Elite - Elite Dangerous: A few things that are valid and not valid

[Bantha]

Some things I remember from Elite when I played it on the speccy in the 80s, that I have yet to see in ED:-
ECM hardened missiles. You have ECM you say? Won't help you against these... BOOM!!!
A big bomb that took out everything on your scanner. I wanna say Q Bomb? Is that right?
Military lasers. In the 80s it went Pulse, Beam, Military, in ascending order. With Military lasers front rear and sides, forced witchspace encounters were much fun
Escape pods. Oh how I wish they would bring back escape pods. Timing was crucial, don't want to die, but can I hang on two more seconds...? LOVED escape pods

 

[Allen Stroud]

Some things I remember from Elite when I played it on the speccy in the 80s, that I have yet to see in ED:-
ECM hardened missiles. You have ECM you say? Won't help you against these... BOOM!!!

I don't recall those, perhaps someone can jog my memory? I do remember the ECM Jammer though.

A big bomb that took out everything on your scanner. I wanna say Q Bomb? Is that right?

I think you're referring to the Energy Bomb? The problem with implementing that in a multiplayer game is clear. As I recall, it took down a lot of the shielding/energy bars on a player ship when used by an NPC. One shot indiscriminate hits like that probably aren't viable in the current game.

Military lasers. In the 80s it went Pulse, Beam, Military, in ascending order. With Military lasers front rear and sides, forced witchspace encounters were much fun

Yes, as I recall, these were distinguished by rate of fire. The current implementation has pulse and beam distinguished in different ways, which I think is much better. However, yes I too would love to see 'military' lasers. Perhaps they are something new?

Escape pods. Oh how I wish they would bring back escape pods. Timing was crucial, don't want to die, but can I hang on two more seconds...? LOVED escape pods

Agreed!

 

[Bantha]

Energy Bomb yes that was it. You're right, clearly can't have them in ED.
As for ECM Hardened Missiles, I'm wondering if I'm getting confused with Oolite. Could be, I am very old! Still got my own teeth though, I remember when this was all fields, and so on and so forth...

 

[madbilly]

There was definitely an anti-ECM system in Elite Plus, this could have been in other versions as well.

 

[drew]

Some things I remember from Elite when I played it on the speccy in the 80s, that I have yet to see in ED:-
ECM hardened missiles. You have ECM you say? Won't help you against these... BOOM!!!
A big bomb that took out everything on your scanner. I wanna say Q Bomb? Is that right?
Military lasers. In the 80s it went Pulse, Beam, Military, in ascending order. With Military lasers front rear and sides, forced witchspace encounters were much fun
Escape pods. Oh how I wish they would bring back escape pods. Timing was crucial, don't want to die, but can I hang on two more seconds...? LOVED escape pods

Definitely from Oolite, not Elite+, these were new weapons that were added in to make the game a little more balanced. One of the rules of Oolite design was that NPC ships could have any equipment the player had - this was problematic in a few places.

The original ECM from 1984 Elite rendered missiles useless, so 'hardened' missiles were introduced that had a percentage chance of surviving the ECM effect.
The original energy bomb was also rather 'uber', it effectively destroyed any other ships in the vicinity at the press of a button - clearly you couldn't have NPCs with this weapon! By contrast the Q-bomb was a weapon in Oolite that would destroy stuff in a given radius, including yourself if you didn't hightail it away from the blast point - It was the starting point of my own fan-fiction in Oolite if you want to read it (free online)

Pulse, Beam and Military were definitely from the original game. With pulse being intermittant, beam being continous and military being twice as powerful as beam.

And escape pods. Yes. They were cool. Arguably ED has them... I'm not sure how else you get back to the station after your ship is destroyed, but we never actually see them in the game.

Cheers,

Drew.

 

[ATrifleMiffed]

And escape pods. Yes. They were cool. Arguably ED has them... I'm not sure how else you get back to the station after your ship is destroyed, but we never actually see them in the game.

Erm. We do, and we see them a lot, both on planets and ejected from ships in various encounters. They're even described as such by the target display. Pretty valuable too, good money for new Horizons players who are just starting out and salvaging stuff on planets, although not as much as the various precious metal and mineral canisters. And of course, I assume they're built into player ships and deployed automatically just before they go boom.

 

[drew]

Erm. We do, and we see them a lot, both on planets and ejected from ships in various encounters. They're even described as such by the target display. Pretty valuable too, good money for new Horizons players who are just starting out and salvaging stuff on planets, although not as much as the various precious metal and mineral canisters. And of course, I assume they're built into player ships and deployed automatically just before they go boom.

You're quite right. I was thinking of the perspective of the player when their ship was destroyed.

Cheers,

Drew.

 

[Gimi]

Don't you mean Trumbles? "Tribbles" was Star Trek, and "Trumbles" was in Elite in the Elite Plus versions onward (I don't recall ever seeing them in the C64 version).

Oh they were in the C64 version.

 

[Allen Stroud]

Erm. We do, and we see them a lot, both on planets and ejected from ships in various encounters. They're even described as such by the target display. Pretty valuable too, good money for new Horizons players who are just starting out and salvaging stuff on planets, although not as much as the various precious metal and mineral canisters. And of course, I assume they're built into player ships and deployed automatically just before they go boom.

Might be nice to have something of a game element to this perhaps? Player enabled launch, limited manoeuvring thrusters, establish a retrieval agreement with another ship, etc?

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Erm. We do, and we see them a lot, both on planets and ejected from ships in various encounters. They're even described as such by the target display. Pretty valuable too, good money for new Horizons players who are just starting out and salvaging stuff on planets, although not as much as the various precious metal and mineral canisters. And of course, I assume they're built into player ships and deployed automatically just before they go boom.

I haven't seen them ejected from actual ships. It is a thing? If yes, exciting!

 

[Zeeman]

Some things I remember from Elite when I played it on the speccy in the 80s, that I have yet to see in ED:-
ECM hardened missiles. You have ECM you say? Won't help you against these... BOOM!!!
A big bomb that took out everything on your scanner. I wanna say Q Bomb? Is that right?
Military lasers. In the 80s it went Pulse, Beam, Military, in ascending order. With Military lasers front rear and sides, forced witchspace encounters were much fun
Escape pods. Oh how I wish they would bring back escape pods. Timing was crucial, don't want to die, but can I hang on two more seconds...? LOVED escape pods

YES!!!! ESCAPE PODS!

This would have made things much more interesting.

edit - as in player controlled eject...
Z...

 

[Cmdr-Wotherspoon]

Escape pods. Oh how I wish they would bring back escape pods. Timing was crucial, don't want to die, but can I hang on two more seconds...? LOVED escape pods

With single-player Elite, you could always go back to your most recent save if you messed up the escape pod exit. Perhaps some other mechanism, that confers an advantage on the player if they "bail" in time might be viable (cheaper rebuy, perhaps, or conversely if you don't bail you get sent back to your starter station with a sidewinder (but any stored ships intact). I do miss the gameplay of choosing when to eject, but there needs to be a differentiation in consequence for it to work.

 

[MartinG]

With single-player Elite, you could always go back to your most recent save if you messed up the escape pod exit. Perhaps some other mechanism, that confers an advantage on the player if they "bail" in time might be viable (cheaper rebuy, perhaps, or conversely if you don't bail you get sent back to your starter station with a sidewinder (but any stored ships intact). I do miss the gameplay of choosing when to eject, but there needs to be a differentiation in consequence for it to work.

Not losing your bounty vouchers & exploration data would be a good enough reason, I think.

 

[VR Lucian Arkright]

Not losing your bounty vouchers & exploration data would be a good enough reason, I think.

Was just about to post the same thing. If you eject, the onboard systems have the time to backup your data before a boom. An auto eject doesn't give time for a graceful data transfer.

 

[madbilly]

I agree it would be nice to see some gameplay elements with escape pods like you've all described. I'd like to see pilotable pods, they could be ejected at high velocity and would have low heat signature so would quickly disappear from scanners. The pilot would then have two options.
1. Activate the distress beacon and hope to be rescued, but revealing themselves to all.
2. Try and get away using the in-system-only FSD that is fitted (no hyperspace possible, only supercruise), but risk being interdicted and captured/killed.

Success would mean keeping all data, vouchers, etc. However, insurance would still have to be paid, with maybe an alpha backer type discount.

But this is all getting a bit off topic.

Back to the previous games, i never found the escape capsule much use, since I preferred to keep the credits and load the last save game, which took me back to my last visited space station. In Frontier, where it was possible to save game during spaceflight, the capsule was even less use! I assume this is why ED just send us back to the last station visited, just like was effectively the case in the original game.

 

[Allen Stroud]

I'm not sure I'd want an Escape Pod capable of Supercruise, that would lead to some strange Youtube videos and Hutton Orbital trips!

If they became part of the game, they should have a limited amount of propulsion and a top speed that is less than any ship.

 

[dannysquid]

I miss the "edible furry lobsters", "carnivorous arts graduates" etc...

 

[madbilly]

Some versions of original elite had different generation system for the planet descriptions, I think this is why "hoopy casinos" appear in some version but not others. So in some versions perhaps the arts graduates were the predators and not the prey!

 

[Allen Stroud]

Antony (Elite Archives) would know best, but some of the Atari and Amiga versions were (I think) developed under license, so some of the ships, equipment and additions (such as a mention of Hoopy casinos) were from these. We had a discussion about this a couple of year's back when Lave Radio did their favourite Elite Ship poll and some of those suggested were only available in these variants of the game.

 

[madbilly]

Antony (Elite Archives) would know best, but some of the Atari and Amiga versions were (I think) developed under license, so some of the ships, equipment and additions (such as a mention of Hoopy casinos) were from these. We had a discussion about this a couple of year's back when Lave Radio did their favourite Elite Ship poll and some of those suggested were only available in these variants of the game.

Going off-topic a bit - any idea what's happening the with Elite Archives? The website seemed to disappear a while ago. Any news?