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Elite: Dangerous
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mattyb
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Sep 15, 2014, 02:59 PM
 
So as not to pollute the Gaming News and Discussion thread. I realise that this won't interest many, but still.
 
Beta 1.03 downloaded over the weekend after having seen too many videos on YouTube. TrackIR and VoiceAttack have also been bought.
 
Stability : I had a PDF file open for the keyboard mapping, Firefox open with about 3 or 4 tabs, plus the Elite : Dangerous Launcher and the Client. In 3 hours of behaving like an idiot, it didn't crash once. I did the hyper space thing, I did the super cruise, I went into a few space stations and managed to land and take-off. No issues.
 
Beauty : The cockpit is perhaps 30% (at most) of the screen. Different in the other ships btw. Most of the time its filled with black, but when you're next to a space station, or docking inside, or going through asteroids, or facing a sun, it is fantastic. The space stations rotate all the time. Smoothly. I shall check again tonight, but I was sure that I saw sun storms. According to the website, it doesn't require a very high spec machine - no doubt helped by the display of black most of the time. The rings around a planet are made up of asteroids, not some solid ring drawn on your screen.
 
Speed : Never stuttered, (might be due to my 4GB graphics card). Hyperspace is impressive and gorgeous. Supercruise isn't as impressive until you whizz past a station. While I managed to use it twice, I've still got some stuff to learn due to navigation (read 'pilot brain fart') issues.
 
Flying : I used flight assist on which does not respect Newtonian physics (when you stop thrusters you start to slow down, the ship does reverse for you). I have the HOTAS joystick setup, but not 100% the way that I'd like. Being able to thrust left, up and backwards at the same time means that you can do helicopter like manoeuvres. There is some power management for shields, engines and weapons which adds a level of complexity to dog-fights (I only did dog-fights against AI foes). Flying is fun, can't wait until you can enter the atmosphere of a planet and fly around it.
 
vs Star Citizen : well, I'm not sure how much you can do in StarCitizen, but you can really travel and see things in Elite. While its only space stations - which are not all the same, and seeing planets and stars from afar it seems to me to be a lot more that you can do in StarCitizen. A YouTuber said that it is 'more finished' than Star Citizen and that it was 'less anal' (space ships in Star Citizen have to have the room for their landing gear for example, they have to respect physical and mechanical rules with their designs). While this might appeal more to the Kerbal Space program types, I personally couldn't give a shit if the gear fits properly in the craft when flying. I doubt that I'm in the minority.
 
I never played the other Elites, but from what's been presented so far, this has legs. They'll add FPS and other modules in the future. Out before the end of the year on PC and OS X IIRC. Pity it didn't capture half of what was pledged to StarCitizen.
     
mattyb  (op)
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Sep 17, 2014, 05:04 PM
 
I can see that this thread is a roaring success, so I'll continue. Snapshot from the cockpit in the first solo mission :



Link to a 4K image (over 70 M) looking down into the cockpit. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...7_20-41-29.bmp

Updated to Beta 1.06 tonight. Still playing with mapping commands to the Thrustmaster HOTAS that I have. TrackIR should be picked up tomorrow. Not played with VoiceAttack yet.
     
The Final Dakar
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Sep 17, 2014, 05:28 PM
 
Originally Posted by mattyb View Post
I can see that this thread is a roaring success, so I'll continue.
Don't take it personally, most of the game threads on here don't fill an entire page.
     
mattyb  (op)
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Sep 18, 2014, 04:02 AM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
Don't take it personally, most of the game threads on here don't fill an entire page.
Thanks. I know it's pretty niche.
     
mattyb  (op)
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Sep 27, 2014, 03:14 PM
 
Getting lots of crashes when playing online. Seems others have the same issue. Beta 2 out next Tuesday, hopefully I'll be able to do online stuff.

Haven't setup TrackIR or VoiceAttack yet.
     
mattyb  (op)
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Oct 2, 2014, 04:25 AM
 
Beta 2 came out yesterday, as well as Beta 2.01 and 2.02. They added loads of stuff so not surprising that people are still having issues. I didn't get to play since my country-bumpkin-bandwidth didn't finish downloading the latest build when I went to bed.

Seems that (like me) quite a few people joined in the Beta very recently. Having a release date this year plus some spectacular vids on YouTube is generating an enormous buzz around Elite. Lets hope that the bugs are ironed out and that Frontier can deliver a truely finished product when they say they can.
     
mattyb  (op)
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Oct 3, 2014, 07:09 PM
 
Beta 2.04 out. It's beautiful but not always smooth. Some stuff from a training missions here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJzizYUEF9c

Online doesn't work for me. Doubt that it'll go gold before the end of the year.
     
mattyb  (op)
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Oct 19, 2014, 06:31 AM
 
2.06 now. Beta 3 will apparently have a full wipe. Really very very stable now, not had any crashes even after playing for hours, switching between the game and Firefox and going off to eat.

Doubt that I'll be able to get one of the big ships before the wipe.
     
mattyb  (op)
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Oct 27, 2014, 07:08 AM
 
Beta 3 won't have a full wipe, we should be able to keep our money but maybe not the ship that we have.

I really can't fathom why people are waiting for Star Citizen while this game is so good, so stable and has so much available now. The group that I'm in have people doing all sorts of missions, from bounty hunter, to explorer (some guy on Reddit made a million from exploration apparently), to pirate to rebel to trader. You are stuck in your ship all the time but the ability to fly down onto planets is coming. Doubt the FPS side will be done before 2016.

I'm too chicken to try the bounty hunter route for the moment (hoping that I can earn enough to put by for the insurance required when your ship blows up plus enough to refuel/re-arm a good few times).
     
mattyb  (op)
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Oct 31, 2014, 05:45 AM
 
Beta 3 came out on the 28th. Last night Beta 3.02 was available. I have chosen to wait since there are a few people that report losing ships and/or money - which I cannot afford to do.

Major additions in terms of gameplay are mining and interdiction. Interfaces for in-game functionality have been beautified. Dog-fighting specialists have commented that AI opposition is more difficult.
     
mattyb  (op)
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Nov 7, 2014, 07:23 PM
 
     
mattyb  (op)
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Nov 16, 2014, 02:04 PM
 
Newsletter #49 came out, with a large shit sandwich for some : despite promising an offline mode, Frontier have said that there will not be one, even solo play will have to connect to the servers (reminds me of Microsoft). I'm personally not bothered (most want a guarantee that they'll be running the servers for the next 10 years).

Good news is 25% insurance cost for beta backers (when you 'die' you can get your ship back if you have the funds)
Also for beta backers free access to one of five new ships
30 different ships in game, less than 10 during the beta.

22nd of Nov sees the pre-release gamma - with a full wipe.

Looks like their focusing on the FPS side before doing planet landings, which is shite. I'd prefer being able to fly around planets personally.
     
mattyb  (op)
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Nov 23, 2014, 05:15 PM
 
Gamma is out. Previously one could 'only' have access to a certain amount of the universe - it was still gigantic. Now there's 400 billion (or some other equally stupid number) planets or stars or something like that. Everyone has been spawned randomly so the old haunts are gone. Only 100cr, instead of 1000Cr although through some luck and early trades I've got enough for a hauler so I'll start exploring.

Event was held on the 22nd (https://store.elitedangerous.com/eli...re-ticket.html) and I know a few who went. Doesn't seem that many stayed sober.
     
mattyb  (op)
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Mar 6, 2015, 08:29 AM
 
Can't link from work but Elite will be a timed exclusive for the XB1.
     
   
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