how does ED compare to SC ?

Recently Frontier announced the alpha coming in on time. CIG announced delays to their dogfighting module... I reckon both games will suffer slippage, but Star Citizen much more so.

maybe because Star Citizen has planets to land on, multicrew ships, and avatars running around, some things we won't see in ED for a long, long time. Like 2015/16
 
I want to own and control fleets of trading ships, I want to build a financial empire, and then turn all those profits towards military conquest.

Will this game offer that kind of gameplay, or will I always be locked in a cockpit, fighting and shooting people/ships myself?

yeah, nope. That's what I wanted too, but.. nope.

you better check out the old X Albion Prelude (because the new X Rebirth is pretty much still broken)
 
maybe because Star Citizen has planets to land on, multicrew ships, and avatars running around, some things we won't see in ED for a long, long time. Like 2015/16

True. Multicrew ships: check! Avatars running around: check! "Planets" to "land" on: Well, kind of...if you count loading up a level of a spaceport while looking at a cutscene a "landing" then yes. Also the "planets" will be nothing but big 3D balls with textures on them and they won't be even close to true scale.

It will be some time before we see some of these features in Elite, that's true. But when we do it will be on a whole different level in my opinion since the game world will be seamless and true to scale. :)
 
Would it be fair to say that Elite is an Arcade game, where as StarCitizen is more of a simulator?

i think that depends where your looking from. ED is a simulator of the whole galaxy and the expansion of humanity through said galaxy. SC on the other hand could be viewed as an arcade game for its PvP style game play.
 
It would be fairer to say that Elite is a space exploration/trading game with a PvE combat system and PvP elements. While SC is a PvE/PvP combat system with space exploration/trading elements.
 
Would it be fair to say that Elite is an Arcade game, where as StarCitizen is more of a simulator?

I'd say it would be slightly different: ED would be more open world space simulator, while SC is a dog fighting simulator in space, at least initially. Everything else in SC is so far away, you can't really say whether and when they'll deliver full scale product with all features.

It's not that SC concentrates mostly on fighting -- it'll feel very small with 100 or so solar systems.
 
Would it be fair to say that Elite is an Arcade game, where as StarCitizen is more of a simulator?

If anything it's the other way around since the galaxy will be realistically represented in Elite. 400 billion stars in the galaxy. All known stars accurately mapped out. Planets will be simulated based on physical laws. Even the confirmed exo-planets we know of in real life will be put into Elite and everything will be true to scale. Also, there is no "magical" gravity aboard the ships and space stations in Elite like we can see in Star Citizen. I could probably list a whole list of other examples but the short answer is no. Elite will not be an arcade game. ;)
 
Both games feature a lot of simulation... Star Citizen is quite impressive for how much detail is going into the simulation of ship systems, with pipes that can get damaged and stuff like that. I'd say that neither represent arcade games.
 
SC will be a game.

ED will be a way of life.

:D

Seriously though, both games will be awesome, its pointless comparing them since they're coming at this genre from different ends of the spectrum. ED has gone for grand scale on an unprecedented level. SC has gone for the finer detail and attention to micro-immersion, like seeing your character sitting on the bog! - it doesn't get any more micro-immersive than that - I hope! :eek: Yes SC will have planetary landings first, but only via cutscenes and predefined points on scaled down planets. But ED will make that an expansion all on its own, so it'll be on a different scale and level to SC's. Both games will have their strong points and weak points, but they'll compliment each other nicely. :)

Besides there's no monthly subscriptions to pay - so treat yourself and play both!
 
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I'm still mindful of the fact that from some of the 'Peek of the Week' images, it looks like small ships just vanish in an explosion if they get killed. We haven't seen much evidence to show that the Anaconda in that video was anything less than a mock-up to demonstrate what Frontier are aiming for. It's probably one of the things I'm most likely to make a fuss about in the alpha, if I don't like what happens to the ships post explosion.

Also, we know that system faults can occur in ED, but I'm still not sure how much that's a game system, and how much is down to actual physical simulation. SC is going for a very simulation-based approach to this, so if a pipe gets damaged it can no longer deliver what it wants to (I guess this could be things like thrust to a thruster, or hydraulics to a weapon's gimballing). Similarly wings have several stages of damage that can render weapons inoperable.

It will be interesting to find out exactly how detailed ED's damage model is, and whether one approach makes for a better experience than the other....
 
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