Bugs in previous Elite games

Fenris Wolf

Fenris Wolf
Back in the Official Ship Transfer Poll thread, TheNavvie posted this comment:

TheNavvie said:
Instant ship transfers is a game breaking device. Like the worm-hole bug in Elite 2, it makes it totally pointless to put anything more than a 2E FSD in a ship.
Click to expand...

Which reminded me of a bug that I'd used for a few time critical missions in a previous version of Elite and wondering if it was the same bug.

The one I remember was after leaving a space station, setting the destination for the hyperspace jump, activating the drive and then auto-docking at the station you just left.

The hyperspace jump would activate and you'd jump to the destination system within docking range at the new station. It was perfect if you had a dangerous mission to an anarchic system, and didn't have a ship spec'd for conflict.


So, was this the worm-hole bug or was that something else?
 

Iain L

Iain L
I -think- the docking but was in the original Elite, not Frontier - you'd time your hyperspace jump so the countdown completed just after you docked, and then you were docked in the destination system instead. I abused that one more than once.
 

[VR] Marrs

[VR] Marrs
I took FFE back to the shop (remember when we bought games from shops?) because the graphical glitches when landing on planets made the game unplayable. So I never got to play it :(
 

steveme

steveme
Marrs said:
I took FFE back to the shop (remember when we bought games from shops?) because the graphical glitches when landing on planets made the game unplayable. So I never got to play it :(
Click to expand...

The joke at the time was Elite 4 was alpha quality code on David Braben's computer, whereas Elite 3 was alpha quality code on your own...
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
In FE2 and FFE, the flight mechanic was pure Newtonian. Since WWII/Star Wars/Elite-style dogfighting is logically impossible with a purely Newtonian flight mechanic, the NPCs "cheated" - all they needed to do was get close to you and they'd "interdict" you, even if you were travelling at 0.5 lightspeed relative to them just a second earlier, you were now at a dead stop. Ships in FE2/FFE Elite had two main thrusters: Main engine (forwards) and Reverse. These had different acceleration specs; ships always slowed down at much lower accelerations than they sped up. This allowed the NPCs to always catch you, since you "had to" slow down to reach your destination, but they didn't have to slow down to interdict you. Cheaty McCheatface.

To avoid all that unnecessary combat, I cheated back, using the Autopilot i a way its designers never intended. I'd simply refuse to slow down.

I'd switch on the autopilot for a few seconds to allow it to align the ship to the destination perfectly, then switch it off again, hold down the main engine accelerate button, and press the time-fast-forward button. In a decent ship (like an Asp), the pirates couldn't come near me in time. All I needed to do to dock safely was switch on the autopilot again just before I zoomed past the planet. Bang, instant stop, hovering over the landing pad. It's as if the station had a huge net to catch me before I slammed into the planet at 2/3 lightspeed.

As for other bugs, FFE was notorious for them. The one I always found frustrating was the Phantom Alliance System bug, where a system would show on the starmap as being full of stations, outposts, colonies etc, then you'd jump there and nothing. Gone. Empty system. Occasionally, the opposite would happen too, and you'd jump into a system that was "supposed to be" empty, only to find it teeming with people. It seems to have been a side-effect of the crude and nasty grafting of the Alliance onto the old FE2 starmap. You could, with a little practice, cause an empty system to spontaneously fill up with people, on demand. A rather handy trick if your hyperdrive needed servicing and you were thousands of LY away from the bubble.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom