Elite:Dangerous

[nowhere.elysium]

[lihp]

[nowhere.elysium]

Not all of us consider whippets, flat caps and tales of "uphill both ways in t'snow"-flavoured poverty to be fungible currency, unfortunately.

Also, London funds that government.
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'10 SV650SF, '83 GS650GT (it lives!), Questionable DIY dash project, 3D Printer project, Lasercutter project

[lihp]

[Tarmacsurfer]

[rideslikean00...]

Yeah I want this game, but where the funds would come from to buy a good enough rig to run it on I couldn't say. I assume the Mac port would require a well specced iMac or higher end MacBook Pro, I can't see it running too well on my trusty Air. Although the Feral ports of Human Revolution and Arkham Asylum are surprisingly stable and playable, and those games are presumably similarly demanding.

Again guys who have built a gaming rig recently, can i do this for around £200 not including joystick etc, just the core machine (motherboard, RAM, CPU, GPU with just enough grunt to handle it at a decent framerate).
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Previous/Current Bikes
2013 Yamaha YBR-125ED -> 1997 Yamaha YZF-1000R Thunderace -> 2009 Yamaha XJ-6 Diversion -> 2007 Yamaha FZ6 Fazer S2

[dabigginger]

Does anyone know how to stop another ship in supercruise to pick a fight with them? I can't see anything anywhere on this!

[metalangel]

https://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Interdiction
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Previous: 2002 Honda CB500 (sold), 2007 Suzuki SV650SK6 (crashed), 2005 Yamaha FZ6 Fazer (sold). Currently bikeless
"A faired bike will get you 10x more clunge than a unfaired one." -Marlboro Matt

[dabigginger]

Ah, nice one. Thanks!

[metalangel]

First proper session of this tonight.

Flew around for ages. Was given several completely broken missions:
-kill an Elite-rated pirate in an Anaconda (sound familiar?)
-endlessly jump into USSes hoping one of them will spawn the dropped item I'm looking for. After a dozen I gave up

Now mindlessly shuttling minerals from a mining station to a neighbouring system, and some worthless shit back just so my hold isn't empty.
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Previous: 2002 Honda CB500 (sold), 2007 Suzuki SV650SK6 (crashed), 2005 Yamaha FZ6 Fazer (sold). Currently bikeless
"A faired bike will get you 10x more clunge than a unfaired one." -Marlboro Matt

[MarJay]

[nowhere.elysium]

[metalangel]

Carrying some not-inexpensive cargo last night on a long haul and ran out of fuel.

Fuel scoop takes up valuable space on a Sidewinder so I'd removed it. D'oh!

Frontier meanwhile removed the 'distress beacon' which you could deploy in that exact situation, and you can't even refuel if you have a hold full of hydrogen fuel so it's not like a friend could come and jettison one for you to scoop up.
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Previous: 2002 Honda CB500 (sold), 2007 Suzuki SV650SK6 (crashed), 2005 Yamaha FZ6 Fazer (sold). Currently bikeless
"A faired bike will get you 10x more clunge than a unfaired one." -Marlboro Matt

[metalangel]

I now have a very well equipped Viper along with my Adder. Took down my first 'pirate lord' in an Anaconda earlier, shield cells make a huge difference in a fight like that. So does the system authority showing up with three fighters, but meh.

Observations of the game:
-we need to be able to carry ship parts, and store all sorts of cargo. As it is it's like living in your car, everything you own you have to carry with you unless it's another car, and that other car has to be mothballed before you're allowed to put it in storage.
-additional to that, we need to be able to swap cargo between ships if we're also swapping ships. The only workaround is currently to fly out of the station, dump the cargo, then quickly fly back in and grab your other ship before scooping up what you just dumped before someone else does.
-that every do-gooder goes hot and every cop in the system appears within moments of you accidentally hitting someone and incurring a 150cr bounty is flippin' ridonkulous.
-Supercruise is so tedious - especially but not limited to when you're flying to the only station in the system to pay off a piddling bounty like that - but the long deceleration phase and it still bringing you in too fast so you can't disengage at your destination without looping around?
-a good fuel scoop is absolutely essential for all but the shortest trips.
-other players? what other players? Every time I've actually seen on it's been with giddy excitement to actually have someone to talk to, and even then that means hitting one button to open the comms window, another to selection their name and another to choose 'text message'... and then you send one whole message. Repeat each time you want to say more.
-that all cargo you scoop is marked as stolen, even if you've found it in wreckage or claimed it from a dead pirate, is stupid. The fines are outrageous too.
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Previous: 2002 Honda CB500 (sold), 2007 Suzuki SV650SK6 (crashed), 2005 Yamaha FZ6 Fazer (sold). Currently bikeless
"A faired bike will get you 10x more clunge than a unfaired one." -Marlboro Matt

[MarJay]

[metalangel]

[MarJay]

They've basically made a hybrid of Elite and Elite 2. They've ditched the story missions from First Encounters, and the artwork is all a little bit too 'nice'. There is little dirt and weathering, you never seem to get stiffed by people on the bulletin board missions and not being able to land on planets is a bit of a backward step IMO.

However, I still love the game. I love the fact that the politics of the galaxy exists despite the fact that I can largely ignore it. I love the fact that you are adrift in space, just you and your ship and your wits. I love the fact that you can go anywhere and do anything.

Yes, Frontier did get boring after a while. When you had a Panther Clipper with 75 shield generators and a small plasma accelerator the game was a bit dull. The game could do with more linked story missions and more progression but I still think it's a tremendous achievement. The story aspect of the game is one aspect that CAN be fixed after release, whereas the people in the Reddit thread forget that First Encounters and to some extent Frontier were both buggy and in some cases unplayable. I think the team behind Elite Dangerous have focussed on the playability and mechanics behind the game before the story, and I think that is commendable. You can't really make a step change in how a ship flies, or how a station looks or how trading works etc, and a lot of the issues that Metalangel has raised exist for simple reasons of fairness. Why wouldn't you remove all your guns and place them in your hold if you get a slightly further hyperspace range and a better power consumption? You could then re-fit them when you decided to go bounty hunting or similar.

I think the E: D team have got the game mechanics and rules of the universe thing about right, and to add a story and to modify how the bulletin board works is a minor almost trivial change to make. It's not like the game isn't fun to play right now!

I think Frontier Developments should add a little bit more content into the game, but criticising the game for that seems a little short sighted IMO.
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British beauty: Triumph Street Triple R; Loony stroker: KR1S; Track fun: GSXR750 L1; Commuter Missile: GSX-S1000F
Remember kids, bikes aren't like lego. You can't easily take a part from one bike and then fit it to another.

[Rogerborg]

[MarJay]

[lihp]

[Rogerborg]

[MarJay]

[metalangel]

I was discussing with a friend today that to match the current graphical fidelity for planetary surfaces is going to be a huge undertaking. You consider the amount of detail inside and out of the space stations. That's a single object against a starfield, and the interior is however many landing pads (48?) in an enclosed space.

Match that level of detail with a giant futuristic metropolis, and a landscape stretching as far as the eye can see. Some people will never bother with atmospheric shields as the only thing that will burn up faster than their ship is their 'rig' trying to render all that. I mentioned the Berlin levels from IL2 Sturmovik as a benchmark for a really nice looking city to fly over.

Are we going to have cookiecutter cities? Probably. I noted that for densely populated worlds, one or two landable spaceports either makes no sense (for the amount of traffic a planet of billions would support) or lots of sense (why land at a spaceport? Your ship is VTOL and can land on your driveway).

However! However. This occurred to me. It worries me.

Planetary 'landings'. We get an altered version of the coming-out-of-supercruise sequence, but with the screen getting lighter as we enter the atmosphere, and the flames are orange instead of blue. Then we're in a confined area, straying outside the confines of which results in insta-death due to a 'planetary defense matrix' protecting the 'no fly zone'. In the centre is the spaceport. Maybe in the distance is the future-o-city.
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Previous: 2002 Honda CB500 (sold), 2007 Suzuki SV650SK6 (crashed), 2005 Yamaha FZ6 Fazer (sold). Currently bikeless
"A faired bike will get you 10x more clunge than a unfaired one." -Marlboro Matt

[MarJay]

Few questions for you lot:

1.) has anyone noticed any differences in the new 1.04 release? Are any aspects of the game harder than before?

2.) How do you stop bad guys from running away from a fight when they get to 40% hull?

3.) Are rare commodities still worth trading?
____________________
British beauty: Triumph Street Triple R; Loony stroker: KR1S; Track fun: GSXR750 L1; Commuter Missile: GSX-S1000F
Remember kids, bikes aren't like lego. You can't easily take a part from one bike and then fit it to another.

[MarJay]