anyone played Elite Dangerous: Horizons …? Are there any incentives to land on a planet? How many planets are there?
I haven’t played it since it first came out, but there were no planet landings - just docking at space stations.
with Horizons they have planet landings now… I checked some videos, the planets didn’t look very interesting, more like a variation of moon surfaces…
There are hundreds of billions of landable planets, I think (400 billion stars in the ED galaxy). With Horizons (“Season 2” of Elite Dangerous), landing and exploring is limited to airless planets and moons. Exploring gas giants, volcanic worlds, and earth-like worlds will come in later expansions.
Within the inhabited “bubble” of the galaxy, there are bases on these planets with which you trade, resupply, get missions, etc. It’s the same sort of stuff you do with the orbiting bases. Some missions are planetside – traveling to other bases, searching for downed ships, taking out installations, etc.
You also have a surface vehicle, a moon buggy essentially, that you can unload from your ship to explore planets. It’s a fast, agile little vehicle that’s pretty fun to drive, especially on low gravity worlds. There are materials to be mined from rocks, which you can use to enhance your ship.
If you’re into astronomy, there is also the appeal of landing and exploring a realistic environment at planet scale. For those folks, landing on an ice planet and exploring kilometer-tall chasms lit by the cold blue light of a distant sun is pretty cool. If you’re not into astronomy, you might find the surfaces barren and boring. For myself, it’s more appealing than the surreal beauty of something like No Man’s Sky, simply because it’s so immersive and awe-inspiring.
The best thing about Elite Dangerous, currently, is the combat and the overall in-cockpit sim experience. These are the things they’ve nailed. There are a lot of other systems in the game – trading, mining, crafting, factions – which some people find a bit shallow or too grindy.
It’s a sim game, set in a scale galaxy, with a focus on psuedo-realism and immersing you in the cockpit experience, with a fairly rich feature-set which will continue to expand over years. It pushes all the buttons for people like me. For others, not so much.
So in a fit of perfect timing, I got an email about Empyrion today. It apparently just had a huge “3.0 Anniversary Update” that adds missions, living worlds and much more.
So I loaded it up for the first time in almost a year, went into creative mode and flew down to a planet. Damn, gorgeous stuff. I’ll try survival mode soonish.
Also, TGB, for the love of GOD would you edit the thread title and correct the misspelling of the game’s name? It’s driving me bonkers.
Mission accomplished!
Done, you big baby.
Pot / Kettle
Well played.
Brian? Can you go back and rate your current favorites in the spaceship/space/planet/exploration vein (with an emphasis on exploration; esp. RWG or yuge!-iverses) as opposed to the crafty or shooty or even RTS?
I want to love NMS but I’ve been talked out of it before even taking the plunge. I’m also hearing that Subnautica might scratch my itch for visual and exploration pleasure. How are some of the other contenders? More and more I’m excited by early access in terms of innovation and fun at a great price point.
My favorites? Personally, I’m not a fan of these craft games like Space Engineers and such.
Exploration though? Sorry, to this day no game beats Starflight. Still best in class, bar none.
Believe it or not I took a look at Starflight; it’s available on abandonware.com. But could you cough up some games from the present which scratch an explorer’s itch? Above you asked SamS “more crafty or more explorey”? Could I get your reply to more explorey than crafty?
The best games, for an explorer, to me are Starflight and Distant Worlds, bar none. Nothing even comes close. The only thing that even scratched that itch a tiny bit was FTL with this mod that removed the fleet chase mechanic and let you explore at your leisure.
Exploration just isn’t that big a deal in games anymore, and it’s damned sad.
Did you play Out There?
Sure did, enjoyed it, but the survival mechanic turned me off a bit. I was just reminded of this one though:
Very good for exploration.
Well, it sure has a decent amount of stuff to explore and discover, but it felt like exploring in Rogue. Nothing like Starflight for example, but it has exploration, so it might do ya.
Approaching Infinity looks like something I’d possibly enjoy but the $40 price tag seems more than excessive for this kind of game.
Sigh, yeah, I kickstarted AI, so I got it for less than $40, and while it IS indeed a fantastic game…it’s hard to recommend it at that price from that publisher when there are cheaper options that are almost as good.
Subnautica is fantastic for exploration. Avoid the maps, avoid the wiki. Go in cold and it will feel like a huge, amazing undersea world with tons of surprises and beautiful, varied environments.
I put about 20 hours into it a few months ago, and it was one of my top 5 gaming experiences (in a life of gaming that dates back to pong). I put it away for now, but can’t wait to dive back in (hurr, hurr) when it’s feature complete.
It’s certainly got a SF veneer, and has ships (well, they are subs, but close) – so I think it’ll scratch the itch for you. It is decidedly non-shooty.
It is however, fairly crafty and buildy, but I love the base-building.