Elite: Dangerous looks better already!

kurush · Post by **kurush** » Tue, 30. Dec 14, 00:02

RoverTX wrote:I wasn't anywhere near the station I had just exited supers-cruise. Its the last menu on the right hand side. Shift or Button trigger, than the last menu, and you hit it where it says "Landing Gear".

Found it, that should work fine. You sure you haven't triggered the silent running by a mistake?

RoverTX · Post by **RoverTX** » Tue, 30. Dec 14, 00:14

I thought about that but my shields where up and my in game console wasn't smoking at all, so no...

vukica · Post by **vukica** » Tue, 30. Dec 14, 12:07

ED has a huge depth problem.

XR has more depth.

most of the time in ED you're in supercruise waiting for USS to appear, or just slowing down, slowly, even though your ship is capable of slowing down instantly when coming out of hyperspace.

this game should have been more fun!

blowing up an anaconda was a lot less fun than i thought. i just flew around and fired a few shots at it and it eventually blew up.

a fair review from metacritic by someone named C_M_K

Currently Elite has a decent framework in place, but there's no real 'game' there -- you can literally experience all of the content in a few hours and it changes extremely little regardless of what system you go to or what ship you're flying.

Pros:
Very pretty (aside from the painfully dated and barely functional HUD).
Amazing sound.
A gazillion star systems to go 'explore'.

Cons:
Every single gameplay system -- trading, mining, pirating, bounty hunting -- is simplistic in the extreme, most are broken in one way or another, and frankly all of it has been done far better elsewhere.

Eleventy gazillion systems to explore means little when the vast, vast bulk of them are basically identical.

Multiplayer? What's that? The game's multiplayer features are so barebones as to essentially be nonexistent.

Online only. This wouldn't be a con if the netcode (especially the perplexing decision to go with P2P architecture in an online-only game) wasn't so flaky, if there were actual multiplayer features that worked, or if there was, well, any meaningful reason whatsoever for it the game to be online, but the netcode is flaky as hell, there aren't meaningful (or even usable) multiplayer features, and there's no real reason for the game to need to be online-only other than as DRM.

Basically Frontier has created a universe simulation that you, the player, have little to no effect on. It's a place where you can fly around and see the same systems, the same stations, and the same ships 400 billion times. Sadly they forgot to include any gameplay beyond the most barebones in there.

At best the game is being pushed out the door six months too early, at worst Frontier has actually made the game they intended and they really do think that copying a thirty year old game with some new graphics will do well. Either way, best to avoid this one for a while and see if they eventually actually add some gameplay before it crashes and burns.

he gave it a 4. i'd give it a 5. it's a pretty good framework.

p.s. kick me in the ass if i ever again buy an always-online shit -.-

RegisterMe · Post by **RegisterMe** » Tue, 30. Dec 14, 13:17

vukica wrote:ED has a huge depth problem.

XR has more depth.

I'm tempted to agree, although I wouldn't have put it quite like that. What passes for an "economy" in ED is much less complex than that in X3. When you add to this that no npc ships actually impact the game state itself (ie if a you blow a ship containing x up, on its way to y, then y won't have less of x as a result), it's a pretty poor facsimile of a background simulation. That having been said I don't know how it's possible to actually simulate this when you have millions of star systems and stations, and ships. In that regard it's mind-bogglingly huge, and would be extremely expensive in compute terms. So, whilst I understand the abstraction, I don't like it.

I do like the way the influence system is meant to work, but I think it's a bit broken at the moment.

The way USS' work is lousy, though I don't know how they could get round this.

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Tue, 30. Dec 14, 13:21

RegisterMe wrote:That having been said I don't know how it's possible to actually simulate this when you have millions of star systems and stations, and ships. In that regard it's mind-bogglingly huge, and would be extremely expensive in compute terms. So, whilst I understand the abstraction, I don't like it.

Surely one of the few advantages of having the game online-only is that all those calculations can be done on a server farm somewhere, leaving your PC free to render graphics etc?

vukica · Post by **vukica** » Tue, 30. Dec 14, 13:37

and these stupid npcs getting in my line of fire. i'm sick of paying fines for their stupidtiy!

RegisterMe · Post by **RegisterMe** » Tue, 30. Dec 14, 14:08

pjknibbs wrote:
RegisterMe wrote:That having been said I don't know how it's possible to actually simulate this when you have millions of star systems and stations, and ships. In that regard it's mind-bogglingly huge, and would be extremely expensive in compute terms. So, whilst I understand the abstraction, I don't like it.
Surely one of the few advantages of having the game online-only is that all those calculations can be done on a server farm somewhere, leaving your PC free to render graphics etc?

Yeah, you'd think so, but then.... let's be completely arbitrary and say that:-

100,000 systems are occupied
3 stations on average
5 ships per station
10 products demanded per station
10 products supplied per station
5 neighbouring systems per station (and assuming ships only go to immediately neighbouring systems)
1 trip per ship per station every ten minutes (that might or might not be impacted by other factions, randomly spawning npc pirates, or players)

.... and I think it could get quite calc heavy quite quickly. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think I can understand the design decisions they took here even if I don't like them.

kurush · Post by **kurush** » Tue, 30. Dec 14, 19:19

pjknibbs wrote: Surely one of the few advantages of having the game online-only is that all those calculations can be done on a server farm somewhere, leaving your PC free to render graphics etc?

I'd say the server there works as a simple database of star systems + cloud service for saves. Everything in this game happens on the client, they just do some server-side double-accounting for things like credits or your cargo hold to prevent obvious cheats. One thing that should appear in the forseable future is some "trainer" hacks that would prevent you from taking shield or hull damage and/or use your energy. They basically just obfuscated the values to prevent the cheat engine and I am too lazy to spend much time in IDA to figure that out. This architecture is amazing for some crazy hacking.

Nyax · Post by **Nyax** » Wed, 31. Dec 14, 00:16

Anyone know what it takes to make a major faction like you?

Basically I'm trying to get a permit for the Alioth system, so I'm assuming that means I'll need to get the alliance to like me. So far I have two alliance friendly factions on side (one in Lave, the other in Gateway.) anyone any idea what it will take to get the alliance as a whole to like me?

kurush · Post by **kurush** » Wed, 31. Dec 14, 02:32

I read somebody had to max 5 or 7 local factions before it went from "Unfriendly" to "Neutral". It is a major effort for several days

RoverTX · Post by **RoverTX** » Wed, 31. Dec 14, 06:47

vukica wrote:...blowing up an anaconda was a lot less fun than i thought. i just flew around and fired a few shots at it and it eventually blew up.

.....

p.s. kick me in the ass if i ever again buy an always-online shit -.-

I actually stopped playing after killing my first anaconda solo with my ASP. No matter what ship you are flying the combat feels the same.

Lewis Black has a funny bit about how he keeps trying Candy Corn every Halloween even though he knows he hates it. I feel the same way about buying always online games at this point...

kurush · Post by **kurush** » Wed, 31. Dec 14, 08:05

RoverTX wrote: I feel the same way about buying always online games at this point...

ED becoming always online was a major, although expected disappointment, but the funniest part is they didn't make it a proper MMO either with all that P2P architecture. Multiplayer is horrible. I think I configured my fireewall so that I can vanish in the plain sight in case of any PvP encounter I don't like, but it is really hard to test it because connection is unreliable at best even without my firewall meddling

I found several human pilots in the area where I settled for now and they tend to jump chaotically in supercruise, presumably because of the networking.
I still like the game though, Elite / Frontier reimplementation is exactly what I expected. It would be A+ if only if Braben didn't have that persistent universe in his think head

SteveMill · Post by **SteveMill** » Thu, 1. Jan 15, 11:56

I've been playing over Xmas and having more fun than I thought I would. It does need more depth added but I do find the classic old elite game-play addictive. I just get into the whole ship upgrade thing and enjoy the added frisson of Open Play where any other human player needs watching closely.

I agree that XR has more 'depth' in some areas but for my taste it's such an unedifying and unrewarding 'depth'. I guess I just don't want to be a CEO and I want a bigger playing field. The economic side was always a means to an end.

X3TC with the conversion mod remains the pinnacle of the series for me because the way it turned to war elements up to 11 so I was waging a huge multi-front defensive war. It felt like a first person strategy RTS.

XR feels like being a CEO to no particular purpose but that's just my taste. i see why some still enjoy it.

As i'm old and crap I wouldn't dream of taking on an Anaconda because its turrets rip me to pieces. That might change though. I've discovered the trading rare goods side of things and have a pretty decent Cobra now so might give it another go.

RegisterMe · Post by **RegisterMe** » Thu, 1. Jan 15, 14:16

SteveMill wrote:As i'm old and crap I wouldn't dream of taking on an Anaconda because its turrets rip me to pieces.

Get a chaff launcher

.

More seriously, there's a reasonable amount of talk on the ED forums that FD might have "tuned up" all the NPCs. It's got more dangerous.

SteveMill · Post by **SteveMill** » Thu, 1. Jan 15, 20:32

With only 2 utility slots I wasn't keen to give up either the kill warrant scanner or the heat sink. I might wait until I can kit out an Asp before tackling big stuff. But my cobra is pretty tough now so perhaps swapping out the heat sink would be okay.

Mainly I'm hauling rare goods and making 500k every 45 minutes or so, although one of these days I'm not going to be able to slip some of these player interdiction attempts. Had 2 or 3 today but been lucky so far.

brucewarren · Post by **brucewarren** » Thu, 1. Jan 15, 21:43

Managed to get me a bare bones Asp. It'll be a while before I can get it up to speed though.

We all know how expensive Asp gear is. A class 6 A shield is 16 million. Of course the standard slot for the shield is in a class 5 so I'm not sure if I ought to put a 5A on it instead. Using the bigger shield slot robs it of 32 tons of cargo space. As it stands I can only hold about 50 tons.

I suspect the first thing I'll need to upgrade is the thrusters. This thing steers like cow c.f. my cobra. It's not as bad as the Lakon6 of course, but it's still feels sluggish.

kurush · Post by **kurush** » Fri, 2. Jan 15, 05:16

I'm on my way to maxing Asp and it is a perfect ship to do rare trades. Sadly, the servers got bugged really badly now. People are getting all kind of issues like disappearing 200+ tonnes of platinum or the same platinum being replaced with food rations or something

As expected, it is a huge mess because of this online shit. I already spent 2 days outside of the game when it bugged like that last time, now it seems even more severe. Moderators are working 24/7 locking angry threads on forums, fun to watch

RoverTX · Post by **RoverTX** » Fri, 2. Jan 15, 05:45

Makes me feel better about my random bug death. I have a feeling that they aren't every going to respond to my ticket with things working out like they are...

matthewfarmery · Post by **matthewfarmery** » Fri, 2. Jan 15, 11:31

lol, sorry to hear about the trouble, but it just seems this game is far from ready for been primetime, if this carries on, I think there will be a major storm heading towards DB and FD in general overal this online requirement, isounds to me, this game needed more time, or the bugs are happening due to shoddy netcode, or the servers are getting overloaded or all of the above.

maybe they should eat some humble pie and admit they are wrong!

RegisterMe · Post by **RegisterMe** » Fri, 2. Jan 15, 13:30

Yeah, it's a mess at the moment. I'm not even going to log on until it clears up.

But, kurush, you can't say it's a "huge mess because of this online shit". You don't have the data to back up that statement. Similarly the moderators are not working "24/7 locking angry threads no forums". There's about six locked threads in the first six pages of the general discussion board, most of which have descended into flame fests, and some of which have been merged into other threads or are dupes of other threads. It looks to me like the mods (who are volunteers and not FD employees), are doing their jobs.

I sometimes wonder what your agenda is.

Similarly, matthewfarmery, the game isn't perfect, not by a long way, but up until last night it had probably the cleanest launch of any online game I've ever played, and cleaner than a fair few single player offline games I've played. Similarly, terms like "shoddy netcode" and "servers getting overloaded" are a) so vague as to be unhelpful and b) not directly related to many of the problems that people are experiencing at the moment.

What people are experiencing are issues with cargo disappearing, cargo turning into different cargo, cargo reappearing and being able to be sold multiple times, mission cargoes not getting cleaned up, not being able to scan systems and so on. All of which are seriously crappy problems for anybody impacted, but unlikely to be related to netcode or server loading.

I saw somebody post about (without details) a cargo dupe bug the other day. They were correctly pointed in the direction of support. My suspicion is that somebody else found it and exploited it, and in the process hit a stack overflow, and it's this that has glitched out the servers.

It does seem to me that some people just want to throw any old random crap at FD, just in case some of it sticks. I don't understand why

.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

Elite: Dangerous looks better already!