Elite Dangerous

All too often I don't.... and then it gets bad and I have to... even though now I need to do some... but sooooo sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepy.

Yes Elite was written by Ian Bell and David Braben originally in the 80s. It's quite incredible that over the decades

this


got turned into this


with interiors that look like this



I find it quite a mind blow to think David might have had this in his head way back when.... but couldn't realise it fully until more recent years.

 

I was very little at the time of Elite.

I remember when I was a a bit older seeing something called 3D construction kit. It came with a video that I think was recorded on a much better computer than what my friend had but the video showed how you could create a fully 3D coloured world. I remember thinking about modelling my bedroom and had this idea about making the screen (which I guess was a TV) as a portal that you could travel through to another world.

Not sure where it would have gone to...

 

I was 4 years old at the time of the first moon landing. I have very faint memories of the family huddled before the radio, as we didn't have a TV before 1973. But I was all over it as soon as I could read. When I was old enough to process all the information coming with these topics, it was the time of the Voyager flights. I remember the excitement when the first colour photos of Jupiter and its moons were published, and again at the Saturn fly-by. I invested significant pocket money into several sets of slides which were sold by a specialty publisher only known to me because of my father's Physical Society magazine. Such were the times before internet or even digital storage media... At least, while others gave slide presentations of their holiday pix that made everybody yawn, I could use these to great effect. A similar sense of awe returned with the imagery produced by the Curiosity rover on Mars.

My Elite plans just got pushed back yet another payment cycle. Another game released a design pack which harkens back to its origins in wiremesh graphics and I couldn't resist. It's available for a limited time so it took precedence. Stomp, stomp, kill, die, space will be there another day...

 

It's great that we can all share our experiences of the things in space that we've witnessed. As a kid we had a book I liked which I think was about the Apollo 17 mission. I don't think I ever read it much but loved looking at the pictures.



But I was a child of the space shuttle generation really and, although I barely remember the Challenger disaster, the Hubble going up or life without a space station I did at least pick up on these things a little through the children's news TV show in the UK, newsround.

Generally though I remember being more or less starved of anything about space. Even though there were presumably plenty of missions going on while I was growing up I think you could only see them or anything about them if you had cable TV or something but we of course only had 4 channels. Probably the first thing I properly remember was the Pathfinder mission to mars. That was probably my personal proper "space first"



and of course the Columbia disaster.



Since then, probably the biggest was seeing Pluto, something that was previously 4 blurry pixels in a Hubble book someone gave me as a present.



But other notable big ones have been Curiosity with it's crazy landing method



The spaceX dual booster landing

The surreal of starman



and, more recently SN10,

coupled with being able to actually watch a landing on mars

and the first helicopter to fly on another planet



Not to mention the first space tourism in the last couple of weeks. It's really so awesome to be able to follow along with this stuff and there is plenty more cool stuff coming up too!

Wistrel

 

Hot damn. This interferes with my slacking...

https://www.edsm.net/en/expeditions/summary/id/151/name/The+Wild+Wild+West

What am I thinking, actually? I do have a functioning and licensed client, even if not the one I want to remain with forever. I have 3 weeks to go from noob to spaceworthy. Traded myself up to a Cobra so far, should not be hard to achieve a viable exploration build until then. And take it to Colonia...

 

I think you want a Diamond back Explorer or something like that... I have one anyhow... the one with the large jump range. I put a russian voice in it... can't understand a thing it says. There are wires running round the edge of the windows... feels like I'm driving soviet space tractor - love it!

Actually it's really impressive how all the ships in Elite feel so different. OK not that I've tried all but have Eagle, Sidewider, Cobra, DBX, Type 7 and Clipper. All very different. Love how the Type 7 feels like I'm driving a massive slab.

 

Thanks, I've seen most mainstream recommendations for various purpose builds. I mainly want the Clipper, too, but otoh aren't inclined to stress out over achieving it before the deadline. One goal at a time and here is also still very much a clumsy noob. These keybinds are a dog.

I'll go with this for the time being, not least for nostalgic reasons but keeping it small also has advantages. You don't need the absolute best for a community event designed to include as many as possible. They recommend having about 30-ish range.

Got the basic build so far, done enough missions and trades to shuffle a few mils together, now working on gathering upgrade mats, weening myself off the dependence on flight assists and trying to quit making stupid mistakes. Just blew myself up yesterday, thinking I can casually try out silent running before learning what it does. And next thing managed to get the SRV upside down and wedged firmly under my ship, out of luck with the published wriggle moves. You don't live long in the West that way :D

You're right about the ships. The flight simulation is really good, no way we'll get that in Entropia any time soon. The comparison is not fair ofc, its focus is elsewhere and Elite took as long to make the surface game viable at all, still far from perfect also. I find it interesting to observe the developments on different sides.

 

Ah nice name. Reference to the Engineer from Firefly maybe? In Entropia (in my mind - since there is no capacity for naming ships in game) I've named my quadwing Kite, which is actually a reference to the .hack character. I don't know why.

Yeh Elite has so much to learn. Some hate that, others love it. I kinda like the comments from the guy who made the Elite Dangerous VR is a nightmare video in that he says something like "you are learning to fly a spaceship - it SHOULD be hard". :D

SRV is really fun as you start to get a feel for it. A big one I found helped was picking up that the thrusters always thrust down regardless of your orientation. OK not quite but what I mean is that they aim in the direction that is up or down but closest to the ground. So if you are upside down, they still thrust away from the ground. This is how people have been able to drive up buildings. They tip back beyond 90 degrees to the perpendicular and thrust and this gets them upwards momentum and push against the side of the building.

I really enjoy tipping forward and thrusting now. Great fun when you the get hang of it. With practice you can fly across the ground at speed and only have to land intermittently. I've still got a lot to learn though. Only recently discovered you can use materials to fix up your ammo and vehicle while out and about too and you get bonus ammo/integrity for doing so also.

Still gaming not really happenning much at the mo for me... just a little plugging away at Tales of a Neon Sea still when I'm too brained out for anything else and have been enjoying horizon chase turbo a little too much. But it's a bit too intense for me to want to play too often cause I get far too into it if I do play!

 

Yes, that's the one. Been dabbling with ship voices, too, but 'Jewel' is the only one I found myself wanting (cough - how old are we, lol). Not currently available even outside.

Indeed the depth of its simulations is really its greatest selling point, imo. You have to put 'simulations' in plural, each part of it is not just a mini-game but a full-blown tool you need to master separately, think of the FSS scanner alone. Flying the ship is actually the easiest part of all.

 

You mention FSS... I have to mention "the coolest man in Elite's" funky tutorial

 

Well, everyone thinks they are the coolest rooster in the galaxy when they make these exuberant displays of glorious immaturity. The example you show is still moderate, most are much worse even when their information value is good. I never needed to see as many guides for another game, or any piece of software I recall. If only they didn't make one cringe so much most of the time. Everybody's perception about this is different of course, and this is why I think most of this video stuff is a regression from the good old text and illustrations, and detrimental that it gets more and more displaced by all the loudness. At least in those cases where video is not really needed to get something across. In text, the author's personality never matters so much, you can concentrate on what's important and the experience is much more unified among its consumers. Sure there are positive examples, too, like this one explaining the various scanners and his other videos about content bits not covered by the official tutorials.

It doesn't look like I can make all the planned upgrades before the expedition starts anymore, got more important things to do also. Some guides claim that with all possible optimizations and exploits you can do all engineer unlocks and material gathering in about 30 hours of gameplay, but that's for someone who did all this before. The ferry to Colonia by the expedition organization leaves on Friday. I'll probably go by myself anyway, the data from that alone is worth a lot of rebuys. If not... well I very much resonate with OP here anyways. Just up, up and away... is what one's sanity needs at times.

Let me know if someone finds a planet that resembles an Entropian one.

 

I think it's a case of each to their own. I like Mr "Hey you" and his more funky approach to explaining stuff but appreciate many wouldn't. OA does his thing too and it's nice also.

There won't be any planets like Entropia for a long time in ED if indeed ever.

 

So I tied the expansion recently on my aging PC. AFAIK I didn't change any setting and it seemed to be running "ok" aside from maybe not the best frame rate but passable. What did seem off though was the texture quality. Views into the distance looked great but up close the near by scenery was blurry as hell. Dunno if there's something I need to adjust or if my computer was just having some sort of brain fart. I've not tried again since and didn't actually get very far into the tutorial. Somehow just wasn't feeling the love and felt more like I'd rather just go fly somewhere in my russian tractor spaceship again. I'll try again at some point.

 

I like this thread: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/elite-an-old-persons-view.606259/

Could this, by divine coincidence, be someone we know?

All the complaints around there sound sooo familiar... LOL

Btw I finally bought Odyssey. Not just the upgrade, but a complete new copy from Frontier directly so I'm out of the Epic launcher now. It was on discount for a short time (would have reported it here but the forum was down), just £5 for the base and £19.99 for the Odyssey upgrade, which translated to just over €26 altogether for me. Still waiting to install it because mobile internet but couldn't pass the deal.

Get to see any familiar faces on an expedition, some time maybe later this year? If we're all still able by then...

 

Hmm... no one I know although I do agree with him. It's come a long way. As for the update, I feel zero ill will about it. I've not played since life kinda returned to normal. But that's simply because gone back to hanging out with friends in person, rather than any issues with the game. Actually recently I've been finding out out about the golden disc on the Voyager mission, as in how to decode the message. Kinda makes me want to pop back to Elite and find out if the pulsars referenced on the disc are actually mapped in game. Dunno if they are, but would be cool if they were. I think the voyager spacecraft are in the game somewhere... think I remember reading that.

 

Bit of a random one... I was looking back at @Jamira 's early posts of her visit to the center of the galaxy and how bright it was and got reminded of a video I saw this week... sounds like an obvious question at first...

 

I've recently been patching up (well... it was more like a full re-install to be honest) Elite Dangerous. Long story short my old GFX card died about a month or so back and a friend was kind enough to sell me his old one (which was an upgrade for me). At the same time, another friend passed an old hard disk my way so I now have more storage and better graphics so it seemed a good time to try again.

Alas Elite is starting to loose support for Win7 but I found a workaround on their forum that seems to have done the trick to get it running. So hoping to get round to trying Elite's Odyssey expansion properly at long last hopefully some time in the not too distant future.

I've been too tired though to face an evening of playing "bind the button" lately though (and the other pretty game is more tempting to spend time in) so going to have to wait until the energy/enthusiasm muse hits.

 

It took me longer than expected but I'm finally on an unlimited connection again and reinstalled it. Have to relearn the basics though, I tried but need to concede I thoroughly lost it. It is beautiful though, still a long wishlist but it's going in a good direction imo. Will definitely like to sign up for another long expedition when I feel fit.