Elite: Dangerous

[praetor]

Courier: gimballed lasers (bursts or pulses) on nacelles and rail/cannon/PA on the central hardpoint is the preferred loadout for me. at least 2 A boosters, if you're pledge to space-Danaerys then class 2 prismatic shields are the best, but, imo at least, class 2 shields are more than enough (iirc class 3 are barely 20% stronger) since that way you can put 2 class 3 SCBs which is probably better overall MJ/ power-ton-price-time whatever ratio. and the engine sound is absolutely super sexy

Vulture is fucking awesome. i hated the look at first when it just came out, but i warmed up to it so much that it's in my top 3 ships aesthetically. i use 2 fixed pulses because it's so manoeuvrable that gimbals feel like cheating

damn son, as a spaceship porn game, even with the very little variety it has, ED is unmatched. can't wait for the Cutter (hopefully 400mil and Earl is enough ) and the Viper Mk4

edit: and if you want to make quick cash, that 1-2mil/hr is nothing. combat-wise it's better to go to a high-intensity/hazardous RES or a compromised nav beacon (if you can find one), profits should be 2-3 times that and the environment is more fun to fly in (and Haz RESes can be fucking deadly when conda wings gang up on you :D), and if you want to do it while hauling cargo, the new Sothis smuggling missions are good and fun (but you need an Asp for it), just refresh the instance until you have enough missions to fill your cargo hold, and then the game will spawn shitloads of NPCs that will try to hunt you down so it can be pretty nerve-wracking when you're constantly interdicted by an Anaconda trying to turn you into dust while hauling missions worth 20-40mln for 400ly

 

[Ulminati]

I'm pledged to spacemilf for the EMPRAH'S HAMMER

Also, any codexers wanna further the glory of THE EMPRAH, feel free to add CMDR Ulminati to your wing

 

[Ulminati]

Lookie who I found!

 

[J_C]

Can you change the colour of the HUD ingame yet, or you have to mod it in?

 

[Ulminati]

You change an xml file outside the game

 

[J_C]

Ehh, devs could have made this into the game already, it would be much more convenient.

 

[Ulminati]

http://arkku.com/elite/hud_editor/

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

So... worth firing up?

 

[Berekän]

And from my POV

 

[Metro]

Who made you two mopes commanders?

 

[SmartCheetah]

Who made you two mopes commanders?

You should better ask who made all dem scrubs who can't fly at all, commanders.

 

[DraQ]

You dont want to go down that path.

Gravity isnt simulated, you have either jump distance and fall damage when thats actually implemented, simply put the effect it would have simply doesn't require the use of a accurate model.

Yeah, no.
Any sort of elevation difference makes simplistic notion of jump distance invalid, you might want to jump less than you possibly can, you might take a running start, whatever you are standing on might be in motion as well, etc.
Then you have the movement itself that needs to feel natural.
In the end, the simplest way to simulate gravity is to simulate gravity - after all it's just the question of increasing downward velocity by fixed value every tick.

this is like asing someone to maintain a F-117 airborne nevermind the fact its aerodynamically unstable and requires computer assistance.

False. No amount of computer assistance can override physics. It's pretty obvious that you are going to get a thick layer of FBW between you and the thrusters, dealing with things like stabilizing the ship so that it doesn't start tumbling around the moment you try anything. The thing is that with physics being what it is trying to emulate completely different mode of transport would effectively cripple the vessel - if there was a way to disable the artificial constraints in ED, an experienced player doing so would be at tremendous advantage over everyone else.

And you asking players to do that against a AI that will have no such problems is the cherry of the fuck you cake.

Yeah, so? Git gud.
The AI is inherently disadvantaged in that it is dumb.
If the combat is projectile rather than hitscan dominant then it can't even pull the usual bullshit with perfect reflexes and 100% accurate aimbots because aiming is no longer such a simple question.

Combat sims at one point simplify mechanics either because Jesus Christ, you ARE asking the player to do the job of two (in case of double seaters such as the F/A-18 or AH-64) and doing it by flipping switches around

AI crewmembers.

Do you also complain when flight sims dont calculate win speed or lack flocks so you get a seagull sucked into the intake? How about clouds that reduce the effectiveness of radar? there are hundreds of things that are emulated at all, unsurprising "death by pigeon" will not go very high of what combat simulators will attempt at emulate.

I would complain if the flight sims made no effort to include gravity or limited airspeeds severalfold to make shit less confusing.

We are not talking about spacesims accounting for fucking mascons when calculating gravity, which would be an equivalent of what you are talking about, we are talking about honest, basic Newtonian physics.

(...)

At first, the game was supposed to be fully Newtonian (sic), but the flight controls on ships rigged to make them handle like ww2 fighters.

(...)

At some point during early testing, it was doing out that combat with flight assist off devolved into one of two styles, neither of which was deemed very fun. Most players would either sit still like a turret and rapidly turn to face enemies, or they would "joust" by flying past someone at very high speed, then taking agrees to turn a around and get back.

That was the reason they added absolute speed and rotation limits. The physics engine was gutted as a result, but we got ships that handled the way Braben said he was aiming for, even if they are less realistic.

And that was the first mistake - scrubfaggotry. Instead of working on how to make players not want to have their combat degenerate into jousting or circlestrafing by creating counters for imbalancing or degenerate behaviour (for example a homing missile with better linear acceleration than any ship can be an effective counter against combatant trying to accelerate away and escape, a shotgun/or flak weapon will be disproportionally devastating against anyone who tries to joust), they prevented players from doing the natural thing in given situation and called it a day.

There is much you can do with directional defences, different weapon systems and, lastly, environments - a space combat between two fighters in the middle of nowhere is going to be boring regardless if they are flying in circles facing one another or chasing each other's tails.

Finally, something like completely loony turning speed tweaks could easily be turned into something plausible, by basing it on acceleration rather than velocity - you have a fusion or whatever reactor that is mainly cooled by having propellant pushed through it and can't be throttled up or down instantly. If it's running at low power it can't really squeeze much thrust out of RCS, at full thrust effectively all propellant is going into main exhaust plume leaving none for maneuvring, but somewhere between you have enough power to feed into RCS without the need to put all of your propellant flow into continuous cooling.

Relativistic speeds aren't fun for space fighters.

Relativistic speeds are not even remotely achievable in a game with sane accelerations and delta-v budgets, let alone one without time compression.

 

[Ulminati]

Ah, hello DraQ. I was wondering how long it'd take you to come doing the usual rant. You seldom take more than 3 days between your newtonian sperg rage.

Nice to see you think combat should be all homing missiles at 10+km away. I guess that would let frontier save on ship textures and models too, since we'd never see others.

I hope somoene will make the game of your dreams someday. If only so you can sit all alone in it and wonder why nobody else wants to play it.

 

[J_C]

if there was a way to disable the artificial constraints in ED, an experienced player doing so would be at tremendous advantage over everyone else.

Now if only there was a way to disable the flight assist. To make the FLIGH ASSIST go OFF. Where the experienced players have a tremenedious advantage.

 

[Ulminati]

Flight assist off?! Preposterous! Why, if such a thing could be done there would be dozens of youtube videos with people doing just that and showing DraQ is full of shit.

 

[dbx]

I hope somoene will make the game of your dreams someday. If only so you can sit all alone in it and wonder why nobody else wants to play it.

Newtonian physics and a proper single player? Sold.

 

[DraQ]

Nice to see you think combat should be all homing missiles at 10+km away.

You're going to need some bigger glasses.

Now if only there was a way to disable the flight assist. To make the FLIGH ASSIST go OFF. Where the experienced players have a tremenedious advantage.

You mean there is nothing preventing you from going at several km/s or turning as fast as you could in the "blue zone" when standing still?
Because otherwise you're just given a slightly longer leash.

And I just love the "you are not target audience/most players don't care about this" argument. I'll be happy to reuse it while looking smug* about it when FO4 comes out.

*

 

[Number Six]

Are there any particular systems of note? So far they all seem very similar to me, but are there more "stocked" stations that offer better prices on outfitting and ships etc?

 

[praetor]

so now that they've killed Sothis & co, i'm back in Empire space (usually around Beta-1 Tucanae, Tamar or Liabeze. cmdr Dreadd in game if you want to wing up and shoot at shit and other cmdrs in a codexian way)

Number Six

there's pretty much no unique system in the game. they all have one of the 4 variations of station (with relatively minor differences between them. hopefully the CQC assets and some new shit will make it in game sooner rather than later to inject some variety in the lifeless universe), and prices vary mildly for commodities, and for the most part ship and outfitting prices are fixed (the exception being PowerPlay control systems of certain powers that offer permanent discounts for stuff, like Li Yong Rui or Hudson)

 

[praetor]

b.... b...b.b .....b bbuuu.. but it's impossible for ED to simulate gravity!

 

[DraQ]

b.... b...b.b .....b bbuuu.. but it's impossible for ED to simulate gravity!

Don't be silly, it can work perfectly well, it's just that it will spontaneously cut out at 500m/s.

 

[Runciter]

That's not gravity, that's another one of their cheese-forces.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

actually, once switching engines off, the whole station should have started to rotate. the ship going down to the landing pad makes no sense.

 

[AN4RCHID]

Some actual live gameplay footage from Horizons:

 

[Rutteger]

actually, once switching engines off, the whole station should have started to rotate. the ship going down to the landing pad makes no sense.

The engines are applying a force directly towards the center axle of the space station cylinder to keep the ship stationary relative to the landing pad. When the engines cut off the ship will maintain it's current velocity which is tangential to the outer cylinder of the space station. So yeah, the video makes sense... I think.

edit: clarity