Yeah, I just saw Jenner put a lid on the other thread, I'll have to move my post over. Joy >.>
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On Grind - It's a bit of a mix, some areas are bad (Plutonium grinding because every time you want to take off from a planet your ship is going to chow down on it like there's no tomorrow), Carbon is a lot "nicer" than people think it is, because Carbon is used in everything and is found in all flora, you basically mine three trees and you're set for a good hour or so of wandering. Thanium9 is ironically, ludicrously simple to get in bulk, just fly off planet and smash up a few asteroids, and you've enough pulse drive fuel to last you for every planet in that solar system and change, plus some leftovers for isotope recharges on other equipment. Once you get the hang of "What is where" it's no more than 20-30 sec out of your walking routine to fuel up and then you can go about your business. Now Warp Cells are another matter, those are a bit of a pain in the backside, being a multistage prep (you need carbon to make suspension fluid, fluid plus something else for electron vapour, then electron vapour plus plutonium for antimatter, and finally antimatter plus another mineral for the warp cores, but you only need a warp core for jumping from star system to star system).
If you find a broadcast transmitter that needs hack modules to get into, use it, you may find a drop pod location which in turn gives you inventory upgrades for your suit, or health upgrades - both good things.
Grinding money is easy, really, just point ship at nearest big shiny rock, land, hollow it out, rinse and repeat, you'll have hundreds of thousands of units in under half an hour, you can even work faster if you have a good multitool and aren't afraid of shooting up sentinels, as their drops can be farmed in quick succession for around 11,000 units for 20 seconds of shootybang.
600k nets you an okay ship, 1.5m will net you a rather -good- ship for reference. Divide that by 10 for the multitools, they sit between 50 and 100k depending on quality and number of slots, a few might be higher, but not seen them yet.
So what does NMS get wrong?
A bit, the universe is all proc gen, and that makes it all feel like mush, or vanilla in the end. You'll fly to amazing planets but after a while you'll be in a rote routine of 'Find POI's > Shake them down for tech and loot > Refill material banks > Trade out valuables for units > Scan lifeforms > Get the hefty unit bonus for planetary completion > Move on' , some of them really are jawdroppingly beautiful, some of them are just -bad-, unfortunately being all RNG it means you can spend a fair number of planets which are "Arsecrack middle of nowhere" until you get a really trippy one.
NPC's are strictly ED level, they're talking heads with not much to say, sometimes they'll offer you multiple choice situations, with various outcomes. You'll also get mini choose your own adventure bits, with success and failure outcomes. Learning their language word by word however is a really neat feature, fumbling through their dictionary and slowly improving your translation is a nice touch.
Space flight is "Okay" at best, it's ED on a gamepad, but with no option for a HOTAS, probably for the best because the AI ain't great, it'll do a good enough job of roughing you up but as long as you're remotely accurate you'll shred them. With a better ship you'll chew through opposing ships for breakfast, lunch and dinner. For the console crowd they'll offer a passable challenge, for a seasoned ED pilot, no, you'll make a laughing stock of them. However, anyone who says that the flight zones are strictly limited is lying, you have full space flight once out of atmo, and you have supercruise between locations. So that part checks the box.
What does it get right? The experience.
ED has the flight model, but is undermined by the rest of the game. NMS perfectly captures the idea of exploring strange and distant worlds, and the thrill of being able to go from land to space to another planet all without even pausing for a second. When NMS works, and that's not always the case, but when it works, the illusion it provides is something to behold. The feeling of just being able to get in your ship, lift off and head for the stars without even needing to pause for thought is an addictive one. *THAT* is where NMS scores highly, THAT is where NMS has one over on ED in a big way.
(Oh, and as a minor footnote, when the servers buckled under the load? I could keep playing, and I didn't even get a warning message, let's see Elite Dangerous manage *that*)
