Elite: Dangerous

[murdoc]

One day I'm going to drop the hammer on this game.  One Day.

This is almost word for word what I keep thinking.

[Rendakor]

Same here; I was about to pull the trigger but the new expansion puts it out of my price range.

[Pennilenko]

The expansion includes the base game if I remember correctly.

[jakonovski]

Hell yeah, I got some lucky courier missions that synergized and now I can buy a new ship (or soon anyway). I'm thinking there's two things I want to do: exploring and space trucking. What should I get?

[Jeff Kelly]

Depends on how much money you have.

Best Choice: Asp Explorer
Best Budget Choice: Cobra MK III.

[Sir T]

If you want to do cargo runs you will have to look at a freighter eventually, and the most fun one is the T6m, that can be retrofitted to a decent exploration vessel of you load it with fuel. It is the only Frieghter class that can dock at outposts as its a medium class vessel. The other freighters cant, and it is far more maneuverable than it's big brothers.

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Type-6_Transporter

Another vessel to consider is the Diamondback Explorer, which is like an asp on a budget and can handle small to medium loads with a large jump range for space trucking. While the Asp is a decent ship, I do like the Diamondback E. It does have some power problems when outfitting it for combat, but I found a dual Pulse laser and Cannon setup worked quite well.

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Diamondback_Explorer

[Rendakor]

The expansion includes the base game if I remember correctly.

Right but it's $60, not $15 or whatever the base was last steam sale. I'm more curious about the space sim genre than an actual fan, so I don't want to spend a whole lot on something that might not jive with me.

[Pennilenko]

I understand completely, I played Elite way back when, and this is a game I enjoy quite a bit. So for me it is a graphically updated faithful remake of the original, which for some is not enough. However, for me it is alright. If they grow it beyond what it is for me is just icing on the cake.

[Falconeer]

If Elite meant something for you in the 80s and growing up, this video is really nice.

David Braben and the making of the original Elite. This is from a wonderful documentary called "From Bedrooms to Billions", which narrates the history of British game development since the very early days only through the words of the protagonists. A must. EDIT: Peter Molyneux is the only one in the whole three hours that comes across as extremely annoying. Maybe I'm biased. Also Matthew Smith? Wow, heroin is a hell of a drug :/

[Jeff Kelly]

I've now switched from the Cobra MK III to a Viper MK IV.

Although the Cobra might be the better alrounder I could never quite get around the fact that the seating position is off center and for what I do (mainly transport and surface missions with a little bit of combat/need to defend myself) the Viper fits my bill exactly.

Decent range (20 ly. with an A rated FSD) enough power to drive all the systems even after I upgraded the Shields from Level 3 to Level 4 and decent cargo capacity (16 for my spec) for missions makes it a good choice for me, at least until I can afford an ASP or similar type.

Insurance will be a factor in the future though. After a few upgrades the Viper is already at about 100,000 Credits for an insurance rebuy.

Second time around the game has really hooked me.

[Jeff Kelly]

Interdictions are no longer a problem but they are really all over the place. I played the whole day on thursday during my holidays and got interdicted once (in probably about fifty to sixty jumps), Yesterday I had about ten interdictions ina four hour period. While flying in the same general area of space.

With the tecniques I'Ve learned and thanks to the ship I'm in they are more an annoyance than anything else but I'm curious how the game decides those spawns. It's doubly strange because I almost never have any sort of cargo. The NPC spawns trigger the in game dialogue for pirates that are after your cargo though.

[Jeff Kelly]

Missions into unexplored systems you can't buy exploration data for suck.

With the basic discovery scanners abysmal range it takes a long time to find your destination. Also the missions still show even when you don't own a scanner.

[Falconeer]

Life is finally being injected in Elite Dangerous!

Notes about the next big patch (ETA: late March). We'll get NPCs with a name, face, history and personality.

Characterisation and a more personal connection to the game world has always been one of the goals for Elite: Dangerous. It’s such a massive play space that it’s easy to feel dwarfed by it and the current impersonal contacts inside the game only enhance that perception. In an interesting coincidence I saw some lovely concept that fans had created for personalities and as part of the mission flow. This is something that we’re working on as part of the 2.1 release (as with the 2.0x point releases some of the changes will be applicable to season one owners).

We’ll leverage the work we’ve done on that Commander Creator) to provide headshots of specific contacts. The focus for this will be mission givers and mechanics (these are loot characters) and the intention is that every mission giver in game (also equivalent to the minor factions) will be a specific individual. This should be consistent for all players.

Your relationship with the minor faction will determine who within that organisation you will deal with, so the better your relationship with them, the higher level character you will deal with. So maintaining a decent reputation with that minor faction is a wise policy!

As well as providing a face for your interactions with that minor faction they will offer more information about how the minor faction is doing and how you can help them. This will be accompanied by a number of changes to missions to facilitate this, there will be more details on this over the coming weeks.

Mechanics are individuals with their own characteristics, history and specialisations who will facilitate crafting. They are spread throughout human space and they are the people to see about implementing changes to your weapons and modules. The release of season two saw the first steps in loot and crafting and this will developed to a much greater degree in 2.1 -  we’ll delve into more details on this soon as well.

In the meantime, after a long treasure hunt that you could say started months ago with the super mysterious "Unknown Artifact", aliens have been found. Or at least traces of them.



Obviously the search isn't really over until a live one will be found and contact will be made.


EDIT: Adequate RPS article on aliens.

[Jeff Kelly]

This game is somehow making me reconsider my decision to not buy a new computer.

[Falconeer]

Especially because it seems to work wonderfully with the Vive 

[jakonovski]

Looks like I need to play some more again, nothing like a little sense of mystery in a space game.

[Falconeer]

More on the topic from the official newsletter

People have been searching for 'barnacles' ever since they caught a glimpse of something strange in the Elite Dangerous: Horizons launch trailer. Although no evidence has been corroborated, suspicions are high that these discoveries are related to the Unknown Artefacts that many Commanders have been analyzing for a while now.

For those interested to join the massive explorer party that's happening in the Merope system, you can find the barnacles on MEROPE 5 C at the following coordinates: -026.3496° -156.4044°. Meanwhile the search for more barnacles in the area continues, and the scientific Commanders in the community are puzzling over the strange sounds emitting from these unusual objects. What could they possibly mean?

and a video that explain(ed) the situation up to a couple of days before the discovery.

The Barnacle Hunt

[Jeff Kelly]

I bought an Asp Explorer yesterday. It's a very nice ship. Nice seating position and great handling. Handles better than my Viper MK IV. Which is strange since the MK IV is a heavy fighter and should in theory handle much better than a medium sized trading/exploration vessel.

[Jeff Kelly]

I made the mistake of browsing the official Elite angerous forums. Didn't change my view on support forums one bit. The same cesspoool of self-entitled players demanding features that "must" be added or "must" be removed. The same sort of people claiming that this "will be the end" of Elite etc.

One difference though. I've never seen a community - even during Everquest or UO days - where the player killers and gankers actually demanded that the developer reprimands or bans players that don't want to engage in one-sided "PvP" (the kind where a significantly better equipped or more experienced player kills easy prey for shits and giggles) or outright demanded that the dev removes or changes game features to make it harder for other players to escape from or evade that one-sided PvP.

There are threads where people demand that players who hard disconnect during a player interdiction should be shadowbanned and the pirates should be reimbursed by Frontier for the ingame loot they lost because of that.

Apart from that it's generally the same schtick I've heard so many times in all PvP debates since time immemorial. If the game allows it it is a legitimate game mechanic, if you don't like PvP play in private groups or local. It#s a game about space so space pirates should be able to exist...

The problem seems to be so severe - at least in the mind of the forumites - that there exists a de facto PvE server. People have founded a large private group called moebius where only PvE is allowed. A fact the PKers use as another argument to justify why PKing should be allowed in open play - if you don't like it join the moebius group.

The PvP vs. PvE debate has always been passionate and ridiculous at times but I've never seen it held like in Elte.

[Khaldun]

As you say, the general arguments extend back to early UO and before. What's really interesting to me is when a certain kind of PK'er defends one-sided conflict as "realistic"--in space, there should be space pirates, in fantasy kingdoms there should be bandits, etc.

Without requiring all the other kinds of "realism" that should surround that. In a situation where there is allegedly some kind of 'government' or 'state', why isn't everyone a bandit? Because if you get caught engaging in banditry the cost is your life (forever), your maiming (forever), or imprisonment (a long time). Meaning the realistic 'risk/reward' that accompanies banditry, piracy, etc. is largely absent from MMOs that enable PvP.

Equally, valuable resources and the routes to them are rarely left undefended by those governments or states to unorganized or petty banditry. Bandits either exist in waste spaces where they catch the few, unwary travellers or they band together in sufficient numbers that they effectively become a government or state in their own right (and then typically attack or punish competing bandits in their own territory of control). In MMOs in contrast, the risk/reward relationship is typically "gamified" by placing the most valuable resources in the least controlled and most dangerous regions.

The only time banditry or something like it becomes commonplace "realistically" is in Hobbsean situations of total social breakdown--where typically "realism" would also include a scarcity of food and supplies, a lack of places to sell stolen goods, etc. And of course these are not anybody's idea of "fun", including PKers--they want a world where you can always refuel, always get value back for what you've stolen, always carry on with 'normal play', etc.

[Jeff Kelly]

If MMOs modelled society - or at least society's reaction to outlaws and bandiry - I'd be less negative about "PvP" in MMOs.

During the heyday of piracy trade fleets had military escort ships (hence the armada) and pirates got hanged or their ships got sunk with all hands on board. Piracy might be a glorified profession nowadays given all of the swashbuckler movies but piracy was only a profitable profession for a very short while (a few decades) given how long the colonial powers used sea trading routes. Colonial military powers employed whole "raiding parties" tasked with looking for and destroying hideouts. Pirates couldn't dock at legitimate sea ports (making access to resources and food that much harder) and were generally deemed kill on sight (with no repercussions). With the invention of the nautical chronometer (and thus trading fleets no longer needing to rely on fixed routes) piracy as a business was essentially over. The number of crime lords that die peacefully in their sleep at a ripe old age is not that high even in cases where crime does pay. If law enforcement doesn't get you, one of your competitors does. Compared to the real world consequences Pking or other antisocial behaviour in games is relatively risk free.

In case of Elite the killed party might lose days, weeks or in some cases months (deep space exploration data) of in game progression. The insurance rebuy for an Anaconda can go up as high as 100,000,000 credits and you might lose cargo or data you can't replace. The only trepercussion the pirate faces is a low bounty.

The general defense is that "people who don't want to get killed should not play or play in 'local' mode". Which would ultimately lead to a game where only the PKers play in open. It's interesting to see that there are still developers out there who somehow haven't learned from 20 years of MMO history and refinement and still claim that antisocial behaviour is somehow "working as intended" simply because the game mechanic allows it.

The only consolation with Elite is that Space is big. Really, vastly, hugely, mindboggingly big. And so the chances of you being repeatedly ganked by one person are low.

[Jeff Kelly]

A thought I had while re-reading your comment, Khaldun is that PKers and other types of people can only exist in MMOs because all MMOs are essentially anarchies. Anarchies where money doesn't matter and death has no consequence.

[Khaldun]

Right. The most unrealistic anarchy one could possibly imagine. No wonder there is a small class of people who spend too much time online who believe that a certain kind of libertarian utopia would be so wonderful. They think it'll be just like being a space pirate in an unrestricted MMO world--able to take what you want when you want it and do whatever you wish to and yet always be able to buy food in the supermarket and gas in the gas station, because of the magic of the marketplace or something like that.

[Sir T]

Another example is the consequences for Smuggling. Rather than having your ship impounded and you seeing the inside of an agoniser booth for a bit, you just get a small fine that doesn't even dent your profits.

Hell I had a bounty for a bit and I basically ignored it and flew in and out of the station with little problems.

[Falconeer]

Louis CK - If murder was legal.

[Count Nerfedalot]

I made the mistake of browsing the official Elite angerous forums. Didn't change my view on support forums one bit. The same cesspoool of self-entitled players demanding features that "must" be added or "must" be removed. The same sort of people claiming that this "will be the end" of Elite etc.

One difference though. I've never seen a community - even during Everquest or UO days - where the player killers and gankers actually demanded that the developer reprimands or bans players that don't want to engage in one-sided "PvP" (the kind where a significantly better equipped or more experienced player kills easy prey for shits and giggles) or outright demanded that the dev removes or changes game features to make it harder for other players to escape from or evade that one-sided PvP.

There are threads where people demand that players who hard disconnect during a player interdiction should be shadowbanned and the pirates should be reimbursed by Frontier for the ingame loot they lost because of that.

Apart from that it's generally the same schtick I've heard so many times in all PvP debates since time immemorial. If the game allows it it is a legitimate game mechanic, if you don't like PvP play in private groups or local. It#s a game about space so space pirates should be able to exist...

The problem seems to be so severe - at least in the mind of the forumites - that there exists a de facto PvE server. People have founded a large private group called moebius where only PvE is allowed. A fact the PKers use as another argument to justify why PKing should be allowed in open play - if you don't like it join the moebius group.

The PvP vs. PvE debate has always been passionate and ridiculous at times but I've never seen it held like in Elte.

um, might I direct your attention to that other space game, named Eve?  The DEVELOPERS there are at least as batshit crazy principled on insisting that PvP not be avoidable and that gankers generally have the upper hand and minimal consequences.

[Khaldun]

Yes. Which is why EVE is both awesome (that someone did it) and not particularly a great model for everyone else.

[Jeff Kelly]

um, might I direct your attention to that other space game, named Eve?  The DEVELOPERS there are at least as batshit crazy principled on insisting that PvP not be avoidable and that gankers generally have the upper hand and minimal consequences.

I'd disagree. Eve is much better at balancing outlaw activity. Try holding up vessels in 0.0 systems and see what happens. Eve also deals better with career pirates. Once your rating is low enough you'll get attacked by security in systems of increasingly lower rating (up to 1.0) and once you're below a -4.5 rating basically anyone can kill you on sight without repercussions. Operating in 0.0 Systems is really risky for pirates and operating in low security systems is really rsiky for traders. As it should be. Brave the pacific ocean near Sumatra and you might get boarded by pirates but it would require the most daring or foolhardy pirate to hold up vessels in the English channel. Eve also has better in-game and social mechanics for you to get armed escorts for valuable cargo or for your corporation to help out.

Eve is basically a game where I'd agree that PvP is a fact of life since the game actually punishes sociopathic behaviour by integrating it into the core game. Both by making it possible for wretched hives of scum and villainy to exist and consequentially making it harder for pirates to operate outside of lawless space. Also in how the social aspects of the game are structured so that you actually could do something to "eradicate the pirate plague" by hiring escorts or bounty hunters to smoke out the little pirate hidey-hole. In Elite though a pirate with a criminal record from here to pluto can still pretty much do everything in Elite's equivalent of 0.0 space and land at every base even with security forces present. Worse if I shoot at a pirate without scanning him first I will get the bounty on my head.

That's like Osama BIn Laden living at Central Park West New York and US law enforcement not caring at all.

Elite is a really bad environment for the kind of PvP EvE does because there's basically no risk involved for gankers and law-abiding players have basically no means to defend themselves (or gang up on) players that engage in piracy or outright space murder. Dying on the other hand is as costly in Elite as it is in EvE. A fully tricked out Asp will set you back 55 million credits and that is a middle of the road ship. That's days or weeks of in game progress for most players. In Eve I could make life really miserable for the guy that just blew up my ship - given enough funds and/or connections. In Elite I can do jack shit. All he gets is a small bounty on his head. I can't offer in-game bounties, I don't even have the means to track that guy down.

"Give me the head of Xxx_NewbGanker52_xxX and I will pay you all of the money" is something I could do in Eve but not in Elite. Therefore I sympathize more with the PvE crowd tha I do with the PvP guys.

[Jeff Kelly]

I just realized that I have the ratings for Eve security completely backwards. I apologize but my point should be valid either way.

[Sir T]

To be honest Jeff, you are kind of showing bad examples with Eve

The reason you dont see gatecamps in 0.0 so much is that the population is low and people stick to the big moneymaning hubs rather than the crap space rather than travel about. However I used Gatecamp all the time AND the entrances to 0.0 are all camped to shit 24/7. The reason that the big powers don't bother chasing off the pirates from those etrances is that if you form a fleet to kick them off the camps alt scouts will see them coming and the camp will log off. So all the "police" will get is blueballs. I mean they are not getting paid so they sit there watching indys fly off for huge profits with no profits to themselves and then they get bored and bugger off, and the pirates simply log back in and giggle. And frankly there are corps out there that live to just roam around in small gangs continuously popping members of whatever big alliances that they don't like. You might think they are only hitting bots ratting or whatever, but that's what they do and the game frakly makes it very easy. Hell they even have shops that can move them around without needing gates and with no visible cynos.

And there was actually huge fleets to protect industrial tried several times in eve. The problem is that no matter what you do Pirates can pop indys like nothing, and no amount of logistics ships can save them from huge burst damage.

Low sec might as well be 0.0 for all the protection gate guns give, as gate guns are easy to tank. I've been killed landing on a gate by smartbombing battleships. And Alts make low sec rating a minor inconvenience at worst. As for your bounty, well thank you for giving the guy a million or so so his alt or corp mate can shoot him and pocket your money.

Frankly Eve is a very pirate friendly environment and people take huge advantage.

[Mandella]

Yeah I'm not reading anything that wasn't already beaten to death back in the UO days, especially PK rage over hard disconnects during battle.

Thing is, even as I have become more and more carebear as I get older, I don't expect all games to cater to me. If I am playing a PK friendly game, I expect to get player killed. Over and over again. And if I don't like it, doesn't Elite have some sort of single player option anyway?

[ajax34i]

That's like Osama BIn Laden living at Central Park West New York and US law enforcement not caring at all.

They don't believe in ghosts, so...

[Falconeer]

More on the upcoming Engineers.

Engineers are individuals who provide the blueprints (which describe the materials and items needed for a specific modification) and can then apply them to the weapon or module. They are characters with their own back story, preferences and specialisations. Initially we’re looking at around 30 engineers dotted throughout human space and we will be able to add more in future updates.

One of the reasons that we chose mission givers and engineers first for the characterisation treatment is because in both cases you have an ongoing relationship which can change over time with the character. For the minor factions this is measured by your reputation with that minor faction (although factors like Pilots Federation rank will influence the deference with which they treat you), with the engineers the measure is taken from a variety of stats throughout the game and dependent on the nature of the individual.

For example we have an engineer who is closely aligned with the Federal Navy and so your rank with the navy is his key consideration, so the higher your naval rank the better blueprints he will be able to offer. As well as naval ranks, the Pilots Federation ranks (including combat, trade, exploration and CQC) will influence some engineers. Some engineers will be affiliated  with minor factions, so you’ll need to manage your relationship with them as well. Some will use your stats for mining or trading in illegal goods as well as a host of other indicators.

As well as these initial governing factor there is a separate reputation with them, which must be cultivated along the lines of their governing factor to gain their trust and so more capable blueprints.

Not all engineers are immediately available to all players. The factor that governs their relationship with a commander has a minimum threshold that must be reached for them to deal with the player.

Each engineer has a specialisation, meaning that the deal with specific weapon types and modules. This is because they are experts in squeezing a bit more performance than the norm in their particular field. We are looking at having a secondary specialisation for engineers, just to help balancing the distribution of specialisations and of course we can add more engineers in the future. Or even remove ones if circumstances require it!

The engineers are spread geographically to add more geography to the map, but also to fit with the individual’s characteristics. They tend to be reclusive characters who are found at their own, isolated facilities on planet surfaces.

Seems like another rep grind to me (  ) but this time with a little more personality. One could argue that everything in any MMORPG is technically a rep or an xp grind or both.

[Khaldun]

I think with demands for PK-friendliness the thing that is just eye-rolling--as it was back in early UO--is the perception of dedicated PKers that a "realistic" game setting requires "realistically" allowing pirates the ability to repeatedly kill and rob other players with impunity because somehow that's the way the setting would "really" be.

[Jeff Kelly]

Tried mining for a bit.

It's lucrative, if you can stand the boredom of pointing mining lasers at stationary targets for an hour until the cargo hold is full. I don't think beats stalking resource extraction sites for bounties as far as credits/h go but the amount of precious metals you get from pristine rings is nothing to sneeze at.