Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter Launched

Elite Dangerous

My favorite part of using the hotas is when I fire up Elite for the first time in forever, and accidentally hit the turbo thrust button when trying to reverse when messing up my docking in a station.

Maybe that’s the issue? Were you instantly proficient with the keyboard and mouse?

The benefit of a (good!) HOTAS is having everything you need at your fingertips. These are inspired by the cockpit of fighter jets. Why don’t they use a keyboard and mouse there? Because it would hit you in the helmet if you flew upside down! And it isn’t a universal interface. The cockpit is designed to do one required set of tasks as efficiently as possible.

There is absolutely a learning curve. When someone gets over that, though, you can instinctively do the thing you want. They develop muscle memory and act before conscious thought.

It’s like a car with a touchscreen interface for the radio versus buttons and knobs. They both get the job done. In many ways the touchscreen is more flexible. But in my car where I’m familiar with those buttons and knobs I can change the volume, switch tracks, change stations, and use the cruise control without devoting significant mental energy - or attention! - thinking about how.

I agree with all that, but 90% of that, you’re getting from the Stick. 10% at most you’re getting from throttle.

Good throttles tend to have buttons as well so it’s quite handy.

I’ve watched Youtube videos of people doing some amazing stuff in ED using dual joysticks. I keep meaning to try it someday.

I don’t have dual joysticks, but I do enjoy using the thumbstick on my throttle unit to control translation thrusters. Makes maneuvering in docking bays way easier.

Dual joysticks make a lot of sense for a game where you’re going to be mostly still and constantly alternating between moving backwards and forwards. Descent would be the ideal target. If you’re going to be mostly going forward at various speeds, a HOTAS with a thumbstick seems like the better choice.

Back in the day, when a joystick was required for everything, I played Descent with HOKAS. It just made sense. I could definitely see playing ED that way.

I played Descent & Descent 2 with an X36 HOTAS, and used the rocker switch on the throttle for lateral movement. For that type of game I think I would want to have yaw and pitch on the right stick with twist for roll, left/right and up/down movement on the left stick, and forward/back thrust on rudder pedals.

Elite is different in that roll is important, so compared to the example above players swap the roll and yaw controls, putting yaw on the twist action. But I’ve also watched videos with people using the left x-axis for yaw control instead. I don’t know what they do for translational movement.

In any case I have two right-handed sticks and no rudder pedals. That may be enough to dink around with a HOSAS setup, but if I got serious about it then I’d probably have to buy additional hardware at some point.

My throttle doesn’t have an analog ministick unfortunately. My joystick does, and it works well enough for takeoffs and landings, but not in combat when I’m waggling the stick around.

If you have an X36 HOTAS with USB, you can still use it on windows 10, and it has now become better! Instead of the ministick moving the mouse, it now functions as a joystick.

Its been 17 hours, Commander Krazycroc! Report?!

he’s been taken…

I’m finally getting back to playing ED, working on unlocking the engineers. I’m at the part where I need to travel at least 5K light years from my starting world.

I have only done a little exploring before, and this is my first time really outside the bubble. Do I understand this correctly? If there’s no ‘first discovered by’ label in the description of the objects on the system map, then they haven’t been discovered yet?

That is true. Also map a thing for an extra bonus. You are adding your name to the galaxy map when you get back!

Grats! If this is your first undiscovered! Its a great feeling! An earth like too is pretty special! Take pics of the system for later I promise you wont regret it. I still love looking back at my old shots.

I didn’t take screenshots of the planets, wish I’d thought of it at the time. I was already on my way back to the bubble when I found this system, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my first, but it was by far the best. In addition to the earth-like, there were two water worlds and three high metal content worlds that were all terraforming candidates.

I hadn’t been paying closer attention to earlier systems I visited partly because I was trying to unlock one of the engineers, so discovery wasn’t my primary aim. But truly, for the distance I was traveling I did not expect to find any undiscovered systems. The game has been out for several years, and has a bunch of players dedicated to the task of exploration. I just assumed at this point I’d have to fly to the ass end of the galaxy to find a planet that isn’t already tagged.

I knew about terraforming, but something I didn’t realize until nearly halfway through my trip was that I needed to look at the description in the system map. I was expecting a notification on the discovery scanner’s info screen. So I probably missed a few.

The only planet I ever found (and it may have not even been a planet but a moon) was a bog-standard icy rock. Big whoop.

When I flew to Sag A via colonia I found four earth-likes. Out there somewhere theres a planet schurem, full of horny little monkeys fucking and fighting and eating shrooms.

Are they accepting Earth refugees?