Elite : Dangerous .... Space is big

[Deleted member 14629]

'Cause you were doing it wrong. The Dreadnaught can dance if you master your lateral thrusters. Circle strafing will give you far better control over your range than simple charges ever can. Set your throttle to zero and keep it there. Use your overrides for forward/backward thrust. Map your hat switch to lateral thrusters. Then you can make effective use of your 6DoF. Keep your forward velocity under 1000m/s in the last 10km when closing on an enemy and start sliding sideways or vertically (go underneath your target if he lacks lower shields, as patcoms do). Roll/pitch/yaw to keep your nose pointed at your target, while leading him a bit. Reverse your engines as you do this until you're about perpendicular to your original heading, then start thrusting forwards again. Open up on him with your guns at about 3km from him. The result will be that you'll sweep around your target in an arc and your high apparent angular motion will make you hard to hit without robbing you of firing opportunities. Best of all if the target tries to joust then you'll be able to unload into his unshielded parts after he overshoots you. Jousting isn't a strategy, it's more a failure to control your ship properly. I-War will reward you if you remember you're in space. Even if you want to do a hit and run attack you should still fly a semi-circle around your target as you pass.

That's all well and good, but we're talking about online multiplayer. I severely doubt that you're going to get a player population dense enough to understand "they were doing it wrong". As such, if other people are jousting at you, lateral control is of very limited use, unless you are already traveling roughly the same rate of speed in the same direction. So it's great that it's an option, but it's one that is unlikely to translate into PvP much.

 

[Dystopia]

Happysin[/url]":rsb9w25r]

'Cause you were doing it wrong. The Dreadnaught can dance if you master your lateral thrusters. Circle strafing will give you far better control over your range than simple charges ever can. Set your throttle to zero and keep it there. Use your overrides for forward/backward thrust. Map your hat switch to lateral thrusters. Then you can make effective use of your 6DoF. Keep your forward velocity under 1000m/s in the last 10km when closing on an enemy and start sliding sideways or vertically (go underneath your target if he lacks lower shields, as patcoms do). Roll/pitch/yaw to keep your nose pointed at your target, while leading him a bit. Reverse your engines as you do this until you're about perpendicular to your original heading, then start thrusting forwards again. Open up on him with your guns at about 3km from him. The result will be that you'll sweep around your target in an arc and your high apparent angular motion will make you hard to hit without robbing you of firing opportunities. Best of all if the target tries to joust then you'll be able to unload into his unshielded parts after he overshoots you. Jousting isn't a strategy, it's more a failure to control your ship properly. I-War will reward you if you remember you're in space. Even if you want to do a hit and run attack you should still fly a semi-circle around your target as you pass.

That's all well and good, but we're talking about online multiplayer. I severely doubt that you're going to get a player population dense enough to understand "they were doing it wrong". As such, if other people are jousting at you, lateral control is of very limited use, unless you are already traveling roughly the same rate of speed in the same direction. So it's great that it's an option, but it's one that is unlikely to translate into PvP much.

Of course it matters. Assuming the game does not in fact enforce jousting as the dominant strategy, then countering jousters in this manner, or something like will allow you to win pretty consistently, provided the hardware* disparity isn't too great. If the jouster gets the jump on you then he has an edge, but that's true of any surprise. If he doesn't have the element of surprise, then he's imposing some pretty severe limitations on himself. Namely the small firing window, the uncontrolled overshoot, the difficulty of dealing with your high apparent motion and the window of vulnerability after passing you. If he jousts at you and you react by circle strafing him he is forced to make a choice. Either he commits to his charge and has to land very good hits, under difficult conditions, while making himself a very predictable target. Or he abandons his charge and responds by maneuvering, either for a better firing position or for a better defensive one. The latter is a difficult option to execute thanks to his high momentum, and it gets harder the longer he waits to try it. Thus you have the first mover advantage. You're now forcing him to fight on your terms.

Jousting is just like the lame strategies favoured by noobs in other games. Even if they are effective against a lot of players they'll be beaten by someone with a better understanding of the mechanics.

*I mean in game hardware i.e. your ship.

 

[HappyBunny]

Dystopia[/url]":11ccnlpf]
You're missing the point. Acceleration is not the only variable the developer can control. There's nothing about thousands of KPH that makes the game inherently unplayable, lag or no lag. It's the combination of those speeds, targets that are only 10m or so long, short weapon ranges and completely manual aiming that cause the problem. Incidentally this is why this sort of fighting will a complete non-starter in real life. But the point is there's no reason you can't make the ships bigger, make shots travel farther, add a degree of auto aim or place a greater emphasis on missiles. It only becomes a problem when you set your universe up such that players have to shoot flies under conditions that are conducive to shooting nothing smaller than an elephant. Or to put it another way, setting up a 1m target on a 100m range is no different than setting up a 10m target on a 1000m range, especially once you take gravity and wind out of the picture.

I get that at this point you're just trying to argue that removing the speed limit could be technically viable, but you're basically arguing here to change the entire game to get something which would play similarly except not have a fixed speed cap. That's a bit absurd, don't you think?

 

[Karnak]

Dystopia[/url]":3il6zp3u]

Karnak[/url]":3il6zp3u]Accleration numbers that are low enough to not cause the problems are not adequate for a space game. WWII fighters have accelerations that are much too high for your purposes. Those accelerations work for WWII fighter games because drag stops the aircraft from getting too fast, but put a Spitfire Mk XIV in a dragless model with the same acceleration it has at 180mph (close to peak acceleration) and you'll be doing thousands or tens of thousands of KPH before you know it, much too fast for multiplayer interaction considering the effects of latency. To do what you suggest we'd probably need to limit acceleration to something like Foker Eindecker (very early WWI fighter, 1915) levels of acceleration.

You're missing the point. Acceleration is not the only variable the developer can control. There's nothing about thousands of KPH that makes the game inherently unplayable, lag or no lag. It's the combination of those speeds, targets that are only 10m or so long, short weapon ranges and completely manual aiming that cause the problem. Incidentally this is why this sort of fighting will a complete non-starter in real life. But the point is there's no reason you can't make the ships bigger, make shots travel farther, add a degree of auto aim or place a greater emphasis on missiles. It only becomes a problem when you set your universe up such that players have to shoot flies under conditions that are conducive to shooting nothing smaller than an elephant. Or to put it another way, setting up a 1m target on a 100m range is no different than setting up a 10m target on a 1000m range, especially once you take gravity and wind out of the picture.

Sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about. You really don't.

It isn't about hitting the enemy. It is about the universe being presented on person A's computer being too divergent from the universe presented on person B's computer. If the differences are to large, and the higher the speeds the larger the differences are, it becomes a problem for the game. ~400mph aircraft already have noticeable problems. I speak from years of experience in that kind of game, as well as conversations with the developers of said game.

You also have to make the game fun. Firing missiles from a dreadnought at other dreadnoughts is relatively limiting. You could make a game like that, but I am not sure you'd get as much interest or sales. It is kind of immersion breaking for every player to have their own personal dreadnought or superfreighter.

 

[Darkseid]

Welp, time to dust off Commander Jameson and built a Cobra with an ass of hard iron.

 

[Dystopia]

Karnak[/url]":35swrz60]

Dystopia[/url]":35swrz60]

Karnak[/url]":35swrz60]Accleration numbers that are low enough to not cause the problems are not adequate for a space game. WWII fighters have accelerations that are much too high for your purposes. Those accelerations work for WWII fighter games because drag stops the aircraft from getting too fast, but put a Spitfire Mk XIV in a dragless model with the same acceleration it has at 180mph (close to peak acceleration) and you'll be doing thousands or tens of thousands of KPH before you know it, much too fast for multiplayer interaction considering the effects of latency. To do what you suggest we'd probably need to limit acceleration to something like Foker Eindecker (very early WWI fighter, 1915) levels of acceleration.

You're missing the point. Acceleration is not the only variable the developer can control. There's nothing about thousands of KPH that makes the game inherently unplayable, lag or no lag. It's the combination of those speeds, targets that are only 10m or so long, short weapon ranges and completely manual aiming that cause the problem. Incidentally this is why this sort of fighting will a complete non-starter in real life. But the point is there's no reason you can't make the ships bigger, make shots travel farther, add a degree of auto aim or place a greater emphasis on missiles. It only becomes a problem when you set your universe up such that players have to shoot flies under conditions that are conducive to shooting nothing smaller than an elephant. Or to put it another way, setting up a 1m target on a 100m range is no different than setting up a 10m target on a 1000m range, especially once you take gravity and wind out of the picture.

Sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about. You really don't.

It isn't about hitting the enemy. It is about the universe being presented on person A's computer being too divergent from the universe presented on person B's computer. If the differences are to large, and the higher the speeds the larger the differences are, it becomes a problem for the game. ~400mph aircraft already have noticeable problems. I speak from years of experience in that kind of game, as well as conversations with the developers of said game.

You're still missing the point. Consider what happen if you added a zero to every number. Nothing would change because everything would be the same relative to everything else. If using large numbers has some sort of magical properties why did Starlancer's netcode work? The fighters in that game flew at ~400km/s, yet the game didn't implode. Because it's an arbitrary number, what matters is their relationship to each other, not their absolute magnitude. Any game's netcode is going to have to tolerate some level of variance between clients and that tolerance is going to be proportional to the size and speed of things. The problem doesn't arise because you adjust the speed of the ships, it arises from not also adjusting other things to compensate.

Maybe an analogy is order. Say I want to make a cup of teriyaki sauce. I'd need 1/4 cup of each soy sauce, mirin, sake and brown sugar. Now suppose I wanted 4 cups of teriyaki sauce. If I tried to achieve that by just adding another 3 cups of soy sauce, then the result would be crap. If on the other I added another 3/4 cups of each ingredient then the resulting sauce would be exactly the same as the first one, just that there'd be more of it.

You also have to make the game fun. Firing missiles from a dreadnought at other dreadnoughts is relatively limiting. You could make a game like that, but I am not sure you'd get as much interest or sales. It is kind of immersion breaking for every player to have their own personal dreadnought or superfreighter.

Because space fighters are so realistic. Yet we don't generally hear people crapping on Freespace for being immersion breaking. It's fiction, you can have whatever sort of ships you want to be common.

Also you seem to have missed that "Dreadnaught" was a name, not a class. The Dreadnaught in I-War is the lead ship of the dreadnaught class corvettes and is a relatively small ship in its universe. In age of sail terms it's maybe a 4th rate frigate.

HappyBunny[/url]":35swrz60]I get that at this point you're just trying to argue that removing the speed limit could be technically viable, but you're basically arguing here to change the entire game to get something which would play similarly except not have a fixed speed cap. That's a bit absurd, don't you think?

Yeah, I'm just attacking a bad argument. If the developers like the gameplay effects of the speed limit, then I haven't got any argument with that. It's the argument that it's that way because it has to be that irks me.

 

[Karnak]

That would be a completely different game. It would bear no resemblance to any of the prior Elite games, including those that had the ships accelerating at 10-20Gs with essentially unlimited top speeds.

I, for one, don't fancy flying a planet, which is about the size of what you'd need to be flying in order to make things "relatively" the same.

 

[Buxaroo]

As much as I love science fact and realism, I don't want a game that plays out like an Ian Banks novel...in am game that is not going to be fun, in a book or movie yes.

 

[daFunkyUnit]

...

Don't mind me, just orange-ing the thread. Carry on arguing... whatever it is you're arguing.



Btw, anyone know if there will be an open beta access period? And if so, how much will that cost?

 

[Buxaroo]

Well, if they release a $50 early access beta, I will be on this like Kirk on a new alien species female.

 

[tim1_2]

I have nothing to contribute to the on-going argument, but I want to tag the thread.

What I *really* want is some kind of hybrid of Elite and FTL, but I'll take each independently if that's all I can get. Not sure if I'll get in on the betas/early access. I'm beginning to think that I'd like to wait until games are actually done before I pay for them.

 

[MaHawkma]

Nothing to see here, just tagging the thread as well.

 

[strawman]

woster[/url]":3f4bzg5o]Nothing to see here, just tagging the thread as well.

What he said.

 

[Mortus]

Buxaroo[/url]":waq23100]Well, if they release a $50 early access beta, I will be on this like Kirk on a new alien species female.

++

 

[SnowGhost]

Buxaroo[/url]":13mjoxsf]Well, if they release a $50 early access beta, I will be on this like Kirk on a new alien species female.

That isn't going to happen. The prices are set and have been for many months now.

I guess you'll be waiting for general release. Which will be sometime. It might even be in 2014, but I wouldn't bet on it.

 

[Buxaroo]

SnowGhost[/url]":201n9vdi]

Buxaroo[/url]":201n9vdi]Well, if they release a $50 early access beta, I will be on this like Kirk on a new alien species female.

That isn't going to happen. The prices are set and have been for many months now.

I guess you'll be waiting for general release. Which will be sometime. It might even be in 2014, but I wouldn't bet on it.

 

[Milites]

I like how when I look down in the cockpit the stick and throttle look *exactly* like the Saitek X52 that I'm using...

 

[skazz]

There are some very nice youtube videos showing how Elite : Dangerous works with various different joystick and hotas combinations. Definitely worth a look if you are interested in optimal stick choice.

This whole discussion about space jousting reminded me of Iain M. Banks' book Excession. Engagements where extremely competent AI's joust at large percentages of c last microseconds

 

[DBlackborough]

Tag: thread now in list.

 

[Haplo]

So when is it coming out?

 

[Milites]

Haplo[/url]":3u1140gn]So when is it coming out?

The forums have users suggesting that September this year would be a significant anniversary (30 years?) and that therefore they suspect the devs of aiming for that date.

I've seen no evidence that the Devs are concrete about that date, but before the end of the year seems likely.

 

[SnowGhost]

Milites[/url]":121qyus0]

Haplo[/url]":121qyus0]So when is it coming out?

The forums have users suggesting that September this year would be a significant anniversary (30 years?) and that therefore they suspect the devs of aiming for that date.

I've seen no evidence that the Devs are concrete about that date, but before the end of the year seems likely.

A comon thought (and I have it as well) is
2 months of Premium Beta
2 months normal Beta
which takes us to September for the 30th anniversary, for the release of the Backers (or Gamma as it is also referred to) release. Becuse this isn't the full retail release if it's a bit buggy, they'll get some slack. So, They might aim to get the gamma out in that time frame. The only promise they have made about this is there won't be a game wipe from Gamma to retail release.

If you buy any gversion of the game in advance of release you're a backer and will get it at that point in time. So, it's a pre order on steroids.

 

[whm1974]

Any chance of being released for Linux?

 

[Milites]

whm1974[/url]":39wy6gqv]Any chance of being released for Linux?

A kickstarter stretch goal was an OSX version for the Mac (released 3-4 months after the PC version) but I haven't been able to find anything suggesting that it's going to be available for Linux.

 

[Buxaroo]

skazz[/url]":1weoovi4]There are some very nice youtube videos showing how Elite : Dangerous works with various different joystick and hotas combinations. Definitely worth a look if you are interested in optimal stick choice.

This whole discussion about space jousting reminded me of Iain M. Banks' book Excession. Engagements where extremely competent AI's joust at large percentages of c last microseconds

Yeah, that's what I was alluding to by my comment about it should not be like an Ian Banks novel....battles that last a few nanoseconds wouldn't be all that much fun

Milites[/url]":1weoovi4]

whm1974[/url]":1weoovi4]Any chance of being released for Linux?

A kickstarter stretch goal was an OSX version for the Mac (released 3-4 months after the PC version) but I haven't been able to find anything suggesting that it's going to be available for Linux.

Yeah, if they said that this would be on linux, and we can get in on a beta at $75, I would def throw my wallet at them. $50 for windows, $75 for linux

 

[thomahawk]

strawman[/url]":1m2r0m0e]

woster[/url]":1m2r0m0e]Nothing to see here, just tagging the thread as well.

What he said.

+1.

That said, I'm not sure I can get this game until I'm retired. I'm pretty sure flying in this universe would qualify as a full-time job.

 

[Milites]

It's very pretty. I'm enjoying most of it, right up until I run into other players.

As I understand it, the server detects that you're going somewhere there are other players and creates an instance for groups of them, and then tells everyone in the group to set up p2p connections so the clients can tell each other what's going on. It also puts someone's PC in charge of the NPCs.

This means if the person in charge of your instance crashes or disconnects, the experience for the other players can be a bit broken.

Also, the matchmaking seems a bit weird at the moment, with people in NZ being matched up (in the same instance) with people from Aus, East coast US, West coast US and UK all at once. That makes the experience a bit more laggy than usual.

It's quite difficult to track someone rubber banding all over the place, and occasionally a bad-guy will just sit there absorbing your shots for minutes and then if the PC controlling the instance wakes up, suddenly explode, or if you didn't put enough shots in, suddenly appear on your tail and deliver a minutes worth of DPS in an instant. I've had ships go from full health to destroyed in a couple of seconds with nobody on scan shooting at me. It might have been someone I was desynched with delivering damage which caught up all at once.

I still like just cruising the asteroid belts dodging rocks (it just feels great), or killing npcs if there are no other players about, but the pvp is in need of work.

 

[Matrices]

The feel of the flying and shooting is incredible. The best I have ever seen, bar none. But the rest - which is a whole hell of a lot - needs a lot of work.

How do you make money? There's nothing to explain trading, bounties, pirating, and no obvious instanced events to follow. The travel system is bizarre to the uninitiated - space lanes that you need to fling yourself off because they don't naturally terminate, at least intrasystem. And then when you do that, half the time you desync with the server and crash.

A lot of potential with the look and feel, but I don't see the right systems being created that'd indicate there's going to be a viable game to actually do anything in, let alone the right server infrastructure. It's like a theme park with no rides installed. Hell you can't even talk to people in-game.

 

[Wudan Master]

Sounds like they need dedicated instance servers they connect you to. Are you going to be able to group up with friends?

 

[Milites]

Wudan Master[/url]":10f4tfim]Sounds like they need dedicated instance servers they connect you to. Are you going to be able to group up with friends?

What they say is going to happen, is that you can choose to
a) play on your own
b) play with people on your friends list only
c) play with anyone not on your ignore list.

Up to three characters per account, each with their own connection preferences.

As I understand it, if you're character is playing on their own, you can't switch into playing with others (so you can't build up your leet pvp fit ship and _then_ take it to fight other players who are in beginner ships.)

How do you make money? There's nothing to explain trading, bounties, pirating, and no obvious instanced events to follow.

Most of the people currently playing remember playing elite 30 years ago, and most of the things that worked then, work in the beta. It's currently limited to 5 systems to try to increase the player density so in all the beacons you should be grouped with other players. The economy is supposed to react to players trading, and the 10,000 new beta testers might have saturated the market somewhat, so there's not anything that's reliable to trade for the moment.

Fastest way to make money is to take your sidewinder with one pulse laser and go to somewhere there are ships with bounties - federation distress signal, or resource extraction zones, or conflict zones - and pick a side and shoot the opposition (for 500Cr per kill) or collect bounties. If you get killed, take the free sidewinder, and you'll only go up.

You can add another pulse laser, and be significantly faster at killing things, but when you get exploded it costs you 1800 Cr or so for the insurance excess, so if you don't think you can average more than 4 kills per death you might want to stick with the single pulse laser.

Save & Quit every few kills, since if you crash you lose all progress since the last save.

This last weekend has seen me make almost no progress because it's been so unstable.

I am enjoying the flying though.

 

[Tremek]

Seems like a hard sell for $150 right now. Other than being able to play, what other long term benefits do you get out of the $150 level?

 

[HairyNoseWombat]

This. This is what will get me off my butt, and build myself a proper gaming rig. Kerbal nearly did it - spent way too much time watching videos, drooling. Didn't quite make it, but this will do it.

Been playing Elite in one form or another since back in the day, missing out only on the wireframe version. I've only seen one video of this so far, and almost wet myself when I saw the radar. Looking forward to this so much.

Not terribly interested in the MMO aspects, just want the old game/gameplay with sexier, up to date graphics - wedge is good, so long as it's fancy wedge.

Oh, and they'd better be busting out the Blue Danube when I dock!

(Orange!)

 

[SnowGhost]

Matrices[/url]":3hfsthve]The feel of the flying and shooting is incredible. The best I have ever seen, bar none. But the rest - which is a whole hell of a lot - needs a lot of work.

How do you make money? There's nothing to explain trading, bounties, pirating, and no obvious instanced events to follow. The travel system is bizarre to the uninitiated - space lanes that you need to fling yourself off because they don't naturally terminate, at least intrasystem. And then when you do that, half the time you desync with the server and crash.

A lot of potential with the look and feel, but I don't see the right systems being created that'd indicate there's going to be a viable game to actually do anything in, let alone the right server infrastructure. It's like a theme park with no rides installed. Hell you can't even talk to people in-game.

Sounds like you're expecting a completed game.
Elite isn't completed yet and has a long way to go.

There is no such thing as Space lanes in Elite. I don't know where you get that idea from. For Intra system travel you have Supercruise and yes you do need to disable the supercruise engine. It's a massivly complicated task of slowing down to less the 200 km/s and pressing 'c'. If you're within 200km of an interesting target (ie, a space station) it will currently dump you 20 km away from it in normal space. This is very much work in progress.

As far desyncing with the server and crashing, some people are having huge problems, others, like me, don't. But the game is VERY CLEARLY marked as Beta. This sort of flakiness is to be expected. If you can't cope with that, then you shouldn't be using Beta release software.

Elite games have always been about "go out and do your own thing". Hand holding isn't a part of the history of the game. If you want a structured set of missions, then good news, Star Citizen is coming and it should fill that need.

 

[Matrices]

Thanks for the tips, Milites. It's amusing and telling that the only way to know how to pick a side for those conflict zones is, well, being told. Who is going to look at that tertiary submenu in the UI, scroll down, and find that by themselves? I assumed some popup would appear asking me to choose a side.

But yes, I never played Elite - my privateering inclination is the result of playing Privateer 2. I still love that game; nothing else is going to have Clive Owen and hours of FMVs and interstellar space combat ever again.

Tremek[/url]":3t1apgrq]Seems like a hard sell for $150 right now. Other than being able to play, what other long term benefits do you get out of the $150 level?

One rationale is that you receive future expansions for free. Who knows what shape or form that'll take, though.

For me, being able to play something that has a good chance of resurrecting the space combat genre was worth it. Evidence of sound decision-making is apparent in various details I gleaned beforehand, and I can't really say I get that feeling with Star Citizen. Within the first 30 seconds of loading the first combat module I was fully recompensed. You're siting there among asteroids and hit the fire button and nothing happens. Until you hear this hydraulic sound and two gatling cannons come online. And then you rev up the engine and it sounds like a ship from Star Wars. It was epic and beautiful.

SnowGhost[/url]":3t1apgrq]
Sounds like you're expecting a completed game.

Not sure. I have experience with only two betas - this and Planetary Annihilation. PA strikes me as practically done, and I know Total Annihilation very well. This game by contrast doesn't seem nearly to have the features in place that would enable it to be viable, like sorting out some very basic parameters for PVP, chatting, pirating, group play. But then it seems broadly more ambitious, and I never played Elite, and the core mechanics and UI seem fundamentally sound, so maybe I'm wrong.

 

[krimhorn]

SnowGhost[/url]":qzb9b1sg]Hand holding isn't a part of the history of the game.

I'd argue that educating the new player as to what is possible in the game (and how to do it) is not hand-holding. In fact it's the sort of thing that's very easily done and fairly easy to make optional for experienced players to skip and should be considered mandatory. There's nothing worse than being handed the reins of a game, being told "you can do anything you want" and have No Idea how. Tends to put potential players off (see: the X series and its inscrutable learning curve).

 

[SnowGhost]

Matrices[/url]":1cic3qpz] This game by contrast doesn't seem nearly to have the features in place that would enable it to be viable, like sorting out some very basic parameters for PVP, chatting, pirating, group play. But then it seems broadly more ambitious, and I never played Elite, and the core mechanics and UI seem fundamentally sound, so maybe I'm wrong.

Yeah, it's highly arguable as to if it should be called a Beta release or not. There is an awful lot of work and features to still implement.

And your (unquoted) comment about finding how to set a faction is very correct. But, if that is the finished product, I don't think it's to bad, beause by the time you need to find that setting you'll be several hours into the game and should have experimented and looked around a bit. Also, you'll have had to look at the right hand panel to put your landing gear up/down (probably). Also, there will be a manual. Which if previous Elite games is any indicator will be extensive.

 

[Karnak]

Elite: Dangerous E3 trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISR4ebdGlOk#t=103

 

[Buxaroo]

Karnak[/url]":jabq76rf]Elite: Dangerous E3 trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISR4ebdGlOk#t=103

 

[SnowGhost]

A better link to the same video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISR4ebdGlOk
But only because this link starts at the start and not the end of the video.

No new ships shown, several minor tweaks to the HUD (Such as landing gear up/down, and cargo hatch open indicators).

 

[Matrices]

Played extensively over the past few days. I can't emphasize how well they have absolutely 'nailed it' when it comes to the feel of the game. One big part of that is sound design. Almost no one really cares about sound design in the industry. DICE is one exception, and these guys are another. Granted, it seems like it's lifted from Star Wars at times, but that's hardly a bad thing.

I'm still concerned that there's not been enough focus on content - how they'll fill out the game and the universe. I have a hard time seeing how the game can possibly be finished in six month's time, though in a game like this probably much of the content generation will be procedural and it won't be like an MMO where someone needs to literally create the equivalent of quests for endless sectors of space.

I've also watched some interviews with the creator, David Braben, and he's a compelling guy - smart, level-headed, passionate, intellectually curious, and decidedly not full of himself.