Elite: Dangerous (Warning: Images May Be Colossal)

[Disco]

I don't know that anyone else here is playing this but I'm perfectly happy to blather on about it to myself.

Current project is a spot of exploration, I've done a little bit of it before but on a much smaller budget (I went out in an unshielded Hauler which made for a somewhat scary return journey) but this time I saved up enough cash to buy and properly re-fit an Asp, here she is:



The plan will be to travel all the way from inhabited space to the very centre of the galaxy scanning unexplored and interesting stuff along the way. To give you an idea of the scale of the trip, the two little red squares on the left are markers for stored ships and the orange marker is my current position.



Looks a good distance but this is as far as I can zoom out and keep everything in the picture. I'm currently about 1700ly into the trip with over 24000ly still to go and my ship will do a little over 30ly per jump.



Be interesting to see how the view out of the window changes as I get closer to all the bright shit in the middle, destination is one of those lights in the slightly brighter bit, probably.



Let's hope I don't die!

[Pepe]

Oh yes, this is the one I really wanted to try but then forgot it existed. Is it fun?

[Disco]

I love it (insert Disco is often a boring git disclaimer here) but it does depend what you're expecting. It's not something you really drop into for a few minutes, takes a little while to build up the capital to start playing around with the bigger ships.


Here's the view out the port window while refueling:

[Disco]

Big old gas giant with exceptionally clean rings made up almost entirely of ice.

[Pepe]

When you say you go do some exploration, is it just sitting staring at the screen for fourty minutes, or is there actually something you need to do?

[Disco]

Last one for today, a really odd system with this tertiary arrangement orbiting another M-class star. I wasn't brave enough to try and get a picture from between the two nearest ones.

[Disco]

When you say you go do some exploration, is it just sitting staring at the screen for fourty minutes, or is there actually something you need to do?

I'll be honest it's mainly staring. Enter system, run the big scanner to see what's there, select first target and accelerate, keep an eye on the distance and slow down to get a detailed scan.

Trading and particularly combat are far more involved but I've done a lot of that recently and this is a trip I always fancied making once I could afford the initial outlay.

[Pepe]

It does seem like the kind of game I would enjoy, but I fear I will get bored with it before I can get to the good stuff. I think my videogaming career is essentially over.

[Disco]

That is probably a valid concern, this is my third stint with the game over the last year and I still think I have a long way to go. The flight model is immense though, just flying around and landing in stations is great, planetary landings are coming soon too (paid update though rather than free) so that should be interesting.

[TG09]

I remember playing Elite years ago on my i486 back in the day, or maybe it was on one of the first Pentiums. I really liked it back then, not sure if this game is for me thesedays.

[Disco]

It's not a million miles away from Frontier (Elite 2) which is the one I played to death back in the day, you have to earn your way into the bigger ships.

Found my first undiscovered Earth-like yesterday:

[Disco]

The true scale of the journey kind of hit home last night when I realised that, as the space crow flies, I've only just dipped under 22000ly left to go. My ship is capable of about 33ish per jump and my rule is that if I decide to scan things in a system then I scan everything, no meat-picking or boom and zoom tactics. Plus then of course I've got to get back again...

In other news I didn't need the heating on when I arrived at this one:


And look at this little feller hiding behind them:

[Disco]

LIterally thousands of light years away from anything resembling civilization, not seen a player tag on any system in hundreds of jumps and who do I stumble across first.



Even out here there are dick jokes.

[ItalAussie]

Man, I just started playing the original Elite on emulator. It's astonishing that it even exists. It's crazy forward-thinking for its time.

[Disco]

I sank lord knows how many hours into Frontier, the scope and freedom was fascinating at the time and (to me at least) this one has much of the same feeling and looks a hell of a lot better.

[Alex]

I kind of want to get back into this now. I was properly engrossed in it at the beginning of the year. I'm not entirely sure why either, as I avoided all the "exciting" bits completely (by this I mainly mean the combat, which I was shit at), stuck to the haulage based ships and basically treated the entire game as some sort of Intergalactic, White Van Man simulator. "Synthetic fabrics going cheap you say love? I'll take as many as I can carry, I bet I can turn a tidy profit on those a few systems over.....".

[Raoul Duke]

This looks mega, but I missed it when it came out and now don't have a PC. My recent rematch of Voyager has got me hankering for some space action.

I'm hoping No Man's Sky can shape up to be something similar.

[Disco]

I'm loving it again after a little break, the only problem is I'm only about halfway through the outward trip and I'm already planning how to spend my earnings (should there be any). I wouldn't claim the game has very much (or enough) depth but it does most of the things Frontier did and it's a damn sight prettier.

In other news, even though I'm pretty sure it's just a 'sky'box, these are certainly looking brighter.

[Alex]

I'm back on this after months of not playing it. Disco, do you have the Horizons add-on for it? They've brought it out on the Xbox One version since I last played. I'm tempted.

Anyway, I've started over. Bought a Hauler as soon as I could, upgraded the frame shift drive and packed in as much storage space as possible and have spent a good five or six hours today just hopping around on delivery missions and making trades. It's odd how satisfying I find what is essentially just simulated truck driving in space. I want to try and get more into the combat side of things this time around too though.

[Disco]

I don't have any of the expansions so I can't help you there. I may have left on my trip before Horizons was even released, might consider getting it once I'm safely (god I hope it's safely) back in the bubble. A little over 10k ly from home now so it's starting to feel close.