The Science of David Braben
- Thread starter deckroid
- Start date
Shh before someone at FD sees this. Next thing we know we'll have a "Stable Orbit Mode" with accompanying giant holographic neon signs, sirens, confetti bombs and a 10 second lockup either side.
Just as they've done with absolutely everything else. Supercruise, Orbital Cruise, Glide Mode, Interdiction and the whole "escape vector" minigame - all these things that just emerged naturally, seamlessly and without fanfare in FE2, have now become distinct 'things' in their own right, more fracturing and disjointed compartmentalising, like so many Band Aids on an afterbirth. Clunky, bolted-on additional "modes" to implement aspects of the other games that were just incidental passing moments.
Miss being able to do slingshots? No worries, just hold out for the inevitable clunky "slingshot mode" with concomitant fanfares, confetti bombs, even bigger holo-neon signs and even more sciencey bleeping noises, and only an 18 second freeze on the transitions, just wait till you see it, it's gonna be great, everyone's gonna love it..
Last edited:
It's an affront to the Elite marque.
And noooo, no, no no. I categorically do not accept that the relative nature of motion, time and velocity are inherently inimcal to network logistics.
In time, other games will come to pass, proving this point. I'm no comms expert but i have a good grasp of physics and information theory and there's nothing terribly complicated about the fundamentals - FD have implemented velocity in an amateurish and ham-fisted way, as rate of change of absolute position WRT coordinate space, and this is why they came up against latency vs relative velocity - because they pitted those limits against one another from the outset with poor design.
It's Elite - it was always the premier space sim game. Without space flight it's utterly emascualted and eviscerated, i'm a paying customer and lifelong fan so no, i cannot just accept it. I spent 85 quid on a spaceflight game incapable of basic spaceflight, and now i'm left playing the same games i've been playing for 20 years (FE2 & FFE), still daydreaming about the long-awaited E4, and right now it seems further away than ever..
Sorry if that bugs you, but if only more fans had resisted these game-destroying compromises when they were first announced, maybe we'd've had to wait a little longer, but we'd also have less bloat and a more fulfilling core game, and fewer bored players two years in.
FE2 and FFE have rubbish GFX and sound compared to ED, and the latter is still hobbled with awful bugs and terrible design decisions despite the recent facelifts, but the reason they're still fun after 20 years of doing the same thing is that nobody - no one with any interest in space or science, anyway, could ever grow bored with the awesome spectacle of realistic spaceflight.
You can bolt yer pew-pew biplane handling over the top, no problemo - the more accessible, the better - so long as we have the option to take the training wheels off and configure our own 'blue zones' or handling response envelopes, speed limits etc.
But an enforced, global speed limit in a modern remake of the game that defined the genre is just totally weak, lame, and robbing Peter to pay Paul - setting up exactly the kinds of malcontent airs we've seen grow with every kludgy attempt to bolt more 'game' onto the hulk by attempting to wallpaper over the absence of freedom of movement and all the other networking compromises that fall out as a consequence of that (RNG spawns, the interdiction minigame, escape vectors, mammoth 'supercruise' dot-tracking sessions w/o autopilot, having every single star, planet and station repeatedly smashed in your face on every jarring supercruise transition, yet while still being unable to simply choose which star in a multiple system is going to get rammed down my throat at relativistic speeds, etc. etc.
The truth is i'm not even playing ED. I update it occassionally, check out the 'Incursion' demo, realise there's still no game there, and go back to FFED3D. Which is horribly buggy, and keeps switching your engines off every time another ship approaches, and worse, when it does this over land, say, while attacking or photographing a base, it also applies full downwards thrust. So one moment you're flying along stable and level, all in control, then suddenly your engines are off, except the top thruster which is throttled wide open, and before you can react you're dead.. (chears DB, fantastic, that.) But i have to play it becuase if you love playing Elite, that's currently your only option. Pioneer doesn't have laser combat, Amiga FE2 only runs at 288p - apparently DB has some 480p dev builds that could run sweet on WinUAE, but fat chace we'll ever see them).
Last night i actually stayed up to around 04:30 trying to come up with a decent SweetFX filter for Amiga FE2. It's crazy, you can add bloom, edit the hues, contrast, saturation, add an HDR effect, but there's not much you can do about the jagged blocky resolution.
Why would i be doing all this if i could persuade myself ED was playable or fun? I'd love to be able to tag along. No one wants to feel left out or short changed.. I'm not grumbling-but-getting-on-with-it.. It's a speed limit. A speed limit, in space. All space, everywhere. A 'space speed limit'. In Elite.
In a modern Elite. That we waited 20 years for the technology to catch up for. A space speed limit, built into the ships themselves. "faster" ships just set a higher self-imposed limit on their speed. Slower ships simply set a lower self-imposed limit on their own speed. And we pay for that privilege, to boot.. because in a game with space speed limits, but separate self-imposed space speed limits for different craft, it is not 'speed' that is the premium, but 'absence of nerfing' that is the real currency. Pilots gain skill not by improving their ability to handle their ship's performance, but rather by learning how to compensate for its lack of performance.
The core game design is a work-around. The supposed gameplay offered instead is another workaround. Most of the threads of discontent are due to this workaround ethos for everything, in place of solid core game design.
Frontier reached their zenith with FE2. FFE added full thruster mapping but broke almost everything else, and ED has just followed it down that same path, so i won't shut up about it, and neither should anyone who cares about the game, and what it could be, and should be..
Last edited:
well i have discovered an earth like planet in a system whose only main star was a black hole...
*éèèè*
Last edited:
Yet, they will throw science out the window for any and all weapons and engineering as well as sub-light space flight.
Those financials are out of date. The latest report shows ED sales down and net financial loss of many millions of pounds.
However Planet Coaster is not far away and that could turn the company around.
Actually onlt a small proportion of ED buyers are still playing the game, so I really don't think many are buying DLC.
I'd really like it if they were taking their time with each aspect and getting it right.
Like energy shields, laser cannons, FTL travel, and a scarcity of Iron?
Rather starships instant teleportation.
At the current rate, in year 15 of the 10 Year Plan.
- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -
Braben didn't really say that did he? Where are Andromeda's trillion stars???
Must be because there are 400 billion star systems of garbage RNG astronomy to explore!
Try Ross 780 https://youtu.be/Vc_txiFzLek?t=57s
Bug? Looks just like crap programming to me.
The PG random number generator seed, you mean. Random.
Hate to have to tell you, but the Ian Bell / David Braben Elite game that defined the genre had an enforced, global speed limit. And it worked for great gameplay.
Compare David Braben's subsequent solo attempt, Frontier Elite II. Braben removed the speed limit, allowing astronomically high speeds. And the gameplay was utter crap.
Last edited:
As I've said in many other threads, why does this surprize players? Everything else in the game that should take time is also instant. It's not a new issue. We have instant repairs, instant cargo loading/unloading, instant mat synthesis, instant FTL communications, instant respawnig on station after ship destruction and instant replacement of ships with all of their unique Engineering mods perfectly replicated and so on. Everything in Elite that should take time is instant purely for gameplay purposes. Why would you expect anything different for ship transfer or the fighter 3D printing? Implementing time-delay functionality at this point would make no sense. They would either need to do it for all of those other things, or not at all, and they have clearly decided that time-delays would be avoided in the interests of not slowing down the core gameplay mechanics.
Let's not blanket crap so generally on the power of individuality. That kid that was inspired by flying dinosaurs hurling fireballs will be making the films, art, music, books and video games that will impact the world just as much as the science inspired kid will or the sports inspired kid...
One path in life, one type of person, is not superior to another purely by default of their chosen field of interest
If only society worked that way! It sounds lovely.
Still, glad to know we shouldn't try encouraging kids to bother with science, education, and stuff like that since it only puts barriers between people and limits the soaring power of imagination that can only truly be nurtured with Pokemon.
Last edited:
What? Where in my post did you read that we should discourage kids from bothering with science, education or anything else for that matter? Please explain.
I was highlighting how creative people influence and shape the world just as much as scientific people because the tone of your post suggested very strongly that you beleive science is a superior endeavor just because it's called science.
Last edited:
Certain fields are demonstrably superior to other fields in terms of their value to humanity as a species. There is a certain type of objective need for an individual to contribute to society in a meaningful way if humanity is to progress rather than stagnate. We aren't at a point where we have enough resources as a species that we can afford to "waste" our time and energy on trivial endeavors or on tasks that aren't useful. This isn't to say that all those endeavours need to be academic. If someone truly has a talent for a non-academic field such as art or music, then this should be encouraged and promoted, as true achievement in these areas does provides a value to society. At the same time, far too many people end up in non-scientific fields simply because they lack the discipline or rational thinking necessary to apply themselves to more challenging endeavors, rather than because they are truly "talented" at something else. If you compare the quality of education at, say, the Liberal Arts level to a degree in Science/Engineering you'll see that they are really not "equivalent" nor are they of equivalent value to society. Not only is this an issue in terms of the erosion of a high-quality education, they are even diluting basic science concepts in primary schooling because they're now deemed too "difficult" for students to learn. The attempt to push "common core" mathematics, where "thinking" about math in abstract ways is encouraged instead of actually learning a proper method to arrive at a correct answer, is a typical example of this. If one student can arrive at a mathematical answer quickly and efficiently, and the other wants to "picture" this in a completely abstract way, that is a problem because the second student has not even learned the basics of mathematics in the process. In many ways humanity as a species has declined in terms of the thinkers and scientists it was producing in the 1950's to 1970's which I attribute mostly to the erosion of the public education system over the past several decades.
That's entirely subjective and dependant on your point of view.
Endeavors that "aren't useful" is another entirely subjective term and totally open to point of view based on many factors up to and including not liking, approving of or understanding of a particular endeavor. Who decides what is and is not useful in a society that has largely progressed past the physical survival of the fittest stage?
It's akin to the naivety of assuming that bees are useless to the world because they seem unimportant to the ill informed observer. Yes, humans should strive to make more of themselves than doing simple tasks but we can't just tell certain people they're the useless dregs of society just because we have pre-judged them based on their career, education, upbringing, background, etc. Some of the greatest human beings in history came from a humble and uneducated begining because they pushed themselves to pursue their seemingly 'useless' talents at the time.
The quality of the education depends on the quality of the people teaching the subject.
Define "equivalent value to society". If you mean obtaining something like a film degree is more trivial than obtaining a degree in quantum mechanics then I would say this argument has no basis in logic for it is comparing apples to oranges.
Mozart was a genius in music but, for example, a dunce in biology. Einstein was a genius in mathematics and physics but, for example again, couldn't play an instrument to save his life. Alfred Hitchcock was a master filmmaker but absolutely useless at theoretical science. All three people contributed massively to human history and society for generations in different yet equally impactful ways.
I agree in parts about the erosion of higher standards in education especially in the cases when teaching methods lose efficiency and proper structure thereby degrading the quality of what can be taught. However...
You're essentially saying there is only one way for different people, with different ways of thinking, different ways of asimilating and interpreting information; to comprehend a single subject. I don't agree there. It is absolutely necessary to have a uniform and quality way of teaching the basics as well as the advanced levels of any subject but it is up to the individual learning it on how best to interpret the information so as to memorise it, comprehend it and build short hands for accessing it in their mind quickly and efficiently.
Good teaching standards and high quality of education definitely provide one with the knowledge of proven techniques and tools with which to understand and interpret the information but a student cannot fail to grasp a subject meerely because they assimilate the information as an individual rather than a drone or a carbon copy of their teacher's thought processes.
I do agree with there being a marked decline of generally intellectual people of all types. My own personal opinion is that it involves a great many factors, including but not exclusively because of changes in the public education system(s) - that's a whole other post though.
But my point still stands that society advances not just because of thinkers and scientists only. Those two categories are undeniably valuable. However there have been great thinkers, great scientists, great filmmakers, great poets, great musicians, great writers, great historians, great politicians (yes, those creatures do exist!) and etc throughout human evolution. The fabric of human society and progress is made up of all sorts. Diversity is what keeps the human species going. Creativity has just as much to play in the betterment and progress of humanity as does science.
Now THIS is only for Steam, but it shows a somewhat healthy gameplay and for some reason it only has the data for ED not Horizons, but maybe it's both?
That doesn't include all the players, certainly, as my friends who play and I still use the Launcher.
Sure, and so is an opinion on what makes a good movie. When there is general consensus, however, on what a "good" movie is and a "bad" movie, then the subjectivity sort of becomes moot. No one would call Liberal Arts a "rigorous" field nor would anyone call Engineering an "easy" discipline.
Society decides this collectively. When an Engineer can find a good job for a good wage, and achieves good job satisfaction, then this is considered a "good" job with a "high" socio-economic standing. When a Liberal Arts grad can't find any job and ends up working at McDonalds, society has clearly decided that their "field" is not sufficiently valuable to allow them to obtain gainful employment.
This is really just a lack of education or knowledge, not a valid "opinion" on the usefulness of bees. Sort of how farmers routinely eradicated wolf populations only to find they were keystone predators and their deaths disrupted ecosystems substantially. There is no particular "value" to say, a Liberal Arts education if does not result in a meaningful job that clearly serves a useful purpose in society.
Does the time invested in a Liberal Arts education, for example, enable an individual to contribute to society in unique and meaningful ways that they could not do without this education? You don't see "self-taught" Enigneers building bridges for example, so this is clearly something that one needs to apply onself with rigorous study.
And that is why I leave the possibility open for truly gifted individuals in the arts to contribute in a unique and meaningful way. Many students who puruse education in "vague" or "non-rigorous" disciplines are not particularly talented at what they have chosen to study, it was simply something that they did not find particularly demanding and allowed them to avoid the reality of finding an actual job for 4-6 years as they went to college.
I would agree with this, but I think there is often an insufficient distinction between an Engineer and a Liberal Arts student where the degree of achievement is simply not comparable and in many cases the standard are so low that there is little to no achievement at all in some cases. I have even seen this in many disciplines in science that lack proper structure or rigor in comparison to their larger field of study and they are not particularly well-regarded in scientific communities. You can imagine where some of the poorly-structured social disciplines must rank in comparison. I think the issue here is that "excellence" in a field (whatever that field might be) has taken a back seat to pursuing whatever you "enjoy" without any sense of whether you are actually any good at what you have chosen to "study".
It shows only about 7% of ED copies registered on Steam launched the game in Steam even once recently and no that's not what I would call healthy.