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Some updates:

Another quick sneak peak video from David Braben, this time a bit of planetary base raiding

This week’s newsletter had this gorgeous screenshot

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Next week’s livestream will be all about planetary combat.

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Hrrrrnnnngghhh!

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PSA: The galaxy map is usually a reliable guide to what sort of star you’ll find in a system you haven’t been to yet, but not always–yesterday there was a system a jump or two from the Kaushpoos Community Goal system which the galaxy map reported as being a red dwarf system.

Well, it did have a red dwarf in it, but the star you encounter when you jump in is a white dwarf, yikes. The system’s name was UVB 9xxx (can’t remember the rest of the number–might have been UBV…), and is named after the red dwarf star, but the white dwarf is NN-something.* Just be careful to zero your throttle before jumping, kids.

Anyone else run into this? *Is this a bug or working as intended? I thought systems were named for the star you face when jumping in, and that all stars in the system had the same name+A, B, C etc. I know of course that you always land close to the star with the greatest mass.

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Glad you’re having fun with it. In my experience, the extra shield booster is much more useful than the point defense. Missiles don’t do much damage to shields, it’s only the hull that they’ll take a good whack out of, and the extra 20% a booster gives you works against everything, not just missiles. That all said, sometimes it’s fun to hear them spin up.

I have seen this, and I don’t think it’s a bug. Stars that aren’t big and obvious and have unique names typically get their names from a stellar survey which searches for objects in a certain wavelength range. So if stars are found at different times (one survey finds the red dwarf and another one finds the white) but turn out to be orbiting one another, well then it makes sense to just keep the names they had instead of screwing one or both surveys by renaming things. Especially when you consider astronomers might have studied one or the other, published papers, etc.

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Why point defence? Do AI use missiles now?

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Not all the time, but in a combat zone there are enough ships flitting about that you’re bound to be the target of a missile or three. I’d fit some point defense on anything where the shields aren’t up to snuff, like the federal assault ship, or if you’ve got extra utility slots to burn. I have to say it is pretty cool to watch an anaconda let rip with four streams of fire from its point defense, so long as I’m not the one having fired the missile that is.

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Thanks for the answer, conVurt, that makes sense, although I still think that the system in the galaxy map should be named after the star you hit (or rather, hopefully don’t hit) first.
@MrCoffee: yes, the NPC pilots use missiles.

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the hour long live stream thing Frontier hosted recently about that space buggy, it is in the RPS thread (which is nice for the comments and brief description):

The stream kicks off around the 8 min mark.

And i think i now understand my disconnect for so much in ED so far, and this is going to sound terrible, but i really had no idea just how young Mike Evans (i think he is the head designer?) is. Yep that is an ageist comment, but it really does explain why ED feels all ‘BOOM! Head shot!’ to me in relation to it’s design priorities, the lack of depth and variety etc. A lack of age off course does not mean you might be inexperienced or not have a vast range of game knowledge and understanding, but sometimes it can and does, maybe especially in realtion to a game that was created before you were born?

Has he even played the original games i wonder (rather than just looking at them briefly at some point)? Did he know what Elite was before getting involved with Frontier? All terrible ageist things to ask, but well…he is very young, and i think that might be one of my issues with ED so far. But atleast we can shoot each other in our space-buggy adrenaline racing game expansion at some point…(shakes head whilst thinking of that Captain Picard Face Palm jpg).

Elite Dangerous is most definately a game, unlike Star Citizen, but boy…they both exasperate for their differing reasons. Will they ever both be as awesome as they should be? That’s a hard one to call imho.

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I’m not sure I buy that. I’ve been looking for the holy grail of space games for a while now and when it comes to games where you interact with the systems primarily from your cockpit, my experience has been that they all feel somewhat flat and shallow. Most of these games fail at validating the player’s actions - the only difference between being a pirate or a bounty hunter in most cases is that faction X is green to you while factions Y and Z are red or vice versa. You want to be a trader? Sure man, have fun shuffling goods around the universe without any real impact to the systems, just to earn enough credits so you can buy a bigger ship so you can trade more.

My general experience with these games is that most of the activities they offer feel more like bulletin points on the back of a box rather than fleshed out game mechanics. In most cases they’re also disproportionate when it comes to effort/payout ratio. You’d have to be a real space nut to enjoy slowboating from station to station for 2-3 hours straight to earn a few hundred k credits when ships or modules cost millions.

Combat in these games is often just shooting at target boxes. Does it matter what kind of ship your opponent is flying when you’re firing autoguided weaponry from 2-3 kilometers away? Does it matter if they’re faction X or Y?

So what else is left? Story? Most of the game writing is cringe worthy, not to mention that linear missions add absolutely nothing to replayability. A good flight model is one of those things that can elevate such a game, but how many games can you name that really achieved that?

If you want some depth in your space games then I think the standard space sim approach should be canned and rpg design should be applied across the board, but with space instead of ground combat. Can you imagine playing something like Mass Effect, except you get to fly your ship? I’d play the shit out of that.

Instead most of my choices are reduced to procedural generation wankfests with the depth of a puddle.

(there are a couple of space games that break the mold, namely the X series, but it has a pretty basic flight model, not to mention vertical learning curve; and Space Rangers, which isn’t played from the cockpit. Something like SR from a cockpit would fucking rock though).

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He isn’t the lead designer, that would be Sandro Sammarco. Mike Evans designed the flight model and related ship systems, which along with the combat is actually the best part of the game. The core mechanics of flying and shooting stuff are excellent.

I don’t really buy the rest of your post though anyway. Do you really think the previous games in the series had more depth and variety than this (I would argue they had less)? If anything the problems with depth and content come from sticking too closely to the previous formula.

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How did I not know that Frontier’s chief financial officer is called Neil Armstrong?

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I think the problems of depth and content really dont come from the designer or previous games. They are problems of expectations and imagination. Search your feelings luke, you know this to be true.

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I’ve got to disagree with this. There’s really not a lot of depth to most of the systems. What is the depth to exploration? To mining? Bounty hunting? What you do at the very start of the game is pretty much all there is. Want to explore? You push a button and point your nose at each planet in turn. Sure, there’s some cool sights out there (especially if you’re into astronomy) but it doesn’t have depth. I can come up with all kinds of cool RP stories and stuff, but it doesn’t give it any more depth. Mechanically, you just repeat those basic thing. Same holds true for bounty hunting… you fly to a RES and you race the cops to blow shit up. That’s pretty much it.

The game is pretty cool, I like it, but I don’t think the lack of depth is strictly due to peoples’ lack of imagination. I’d like to see real AI simulation, border wars, trade disputes. I’d like bounty hunting to be a combination of investigative, exploration, and combat skills. I’d like to be able to play a pirate and destabilize a trade route, incurring the wrath of the authorities and causing NPC bounty hunters to track me down, as well as the cops providing additional security to the trade route. I’d like the extra police presence and the loss of shipping to have the potential to cause economic problems which other players (Traders, smugglers, etc) could benefit from.

That kind of thing, to me, would give the game depth.

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And I would like mass effect style scanning mechanisms (optional) for exploration and mining. your thoughts on improved background simulation are great. None of these things were even in the old games. the game as it is is already miles beyond the original ones. stuff we want will get added in due time.

these guys have a freakin ten year plan for this. patience. its already awesome and only getting better. but slowly. garden dont grow beautiful overnight either, kids.

once more, expectations, temper them because rome was not built in a day.

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Yeah, more stuff is coming, but for today I guess it comes down to whether the moment-to-moment gameplay is fun. Opinions will vary. I like the way they’ve modeled flight, I like how they dealt with traversing distances (jumping between systems versus super-cruising in system), I LOVE the way docking is dealt with; it’s just slightly fiddly and challenging enough to keep you engaged, but not by any means frustrating.

I like the reality and sense of scale the game conveys. Love the sound design. Love the ship designs and their simple but strong silhouettes. Have fun doing various loadouts and trying different ships. Really like the combat, and have had many, many moments of extreme stress which led to a really satisfying victory or an agonizing defeat. Trading and cargo missions can be pretty blah in starter ships, but I’ve yet to try it in the big ships.

And, I often spend a fair bit of time in my travels just admiring the way a yellow sun lights the edge of a planet, or the glare of a distant white dwarf through the clutter of an asteroid field, or an Anaconda muscling it’s way into a station, or the dark loneliness of an outpost at some godforsaken spot light minutes from anything.

Dozens of hours in, but lots still untouched. Mining, exploring, winging up, community challenges, etc. – all on my to-do list. I don’t really play to grind reputation or amass cash, and in fact I’ve restarted like three times just because I enjoy the initial experience of clawing up from that free Sidewinder.

But, yeah, lots of the above is totally a me thing. Maybe my background with sims helps. Gameplay in combat flight sims, for example, is fly here, patrol, shoot down some guys, maybe drop some bombs, head back. Do it all again. It’s the immersion factor, the little surprises, and the moment-to-moment challenges and decisions that make it fun. ED is much the same.

It’s not without mild irritations. Patches often feel like one step forward, one step back. I have a high end system with crazy-good FPS but still get stutters in asteroid fields. These things don’t bug me too much, but I hope they improve.

It’s also a game where I am super excited about it’s future, enough so that I spent my Saturday last week making some purely conjectural posters for what might be ahead. As far as I can tell, David Braben and team have an incredibly sensible methodology and plan.

Anyway, I probably need to quit being the rah-rah guy in this thread, but there you are.

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Nah, keep up the rah-rah BiggerBoat! I love this game for the same reasons you mention, but then I also have enjoyment of sims in my background.

Like your posters - but where are the Thargoids! :)

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I agree with all those things, but I think there’s more to it than the micro-feel and the depth of the content. There’s also the macro-feel of the game, and I was never able to escape the MMO-ness of it all. I’m not sure that will ever change. That kind of stuff is really hard and it may depend on the framework of the game.

For example, I’m playing Falcon 4 at the moment. While the chrome is seriously lacking, it feels great to take off to a patrol point, get a single kill with my wingman, maybe dodge a missile, and return to base. I suppose I could do something similar in Elite by taking on high-level bounties. But how does that mesh with the progress quest these days?

I’m super excited to explore planets and whatever they have planned next. I just don’t know if it’ll ever have the right feel at a high level.

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Plus one intarrwebs to yer post biggerboat, love them posters. How did fdev react to them?

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Ah yes Sandro, i guess just the fact we see Mike Evans (well we did for a bit) posting on the forums about stuff, it gave him a senior feel. And you are right the combat and flight engine is very good indeed, it’s just that everything else is meh to seemingly unfished/forgotten about, which again is why ED seems all about the pew pew and less about everything else perhaps, which is certainly where much of the ‘lack of depth’ complaints come from? We still don’t have passengers for the Orca etc etc.

So yes, with all the unfinished/dropped aspects to ED it does feel less an overall game experience vs the older Elites, certainly to myself (but also to others, going on forum posts from time to time). And that is speaking as someone playing FFED3D right now, as my Elite game of choice.

Sure i get ED has a ten year road map, we have all the expansions etc, but simple little things have constantly been overlooked since the alpha/beta testing stages (and bugs/issues all dutifully reported for those by most folk) that detract from what ED should be right now. The list would be so massive and boring and simply a repeat ad nauseam of stuff we have all seen, and know about, from the Orca situation to no Alliance to background sim issues to navigation clunkiness to effects of system law level on interdictions to instancing balancing etc.

It encompasses pretty much everything but the pew pew and flying, which we all agree is awesome. But Elite has always been so much more than that, which is why it is completely frustrating to see it stagnate at the ‘I’m teh awesome pew pew game’. It should be more, i should not be playing FFED3D as a preference ;)

The expansions, the ten year road map, those might ‘save’ the game in the long-run, i hope so, ten years should be enough time to fix all the annoying little non pew-pew related things, shouldn’t it? I hope we don’t all just forget about all those while getting excited for a bouncy dune buggy pew pew addition? Or maybe they should drop all the Elite stuff and focus on CQC and the consoles? I have my trusty FFED3D+Andyj mod whatever way it goes (and maybe SC/NMS/Limit Theory as well?).

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They offered me a job as head of marketing, of course ;)