Elite Dangerous - Yay or Nay?

[Burning Bridges]

Humans are extemely compulsive animals who keep at a certain point just keep doing pointless things because they have to, like biting fingernails.

I noticed myself that I kept playing ED way past the point I found it fun. Thje point is simple that in the absence of an engrossing space sim ED was all I had

And that is also the reason why people keep playing ED. It is shit, but the other space sims are even greater shit. In ED you can at least pretend to travel long distances, whereas other games have scaled space into the confinements of their shitty engine until it no longer feels like space.

 

[DraQ]

I'm happy that the carriers cost a lot, because nothing would be worse than every second player having a supercarrier, flooding every system with them. Having a few dozen of these is a much better balance.

I don't care for balance, I wanted an offline game. *gathers pitchfork and furiously googles up Frontier's address*

And turning "# millions of credits per hour" into an even more important metric is not balance. It's inflation. It just means the next toy will cost 100b and missions/rewards will be adjusted as such. At the end of the day, that's what the game has done since launch, each new expensive toy being paired not long after with new vastly improved money making schemes. I remember the old "Not everyone needs to have an Anaconda". Can you even play in open without coming across dozens of Anacondas/Cutters/Corvettes these days?

Imho, cost is almost irrelevant here. It just follows the shitty inflation this game has seen since launch. I'm just flabbergasted at how long it took Frontier to mention/hype/develop/release such an apparently massive feature which amounts to "added a new space station model". Meanwhile, I'm still waiting to land on more planet types than rocky/icy.

Well, you can always just boot up old Frontier in DOSBox or maybe contribute to Pioneer if you can into gamedev.

Both are solo and you can land wherever you fucking please.

 

[DraQ]

Humans are extemely compulsive animals who keep at a certain point just keep doing pointless things because they have to, like biting fingernails.

I noticed myself that I kept playing ED way past the point I found it fun. Thje point is simple that in the absence of an engrossing space sim ED was all I had

You can always retreat into deep space autism and play COADE.

 

[Ezeekiel]

Anything new happening with the aliens these days?

 

[Fishy]

Well, you can always just boot up old Frontier in DOSBox or maybe contribute to Pioneer if you can into gamedev.

Both are solo and you can land wherever you fucking please.

Indeed, for all the warts, FFE is still a thing of beauty. But I like telling myself that being personally mad at Frontier will make them realise that I'm totally right and that they'll start using their gorgeous engine to finally make the Elite 4 I want instead of the World of Braben they wasted my precious money on. In my dreams, it totally works!

 

[DraQ]

Chaosdwarft
Kneel heathen.

 

[Chaosdwarft]

Chaosdwarft
Kneel heathen.

I am also a convert, check my post on the thread

 

[DDZ]

Fuck, hadn't played in a while, decided to pick it up. My Krait was far on an outer arm when I last played so I got ready to fly back to Sag A* and hand in exploration data at the new station there.

2 hours later I charged my FSD and joined into a system. In it are two stars, no planets. No FSD injections.

I am now keep having only a single jump option. Wonder if I will get out or that it's just a dead end.

 

[Mortmal]

Anything new happening with the aliens these days?

Given they managed to even make alien invasions something boring, i wouldnt count on it. Will always be that static lifeless boring universe.

 

[Twiglard]

Anything new happening with the aliens these days?

Given they managed to even make alien invasions something boring, i wouldnt count on it. Will always be that static lifeless boring universe.

The whole game is defined by its sleepiness. The only thing remotely exciting was attacking surface settlements in a rover. But that's an insignificant part of the gameplay.

Just play KSP.

 

[Morkar Left]

Anything new happening with the aliens these days?

Given they managed to even make alien invasions something boring, i wouldnt count on it. Will always be that static lifeless boring universe.

The whole game is defined by its sleepiness. The only thing remotely exciting was attacking surface settlements in a rover. But that's an insignificant part of the gameplay.

Just play KSP.

Or you guys could just play X4 instead. Actually by now even Star Citizen will bring you more fun (ointless fun but at least some fun). The core game at release was decent. A graphically and feature updated version of the old Elite game. Everything that came after was grudgingly bad design for me. I guess it took me 20 hours to get my controller properly configured, get used to the flight model and understand the core game mechanics. After that I played around 20 hours for real and from these I had only around 5 hours of fun. In my complete braindead frustration I even bought the horizons expansion. Landed on a planet and decided after 20 minutes to sell the landing module because landing was such a shitty and pointless annoyance. It has a big universe, nice graphics and some nice ship designes (with a nostalgia bonus for the oldschool ships). But that's it for me.

 

[DDZ]

I still have a blast exploring even after 1100 hours. I have done maybe 10 hours of combat. Went from Sidewinder to Cutter twice.

I am glad there isn't any narrative shit I have to do, it would just get on my goddamn nerves.

 

[DraQ]

The whole game is defined by its sleepiness. The only thing remotely exciting was attacking surface settlements in a rover. But that's an insignificant part of the gameplay.

Just play KSP CoaDE.

Fixed.

At least until someone makes The Expanse game - if not in IP then at least in spirit.

 

[Yosharian]

The whole game is defined by its sleepiness. The only thing remotely exciting was attacking surface settlements in a rover. But that's an insignificant part of the gameplay.

Just play KSP CoaDE.

Fixed.

At least until someone makes The Expanse game - if not in IP then at least in spirit.

What the hell do either of those acronyms stand for??

 

[DraQ]

The whole game is defined by its sleepiness. The only thing remotely exciting was attacking surface settlements in a rover. But that's an insignificant part of the gameplay.

Just play KSP CoaDE.

Fixed.

At least until someone makes The Expanse game - if not in IP then at least in spirit.

What the hell do either of those acronyms stand for??

KSP = Kerbal Space Program.
CoaDE = Children of a Dead Earth.

KSP doesn't really need much introduction, I believe.

CoaDE is a one man project (which sadly shows sometimes) that attempts (with varying but overall quite impressive success rate) to derive near future space combat basically from first principles - you build warships out of parametrized modules defined by physical models and material properties and have them manoeuvre using n-body orbital physics and duke it out using quite detailed physical simulation.



Highly recommended if somewhat flaky, mandatory ride if you're a Sci-Fi turbonerd.
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/children-of-a-dead-earth.111131/

 

[anvi]

I'd rather try X4 but seems like it still needs more time.

 

[DraQ]

I'd rather try X4 but seems like it still needs more time.

It probably won't get more time.
Plus the trailers are much earlier version, stuff like this is more representative of the current version:

And that's what you get when you crank the module designer to near physical limits of the 5' in the future tech in game - like solid core reactors and NTRs (basically NERVAs), etc:

(The bright blue lines are rapid-firing 100km/s pellet railguns, BTW, indigo rapid fire 40km/s multistage coilguns).
Yeah, that's 30.2GW of waste heat rejected at some 2630K.

Also, it's a game where it's fairly typical to throw 20 or 50 nuclear missiles at enemy ship in a single wave - you know you want to.

Some dewd playing a bunch of the early missions using current version:

 

[anvi]

That looks interesting, like KSP with weapons.

 

[DraQ]

That looks interesting, like KSP with weapons.

Except you can make your own - weapons, engines, reactors, nukes, etc.

 

[Mag Steelglass]

There's a Kickstarter open now for a remake/remaster of EV Override, the second (and best) game in the Escape Velocity series, which was partially inspired by Elite and may be up y'all's alley: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-frontier-override/

 

[DraQ]

At relatively close orbital flyby you definitely get 3D environment even with low delta-v and acceleration, because you will have two ships/fleets leading each other and weapon fire incoming asymmetrically because of that.
Something like this:

Yes, that path looks complex when seen from an outside perspective, but what happens when you normalize it using one of the combatants as the frame of reference, instead of an outside point that has no meaning?

That's in combatants' frame of reference.

And it's just 1-on-1.

Norfleet
An old shot I've found, this time using stock armaments so I can actually tell exactly what is what based on tracers alone:

You have different velocity fire incoming and outgoing at different angles and it may make sense to have it inform your tactics and even ship layout.
And again, it's just 1-on-1.

 

[Fedora Master]

Fleet Carriers in ED can't even fight each other.

 

[DraQ]

Fleet Carriers in ED can't even fight each other.

And that's why we mostly talk something else in the ED thread.

 

[Silly Germans]

How does flight and fighting feel in X4 ? Is combat enjoyable or rather dull ?
I have played X3 for a while but focused on trading and mining and barely
remember how combat felt.

 

[anvi]

I read combat is better than X3 and fun, nothing incredible but still good and an improvement. Large ship combat is even better. The highlight is the empire building, it is meant to be really good.