I thought I’d say hello, outline some of my experiences in Elite: Dangerous so far and maybe leave a few links for new players so they can possibly avoid the mistakes that I’ve made in the past six weeks.
I first played the cassette version of Elite in a BBC Micro back in 1984. A few months later my parents were kind enough to upgrade the computer with a DFS chip and a floppy drive. I bought the disk version of Elite and started again from scratch.
I must have played that game all through the 1980’s – nothing compared to it and I still have very fond memories of reading the book and the user manual, and of searching for generation ships and suchlike in the game.
In the intervening years, I’ve played Frontier: Elite II, Freelancer, the first of the “X” games, the X-Wing games, Star Wars Galaxies and gave Eve a try for three months. Some of them came close to Elite, but never really quite captured that magic.
Just after Christmas I found Elite: Dangerous online whilst searching for screen shots from the original Elite game. I bought and downloaded the game and…I was home.
Back in the 80’s, I always used to have music cassettes playing whilst I played Elite. For some reason, I had those tracks in my head whilst driving to work. I wondered why, then I realised – my mind was linking that music from the old Elite with my playing Elite: Dangerous.
I started in the game in Open with bounty hunting, on the premise that losing the starter ship wasn’t a huge loss, getting better at combat early was probably a good idea and that it seemed a way of gaining some capital for trading quickly. On the second day, at a Nav point there were three of us killing bounties. One of the other Commanders must have been upset at not having the spot to himself because he killed me. However, it was an exciting minute or so whilst we fought.
Didn’t take me long to make enough money to get the next ship and here I messed up – I bought an Adder instead of a Viper. Tried it in combat and then went to trading until I had enough to trade it in for a Viper. Lost the first Viper at a ring system bounty hunting when I accidentally hit a system patrol ship and a lot of them turned on me. Luckily, I had made certain to have enough insurance so I was ok.
I very soon upgraded to the Cobra Mk III – a ship which holds a special place in my heart from the original Elite. Not long after, I downgraded to a Viper again – I wasn’t ready to outfit the Cobra properly. Made myself feel better by buying some ship skins – I decided that if the money goes to the game then that’s better for the players.
When I did have enough cash for the Cobra, I bought it in one system, and needed to fly to another to buy the parts. I launched, raised my landing gear and then accidentally hit the boosters and ploughed into the station wall, destroying my brand new Cobra. Fortunately, I had once again made sure I had insurance.
I did quite a bit in the Cobra – some trading, some bounty hunting, then tried rares trading and found I liked exploring whilst I was on the rares route. Once I got back, I bought an Advanced Discovery Scanner and a Detail Scanner and set off.
I discovered something interesting – I don’t like logging off the game outside of a space station. I know that my ship is safe, but it doesn’t feel right to me. Anyway, I travelled as far as 3 Canum Venaticorum and then turned back for “home”. Whilst exploring, I used StarWalk on my iPad to try and see where I was where possible. A lot of fun.
Back in the real world, I looked at upgrading the graphics card on my pc to enable me to play at a higher resolution, but I’ve found that the motherboard won’t take a modern graphics card because of the BIOS, which can’t be upgraded any more. I started to look at buying a new computer – mainly just to play this game, but also as a step from my current machine.
After getting back from exploring, I traded in the Cobra for a T6 to try and make money a little faster. When I got bored of trading, I bought another Cobra and alternated with some missions and bounty hunting.
Eventually traded in both and bought an Asp. For the first hour I hated this ship and thought I had made a huge mistake, but it has grown on me to become possibly my favourite ship in game. Bought some skins for this as well. I used it to make my first player kill – a Commander with a 7k bounty. I also used it to escape when I had a hold full of palladium and got intercepted by a pirate Commander demanding 10 units of cargo. I wasn’t carrying weapons, and so was caught with my pants down. I decided to run and lost about 20% hull before my frameshift drive got me out of there, but it was a thrilling fight (or retreat).
I died a couple more times in both the Asp and the T6 – once when a T9 hit me as I was docking and the second time when I boosted into an asteroid. Again, each time I had insurance so annoying, but not the end of the world.
Two weeks ago, I made a major decision in the game – for the first time I switched from Open to Solo mode. I decided to try another rares run, this one involving Lave and the surrounding systems, and I had heard of some of the griefers there. Deciding that I don’t have much chance of winning any of the “Race to Elite” prizes, I went to Solo to save myself any grief. No, I know they’re not real credits, but it is real time that you lose and although I don’t mind losing in combat, I didn’t fancy being blown out of the sky whilst I had no guns and a hold full of rares.
In the last week, I’ve managed to upgrade to a T7 and have a Viper for bounty hunting when I get bored of trading. I bought the T7 the day before patch 1.1 and daren’t take it out for a couple of days. I flew around in an Eagle instead, which was actually a nice break. I think I’m going to buy another Cobra soon – not the best ship in the game for me, but it will always be special to me.
So far, I’m really enjoying the game and trying not to turn it into a grind by varying what I do. The only thing I haven’t liked so far is the trial of weapon heat management in the beta testing for 1.1 and the promise that it will be back in a slightly different form in 1.2. Because of this, I’ve held off on ordering the new pc – I’ll make the decision when I see how the changes affect my enjoyment of the game. On the plus side, the supersampling changes in 1.1 have let me increase my resolution and keep a reasonable frame rate.
This has been a longer post than I intended, but I would like to thank all of the members of the community here who have posted in the forums with help (I haven’t been posting but I have read a LOT of advice here), and all those who have created Youtube videos explaining parts of the game.
Here are some of the areas I found to be the most help to me at the start:
Power management & Fire groups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO1E9_sPtvg
Fuel Scoops: http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Fuel_Scoop
Insurance costs: http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Insurance_costs
Flight Assist OFF Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtD41MRibe4
Finally, the two best pieces of advice that I can give to any new player:
1)ALWAYS have insurance. Always check before you launch. No matter how tempting it is to get that last few tons of cargo, don’t go into your insurance budget. If necessary, sell a piece of equipment on your ship to cover your insurance budget, then buy it back after your trade run.
2) Always check the landing pad number before entering a station...just in case you forgot to ask for permission. I lost 100 tons of palladium that way and have never forgotten to do it since.
I first played the cassette version of Elite in a BBC Micro back in 1984. A few months later my parents were kind enough to upgrade the computer with a DFS chip and a floppy drive. I bought the disk version of Elite and started again from scratch.
I must have played that game all through the 1980’s – nothing compared to it and I still have very fond memories of reading the book and the user manual, and of searching for generation ships and suchlike in the game.
In the intervening years, I’ve played Frontier: Elite II, Freelancer, the first of the “X” games, the X-Wing games, Star Wars Galaxies and gave Eve a try for three months. Some of them came close to Elite, but never really quite captured that magic.
Just after Christmas I found Elite: Dangerous online whilst searching for screen shots from the original Elite game. I bought and downloaded the game and…I was home.
Back in the 80’s, I always used to have music cassettes playing whilst I played Elite. For some reason, I had those tracks in my head whilst driving to work. I wondered why, then I realised – my mind was linking that music from the old Elite with my playing Elite: Dangerous.
I started in the game in Open with bounty hunting, on the premise that losing the starter ship wasn’t a huge loss, getting better at combat early was probably a good idea and that it seemed a way of gaining some capital for trading quickly. On the second day, at a Nav point there were three of us killing bounties. One of the other Commanders must have been upset at not having the spot to himself because he killed me. However, it was an exciting minute or so whilst we fought.
Didn’t take me long to make enough money to get the next ship and here I messed up – I bought an Adder instead of a Viper. Tried it in combat and then went to trading until I had enough to trade it in for a Viper. Lost the first Viper at a ring system bounty hunting when I accidentally hit a system patrol ship and a lot of them turned on me. Luckily, I had made certain to have enough insurance so I was ok.
I very soon upgraded to the Cobra Mk III – a ship which holds a special place in my heart from the original Elite. Not long after, I downgraded to a Viper again – I wasn’t ready to outfit the Cobra properly. Made myself feel better by buying some ship skins – I decided that if the money goes to the game then that’s better for the players.
When I did have enough cash for the Cobra, I bought it in one system, and needed to fly to another to buy the parts. I launched, raised my landing gear and then accidentally hit the boosters and ploughed into the station wall, destroying my brand new Cobra. Fortunately, I had once again made sure I had insurance.
I did quite a bit in the Cobra – some trading, some bounty hunting, then tried rares trading and found I liked exploring whilst I was on the rares route. Once I got back, I bought an Advanced Discovery Scanner and a Detail Scanner and set off.
I discovered something interesting – I don’t like logging off the game outside of a space station. I know that my ship is safe, but it doesn’t feel right to me. Anyway, I travelled as far as 3 Canum Venaticorum and then turned back for “home”. Whilst exploring, I used StarWalk on my iPad to try and see where I was where possible. A lot of fun.
Back in the real world, I looked at upgrading the graphics card on my pc to enable me to play at a higher resolution, but I’ve found that the motherboard won’t take a modern graphics card because of the BIOS, which can’t be upgraded any more. I started to look at buying a new computer – mainly just to play this game, but also as a step from my current machine.
After getting back from exploring, I traded in the Cobra for a T6 to try and make money a little faster. When I got bored of trading, I bought another Cobra and alternated with some missions and bounty hunting.
Eventually traded in both and bought an Asp. For the first hour I hated this ship and thought I had made a huge mistake, but it has grown on me to become possibly my favourite ship in game. Bought some skins for this as well. I used it to make my first player kill – a Commander with a 7k bounty. I also used it to escape when I had a hold full of palladium and got intercepted by a pirate Commander demanding 10 units of cargo. I wasn’t carrying weapons, and so was caught with my pants down. I decided to run and lost about 20% hull before my frameshift drive got me out of there, but it was a thrilling fight (or retreat).
I died a couple more times in both the Asp and the T6 – once when a T9 hit me as I was docking and the second time when I boosted into an asteroid. Again, each time I had insurance so annoying, but not the end of the world.
Two weeks ago, I made a major decision in the game – for the first time I switched from Open to Solo mode. I decided to try another rares run, this one involving Lave and the surrounding systems, and I had heard of some of the griefers there. Deciding that I don’t have much chance of winning any of the “Race to Elite” prizes, I went to Solo to save myself any grief. No, I know they’re not real credits, but it is real time that you lose and although I don’t mind losing in combat, I didn’t fancy being blown out of the sky whilst I had no guns and a hold full of rares.
In the last week, I’ve managed to upgrade to a T7 and have a Viper for bounty hunting when I get bored of trading. I bought the T7 the day before patch 1.1 and daren’t take it out for a couple of days. I flew around in an Eagle instead, which was actually a nice break. I think I’m going to buy another Cobra soon – not the best ship in the game for me, but it will always be special to me.
So far, I’m really enjoying the game and trying not to turn it into a grind by varying what I do. The only thing I haven’t liked so far is the trial of weapon heat management in the beta testing for 1.1 and the promise that it will be back in a slightly different form in 1.2. Because of this, I’ve held off on ordering the new pc – I’ll make the decision when I see how the changes affect my enjoyment of the game. On the plus side, the supersampling changes in 1.1 have let me increase my resolution and keep a reasonable frame rate.
This has been a longer post than I intended, but I would like to thank all of the members of the community here who have posted in the forums with help (I haven’t been posting but I have read a LOT of advice here), and all those who have created Youtube videos explaining parts of the game.
Here are some of the areas I found to be the most help to me at the start:
Power management & Fire groups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO1E9_sPtvg
Fuel Scoops: http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Fuel_Scoop
Insurance costs: http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Insurance_costs
Flight Assist OFF Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtD41MRibe4
Finally, the two best pieces of advice that I can give to any new player:
1)ALWAYS have insurance. Always check before you launch. No matter how tempting it is to get that last few tons of cargo, don’t go into your insurance budget. If necessary, sell a piece of equipment on your ship to cover your insurance budget, then buy it back after your trade run.
2) Always check the landing pad number before entering a station...just in case you forgot to ask for permission. I lost 100 tons of palladium that way and have never forgotten to do it since.
