A friend and I had been casually playing Elite for a very long time indeed up until Odyssey released, and we recently decided to get back into it. Mainly what we preferred to do was sit in our favourite RES, me in my lazily engineered green-lasered golden Anaconda and friendo in one (eventually all) of my fighters, waiting for NPC ships to be visibly disappointed that all of my gold was gaudily slapped on the outside of my ship rather than conveniently located in my cargo bays for their taking. Then the NPC ships would somehow explode. Experiencing this familiar arcadey comfort was not to be our goal this time: nonono, we were to stretch our emaciated legs and leave the safety of our ships. With guns, and stuff. Intending to make them go pew pew.
We both completed the tutorial, eagerly met up at our home station, bought all the suits, guns and grenades we could see, grabbed a few combat missions with the same targets and shared them with each other. There may also have been a slight amount of disgust expressed to me by my friend, as she often fails to properly recognise my creative genius when it comes to character creators, but soon enough I got in her ship and we were on our way.
The missions all called for targets of a certain faction to be eliminated at any settlement controlled by that faction, so I brought up the maps (...and outside assistance from eddb) and got meself a-searchin'. I managed to find only one settlement controlled by said faction, so we headed there, landed nearby and took Scarabs to the base on account of 'nearby' not quite being near enough.
We saw NPCs, they saw us, and then we died.
I hadn't taken my ship.
I respawned back at our home station.
Oh dear.
I pledged never again to forsake my own giant thrusting wedge, and raced as fast as I could back to the settlement. Taking things seriously this time, we mercilessly slaughtered them all, and then scanned them... only to discover that they did not count towards the mission objectives. Okay, we thought - we must have to turn the power back on, and then the people we need will turn up, rather than these silly now-dead ones, who were presumably unaffiliated with any faction. We tried to do what the tutorial taught us to do, but could not find an SRV from which to yoink a regulator, and still no mission-critical targets could be found, so we gave up.
We then tried another sort of mission - one with a specified settlement to go and rub ourselves all over instead of having to try to find one ourselves. And this time we had to kill scavengers, which we now had experience doing. Marvellously fun times were certainly ahead of us...
...except no they weren't, because we killed all the scavengers and somehow 3 were still remaining, but nowhere to be found. Couldn't find them, couldn't find an SRV from which to nick a regulator, thought perhaps it might not make any difference whether the power's on anyway, so we gave up.
Oh, Elite, we try so hard to love you. But we are unclever, and you are difficult.
We shall try again.
We both completed the tutorial, eagerly met up at our home station, bought all the suits, guns and grenades we could see, grabbed a few combat missions with the same targets and shared them with each other. There may also have been a slight amount of disgust expressed to me by my friend, as she often fails to properly recognise my creative genius when it comes to character creators, but soon enough I got in her ship and we were on our way.
The missions all called for targets of a certain faction to be eliminated at any settlement controlled by that faction, so I brought up the maps (...and outside assistance from eddb) and got meself a-searchin'. I managed to find only one settlement controlled by said faction, so we headed there, landed nearby and took Scarabs to the base on account of 'nearby' not quite being near enough.
We saw NPCs, they saw us, and then we died.
I hadn't taken my ship.
I respawned back at our home station.
Oh dear.
I pledged never again to forsake my own giant thrusting wedge, and raced as fast as I could back to the settlement. Taking things seriously this time, we mercilessly slaughtered them all, and then scanned them... only to discover that they did not count towards the mission objectives. Okay, we thought - we must have to turn the power back on, and then the people we need will turn up, rather than these silly now-dead ones, who were presumably unaffiliated with any faction. We tried to do what the tutorial taught us to do, but could not find an SRV from which to yoink a regulator, and still no mission-critical targets could be found, so we gave up.
We then tried another sort of mission - one with a specified settlement to go and rub ourselves all over instead of having to try to find one ourselves. And this time we had to kill scavengers, which we now had experience doing. Marvellously fun times were certainly ahead of us...
...except no they weren't, because we killed all the scavengers and somehow 3 were still remaining, but nowhere to be found. Couldn't find them, couldn't find an SRV from which to nick a regulator, thought perhaps it might not make any difference whether the power's on anyway, so we gave up.
Oh, Elite, we try so hard to love you. But we are unclever, and you are difficult.
We shall try again.
