PM, Chimay said:

Arghhh - this game. It's difficulty curve (well, I say curve - it's a vertical precipice) is really unforgiving, but i'm having such a good time getting stuck into the nuts and bolts of it. I've now purchased my third ship after ditching the Eagle for a Cobra MKIII that i've stripped bare and kitted out with a decent jump drive and sensor arrays so I can make a living as a space taxi/explorer. Currently taking a passenger on a sightseeing tour that so far has taken me 36 jumps at 20 light years a pop - and i've got another 38 jumps to the next destination, and then I have to head back! Should net me a cool 1.6 million credits though.

 

Looking at the 20ly jumps and the small ships and basking in a 1.5m credit payday makes me smile. That's between 5 or so big bounties now in hazardous zones (with the help of Jay and his Fer-De-Lance). I was making 1.5 million per run with the Python on the Community Goal. The Wing delivery missions can net you ungodly amounts of cash, as well as cargo bonds if you run and deliver at the same time. If you have people willing to give you a peg up you can be up and in decent ships in no time at all.

 

You still have to learn to fly though. A few guys that we've been playing with that are new to it have pussied out and bought docking computers. It's like damn, man, you can use that optional internal spot for something that's going to give you better bang for your buck, unless you're using the auto docking time to plan the next lot of jumps on the galaxy map. I had to laugh when one of them got his fighter mangled and the docking computer died when he had a smashed canopy.  Needless to say because he'd not learned to dock manually he ended up facing a rebuy through his stubbornness.

 

That would be my advice for new players. Stick to something cheap and ride it into the ground until you know you can take off and land without any major issues. My Hauler might have been a piece of shit, but it was a cheap piece of shit I could ding up and smash about without worry of getting dicked over with a massive rebuy. Fuck learning to do it in an Asp, those things are relatively expensive. It's like learning to drive a car. You're only going to fuck the gearbox up and scratch the panels, it's not worth going any further until you're out of that phase.

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New community goal up. It's the Empire building a new prison class ship and you have to deliver slaves and non lethal weapons. Put your morals to one side, there's money to be made. You can fight undesirables going against the goal as well, in case you want to get blood on your hands over all this.

 

Spoiler

I'll still chip in, even if it's for the dirty Empire. The credit is my god.

 

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For the people wanting to do the CG you are in for some bad news. You cannot call your ship to the station you need to supply. This is because it's an orbital, as a result it has the minimum of supplies and only 1 medium landing pad. So that's a pain in the arse. 

 

The closest station I could find was HIP 117831. You want to send your fighter and hauler there. It's fucking 1200ls out too, so it's a fair old cruise from the sun. 

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I've not done much of the CG, but it's paying out mad stacks. Looking at just short of 3m per run, but ti's a bit of a long cunt and there's literally no room for error on the way back. By the time you get back to the prisons foundation I'm running on fumes, the path from the market to the check out is absolutely crawling with pirates as well. I don't think I've seen many solo pirates either, it's all wings of 3, so if you get caught running slaves you're going to end up getting killed for them. Might be worth dropping a load off and then fucking it off to do something else. As tasty as the payday is it's too dangerous to do it repeatedly, the anarchy systems offer zero protection against getting attacked. It might be worth trawling the surrounding system for bounties though, just be aware that they're going to be fully winged up.

 

Also spent some time over today trying to learn an old lad called Roy get to grips with it. That first few hours are basically gaming persecution for even able players, so to see him get a few reasonably clean landings in was impressive. He struggled on the evening but then again so would I if I was tired so it's hard to hold it against anyone. I'm sort of determined to see him through it though, once he's comfortable with traversing the galaxy there's enough for him to do without having to escort him around. Learn people the basics and then let them get on with it unless they ask for more advice.

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Get ready to read a rantble. Yeah, I just invented a word.

 

So this community goal stuff they have on this week. Participation is terrible. It's in a shit place to get to and anything larger than a Python is basically locked out. That's stripping out all the people with bigger ships that like to run cargo out of the equation.

 

Then you have the fact that it's a good amount of jumps to actually find decent prices to make the best profit. Yep, it's some profit you're making, but elsewhere will see you gaining money at a faster pace with less risk.

 

Then you look at the tiers met on both goals and it's looking really bad. Usually people will have a bit of a session just to get their name on the sheet and come away with a few million for very little effort. Because people aren't committing to this one means that diverting off doing whatever people usually do means they're not going to bother. It's the opposite of snowballing, since people see it isn't worth their time and carry on with what they're usually doing.

 

Then you look at the combat goal. The largest ship you can have without adding in a jump to system is a Python. The place to see the most ships is the nav beacon, but it's such a trickle that it feels almost pedestrian. I get it that they need to give different levels of combat for the people coming in, the intermediates and the die hards, but it's like, shit, I've sat here for 5 minutes just scanning everything that's coming in and not had a bite.

 

Then you look at the way you have to hand in the bonds and the services they're offering at that station. Refuel and repair and that's it. You're not going to be able to fill up ammo or limpets unless you go a jump across and go to James Station.

 

Nobody can be arsed with that. The time invested isn't reflective in the payout.

 

The last few community goals have been great, either in nice places or had additional rewards. On goals like this that you know people are going to abandon it having those additional awards are a good incentive to go for. Allowing you to decorate your ship with your accomplishments is a good thing to do. I mean the decals they threw into those goals were just OK, but it's better than nothing considering you need to buy practically everything that goes into customising your ships.

 

How hard would it have been for Frontier to knock out two skins or ornaments for your dash for this? Tie it into the story of the community goal. We're building a prison ship, then have one skin unlock if you contribute above a certain amount for cargo and another if you do the bounty hunting. For the games universe sake you could have it be a cop car and a prison transport type skin and have them on something like the Imperial Eagle and the Imperial Clipper. It's going to make people want to hit that mark and drive up the completion because collecting stuff to customise their ships because people like that. If that's too much then have a cop and a robber set of bobbleheads or something. It's tiny amounts of work to stimulate people being interested in contributing. I know it's more than a .gif that the previous decals were, but it's going to take a few days to bang something together by a few people. Damn, they could have even had nameplates or ship ID stuff themed around police and prisons.

 

I think Frontier are scared that doing stuff like that will eat into their real money store front. It's full of skins and all that other stuff and while a lot of it is basically throw away cash, a lot of it should just be in the game. For instance you need to pay just to change the colour of your ship. It weighs in at about 50p per colour or something like that, but you have to pay out for every ship. There's 33 ships in the game currently That's just shy of £100 if you go for the bare minimum 6 colours thing if you have one of each ship. It's kind of mad that they have done that. I'm not a massive fan of paid for storefronts when it comes to stuff like this, but they're taking the piss a bit. 

 

I mean look at this.

 

By all accounts have the fancy as fuck skins up for a cost, but have ones in game that can be earned just by playing. Have customisation gear that can be earned through doing certain activities. Say if you go to Hutton Orbital, allow people to buy a Hutton Mug bobblehead for their dash (or even a decal that says my other ship's an Anaconda because of the in-joke). Put Fuel Rat decals and  ship skins on the line for people willing to go out their way to refuel people that are stranded. Put the pirate ship kits on the line for people wanting to go and fence their illgotten gains. Give the nut cases that have managed to get to Beagle Point a sparkly engine detail. You could fill out so much of this game with more things to do that will actually rewards people for playing other than. The market should be for real fancy dress up stuff.

 

In many regards it reminds me of Destiny 2 with the way it holds all the stuff behind a paywall. Well even worse since in Destiny 2 you can actually get it if you drop a lucky engram. But like Destiny 2 it shouldn't be like that, those things should just be in the game or woven into the game for rewards to be dealt to the player on reaching such accolades.

 

I fucking adore Elite Dangerous, I really do. Anyone that played the older games would find themselves right at home with it. I just cannot defend the amount of stuff it feels like they've stripped to sell back, especially when there's events that could dole out stuff like that to get people interested. And for stuff to sell on the marketplace, they need to up their game. If people are forking money out it has to be better than what's on show now. Really they need to be at least the quality of these concepts some random fan come up with. Not just slapping light up bits like the fusion stuff.

 

Spoiler

cpJVy0t.jpg

 

So yeah. That's my rant. Make some of the less appealing community goals more appealing and improve the cosmetic content by putting the stuff that should be in the game in the game and making the paid for stuff actually worth the coin.

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Yeah. The stuff about the community goal is super unrealistic at times. There's so many problems with some of them that it's hard to know if they are designing them that way on purpose or are they just completely misguided on how people are playing.

 

A few weeks ago they had one with specific products, but the products didn't refresh in stock quick enough so you ended up taking pittance back to the goal because everything has dried up. That is so dumb. They're shooting their own weekly in the head because people are going to have a fly around the commodities, see there's not enough, dunk what they have in and leave it. It should be a complete feeding frenzy of unrivalled earning potential for the duration of the event. As it stands now those ones with the specific items if you come in late you're fucked because the shelves have been stripped.

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You might laugh but we were all here once. Watching Roy slowly develop some sense of of control and direction, working out that the game is in 3D space instead of the usual 2D plane. You see players spinning wildly of tangent and grinding their ships against the walls but watching Roy gain piloting skills has been fascinating to watch. He might have a bad one here and there, but he's gradually got a choke hold of what he's meant to be doing without having to be directed too much. I've been timing him and he's gone down from 8 minutes per landing to about 90 seconds now. Eventually he'll be down the the 30 seconds or so landings most of the people that have mastered it.

 

You sort of take for granted when you can do it, you come in, see your pad number and plonk it down like it's nothing. It's a stark reminder that it wasn't always like that and having to hard wire yourself into being able to do that is something that has to be practised until muscle memory takes over.

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Sometimes the hardest things to explain are expectations that you bring over from other games. He didn't think you could pass the sun, like it was an invisible wall or something. It didn't occur to him that you could just fly around it.

 

Bought his first ship today as well. He also made the decision that he wasn't going to go for a docking computer, which is more than I can say for those 2 other slags we're playing with. I can understand on the huge ships since a) They have the spare optional spaces to house a docking computer and b) they're so fucking big that manoeuvring them about is a pain when it comes to fine adjustments. I know it's a pain in the arse to learn to dock, but it really is a skill you just have to grind out. It's not just giving you the skills to move about when everything is nice and slow, but it's also giving you skills to know what controls do what when you're flying in a dogfight or in a high pressure situation that might end you. Those skill transfer without you really knowing it, it's easier to keep track of targets when you know what pitch and yaw as well as strafing up, down left and right. If all you are doing is controlling the nose of the vehicle you're in for a bad time the deeper you get into it. In fact without accurate control over the position of your ship there's no way you'd be able to hit stuff with the fixed weaponry.

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Sat and refit my Python from being a bog standard cargo runner to being a mining vessel. Cost me a fucking bomb, Roy's sat over in America complaining about how stuff's costing  50k and I'm looking at numbers on my units and wondering if the 4.5 million is going to pay itself off quick enough to warrant me installing it. Also a cool 7 million just for mining lasers and beams to protect me from pirates. Shit's expensive in the future.

 

Going to need someone to watch my back while I break rocks apart. Hopefully one of the guys can squad up, I'll chuck them some off cuts and a cargo share when we dock for their troubles.

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So it turns out mining is relaxing as fuck, a bit more involving than exploring since you have to be a bit more involved, but it's just enough to keep you ticking along, keeping an eye on what's coming in and filtering out all the shite that comes through that's not worth hauling to market.

 

There's something sort of mesmerising about the collector drones that you can have that pick up the mined fragments. It's a similar feeling of watching harvesters in a real time strategy or vehicles drive about in a city builder. Keftlings had the same thing as well, once everything was set it was nice to zone out to.

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So I set off towards Colonia tonight. After tonight's session I was just under 20k ly away from it. Not had anything too scary happen while out in the black, but I did forget to equip heatsinks. I hope that doesn't come to bite me in the arse on my travels.

 

I am going to visit Sag A* while I'm out here, I had no idea it was so far from Colonia. The map is deceptive because you're looking at it at an angle, might be another 40k ly round trip to get there and back, I don't know, it might be worth going back towards the bubble. I'll have to make that decisions if/when I get there.

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I did about 150 40+ ly jumps tonight outside the bubble towards Colonia

 

The black has started to populate with more and more stars on the way to humanities second settlement.

KPlP5KO.jpg

 

On one jump all the lights lit up on the dash warning me something was wrong. Nearly got burnt to a crisp by these bastards.

DE3JLhw.jpg

 

A few jumps after that I managed to find an undiscovered Earth like. Hopefully I get to cash it in before anyone else. Highlight of the night finding this.

rDjhEY1.jpg

 

Whilst jumping to the next system I noticed a nebula that was gradually getting bigger and bigger. I was going to skim right past it on my current heading, so I've decided to detour and go right through it, see what it's like on the inside. It's designation is Skaidai AA-A H71 for those (not) interested.

4iFDHmE.jpg

 

Exploring is relaxing, except when the hyperjump nearly throws you into a sun. It's those moments where your heart falls out your arsehole.

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Today I've gone god knows how far.Went through the Skaidai AA-A H71 nebula which was lovely, like some fancy painting you'd find in a modern art gallery that you could fly around. Lovely. Later on in the day I went on to find a few more Earth like planets as well as water worlds that could be terraformed for colonisation. On top of that I found both water based life on a gas giant and carbon based life dotted throughout my travels. So that's nice.

 

On top of that I completed the first leg of my exploration voyage. Coming up on Colonia is something else Pictures really can't do it justice, since the way the sun bleaches out all the light in the distance and how it slowly fades as you travel away from a systems star leads to some stunning reveals in colour and saturation, a whole galaxy full of stars and nebula unfold and blossom in front of you the further into the black you get. The beautiful thing about Colonia is you approach from the bubble side is that you go through a gap in the nebula. When you're in the Colonia system you can look out the window you just can and it's all starry. It's like looking into a stage that's got the curtains partially pulled back.

 

Stunning looking game if you're willing to go find the views. And the best thing? Chances are you'll be the first person ever to witness them, give them a scan and put your name on those exquisite bastards to let people you were here first

 

 

 

Tell you what though. After the 25000+ ly trek, getting landed in Jacques Station was a lot more stressful than any normal landing should be. All that exploration data at risk weighs on your shoulders.

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  • 2 months later...

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