With Elite : Dangerous (here after just called Elite) Frontier developments will show you just how big space really is.
http://www.elitedangerous.com/
Elite puts you in the role of a small time space ship owner. For older gamers, think Han Solo, if you’re younger, think Malcolm Reynolds. If you can’t place either name then that is a sad indictment on your part. You pilot the space craft for a 1st person point of view. There will not be any 3rd person point of view. It’s all from the cockpit.
You get to trade cargo from here to there. You can be a pirate and suggest to other pilots that giving you some of their cargo might be a good idea. You can be an explorer and go find new system, map their valuables and sell that information for profit. You could just be a combater, mercenary for hire.
Elite will appeal to those with a scientific mind set. The speed of light is referenced a lot in the game, both in speed of the ship, to distance to other planets (as in 1,300 light seconds away, or 390,000,000 km away).
Elite is a more deliberately paced game. Docking was a big part of the original Elite and is again in the remake. It takes time to dock. It takes time to travel between planets. Hyperspace is near instant.
Frontier developments have recently released the ‘Dev Diary’ video that shows off where they are going to great effect. Go watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGf9OPot8Sc
though you can probably ignore the talking head.
You can fly anywhere. You can fly from one space station to another. You can even fly direct from one star to another. No hyperspace actually required. But this takes quite some time. Someone has already tested this. It took 14 hours.
The background stars you see, that isn’t just a pretty sky box. Those stars are accurately placed to represent the sky you’d actually see if you were at that star. You can travel to earth orbit and see our stars as they really are.
The game includes 150,000 known stars accurately placed and with accurate physical characteristics. There are the known exoplanets. The game then simulates the rest of the galaxy with 400 billion other systems.
You can sit and watch a moon orbit the planet. Someone did, and took a screen shot every 10 seconds of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74XVP7bWJ20 It is not very exciting, but it’s a nice touch that Frontier included such a level of detail in their universe.
There are three different modes of travel, all completely separate and totally different.
1. Normal sublight speed. Limited to 500m/s. The main reason for this is multi player. Having two (or more)players approach each other in normal space at 1,000’s of km/s just wouldn’t work in a game. All combat takes place at this speed.
2. Supercruise. This lets you get up to 2,500c (2,500 times the speed of light). The fastest I’ve seen is about 20c though. Used to move around star systems and interplanetary movement.
3. Hyperspace jumps. The typical method to move between star systems.
Moving between planets in Supercruise is a site to behold. You get to watch the gas giants move from a dot to a blob to an oblong, to the full visual beauty of rings spread wide, the planet rotates and the moons orbit reasonably correctly. You get to watch your speed change from km/s to fractions of c, to multiples of c. And it still takes minutes to travel to a different planet. (This time frame is being refined still).
Elite is beautiful to look at. It fulfils the promise that the box art from Frontier : Elite 2 made 20 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier:_Elite_II
The ship computers have a fly by wire system. This makes flying the ship easy for humans. The main flight movements are pitch & roll. Yaw is very limited. The end result is very similar to the original Elite game. Think spitfires in space.
There are no really helpful computers in the Elite universe. No AI. You do most things yourself.
There will be capital ships in the game. You can’t buy them.
There are space stations. You can’t own them.
You can own multiple ships, but you can’t fly more than one. The others sit in a hangar costing you money for storage.
There are no guilds.
There is no crafting. So you can’t make your own space ships or weapons.
There are pretty planets to look at. You can’t land on them in the initial release.
The ship interiors are all fully fleshed out. You can’t leave your seat in the initial release.
So, it’s not much like Eve. Or the egosoft ‘X’ games.
Elite has an online persistent universe that will expand with time and will react to player actions.
You can chose to play either multiplayer, or on your own in this universe. You can also play totally offline and have nothing to do with the persistent universe if you’d like. But this offline mode will miss the good parts.
It’s YOU, in a space ship.
The initial game release will not include planetary landings OR getting out and about in a 1st person point of view in your ship. Both are planned for the future.
Should you buy into the Alpha 4 recently released? No. That is a waste of money at this point. But the premium beta release is coming end of May 2014. That might be a bit more tempting. It’s currently expected that the premium beta will run 2 months, after that will come the second round beta test, which should run again 2 months. After that there will be what frontier is calling a Gamma test. This is basically a release for all backers prior to general public release and availability in stores. The original Elite was released 20 September 1984. I’ll put money on it that Frontier is aiming for Gamma release to be timed for the 30 year anniversary of that date. There is no information yet how long the Gamma will run for. But it’s aimed at sorting out all the multiplayer and balancing issues prior to general release.
So, what happens in the game?
A quick example.
I launched from the space dock, exited the rotating coriolis station, and took at look at the list of possible destinations. There was an “unidentified signal source” 0.14 ls away (that is, 0.14 light seconds away, about 40,000km). So I lock onto that, fire up the Frameshift drive. For this to function you have to aim the ship in the direction of the target and accelerate upto 75% of maximum speed.
I cruised out the 40,000km, or so, dropped out of supercruise and had a look around. I find 1 federation Anaconda cargo ship being attacked by 3 pirates in sidewinders. Decision time. Do I side with the pirates and possibly get some nice cargo out of the Anaconda or side with the federation and get paid bounties by taking out the sidewinders? I went with the side of good and justice and attacked the sidewinders. I was credited with $650 for each kill and each one also dropped one cargo canister of liqueur. I scooped up each cargo canister and flew back to the base 0.14ls away (where I’d come from). I then sold the liqueur on the blackmarket for about $1500
http://www.elitedangerous.com/
Elite puts you in the role of a small time space ship owner. For older gamers, think Han Solo, if you’re younger, think Malcolm Reynolds. If you can’t place either name then that is a sad indictment on your part. You pilot the space craft for a 1st person point of view. There will not be any 3rd person point of view. It’s all from the cockpit.
You get to trade cargo from here to there. You can be a pirate and suggest to other pilots that giving you some of their cargo might be a good idea. You can be an explorer and go find new system, map their valuables and sell that information for profit. You could just be a combater, mercenary for hire.
Elite will appeal to those with a scientific mind set. The speed of light is referenced a lot in the game, both in speed of the ship, to distance to other planets (as in 1,300 light seconds away, or 390,000,000 km away).
Elite is a more deliberately paced game. Docking was a big part of the original Elite and is again in the remake. It takes time to dock. It takes time to travel between planets. Hyperspace is near instant.
Frontier developments have recently released the ‘Dev Diary’ video that shows off where they are going to great effect. Go watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGf9OPot8Sc
though you can probably ignore the talking head.
You can fly anywhere. You can fly from one space station to another. You can even fly direct from one star to another. No hyperspace actually required. But this takes quite some time. Someone has already tested this. It took 14 hours.
The background stars you see, that isn’t just a pretty sky box. Those stars are accurately placed to represent the sky you’d actually see if you were at that star. You can travel to earth orbit and see our stars as they really are.
The game includes 150,000 known stars accurately placed and with accurate physical characteristics. There are the known exoplanets. The game then simulates the rest of the galaxy with 400 billion other systems.
You can sit and watch a moon orbit the planet. Someone did, and took a screen shot every 10 seconds of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74XVP7bWJ20 It is not very exciting, but it’s a nice touch that Frontier included such a level of detail in their universe.
There are three different modes of travel, all completely separate and totally different.
1. Normal sublight speed. Limited to 500m/s. The main reason for this is multi player. Having two (or more)players approach each other in normal space at 1,000’s of km/s just wouldn’t work in a game. All combat takes place at this speed.
2. Supercruise. This lets you get up to 2,500c (2,500 times the speed of light). The fastest I’ve seen is about 20c though. Used to move around star systems and interplanetary movement.
3. Hyperspace jumps. The typical method to move between star systems.
Moving between planets in Supercruise is a site to behold. You get to watch the gas giants move from a dot to a blob to an oblong, to the full visual beauty of rings spread wide, the planet rotates and the moons orbit reasonably correctly. You get to watch your speed change from km/s to fractions of c, to multiples of c. And it still takes minutes to travel to a different planet. (This time frame is being refined still).
Elite is beautiful to look at. It fulfils the promise that the box art from Frontier : Elite 2 made 20 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier:_Elite_II
The ship computers have a fly by wire system. This makes flying the ship easy for humans. The main flight movements are pitch & roll. Yaw is very limited. The end result is very similar to the original Elite game. Think spitfires in space.
There are no really helpful computers in the Elite universe. No AI. You do most things yourself.
There will be capital ships in the game. You can’t buy them.
There are space stations. You can’t own them.
You can own multiple ships, but you can’t fly more than one. The others sit in a hangar costing you money for storage.
There are no guilds.
There is no crafting. So you can’t make your own space ships or weapons.
There are pretty planets to look at. You can’t land on them in the initial release.
The ship interiors are all fully fleshed out. You can’t leave your seat in the initial release.
So, it’s not much like Eve. Or the egosoft ‘X’ games.
Elite has an online persistent universe that will expand with time and will react to player actions.
You can chose to play either multiplayer, or on your own in this universe. You can also play totally offline and have nothing to do with the persistent universe if you’d like. But this offline mode will miss the good parts.
It’s YOU, in a space ship.
The initial game release will not include planetary landings OR getting out and about in a 1st person point of view in your ship. Both are planned for the future.
Should you buy into the Alpha 4 recently released? No. That is a waste of money at this point. But the premium beta release is coming end of May 2014. That might be a bit more tempting. It’s currently expected that the premium beta will run 2 months, after that will come the second round beta test, which should run again 2 months. After that there will be what frontier is calling a Gamma test. This is basically a release for all backers prior to general public release and availability in stores. The original Elite was released 20 September 1984. I’ll put money on it that Frontier is aiming for Gamma release to be timed for the 30 year anniversary of that date. There is no information yet how long the Gamma will run for. But it’s aimed at sorting out all the multiplayer and balancing issues prior to general release.
So, what happens in the game?
A quick example.
I launched from the space dock, exited the rotating coriolis station, and took at look at the list of possible destinations. There was an “unidentified signal source” 0.14 ls away (that is, 0.14 light seconds away, about 40,000km). So I lock onto that, fire up the Frameshift drive. For this to function you have to aim the ship in the direction of the target and accelerate upto 75% of maximum speed.
I cruised out the 40,000km, or so, dropped out of supercruise and had a look around. I find 1 federation Anaconda cargo ship being attacked by 3 pirates in sidewinders. Decision time. Do I side with the pirates and possibly get some nice cargo out of the Anaconda or side with the federation and get paid bounties by taking out the sidewinders? I went with the side of good and justice and attacked the sidewinders. I was credited with $650 for each kill and each one also dropped one cargo canister of liqueur. I scooped up each cargo canister and flew back to the base 0.14ls away (where I’d come from). I then sold the liqueur on the blackmarket for about $1500
