Elite: Dangerous

[DraconianOne]

I'm only playing the single player missions at the moment but I'm finding this really hard. Do I need to buy a joystick or am I just bad at video games?

How hard? As in, did you manage to unlock them all or are you struggling with one in particular?

From reading the forums, they've apparently improved the AI and increased the shield and hull values since Alpha as well so watching old videos of people breezing through them is both demoralizing and not relevant to the current build. Which is encouraging because I've found them tricky too and while I want to say it's because of my not very good joystick, I'm quite prepared to accept that I'm just not that good at this game. Yet.

A joystick discussion would be good tbh - as much as I've always wanted a Saitek X62, it's a little pricey still.  But there is a £30-£40 Thrustmaster HOTAS (T-flight HOTAS x?) which some people say is perfectly fine.  (My current one is a Saitek Cyborg Evo which is getting old these days).

[Falconeer]

One thing's for sure if you ask me: aiming with the normal pulse lasers is harder than everyone is prepared for. That's why, if you look at all the videos around, everyone is using fucking gimballed weapons. As much as I suck at this, I really hate the concept of autoaiming weapons. Bleah.

[Ingmar]

Just because Luke turned off his targeting computer doesn't mean you have to. 

[DraconianOne]

Real Jedi fly without Flight Assist.

[apocrypha]

Witchspace Diaries Episode 3 is online!

In a bit of a hurry, will contribute to the joystick etc discussion later :)

[Falconeer]

Huge patch is today! Hope they put in missions.

[DraconianOne]

Witchspace Diaries Episode 3 is online!

You guys do make me laugh - good work!

Must choose a Commander Name - down to a choice of 3 and a half. 

[apocrypha]

Thanks Drac :)  We do have fun recording them! Sorry for the extended period of me just sitting in the station, we were supposed to be seeing Mike's pov but he messed up his XSplit.

Servers seem to be down right now... hopefully patching is underway! Sooo looking forward to the social tools. Please anyone feel free to friend me up, Commander Apocrypha.

[DraconianOne]

Challenge accepted!

[Falconeer]

Live in an hour.

The Beta phase has now started with many significant additional features. There are now 55 star systems covering 38,000 cubic light year. Player to player communication by voice and text, friends management and matchmaking. Private group and online single player options. Fuel consumption and docking computers for safe star port landings. Plus an overview of trade route mapping and the beginnings of online mission systems.

Gigantic Patch notes.

New Content/Features

- Added Viper
- Added Imperial Fighter (AI only)
- Added Lakon Type 6
- Added text chat
- Added voice comms
- Added missions
- Added fuel consumption
- Expanded playable bubble to 21 ly radius (@50 systems)
- Add support for friends management
- Allow matchmaking through jump to specific island
- Supercruise supports multiplayer
- Add RandomEvents to the current interdiction functionality. Random locations will now be spawned in front of the player while in supercruise
- For new bounties & fines, adding a "Local Security Office" to the contacts menu
- Added server moderated bounties vouchers
- Docking computer added
- Added trade route visualisation to galaxy map
- Add system connections based on fuel to galaxy map
- Added new paintjobs
- Gas giant features dervived from stellar forge data
- Chaff launcher stops scans and confuses tracking weapons but doesn't effect missiles
- Added new station variants
- Updated trade commodities
- Smuggler AI behaviours added
- Art updates for Orbis station
- Latest audio updates and balance pass
- Hauler art tweaks/updates
- Added new pilot animations
- Large Plasma Accelerator added
- Eagle art updates
- Added 'rich' station interior variant
- Added support for much larger accessible bubbles
- Fix up the last of the unsafe GOH use in ShipComponents
- Updated Sidewinder ship art
- Added beacons and associated traffic

Cont...

[palmer_eldritch]

I'm only playing the single player missions at the moment but I'm finding this really hard. Do I need to buy a joystick or am I just bad at video games?

How hard? As in, did you manage to unlock them all or are you struggling with one in particular?

From reading the forums, they've apparently improved the AI and increased the shield and hull values since Alpha as well so watching old videos of people breezing through them is both demoralizing and not relevant to the current build. Which is encouraging because I've found them tricky too and while I want to say it's because of my not very good joystick, I'm quite prepared to accept that I'm just not that good at this game. Yet.

A joystick discussion would be good tbh - as much as I've always wanted a Saitek X62, it's a little pricey still.  But there is a £30-£40 Thrustmaster HOTAS (T-flight HOTAS x?) which some people say is perfectly fine.  (My current one is a Saitek Cyborg Evo which is getting old these days).

I couldn't get past the third single player mission, even with a joystick. So I suspect it may just be me. Despite that, I'm now patching up for the full beta!

[DraconianOne]

I couldn't get past the third single player mission, even with a joystick. So I suspect it may just be me. Despite that, I'm now patching up for the full beta!

You may (or may not!) be glad to hear that they've updated the missions a little.  The NPC ships are now a lot easier than they were and that third mission (which was an absolute bastard so you're not alone!) is far simpler to kill now - I think I even managed to take its shields down on the first pass. In fact, the Recon Wing mission (which had 4 ships iirc but now has 3) was easier too.  The Supply Run mission has a Lakon 9 instead of an Anaconda and again, much easier and quicker to kill.

What seems to be more balanced now is that their shields will recharge irrespective of whether you hit them or not (but don't know if that's by design or by accident).

I will confess to being a little disappointed that they removed some of the challenge - but as tutorial missions go, they're now far more reasonable and accessible imo. Also, it does make me feel like I might stand a chance at combat against NPCs in the game now.

[Falconeer]

In the meantime, servers are being hammered and online isn't really accessible. Nothing serious, it's beta, and LOTS of new players got in today, still it sucks cause I want to try the new stuff.

EDIT: I got in. The amount of improvements is too high to count. There's a lot of new stuff and for the first time since 1994 I felt like I was traveling across space to reach a distant destination and sell my cargo, hoping not to be interdicted and blown off in the process. And I have to admit that so far the implementation of fuel contributes a lot to the whole idea of space traveling. The mission system is very basic so far but it was needed and adds a lot of flavour. And things to do. The 45 new systems suddenly make the universe huge. And the little new details here and there are just wonderful. One the one thing I didn't think it could be improved just got better: sound. This could be the game with the best sound FX I can think of. Turn off the music, pur on your headphones, and start flying around. The bass vibrations kickin in when you get into supercruise or the crackling noise when you get out of hyperspace, or the sound of the positional thrusters when your main thruster is off and you are just turning around, or the hardpoints being deployed... this sound engineer/artitsts are godlike.

[apocrypha]

Didn't manage to get on last night, so I've had a scant 20 mins this morning.

Graphics are very nicely smartened up, textures, especially on planets, look higher res, anti-aliasing seems tweaked, framerate is greatly improved for me at least. Much, much smoother, looks and sounds stunning now.

There are a lot more players and they seem to have raised the numbers visible in one location. Stations are busier now, I've been rammed a couple of times entering/exiting stations!

Missions feel a bit clunky atm. Trading missions are very annoying in that you have to return to the system where you picked the mission up to collect payment, which makes them slow and the payout low for the time. I'm hoping that gets tweaked.

I've had a problem with mouse input in station services too, eg. Commodity Market, Outfitting, etc. The menus don't seem to respond to the mousewheel and clicking is really flaky. I'll bug report it when I have time.

Looking forward to playing a lot more when I have time later on today :)

[DraconianOne]

I hit you up with a friend request Apoc , Commander Tankin.  Don't currently have voice comms though.

[Falconeer]

I am Commander Lefteye Falconeer. We should all be friends.

[apocrypha]

Added both of you :)

[DraconianOne]

New trailer

[Ironwood]

I'm not sure about the Viper.  At all.

[apocrypha]

In what way?

[Lucas]

Add me! Commander Lucas Konrad

[apocrypha]

Added :)  Game is having some major server issues atm, all kinds of nope.

[WayAbvPar]

Find lots of bugs and slow this thing down a couple of months. I don't have time to play it right now but it sounds like it will be fun as hell.

[Falconeer]

It'll be out in 6 months, so no hurry.

The bad news is, at the moment the game basically is like UO but with Trammel & Felucca. Except Trammel is empty because their version of Felucca is the online server, and their version of Trammel is the solo-or-party-of-friends coop servers. And what you get in solo/coop can be then brought to Felucca (shared universe).

 

[apocrypha]

Witchspace Diaries Episode 4 - Space Toilets! Bit of a rundown of the new features in Beta-1, and we had a play with the grouping system and stuff :)

Trading income seems tweaked high atm, I'm in a Lakon Type-6 already. Which is a very nice trader, 100 ton capacity and decent range, can reach almost all of the currently available systems in 1 jump. Steers like a brick though!

[Ironwood]

In what way?

In the way that it doesn't really resemble a Viper at all.

[Falconeer]

I don't know man, it looks pretty identical to the original to me  





Source:    http://imgur.com/a/C95sv  

[Ironwood]

Frypic.jpg

[Falconeer]

To those who are playing and are smarter than me:

Is there a way to use the Galaxy Map "Navigation" tab to actually plot a route and figure out how to get to a specific system?
I can see the "from -- to" fields but it's not like you get any result by putting two systems in it.

What I would like to know is for the navigational system to give me an idea of what jumps should I make to get to some place, so I can read if my ship has the jumping capabilities to do so, or not. Is this not yet in, or am I missing something?

Another question: is there a way to find out if a specific system has a star base or not? I made the jump to one area and there was no base there so I risked being stranded without any fuel. I like the idea that we have to buy information eventually, but you would think starbases existence would be known on any starmap (unless they are illegal or something). So again, am I missing something or at the moment you can't really tell if a system has life and services or it is completely barren?

[Falconeer]

Lovely Mike Evans aggressively explaining why Elite Dangerous flight model works the way it works. 

I don't give a damn what all the other space games have done in the past, nor do I care that our yaw rates are apparently even slower than a plane's is.

Fast yaw and pitch in a space game is a video game trope of the highest order along with banner arrows sliding around the screen and compasses telling you where to fly all the time. I'm almost certain that other developers just implement those features because they've been so prevalent rather than actually reassessing whether the game needed them or could be even better without them!

(...)

Suffice to say we wanted Elite to feel like star wars in terms of how the ships move by banking/rolling and pitching through manoeuvres opposed to the yaw and pitch based FPS style movement most other space games offered (where roll plays little or no part).

(...)

Finally realism has played no part whatsoever in any of our design discussions about the flight model. We don't care what would be realistic as we only care what the game play experience is when flying these ships and so far we feel we're hitting the right notes for the majority of our audience.

[Ironwood]

In fairness, Frontier got utterly humped for putting in realism.

[Jeff Kelly]

I don't know man, it looks pretty identical to the original to me  

On my slow-ass old rig it will probably look more like the right pic anyway 

So my rig is not slow, I'm just having the retro experience.

[Jeff Kelly]

If you want realism in your space flight sims then you probably would not fly a Cobra MK III through half the galaxy but instead spend the game sitting inside a tiny cramped Soyus capsule for half a day waiting for your docking maneuver with the ISS to complete.

Or spend weeks to get through a series of complex breaking maneuvers to get from quasi-relativistic speeds down to a velocity that allows you to dock and doesn't lead to you and the station get completely obliterated. Accelerating to even 10% c with only a few g of thrust (so that the squishy creamy center inside the ship doesn't get crushed to death by g-forces) would take months.

The people who claim lack of 'realism' in such games are the worst kind. Because it's always somehow perfectly acceptable as far as 'realism' goes when those games have artificial gravity that reacts to g-forces in femtoseconds, miles of visibility in pitch black space and ships made from materials that can sustain flight maneuvers at > 50g. Yet somehow argue over whether something else is 'realistic enough'

[apocrypha]

To those who are playing and are smarter than me:

Is there a way to use the Galaxy Map "Navigation" tab to actually plot a route and figure out how to get to a specific system?
I can see the "from -- to" fields but it's not like you get any result by putting two systems in it.

What I would like to know is for the navigational system to give me an idea of what jumps should I make to get to some place, so I can read if my ship has the jumping capabilities to do so, or not. Is this not yet in, or am I missing something?

Unfortunately not that I can figure out. I agree that those From & To fields make me think it should be there, so I'm guessing it's just not implemented yet. On a similar note the galaxy map's estimates of where you can jump to aren't always 100% accurate. Beware!

Another question: is there a way to find out if a specific system has a star base or not? I made the jump to one area and there was no base there so I risked being stranded without any fuel. I like the idea that we have to buy information eventually, but you would think starbases existence would be known on any starmap (unless they are illegal or something). So again, am I missing something or at the moment you can't really tell if a system has life and services or it is completely barren?

Yeah I think the "Navigation Markers" option has different indicators for populated/starbase systems and empty ones... but I've never yet found an empty system so I can't confirm that! I was thinking of doing a WSD minisode later looking specifically at the galaxy map so I'll have a play & do some research first and see if I can work it out for sure :)

[apocrypha]

In what way?

In the way that it doesn't really resemble a Viper at all.

Yeah it should be pointier, agree.