Elite: Dangerous

Yeah, I got the Asp skeleton skin over Christmas, then realised that it looks a lot less appealing in-game than in-screenshot.

I might end up with the Alphabetty Spaghetti bobbleheads and use them to write libellous things about Davey B on my dashboard.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Worth it

Yeah the 'wireframe' ones turned out a bit meh :/

(For what it's worth the lights on the Xmas tree bobblehead get knocked out by the alien EMP blast. That's realism )

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

This fricking game. So I have decided I probably can grind up the Fed rank and still have fun (almost all mili missions in war states give good rank). I have a terribly good tolerance for combat farming and doing odd jobs, I'm up for it . This game really doesn't help itself as an open world experience though. My game session went:

• The war I'd stacked some missions for has abruptly ended. (They would have gained me 10mil + decent rank. Meh. You know it's going to end, but nothing in-game tells you how or when...)
  
  
• I find another system at war. Everything looks sweet. Until... the mission board is greyed out, because the station's being UA bombed. (I get groups can mess with the sim and each other like this, via ferrying rare banes & antidotes huge distances, but what a killjoy mechanism ultimately. Ugg)
  
  
• I find the last Fed warzone in the vicinity. Everything looks good. But I can't find the Combat Zone. Like I check every planet. I even go to the Nav Beacon to be given a 'You'll have to find it yourself Cmdr' message from the very bastard who sent me to fight. (Have they lost the warzone, and he's too embarrassed to say? Is it taking place in a cupboard? Makes... no.... sense....). So I left that place.

And that's without mentioning the deserter assassination yesterday that had no time limit beyond '24 hours', yet auto-failed on arrival because I was 'too late'. Or the mission that needed repeating because it didn't take first time, despite showing as completed. Or... actually there's too many buggy things from two play sessions to mention them all...



So I stopped trying to rank, and just had fun. Zapped some fools in this ice ring which seem particularly tight-knit and chunky. Took on so many wetwork jobs that I was wanted in three system. Threaded my way through them all, having a laugh, and even killing the same evangelical twice. Because... this fricking game...

(Honestly, the travel times wouldn't be half as bad if you thought the game would at least follow its own rules, not end half your freeform ventures in arbitrary failure. Guaranteed A-to-Bs are nailed on, but dull. Taking a punt should be fun because it could fail when you mess up, or mis-plan, not because the game fell over again, or communicated itself like a man with an oatmeal bag over his head. I still think they'll slowly improve many of these things, and that having to find stuff out is a good thing, and that you can have fun with it in its current state. But damn you do have to try really hard ...)

Aw man, actually got some top-ranking CZ action on this morning (while listening to reggae no less)... and then the blinking patch dropped

It's the chunky between-updates balance pass. The headlines are:

• Commodities for Engineer blueprints binned for now. Much grind unwinding. (They've just wiped them off the face of the map. Because they were ****. Specific storage planned down the line).
• All the traders get a 50% hull buff, including the mighty Keelback
• Mission boards are no longer borked and should be far more populated with options.
• The military ships get bonus module slots (only for hull reinforcement, shield cells, or the new module reinforcements. Good for hull tanking hopefully).
• Big networking fixes supposedly
• 15% buff to combat payouts as time to kill now longer

EDIT:

Oh and stealthy sub-woofer news: DTS Headphone X support now added, for 3D surroundy sound on the cheap.

Also there is buzz on the forums that the AI has changed in some favourable way, Will clash cockpits with em tonight and report back.

Best change in this patch: Getting rid of Commodity loot.

I'm actually having a ball!

I'd given up on Engineering stuff as the sub-quest to get Commodities was such a ball-ache of a timesink, always dumping a big roadblock in the way of freeflowing fun. Now they're gone you can loop a load of different activities together in a play session, including Engineering. ED was acting like a proper Open World suddenly! (IE: Make plan > Start plan > Get distracted by sub plan > Accidentally buy starship ).

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The Military module slots are natty too. Can now run bonus kit in my FAS having shuttled hull reinforcement over to them. Room for chunky interdictors and SCBs and other handy stuff now.

Networking much better too by all accounts. Gives some hope for Multicrew...

Sounds like it's time to jump back in.

Thank you, oh Elite QA tester!

I might have become a Manchurian candidate with Stockholm syndrome, it's hard to tell

All I know is a couple of things have clicked again, and little additions added up. My big loop is getting the last rank & cash for the FGS (so I can ship launch in style), but the smaller loops colouring the journey are: AI variety keeping combat interesting / experimenting with Engi mods now the bar of entry is lower / seeing a reasonable variety of missions which can plug in to any of those aims.

Working for now

(I wouldn't bother with the '100 mil' alien mystery mission though. There's some cash there, but the puzzle is fairly tedious, and also borked as all hell . The lore's kinda cool though.)

So I went a bit mad...





Many many NPCs have died at my hands (I think about 150). Totally worth it tho

I realised that in the time it'd take me to hit Fed rank for the FGS I could actually make the cash for an Anaconda, which is the type of tank platform I wanted for the fighter anyway. Between a combat CG and some determined assistance in a civil war (plus some dubious mission stacking) I made about 200 mil. Enough for the shell and some class C survivability.

Now I've just gotta teach my 'competent' crew member to stop shooting randoms with its bristling weaponry. I've sweated buckets in the first two hours of flying this thing . (It's literally terrifying even trying to sun scoop. I really haven't got the shape of it yet. Proper new car stuff )

I figure worst case, it's the ultimate multi-purpose, and with the fighter giving release from its tanky steering (which is actually kinda atmospheric in a space cruiser way), I can def have fun doing a bit of everything (while fixing it up to avoid that 10mil rebuy).

Best case, Multicrew, and later Legs, will be classy in this old beast. But I've gotta death-proof it a bit more before that

I seem to be neither elite nor dangerous!

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You know what, I think Im gonna get a new computer, and this game. Looks completely different than anything Ive ever played before.

Or maybe Ill get a Battletech-type game, I dont know.....

I played with a clan in Mechwarrior Online for years. Fun, but I finally got tired of it.

I've not been Elite since the late 80s .... it's a seriously long route in the new game.

Good to see you on board, CMDR!

I get smoked in the combat missions.

My commander name is Brynstar - I am currently dorking around in the Eravate system in open play.

I'll add you and hopefully hop on later.

How are you finding the controller? Been meaning to try the game with a gamepad, especially since it should look great on my TV (and sound great on my AV system) over Steam Link, where the flight stick won't work.

CMDR David Tacitus reporting for .... argh, stoppit!

Dang - our names can be more than 1 word? Whoops!

Just think of yourself like Prince, or Madonna. Or Lassie.

Woot, it happened

I'm Zorrito in game, will sling you a friend request. (I seem to remember Eravate and the other starter systems are all gated to stop noob-gank, but we should def meet up )

Def ask if you're puzzled by anything. There are lots of puzzling things.

Just be warned T that this game is annoyingly unfinished. Very cool and beautiful in some aspects, a complete wasteland in others . It's on a long road though, should hopefully keep getting better.

I wouldn't go too strong on saying the game's unfinished. There's an update path stretching into the distance but the core game is done, barring future refinements.

As long as you realise you're playing a space sim and not Mass Effect you'll have a (burning space) whale of a time. /MGS5 references

Compared to launch, Elite's extremely polished with a perfectly acceptable mission structure and far less grind, at least in the beginning. If they never do anything more to it, I'll be fine with it as the expansions have been tepid so far.

It's Elite, for better or worse, and a very solid update on a game that's dear to my heart.

I'm gonna try and avoid being a sourpuss about missing stuff during Sed's honeymoon . So I'm gonna put the following in spoilers


For now it's just happens to be a rad spaceship buying and flying game, with some gaps that you have to fly through

You have 577 hours in the game + whatever you had before Steam. Quite a lot for something which is only now approaching adequate.

I don't want the game to be the bloated, probably unreleasable joke that Star Citizen has become. It looks, sounds and flies great and missions are now as good as any space sim I've played barring the extremely linear Freelancer.

It has a faction called the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu. /argument

EDIT - I'm off to see how it plays with a Steam controller. Might be in Solo mode for a while.