Elite, Braben, Kickstarter!

[tabs]

If you're considering a pricey monitor largely for elite, I'd hold off and grab a Vive or Rift when the consumer versions are out in the next few months. This game in VR is very special.

 

[nutball]

Nah the reason for the monitor was primarily desktop work, eg. photography. I want 4K because I'm spoiled by having a retina Mac laptop and I want the same for my desktop. There are no downsides to 4K if games aren't part of the equation, but that's changed now

The VR stuff does look fun. It'll have the wife in stitches.

 

[tabs]

So how are all you new commanders finding it? Any stories to share or questions to ask? Love it? Hate it?

At the moment I've taken to bounty hunting in an Eagle. Playing with head tracking makes you extremely aware of the amount of canopy each ship has, and the location of said windows. This one has a pretty good view, although I'd love a window under my feet like the Type 6 has.

I don't take on much without the assistance of the local police force, but it is fun to fly and I can do enough damage to claim bounties even on Anacondas. These larger ships usually net over 120,000 credits a pop. I think my biggest single single target payout was in excess of 250,000.

Had it kitted out with a couple of fixed rail guns, a gimballed beam laser and a kill warrant scanner for a while but I sacrificed some fire power and switched the rails out for a triple beam setup. Now I get to spend more time hunting without needing to resupply ammo. Power management and overheating are fun things to deal with. Even though I have an A rated power plant, it took some finagling to extract the best performance out of it without critical systems shutting down, particularly when I was rocking the dual rail guns.

I decided to get somewhat involved in powerplay for the first time. The initial attraction was getting a bonus percentage put on top of any bounties I collected in systems controlled by Arissa Lavigny-Duval, which happens to be the case for my current bounty hunting spot. After pledging my allegiance I realised I needed to put some work in to earn this bonus. One option is fortifying systems under her control by shipping garrison from the headquarters. Securing my hunting grounds seemed a mutually beneficial thing to do and thankfully her headquarters were just a few jumps away from it. Bought myself a Type-6 Hauler with a chunk of bounty money and make occasional trips to HQ in it to grab the grunts.

After signing up I found myself reading Gal-net and becoming somewhat interested in the goings on in the galaxy. It's totally skippable but adds a bit of flavour for those that want it.

 

[homerdog]

I tried the training and found it unplayable with a mouse +kb and still near impossible with my 360 pad. Haven't been back since cause Fallout.

 

[cheapchips]

I tried the training and found it unplayable with a mouse +kb and still near impossible with my 360 pad. Haven't been back since cause Fallout.

Tempted to say 360 pad is really easy, but I've been playing for 18 months. Being useless with the Horizons buggy shuts me up though!

 

[hughJ]

This game seems built to conjure up dreamily high expectations that will probably be impossible to materialize, heh.

Reminds me of those news reports of the construction boom in China where you've got acre after acre of high capacity residential high rises along with the infrastructure and yet no people utilize it. Everything about this game begs for a huge and bustling MMO population with a fully realized vertical player economy in order to fill out the framework they've built, but all signs seem to point to the game trying to straddle this quasi-persistent single/multiplayer world that's composed of, at most, isolated and small group interactions. Hopefully games like this and Star Citizen deliver enough value in the end to not poison the well for future ambitious, big-idea game designs.

All that negativity aside, these sorts of games + VR is probably the most pumped I've been for PC gaming since internet multiplayer Quake. Reminds me of reading PC Gamer and drooling over screenshots of multi colored lightmaps and promises of 200 player death matches.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIuwuUSZqYY
www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4ugKLiQwU0
www.youtube.com/watch?v=79Me57w2HBA
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aukc7gky9ik
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l2j7a6vQm4

 

[nutball]

My new joystick arrived this morning (TM16000), after a Black Friday-related logistics screw-up by Amazon. It's quite nice, I'd've liked a few more buttons on the stick itself, but that's probably a trade-off for the ambidextrous nature of the thing. I've barely played the game this week for various reasons (not really getting on with k/b and mouse), but I've had an hour of tooling around this evening and the game seems like it'll hold my attention for a while.

It's not EVE, that's clear. I've played EVE since launch, intensively for the first 4 years, and on-and-off since then. I love the depth and the player-driven elements, but I really can't be bothered with PvP combat - I have neither the time nor the inclination. Unfortunately the way that CCP has developed the game has over the last few years it's becoming increasingly difficult to avoid the attentions of those who do have the time and inclination for PvP, whilst getting challenge and reward from the game. It probably doesn't help that I have more ISK than I know what to do with.

Anyway, Elite looks fun. I've joined Mobius, so it'll be interesting to see how "alive" the galaxy feels when I enter it

 

[tabs]

If you or anyone wants to wing up with me in Mobius, add me in game. Commander name is '_tabs_'. Currently bounty hunting and mining as the mood takes me. Could always use some backup, and can drop a few tons of shiny stuff to get you started.

 

[cheapchips]

Everything about this game begs for a huge and bustling MMO population with a fully realized vertical player economy in order to fill out the framework they've built, but all signs seem to point to the game trying to straddle this quasi-persistent single/multiplayer world that's composed of, at most, isolated and small group interactions. Hopefully games like this and Star Citizen deliver enough value in the end to not poison the well for future ambitious, big-idea game designs.

It would be great for ED and SC if they supported tens of thousands of players in a big battle of Endor fight. Can't see network infostructure ever being able to support that. Would love to be proved wrong. If it's doable in the future, you'd hope both games have enough legs to redevelop their network code down the line.

It's not just these games either. I'd love a city in an online game properly populated with collision enabled people/interactions.

 

[nutball]

Still enjoying the game, though still very much in noob-ville. Made a few million on the recent trade CGs, which has been a nice leg-up. I don't get a lot of time to play, but I do like that I can kind of set the pace of my own game, so that doesn't matter.

(And still missing having more buttons on my stick.)

 

[Blazkowicz]

It would be great for ED and SC if they supported tens of thousands of players in a big battle of Endor fight. Can't see network infostructure ever being able to support that. Would love to be proved wrong. If it's doable in the future, you'd hope both games have enough legs to redevelop their network code down the line.

It's not just these games either. I'd love a city in an online game properly populated with collision enabled people/interactions.

I can imagine this scale of network interaction if the whole game is run on the servers, i.e. the game engine is run there, rendering done server-side and the game streamed via H265 or H264. That way players are on the same LAN basically, you get to play against/with players that are in the same datacenter as yours (or if game state is kept in sync with the game state in some other datacenters : your game is rendered from the datacenter closest to you ; you can play with people that are either on the same datacenter or on a few nearby ones)

Quite a big affair, game streaming has its own requirements and limitations. Players don't suffer from latency and drops disrupting the game state, but they suffer varying streaming and input latency still.

 

[cheapchips]

I can imagine this scale of network interaction if the whole game is run on the servers, i.e. the game engine is run there, rendering done server-side and the game streamed via H265 or H264. That way players are on the same LAN basically, you get to play against/with players that are in the same datacenter as yours (or if game state is kept in sync with the game state in some other datacenters : your game is rendered from the datacenter closest to you ; you can play with people that are either on the same datacenter or on a few nearby ones)

Quite a big affair, game streaming has its own requirements and limitations. Players don't suffer from latency and drops disrupting the game state, but they suffer varying streaming and input latency still.

I think it's a shame to some extent that game streaming services haven't taken off. If there was a large user base streaming service it would provide a lower risk target for experimentation.

As it is, just conventional mmo games are high risk (although EDs AWS+p2p combo is a mostly clever way round scaling costs).

As an alternative to full bore streaming, will cloud based 'worlds' with input and positional data transmitted to a local render be viable? I assume the Crackdown multiplayer is something like this? That must be lower b/w than video?

 

[green.pixel]

So, is ED sort of like online X3, Space capitalism: The Game, but less spreadsheety and with better combat? There won't be any Freespace 2/Starlancer style singleplayer campaign, right?

 

[cheapchips]

So, is ED sort of like online X3, Space capitalism: The Game, but less spreadsheety and with better combat? There won't be any Freespace 2/Starlancer style singleplayer campaign, right?

There's no campaign. There's a single player solo mode, which shares the same economic and political background sim as the multiplayer. You're free to flit between the two with your CMDR.

In principle, stories should rise out of the background sim. It needs fleshing out really. The spring update should add another improvement to missions that factions can give you, tied more closely to what happening to that faction.

It differs from the x series that you are always a spaceship commander. There no building up a fleet etc.

The combat model is amazing but not to everyone's taste.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Anybody played this with an Xbox controller? Is it viable?

 

[tabs]

It's playable if you use the advanced configuration where you use button combinations giving you access to more stuff.

To be fair though I only played it like that for a day before my HOTAS arrived.

 

[cheapchips]

I played it for several months with Xbox controller + keyboard for a few landing controls. This was before the advanced options and it was absolutely fine.

A controller gives 6dof, throttle and pip control so is all you need really. Joysticks are just that bit more spacey though.

 

[Davros]

Elite Dangerous: Arena for Free
Frontier Developments announces that Elite Dangerous: Arena is available for free this weekend, and everyone who downloads a copy from the Frontier Store or Steam between now and 1:00 pm EDT Monday will get to keep it forever.

 

[Davros]

Ive just downloaded the above game
I have a logitech 3d pro and my ship is constantly rolling anyone know how to fix this ?

 

[cheapchips]

Ive just downloaded the above game
I have a logitech 3d pro and my ship is constantly rolling anyone know how to fix this ?

I cursory Google didn't show anyone else with the same issue. Do you any other control bound to roll that could be doing it?