To be completely honest, my old self appreciates the 5-15 minute cruise back to the station after a 30-60 minute intense session of dog-fighting, in a way I can relate to driving home on a commute after a long day of work or my 15 minute drive home after an intense night of bowling. But, I totally get that isn’t for everyone and the hour long sequence of jumps to get to a new system is annoying for sure, when you want some action on another area of the galaxy.
Since you can transfer ships, it would be nice if they had the option to travel that way yourself.
Yeah, I enjoy the travel back to the station. Since you have to actively watch the velocity yourself so you accelerate and then brake in time so you don’t overshoot your target, it’s a fairly engaging little activity and doesn’t take all that much time if you keep accelerating for a while.
It’s not really the same kind of travel as in the Wing Commander days. That really would be dreadful without the ability to autopilot and skip. Travel in Elite isn’t like that.
How is the alien stuff these days in Elite?
I would answer if I knew! Sounds interesting, but I don’t really know anything about it yet.
After years of waffling, I finally picked up Elite Dangerous in the Steam winter sale. I jumped into the first tutorial mission after hooking up my trusty old Logitech Wingman Extreme Digital 3D joystick, but I’m having a bit of a problem. The ship is definitely drifting (and not always in the same direction) with the stick centered. I tried recalibrating through the Windows control panel, but it did not fix the issue. I haven’t used this stick in a long time, but I don’t recall having similar problems in other games.
Any thoughts as to whether this is an E:D specific issue and if there’s anything I can do to fix it? If I had to guess, I would say that the deadzone on the stick is too small, and it’s drifting in whatever direction I last had it.
If the Logitech is to blame, any recommendation on a reasonably priced joystick setup to replace it that would work well with the game? I’ve seen some positive talk on these two from Thrustmaster (not sure what the difference is):
I’m unaware of any issue with Elite specifically. Is this a very slight drift that could be resolved by adding a deadzone, or is it too pronounced for that?
Also, I plugged mine in while apparently leaning on it a little and it set that as a zero point. I unplugged my Logitech joystick, and then back in and all is good.
Yeah, there appears to be a deadzone setting for each axis you can set too.
So, I think I need to look at my Vulture fit a bit closer. Got chased out and finally blown up heh. I have modules set up or scanning and have no idea what I was doing so need to get this fitted better!
I also accidentally shot a friendly and after paying the fine, they sent me to a prison station of sorts. It was many jumps away too, ugh!
Thanks for the hint. I didn’t realize there was a deadzone option for each axis. Added one for yaw, pitch, and roll and the drift appears to be gone.
ah people relearning the lost arts of dealing with analogue joystick and setting them up. Soon you’ll be asking about setting up headtracking too lol.
Embrace this part of the game, getting it all set up just so makes it yours.
I went ahead and got the TM 1600M for Elite since it was on sale for $97 over on Amazon. I’m not loving the control setup, yet, but I may simply need to try another setup for things like navigating the pop up panels in my ship. Or I will get used to the control scheme. It’s been a long time since I had a HOTAS, but it’s coming back to me.
I only have an hour or two a day to play, but I’ve managed to amass about 5 million, so I’m considering getting a nicer ship than the Cobra. Maybe the Vulture after a few more bounty runs. I have a hauler that’s setup so I could try mining, but it can barely carry enough limpets to do a successful run. still learning the game a few weeks later, and still having a blast.
It’s funny, I played a lot of combat flight sims, Wing Commander, etc. but it’s been so long I forgot about setting up deadzones within the game. Or maybe it just wasn’t as much an option then. /shrug
So I’ve definitely fallen down a hole with Elite. It’s a little surprising, because I typically don’t care for open world games without some sort of over-arching story to work through. Over the years I’ve played several “make your own way” space sims and they’ve never grabbed me. Could just be because I took a bit of a break from PC gaming, and it’s been a long while since I played any sort of space sim. Yet I dropped 5 or 6 hours on Elite yesterday, ferrying passengers around to get my first Adder.
I think I’m going to pass on the cheaper HOTAS setups above. They’ve only got a few buttons on the throttle, and I the more I play the more I feel like what I want is some additional 4 way buttons on the left hand, similar to the TM 1600M Crusis mentioned. It’s a bit of a jump in price though. I may just wait to see if I stick with the game once the kids get back to school and work starts getting busy again.
It’s real nice having lateral thrusters on the throttle. My other main binds are boost/jump etc and thrust direction toggle.
Not to dissuade you from spending more money, but one thing to consider with the Thrustmaster T.Flight 4/X you linked above: Elite allows you to combo buttons (press two buttons at once to represent a different command), and the rudder on the T-Flight has a nicely positioned set of buttons that can serve as “shift keys” so that every button gives you essentially 4 commands (seen in the command map below as Flight/Combat/etc.). I’ve actually played with some more expensive sticks, but I like the position of these toggles on the T-Flight – particularly for VR – and I have buttons left to spare.
I always like to be dissuaded from spending more money, so thanks! That image is really useful. If I understand correctly, the shift keys you mentioned are the four on the throttle thumb position? So if I wanted to lower the landing gear, I’d hold the throttle 7 (Miscellaneous/Green) button and then joystick 3? Or do you tap throttle 7 to get into Miscellanous mode and then joystick 3?
Which system do you have? I think that’s what I’m thinking, that having a separate hat for lateral thrusters would be really convenient.
Ginger’s setup sounds similar to my T16000M setup. It has a little joystick on the front of the throttle for controlling the little thrusters, a button mapped to boost, a switch to toggle forward/backwards thrust, and a big rocker thing that I used to navigate menu tabs.
Saitek X52
Hold the toggle button - in this case throttle 7 - and then press the joystick 3 button.
Saw the Hotas X in a clearance bin at my local Staples for $54.99 CAD.