Elite: Dangerous

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Gave the CQC beta a quick spin last night. Had fun doing a bit of mindless pew-pew, but I wasn't very good... Funnily enough when you don't have millions of credits worth of your own ship riding on the PvP in CQC, it doesn't have quite the same edge to it as PvP in the main game does!
 
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So this has got to be one of the silliest things I've ever done in a Video Game...

View attachment 50919

Hutton Orbital is a remote outpost that orbits Eden, which in turn orbits Proxima Centauri. Proxima Centauri is part of the Alpha Centauri system which is the closest system to our sun. Now in Elite, when you jump to system you always end up arriving next to the most massive body in that system. Unfortunately this can mean that in systems with more than one star you can end up a long way, sometimes a very, very long way away from where you want to get to. In the case of Hutton Orbital this long, long way is 0.22 LY which translates to a journey time of ninety (90) minutes of real time in supercruise!

Last month Frontier set up a competition to create a rare good. These are commodities that are generally available in small quantities, but can be sold for a huge profit if you take them far enough away from their point of purchase. There are a few parts of the galaxy where a number of these rare goods can be found in close proximity and they tend to be a magnet for scum and villainy. Anyway, some bright spark thought that it would be funny to have a rare good at Hutton and that the way to make it would be for the players to transport scrap there, the most worthless commodity in the game. Even more bizzarely the community then voted this idea as better than nine other far more sensible new rare goods. This new good would be called the Hutton Mug, made out of the scrap from foolhardy spacefarers who ventured out to Hutton Orbital and forgot to top up the fuel tank of their ships...

I'm not entirely sure what possessed me, but I thought I might as well take part just to say I've been there once. In the end I went eight or nine times and enjoyed quite a bit of banter with other players en route and at Hutton Orbital itself. Fortunately once you've got your ship pointed in the right direction you don't actually have to sit at the controls for 90 minutes. I got my ship's computer to knock up some very realistic simulations of early 21st century chores while I was travelling, I think I even got a lawn mown...

There was a great community spirit about the whole, incredibly silly, escapade for the most part. Some of the players set up a radio station specifically for the goal and some players even ran in convoys from one of the closer scrap yards. There was also a surprising amount of civility when it came to queuing at Hutton Orbital, clearly a British game..! I said the spirit was great for the most part. Towards the end of the goal (we had a week to transport as much scrap to Hutton as possible, the more scrap that was delivered the more mugs would be available to buy) one of the player pirate factions decided to piss in the bath tub. They declared a blockade of Hutton and started to attack traders who were trying to deliver the scrap. So this one of those moments where you have to stop and think. We've got a video game where people are flying 90 minutes of real time to deliver scrap, probably having to wait and queue at the other end. Then we have other players who are flying 90 minutes just to kill and destroy other players, and so waste that other players 90 minutes. Ahh, the human spirit. Anyway, the didn't catch me :p
 
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Still having fun with Elite. I joined in the last couple of community goals, including the last one that involved mining. The addition of drones have made this a lot less tedious than it was this time last year in the beta, having said that it is quite a slow profession in Elite. Jumping into some of the extraction sites makes it a bit more entertaining although I haven't been brave enough to try one of the hazardous ones yet. On the way to sell my haul from last trip I got some back chat from an NPC threatening to take my hard earned cargo off of me. This punk was flying a Diamondback and I fancied my chances in my Asp even though I'd had to swap out a couple of weapons for the mining lasers. So I let the guy interdict me and scanned him for bounties, he opened up and I started to shoot back. All of a sudden an Anaconda appears out of nowhere and melts the Diamond in a couple of seconds. Thats cool I think, NPCs now play good Samaritan... Then I get a message telling me to hand over my cargo again... So no, the NPCs now fight over PCs like vultures over carrion... I traded blows for a couple of fly pasts, lost my shields and ran with my tail between my legs. Oh well.

The next beta is due to drop next week which should add some more ships and hopefully begin adding a decent mission system. The beta for planetary landings is supposed to arrive at the end of the month, I guess to get it out in time for Christmas. I guess the ability to land on planets will be cool, but to be honest I'd swop it for more detail in space!
 

Scott Tortorice

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Today, the 2.2 beta dropped. The change log is impressive:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/290122-Elite-Dangerous-2-2-Beta-is-live

I particularly like stuff like this:

Surface Features

- New geological features added (fumeroles and geysers)
- Biological entities added
- POIs can now be persistant (applies to new geological and organic features)
- Mysterious things added


This is what ED needs more than anything. More things to discover and less cookie cutter systems. I hope this is a productive beta. I've been harsh on ED the last two years with its seemingly tortured development, but with the release of Engineers (and the subsequent few weeks of patching) the game finally feels like it has found its footing. Looking forward to getting my hands on 2.2 next month.

Vid:

 

Scott Tortorice

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After eighteen months of tortured development, it looks like Frontier has hit their stride with Elite: Dangerous. I loved the addition of ATC voices in Engineers, and these new interiors look great! Looks like Frontier pulled a rabbit out of the hat in the end!

 

Scott Tortorice

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Here come the Thargoids! I am curious if Frontier just inserted this as a teaser for the next batch of content, or if this is one of the "surprises" that Baban has populated the galaxy with since the game launched and it just took this long to find it. I suspect the former.

http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/DP Sayre/video/25338081

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/319545-First-contact-today!

I haven't touched the game since it went back into beta for that massive balancing pass. I wish they would finish up already so I can check this out. :)
 

Scott Tortorice

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Elite: Dangerous' beta for 2.4 ends Monday, so is the Galaxy's Green Dawn here on Tuesday? Probably. I better grab my meta-alloys and hightail it out of the Pleiades Sector fast. Don't want to get caught behind enemy lines!

 

Scott Tortorice

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I agree with the community consensus: the 2018 updates are more exciting than the new content added in 2017. :) To be fair to Frontier, you can tell that with the addition of the Thargoids, Elite: Dangerous is finally "feature complete." Now Frontier has time to go back and flesh out the core mechanics, something that is long overdue. I am particularly excited for the new planet graphics and the "squadron" assets. ED needs its own equivalent of Eve's player-owned stations.

http://www.pcgamer.com/elite-dangerous-is-getting-squadrons-large-groups-of-players-that-share-a-massive-mobile-base/?utm_content=buffer329e1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=buffer_pcgamerfb

Video overview:


 
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lionzop

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I was thinking sooner because beta was so close. However, if it is indeed as you say, then that means it should be out probably not too far in advance of Star Citizen.
 
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lewisrassel

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Certainly the AI side of things Showbox jiofi.local.html tplinklogin would be far more important to me than the graphics as I'm more likely to play these games on a stand-alone basis. The one thing that bothers me about Star Citizen is the threat of 'Newtonian Physics'.
 
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