Elite / Frontier [Frontier] Exploring & Navigating
- Thread starter g04tn4d0
- Start date
To look at the various planets in the system you're in, select the orbital view (F2 in FE2, F6 in FFE) from the navigation screen.Hey, I was wondering how exactly I can discover and navigate to objects or areas in space like asteroid fields, for example. I know how to lock the autopilot onto a station or starport, but I've not been able to figure out the finer points of space exploration.
Thanks in advance!
As far as asteroids etc. are concerned, I think you just have to bump into them!
In FE2 you can also see (and lock on) the ships in the system as colorful dots.
I also recommend doing all kinds of stuff, like landing on uninhabited planets like methane worlds, entering the atmospheres of gas giants and admiring the rings above their seas of clouds (best in FE2), landing on asteroidal bodies (FFE), visiting Canopus 1, flying by a white dwarf, putting your ship in (more or less) stable orbit around a planet, etc.
Of course, this kind of stuff requires decent manual flight skills.
This reminds me of one of my flights.
I was doing about 4000km/s when I was ambushed by pirates. I quickly dispatched the attackers, but noticed some odd points of lights blinking around the ship. Puzzled and quite disoriented I stared at them not knowing what they were. Suddenly a huge wall of rock flashed by the side of my ship, then, in a blink of an eye disappeared into infinity behind the aft. The rest of the trip was uneventful, although I felt a bit nervous, having realized that I had just flown through an asteroid field and barely even noticed that - had I even scrapped one of these chunks of space debris the inhabitants of the system would be able to read by the light of the explosion for good several minutes. Of course, when you're hurtling through the system at 4000km/s there is little you can do to avoid collisions - you can only put your ship on autopilot and put your trust in the sparsity of any asteroid fields you may, unknowingly, buzz through.
You know, that's the only two issues about Frontier that I don't like. The inability to lock on to anything other than the aformentioned objects or add some sort of bookmark for previously visited areas (lack of a robust navigation system), and of course the fact that large, crewed ships don't automatically operate the turrets; the player must literally operate each turret manually even though there is a paid pack of NPCs onboard.
Other than that, it's god's gift to the gaming world as far as I'm concerned!
Other than that, it's god's gift to the gaming world as far as I'm concerned!