Competition: Your Fondest Frontier Memory!

My best experience in ED was returning to the bubble to cash in my data following a loop around the core. That sentence alone makes it seem a mundane task but there was a little more to it.

When I started the game I promised myself I would re-earn my Acornsoft badge (see my avatar pic), earned for reaching Elite in the original game. IIRC you had to do it within the first year, & send off a postcard (included in the box) with a code the game supplied.

I started on 13th Jan 2015, and by August was Combat Elite, so I gave myself a stretch target of reaching Triple Elite before the 13th Jan 2016.
By Mid December 2015 I got my Trade Elite & was about half way through Pioneer for Exploration. I had time for one big trip, needed a little over 40mCr and on a previous trip to SagA* I'd earned 30m (mostly honking & scooping) so I knew what it was going to take, and roughly how long it would take.

With hindsight I didn't have to go to such extremes, but I wanted the fastest ship in the game, just to make sure I could get back from wherever I went in time.

I looped around the outer core (the really bright bit), mostly searching for black holes and O&B class stars until I realised that I wasn't sure how much cash I'd earned & if it wasn't enough I needed to allow time for another trip, so I called a friend for help. It's the only time in my ED 'career' I've ever felt I couldn't do something alone, but a lot was riding on this, I had to make it back in one piece, I had to have enough and I couldn't wait.

I was in a 40ly Conda with a 1d distro & a 3a PP. No weapons, minimal shield, fastest ship in the game (this was before engineers) If I got attacked by a single NPC there would be nothing I could do but put four pips to shields & wait for the FSD to charge.

I needed a wingmate. Considering what I had riding on that trip I wanted an armarda but I have a few PvP buddies & one agreed to fly out to an agreed rendezvous system outside the bubble, in a fully equipped PvP Python.

I travelled 10,000ly in the time it took for him to get his solid hunk of metal out to meet me, I'm pretty sure it's the only time I've ever impressed a PvPer with just how much ground it was possible to cover.

We met up in supercruise, winged up & jumped into the destination system where I had left my gunrunner Cobra MkIII (the other fastest ship in the game, weaponless but unkillable) & travelled the most uneventful 500ls, sweat literally pouring off my brow, my wingmate wondering what all the fuss was about

I made it into dock, switched ships & bid my buddy thanks & farewell as I left his Python far behind.

I got the Triple Elite within a year, with a week to spare. As best experiences go I imagine I'm unlikely to top that.

Original post:
Best experience in Elite
 
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A great and scary memory would be trying to do the "dock without station rotate enabled" I was in a cutter(god that was a bad choice) so I turned it off and entered the station. Heaven help me I sure wasn't drunk but anyone in the station trying to watch that massive machine land had to think the pilot was 3 sheets to the moon and back. I was all over the place. Left and right and back and forth. 2 minutes turn into 5 minutes turn into 7 minutes before getting stuck in some of the stairs or other parts of the station. I wedged myself in there so good I couldn't get out without causing ship damage. Finally had to log out to get out of it and promised myself NEVER AGAIN would I turn that simple lovely option off.
 
My fondest memory of the Elite series was back in 1993 when I saw a letter sent to the computer mag Atari ST Format. Yes we got all our news monthly in paper format ( no internet for us back then) :p

Well the letter was sent in by one David Hollis (I'm sure he won't mind be giving his name), it was about the formation of a club for people that played Frontier Elite II and was going to be called the Panther Owners Group or POG for short.
I thought that the idea for a group was a good one but having it need you to own a Panther Clipper to join was not so good so I wrote to him to tell him so.

Fast forward 26 years and many lan parties (home and professional), selling disc mags (POG, ST+) and the paper based ST+ as well as computer show as store holders.

We are still good mates and still have our love for Elite and still have the Panther Owners Group running (privately but its still here), possibly making it the oldest running Elite fan group!

Elite has brought a large number of my current friends and family together so I know I've already won.
 
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Fondest memory? Jeez that's a tough one.

I was an original '84 BBC micro Elite player so I have definite (but alas now vague) memories of first opening that black box containing the Dark Wheel, the Gazetteer, the star map and ship identification guide and more besides - such riches! Oh ... this was gonna be good! (and so it proved to be). Those memories are actually so poignant that if I dwell on them I fear I may actually weep.

Fondest memory? I guess it has to be this.

Yo Al, what's this? No mention of the buckyball race at FX17???? ;)
 
My fondest memory was 2 glitches:

1. The one where you could not sell your ship with a crew member but the station give you the credits for the ship anyway (panther clipper for the win!) but then had to wait for hours to fly the clipper as you could not fly it without the full roster of crew haha.

2. If you scrolled out millions of light years somehow the jump drive would let you jump into certain systems thus enabling you to jump massive amounts with as little fuel as possible!
 
My fondest memory was an assassination mission in FE2 (or possibly FFE). I'd parked up near the spaceport my target was due to leave from. At the due time he took off and headed up towards space. I planned to wait for him to hyperjump to his destination system, wake scan his departure cloud, follow him through hyperspace then attack him upon arrival in the next system. This was to avoid getting attacked by the spaceport police.

After following him in the ascent for a while, I wondered why he was yet to make his jump. I kept watching him until I suddenly realised he was headed straight for a moon! As no hyperjump would be forthcoming, I instead stuck with him until he was well into space, and the planet we'd taken off from was noticeably smaller, and the moon significantly bigger. At this point I thought it would be safe so started the attack. He was a Panther Clipper so it was going to take a while.

A few minutes into the fight I was amazed to see police Vipers in the distance, with the planet directly behind them. They'd come all the way out in to space to chase me off. The next several minutes was spent chipping away at the Panther while trying to dodge the wing of vipers - all the while the lot of us hurtling towards the moon. Eventually I prevailed, but regardless it's my favorite Elite memory. Seamlessness + scale.
 
Many memories to choose from really, including the excitement and frustration I experienced when I discovered the Kickstarter for Elite Dangerous while at a conference for work. I was frantically trying to create an account on Kickstarter and pledge on my phone but it refused to go through. But that is outside the games.

My fondest memory has to be the dog fight I experienced after finally catching up with the Constrictor in the first mission in Elite for the C64 (The Trumbles don't count as a mission).
I remember that dogfight experience as really hard and something special. The fight felt like it went on forever, and the satisfaction I felt after blowing the Constrictor up was great. It was probably the moment I got really hooked on Elite and as a consequence the sequels.
 
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For my fondest memory, I have to go back to 1984 Elite on the ZX Spectrum; exiting Lave Station and the view of Lave planet below. It's not much to look at by today's standards, but thinking about the number of journeys that must have started that way just fills me with joy.
 
My fondest memory was, after many years searching, I finally found that David Braben was to spearhead a new version of Elite... and with Elite:Dangerous I could finally re-live some of my childhood... thank you David, you have no idea what you have done for so many people.
 
I hadmoved from Germany to the USA in 2001 and while I had managed to keep in contact with my best friend (who was like me a huge fan of the original Elite and the Frontier sequels) for a while, I haven't heard or seen anything from him after my son was born in 2006. When Elite: Dangerous was put on Kickstarter my first though was "Hey, Andy might like that", and I redoubled my effort to find him again. Apparently he had the same thought when he read about it, because he too tried to find me. And once it actually happened, the third thing (after the good old "How are you?" and "How's the family?") he asked was "Have you heard about the new Elite game?!"
 
Even though slightly late to the party, the first time I managed to take down an attacker on Frontier : Elite II, was amazing. I found a copy a decade later, and got the same feeling after several hours of play. Tells you a game is timeless.
 
It has to be playing the orginal Elite for the first time. I would have been around 13 years old, and I'd borrowed the game from a friend. I can picture myself sitting in my bedroom in front of my rubber-keyed 48K spectrum and loading the game up from tape which took about 5 mins. There was this lens lock thing - copy protection using a small plastic lens that transformed an image on the screen into readable letters or something you had to type in.

After working that out I saw the infamous rotating Cobra mk-III and launched into the game (Without reading the manual - most games were so simple it usually wasn't necessary back then...). I looked at the various menus and launching and for a while remember feeling underwhelmed - I couldn't work out what I was supposed to be doing.

Then it clicked - I could actually travel to the other stars - and that was the moment. The ships, the upgrades, trading, combat - oh my god - this was something I had never experienced in any game before - suddenly I realised I was part of a real world and I had to survive an make my own way. The wireframe planets, space station and ships - they were all real in my mind. I remember that I left my Spectrum permanently on (As I had to give the game back to my friend) for the whole week (until my mum found out and sensibly told me I had to switch it off....). So I saved up and bought the game - I probably borrowed pocket money...

That evening and the weeks that followed will always be in my childhood memories - like buying my first Album on vinyl, and those childhood Christmases'.
 
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My friend Mintie, getting the little 20k Hauler, slapping a discovery scanner on it and leaving for Sag A* - the first week the game came out.

Listening to him do that journey for the next few weeks was amazing, hearing the descriptions of what he was seeing on his travels.
Talking about only being able to plan 99Ly at a time but as he got closer to Sag A* that distance got smaller and smaller until he was having to wing it the last few jumps.

But the best bit, after all the joy, amazement, wonder and screenshots of Sag A*, was when it suddenly hit him.

He had to travel back home.

OMG, I laughed for hours after that hit him. You could hear it in his voice, the sudden realisation it was another 3 weeks back again.

And now we can do it in a day, he's not bitter... much :D
 
I fell in love with the sense of mystery and the unknown in Elite Dangerous when I first started playing back in January 2017. No game has ever pulled me so deeply into it's history as Elite has. The huge scale of the galaxy and prospect of setting out in such an open environment with the prospect of being able to lay eyes upon things yet unseen, and getting feel that sense of being on some new frontier, was everything I had ever dreamed of when I was a kid. I've always viewed Elite Dangerous as a game about finding things. Finding the right opportunities, finding the most efficient way to solve something, finding out the secrets of the world around you, and most importantly, finding out who you are in that world. The game has lead me through so many great experiences ranging from a wide array of careers over my two years in game, and out of all of them, some of my greatest have come from exploration. Whether it was goofing around with other CMDRs as we waited in open at the barnacles when the Thargoids started showing up at them, or delving into the eerie Thargoid and Guardian sites with my friends, the game has given me a sense of wonder unlike any other I have played. However, the absolute greatest feeling in Elite Dangerous for me has to be when all that time jumping and scanning pays off with a new discovery you can put your name on. Not many games can give you a feeling like that, and for that I am forever hooked.
 
Elite Dangerous Memories

Two instances come to mind.

1) My first 'long range' trip:

Back in the beta I failed a mission and got a fine, and needed to travel all the way to Ithaca to pay the fine. This was my first time outside of a small handful of systems (Aulin, Asellus Primus, I Bootis etc) It may not be that far now, but being in a barely upgraded sidewinder meant it was still a relatively large number of jumps. It was my first taste of the vastness of the Elite Dangerous world.

2) The one time I broke Rule #1:

I had worked up to a Type 7, and desperately wanted a Python. I thought I had enough Credits for the ship and rebuy, but failed to take into account the losses associated with selling a ship hull. Oops. Apparently pirates can detect a weakly defended, stripped down python with no rebuy from 4 systems over cause they attacked like never before. On what had been a relatively safe route that the Type 7 had flown many times without incident the python was getting attacked by pirates nearly every run. Had to dump the cargo at least once to avoid being killed. At the time I was terrified of losing all that progress, but looking back on it flying with everything on the line was kinda fun in a nerve wracking kinda way.
 
I remember playing the original game as a kid.. I say playing, more like pushing buttons, and crashing out. Then as a teen, FEII came out, and it became my guilty secret (That everyone, of course, knew). People had nintendo super mario, street fighter in the arcade (thanks 147 in Queens Street for after school fun) etc, but I would come home, get the homework done, and sit on that for hours.

Of course, then girls etc came on the scene, and other games were afoot, but those evenings are some of the best of my gaming life, and whetted the appetite enough that, 25 years later, I am trying to convince my son the benefits of learning how to explore the universe (Fortnite is winning atm though :()
 
My fondest memory? Well. I am playing Elite Dangerous for about 11W and 4D ingame time..... Over 1900 hours.... That are a lot of memorys! Mostly good ones. Some ones. Very few OMG ones. Thanks for giving me so much fun being whatever i want to in a great spacegame!
 
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