Elite: Dangerous

Basically, the game's slowly turning into FTL.

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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

With fancy graphics ay

Fires, hull damage, decompression, random crew? I do hope they bring it

(All of the above are pretty nailed on I think, they've all been referenced by devs. Just a matter of how well they can do the first-person experience, and if they can get multiplayer versions and NPC hires to play out nice over time)

I'm off now to learn a bit more about 3D extrusion and mock-up a version of that Engi idea. (Or to decide it's too difficult and... not. Whichever comes first )

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

Who'd be a dev? They just fanfared Multicrew in the latest Beta update, then QA immediately informed them that it's broken in some new ways

Some fun little bits in there tho: Duelling combat CGs, audio love, and um, nostril depth

Did remind me of this cute bug fixing story at least:

Yeah I know, I follow this dev too closely. But it's fun watching people build worlds

How are you gents getting these exterior shots of your ship?

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There's a debug cam (tis in controls menu, I can't remember default keybind), but the update will bring a swankier version

CTRL+ALT+Space gets you the exterior camera.

They've added Multicrew to the latest build. Bugs and all so they say

This is how I look after accidentally shooting the wrong side in a combat zone...



And this is how our ship looked after both the engines and the FSD got shot out (because I kept deploying hardpoints to shoot our pursuers while Helm was trying to put them away for the jump )...



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It's actually all pretty solid. I mean there were disconnects and judders, the client crashed at the end, and I had to listen to a guy berate his child about their Snapchat habit. But aside from that it worked well . The 'find a ship / crew' aspect is neat and functional. And at the end of the day I was zipping around with a guy from the States and one from the Netherlands for a prolonged session. That's something ED has been kinda famed for not doing for a long while

Still not sure there's a huge amount of meat on the bone, but the turret solution definitely works, and the fighters are as cool as ever. Could def see much farming success with a tight team. And even a fairly sloppy one . Fighting super swift alien swarms could border on the badass

Not tried any of that yet, but I have been to see your friend and mine, The Dweller!

I think the whole Engineers thing is next to useless (3% increase in your power drain on your lasers for a 2.3% damage increase? That'll be a ton of rare loot, sir!) but this guy has a shipyard with 31 ships for sale.

I ended up with this big lassie:







Really like the look of the Imperial ships.

Tatty noooo. In game or in Beta? It's 15% off over in the Li Yong-Rui PowerPlay zone, ships and modules. Definitely go there to go big next time!

Engineering does actually scale quite nicely now. The early stuff is fairly weak sauce, but it's dead easy to access. The Grade 5s are pretty killer though. Grade 5 Cannon on my FAS eats ships for breakfast. You also start rolling bonus effects etc. (It probably helps that I'd already done the base grind for them previously, but had got roadblocked by the deranged-grind of the commodity requirements. When that got lifted I just went on a shopping spree for free )

Dweller is pretty pants for everything except Power Distribs etc, of which he is king. Makes up for that extra power draw for your pew in no time too . (Quickest way to rep up is to roll a bunch of cheap mods and discard as needed btw )

(There's lots of fun stuff around once you start truffling. Plus basic grade 3 stuff means I don't even feel the need to A-class my 'Conda's core modules right now. Only think I could almost hanker after is a Special Effect G5 on my Efficient Beam, which can just blaze for days. Put snipey range on my turrets a while back and it's properly prickly now.)

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Hell yeah on Empire ships. As I mosey my way through this game over the years I intended to get me some Empire rep too. (I've got a terrible feeling I'm going to buy an Orca as my white pimp-mobile in the meantime though )

Oh, don't worry. I'm aware that everything's cheap in the Beta - The Dweller's stuff all costs 1 unit of Fish!

I just can't abide mining or scavenging in any game, let alone one which has stores which sell everything else.

Phew, thought you'd splurged madly in the main game

Yeah, the idea of making use of all the game's pastimes was a good one in theory, but if you abhor a few of them that kinda backfires . The one workaround is that missions seem to reward you with nigh everything over time. Think that's another way I stocked up. It's just harder to target what you want etc.

If I was to suggest one silly looty pastime as a one-off, I nabbed wake scans outside a bustling station once, just zenned out and spiralling around, and ended up noticing that smugglers would turn up with loads full of booty, turn tail when standard-scanned, becoming wanted in the process, and form a very profitable snack

I suspect they may have to keep refining Loot towards accessibility ultimately. Like give in to player demands to allow player trade, or inter-player purchase, at least. Not exactly a gameable economy I wouldn't have thought. (Which is the type of inflationary, troll-able, supply-throttling thing they don't want).

PAX stuff dropped then...

Alien tease: Featuring some kinda pirate ship kit, and some kinda giant be-tunnelled biological base...



Multicrew trailer: featuring faces & pew/boom...



Ship naming decals look like this:





Also 'raider' suits, tats and 'war paint'

I take it all back! Best update yet

This got me excited for quick-join Fighter racing using Multicrew ...

Setting up at a location and inviting everyone under a 'Racing' theme would be great. Only downside currently is that Helm couldn't take part :/. (I'm petitioning FDev as we speak to make this as a category, and to allow Helm some time out of the seat in that mode . It's do-able, you normally can with an NPC crew on board to take over etc...)

Oo interesting, some fun PR shots have wondered into view. This one in particular



We know that the gameplay they planned for most of these new locations (the Close Quarter sites, the new 'Bars' etc, and these Megaships) hasn't made the cut for 2.3, aside from the odd bit of material scooping and node scanning etc. But they can still be used for bounty hunting etc apparently. Following pre, or fleeing through those could be cool

I'll believe this 'reavers vs transport ship' malarky when I see it tho

Dyamn, Cmdrs are loving the new camera suite



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EDIT:

Oh and one particular future thing that came out of recent Q&As that's worth flagging...

Which hopefully means a tracker that shows where your target went in the galaxy . Long-term could see some fun and games with that. (Missions requiring you to follow a guy to a prisoner exchange and intervene etc / a proper PvP 'galactic bounties' system )

Name plate pricing is out, and praise Braben's monogrammed socks, they're not stupidly expensive...

£2 for a pack of 3 decals, ship-wide. I can live with that. Was expecting much more malicious bundling ('one per ship' style shenanigans).

Time to break out my latest fan art then

I got carried away and visualised my 'Mobile Engineer' idea. Never know, might affect some Devs...

Gallery





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The slew of recent quotes really pushing Legs into the far future, or eluding the word all together, suggests Gas Giants and the like will be the next flagship addition though. More time for dev I guess

Now this is proper stately Elite fan art: Some chilled Vangelis via Ghost in the Shell ambient accompanying nicely framed shots. Proper zen...

I'm putting this here, because essentially this is my blog . (Also it helps me find stuff later...)

There are some hardcore ED guys who will fight tooth and nail to keep the incredibly long journey times in ED. They see long transits in empty space as the epitome of a space game. They feel it's the only real way to represent scale.

I definitely don't feel that way. I think it's well over the border into dull gameplay. I try and explain it to them like this:

Thank god FDev aren't kowtowing to this hardened cadre, and are still open to the possibility of in-system jumps to secondary stars, and potentially upping the transit speed in Supercruise. I'd happily see things turned up a notch in both areas. (Add more natural phenomena over time, more templates for the signal source encounters, and ideally the 'Nemesis system' NPC encounters, and then we're getting somewhere )

(A lengthy graphical pitch for 'star jumps with risks' will probably appear later this year )