Competition: Your Fondest Frontier Memory!

Has to be the day I checked Frontier's website after a few years of randomly checking to see "what are they up to these days?" and finding out about the Elite Dangerous Kickstarter. Oh happy day! :)
 
I have always been fascinated with space, and when I stumbled across elite dangerous, I was unsure of what to expect. The learning curve felt a little steep as I analyzed the panel options in the game. I ended up not having the time to invest in the things I felt as though I needed to learn, and ended up taking a step back from the game. A good six months later at least, I decided to check it out again, and this time was different. I feel into how immersive the game was. I landed on an incredibly beautiful planet, skidding around in my srv, speeding off of cliffs and tapping my thrusters as I flew through the air. In that moment, the game brought me into touch with just how small and insignificant my life is in the scheme of things, which I think is a pretty incredible achievement for a game.
 

Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
I don't have a single fondest memory. Rather, I would hold up my entire experience here on the forums and in the Elite Dangerous community as the highlight of my time over the past few years. I've met some wonderful people here, and several I would consider close friends. I've never had that experience in any other game community. From role playing with pals on the forum prior to the launch of Elite to even flying half a world away to visit with T.J. and Yaffle (excellent hosts, btw), it's been a wonderful experience that I wouldn't trade for anything.
 
My fondest memory is, in the middle of a rather long trek through the galaxy in Elite Dangerous, coming across a very interesting system that turned out to be a green system with twin Water Worlds. Finding this system in the middle of nowhere hit me with the realization that in the vastness of the galaxy, and the universe, there are countless riches and unknown things waiting to be discovered by us. Things that have existing for hundreds of million, if not billions, of years patiently 'waiting' our arrival. Truly amazing.
 
My fondest memory, is from playing Elite: Dangerous.

A good friend had been helping me learn the game, until I threw a spanner in the works.

'Out of the blue', I decided to take a passenger 22k light years, for a mission..

Four weeks later, having taken him to his desired location and back.. I completed the mission with under four hours remaining.

While I was confident that I'd manage it, my friend was a bundle of nerves, which I still find funny!
 
3 hours of mining and pull in to the station to sell 256t of cargo. Instead of dropping landing gear i hit Jettison all cargo. :eek: LOL. Promptly deleted that keybinding. Maybe not the fondest memory but had to laugh at my mistake.
 
It was beautiful when Planet Coaster came out. The best game on the market right now! I love to create environments and play with the emotional feeling of people by letting them see my coasters and parks. Keep on guys!
 
I was 13 years old when the original Elite came out and I was playing on a BBC Model B, marvelling at the wire-frame graphics and playing my Christmas present non-stop. I had an analogue joystick, so I could practice lining up to dock with the space-station, invariably crashing, or hitting the fire key and getting swarmed by Vipers.

Eventually I managed to jump from Lave to Leesti, dock successfully and trade, then on my return trip I crashed into the side of the station. I complained about how difficult this game was, how I'd never get very far if you could die when you docked. My parents who actually had a read of the manual said "You do know you can save this, yes?"
 
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My first Landing

My fondest memory was when I first got Elite Dangerous: Horizon and decide to land on a planet. It was just the sheer awe of being on a planet, million of miles away, looking up at the starry sky, the star shining away and the rocky mountains silhouetted. The beauty of the game.e just blew me away. I can't stop playing now.
 
My favorite Elite: Dangerous moments were in combat before the A.I. changes that made most battle space jousting. It was fun to be able to get behind an enemy ship for a while and fire multiple salvos at its rear, making it feel more like a WWII aerial dogfight than a contest of who can boost away and turnabout the fastest. Even when using a low maneuverability ship, like an Anaconda, it was still possible for skilled pilots to be able to ride an enemy's tail for a decent while. Granted some didn't feel challenged enough by the old A.I. but I always had more fun and felt more skilled than I do now. If I had to single out my favorite combat time it was when the weapon penetration model was reworked so it was harder to kill a ship but the "sit and spin" bug was still there. It always felt like the enemy would do the "sit and spin" as a reward for out maneuvering it long enough to pile on the damage. To me it wasn't a bug but compensation for improving the enemy's survive-ability and piloting skill that accompanied the introduction of what turned out to be a bug. I miss those times.
 
Christmas day, 1984, and 11-year-old me excitedly unwrapped an Acorn Electron and the only game I'd asked for - Elite. I quickly found the keys for basic control of the ship and launched for the first time.

Ooh, there's a planet right in front of me. I know, I'll fly down and have a look at the surface. As the altitude bar kept dropping, I thought that I might see something as I got closer to the surface.

Nope. BOOOM! Game Over.

I had just encountered my first experience of RTFM. Thankfully, the manual was beautifully put together and very clear about most things.

Before too long, I was navigating the galaxy, making profit from trade, and dealing with those pesky pirates!
 
I was introduced to Elite when I was about 12, on a computer belonging to a friend of my parents. I was terrible at it, but it left an impression. I just got back to the bubble after exploring out as far as The Torment, and that brought me Elite Explorer status as well as enough credits for an Imperial Cutter (Ave Imperatrix!). It was realizing a tiny childhood dream.
 
Hmm, best Frontier/Elite memory... Hard question after a few thousand... One that still makes me laugh; I had just gotten a dolphin doing tourist runs and decided to get a docking computer... The first time I used it and Blue Danube started belting out as the lil pony shot off through an intensely gymnastic docking maneuver... Wow, I laughed harder than I had in eons. Ahh, those precious details. I have both been stunned by the beauty in Elite and angered by some nerf or whatever. Never really felt overly passionate about any video game, and I used to write my own on the old ti-994a. Happy anniversary.
 
My most memorable moment comes from Elite: Dangerous. I lost my Father to cancer in 2013, it was very sudden and unexpected, hastened by complications with multiple sclerosis. I found it difficult to cope with the loss as our relationship in recent years wasn't amazing but we were getting there. I retreated into games and ultimatley lost myself in ED when that was released, knowing that my Dad was an avid original Elite player and had even managed to get my mother playing it way back then! I found it easy to get lost in the massive universe that ED gave me and would spend weeks at a time getting up only to play Elite until i couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. This went on for a while, trying to ingnore my loss with distractions until one day I arrived in a system and needed to look for a specific pilot (i don't remember why but i feel it was an assasination or similar). While scanning ships in supercruise, one pilot stood out from the list of names by a mile, because this particular NPC pilot had my fathers name, in full, with the correct spelling. I was so taken aback that I just stared at the contacts panel until he jumped out of system. That was a turning point for me, either by fluke of name generation or some kickstarter / orginal elite players tie-in, my Dad was in the universe! I've never seen that NPC since, but that doesn't matter, that little thing was what I needed to start climbing out of the funk I had gotten myself into since his death and even today, every time I think about that brief encounter it brings a smile to face knowing that he's out there somewhere deep in the servers that house the universe, o7 Dad.
 
October 1985, teaching in a remote community in the middle of the Gibson Desert in Western Australia, no TV, no telephone! I picked up a brand new Acorn BBC Model A computer while on term break and started teaching myself Basic programming and subscribed to a British magazine about the beeb. In it I saw an advert for Elite and promptly ordered it.

The game finally arrived and my life changed! I loaded it up, launched into the Lave system and never looked back. I played that game non stop for months and months until finally achieving Elite status. I was a trader and bounty hunter and I really think it saved me from going crazy. My wife probably thought I already had!

Fast forward 30 years and I thought I'd get back into it with Elite Dangerous and I am once again hooked. I now have an FDL for combat, a Python for transport and a Cobra Mark III for fun. While the original Elite game was amazing for its time (wire graphics and all) the latest incarnation is absolutely stunning. The best part is that my Holo Me can still be young, handsome and heroic, even if I'm not ;>)
 
My fondest memory would be the very first time I loaded Elite up way way back in the 80's. I had an Amstrad CPC6128 which was one of the first that actually had a floppy disc drive. Unfortunately, Elite wasn't on the system at first as it came out on Commodore and my friends dad was playing it and I was envious as hell. I went into the games rental store, (A very new concept), and there it was for the Amstrad, wow. I got home and put the tape in, (awful, especially as I had a disc drive), I then took the time to read the manual which was more like a book and studied how to fly so I would be ready when it finally loaded up. I read the Dark Wheel which was a first for me as I am pretty sure that this was the first game that actually had a story, up until then it had been jumping barrels and shooting side scrolling aliens but no real stories as such unless you wanted a 'Text Adventure game'.
As soon as the game loaded and I got my Cobra, 100cr and full tank of fuel, I was set. I'm pretty sure that I marked up an obscene amount of game time, I never made Elite but I did get Deadly and as far as I can remember, that took me nearly two years of play.
The funny thing is that I'm pretty sure my parents knew nothing of Elite or what I was doing in my room for all that time and even now that I have grown kids of my own who also play Elite, I do wonder if they would have been concerned or relieved.
 
I have played Elite since the days it was released on BBC micro, back then I coveted time on my brothers computer and was overjoyed when it made it's way to the C64 which I had and no longer had to beg for time on my brothers PC.
When it got revamped and released as Elite Dangerous I had to get it and was awed by how much it had evolved from it's humble vector graphics.
But the developers have continued to evolve the game and being able to land on planets and explore in the SRV was a joy, being freed from always being stuck in the cockpit has added a whole new dimension to the game, but my fondest memory has to be when I achieved my first "elite" status, thank you Frontier for re-imagining this great game and fleshing out the wonders of the galaxy in such varied and stunning detail.
 
My fondest memory was when I landed in a starport for the first time in Elite Dangerous managing to not become a fireball. It felt great, like the first steep in a long journey.
 
I first encountered Elite back on the Atari 1040 ST. Even though I was primarily a hardcore wargamer at the time - lord, how I miss those classic SSI wargames from the '80s! - I could tell right away that Elite was something special. I didn't stick with it for long because, again, I wasn't much into sci-fi at the time, but I liked what I saw.

For my fondest memory, it would have to be from Elite: Dangerous. I recall a time when I docked at a station and logged off for a few days. When I came back and raised my ship on the launch platform, I was instantly struck by how a moon that was in one part of the sky when I originally landed had now orbited to nearly overhead. That was a very cool moment. Over the decades I had given up wargaming (my bread and butter was Cold War wargames, so when the Cold War ended....) and became a more devoted sci-fi gamer. I had been looking for a sci-fi game with such a sense of realism for years. I had finally found with with Elite: Dangerous!
 
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