You clearly forgot about the Trumble carcass jammed into your undercarriage - which has prevented you from raising your undercarriage for months...
Elite / Frontier Frontier: First Encounters - or: how I learned to stop worrying and shove the Mouse
- Thread starter Arioch
- Start date
I’ve had the local engineers in to have a look, and I think the Cobra’s got the all-clear 
In other crackin’ news, I’ve spotted my second Right on, Commander! in the wild:
As suspected, using the targeting computer immediately drops off the EFP message from the screen with a “target lost” message - so I’ve now taken to not using the targeting computer as much
I think this is the first RoC I’ve had since reaching Dangerous, so I’ve plenty more to go!
In other crackin’ news, I’ve spotted my second Right on, Commander! in the wild:
As suspected, using the targeting computer immediately drops off the EFP message from the screen with a “target lost” message - so I’ve now taken to not using the targeting computer as much
I think this is the first RoC I’ve had since reaching Dangerous, so I’ve plenty more to go!
Blimey! It’s taken a while and I thought I’d missed it - turns out my kill rate wasn’t as high as I thought it was 
Anyway, here’s the next one:
…which took nearly 6 months in-game and a fortnight in the real.
It didn’t help that I got my Military Drive shot out, again It was a bit of a trek to the nearest system with the required tech level, but I’m now fitted out, repaired, and ready for the Anarchies once more.
I’m getting intercepted by the occasional big stuff - the Imp Explorer usually turns up with a few escorts and about a gazillion missiles, but if you can get on their tail then they can’t outmanoeuvre the Cobra:
…and you can blast away to your heart’s content
The news feeds continue to be wonderful, very much from the school of Douglas Adams. Why can’t we have Imperial characters like this anymore?
Also of note is the since-retconned Thargoid story - thanks to my endeavours in the FFE missions, it would seem Humanity and the Thargoids had a different timeline to the blessed one that leads to Elite Dangerous:
I guess this Variant CMDR had better keep an eye out for the TVA
Anyway, here’s the next one:It didn’t help that I got my Military Drive shot out, again
It was a bit of a trek to the nearest system with the required tech level, but I’m now fitted out, repaired, and ready for the Anarchies once more.I’m getting intercepted by the occasional big stuff - the Imp Explorer usually turns up with a few escorts and about a gazillion missiles, but if you can get on their tail then they can’t outmanoeuvre the Cobra:
…and you can blast away to your heart’s content
The news feeds continue to be wonderful, very much from the school of Douglas Adams. Why can’t we have Imperial characters like this anymore?
Also of note is the since-retconned Thargoid story - thanks to my endeavours in the FFE missions, it would seem Humanity and the Thargoids had a different timeline to the blessed one that leads to Elite Dangerous:
I guess this Variant CMDR had better keep an eye out for the TVA
An interesting bit of Thargoid lore popped up in the latest newsfeeds - and possibly lets FFE Cmdr Arioch avoid a meeting with one of the Time Variance Authority’s deletion wands An “octo-wave” theory has been put forward that says the Thargoid species are actually 8 nomadic fleets, slowly rotating around the Galaxy:
This would explain why original 8-bit Elite Thargoids were aggressive, while FFE’s have a more peaceful bent - different fleets. ED’s aliens are the next wave passing through human space and are just in a bad mood compared to the previous lot
Having had a quick look in the Codex, it looks like Universal Scientist et al have been labelled as “sensationalist media stories of the time” - which goes some way to explain the revised lore, to my eyes at least.
I wonder if any of the “locked” areas of ED’s Galaxy have owt to do with this?
An “octo-wave” theory has been put forward that says the Thargoid species are actually 8 nomadic fleets, slowly rotating around the Galaxy:This would explain why original 8-bit Elite Thargoids were aggressive, while FFE’s have a more peaceful bent - different fleets. ED’s aliens are the next wave passing through human space and are just in a bad mood compared to the previous lot
Having had a quick look in the Codex, it looks like Universal Scientist et al have been labelled as “sensationalist media stories of the time” - which goes some way to explain the revised lore, to my eyes at least.
I wonder if any of the “locked” areas of ED’s Galaxy have owt to do with this?
I’ve always thought the collective name for Vipers was a “nest” - today I’m thinking of changing it to “a Naval Missile Swarm” of Vipers
Whilst making a lucrative trade run to an Anarchy system I was intercepted by a pirate wing of four Vipers, and the swines decided to launch all their missiles Once the expanding clouds of debris had finally dissipated it was time to survey the damage…
I joined the 1% Club in January of 3251 - as of June 3256, I’m inaugurating the 0.5% Club
I managed to make it to the nearest port - only one further interception by a pair of Saker III’s - and my scooped cargo (which included 3T of Gemstones) paid off the exasperated sounding Shipyard mechanic
As before, the game took note of my damage and played appropriate FMV - no soldier in a vest offering to buy me a drink this time, instead this nice lady saying “Well done, we didn’t think you’d make it. Enjoy your stay.”
Whilst making a lucrative trade run to an Anarchy system I was intercepted by a pirate wing of four Vipers, and the swines decided to launch all their missiles
Once the expanding clouds of debris had finally dissipated it was time to survey the damage…I joined the 1% Club in January of 3251 - as of June 3256, I’m inaugurating the 0.5% Club
I managed to make it to the nearest port - only one further interception by a pair of Saker III’s - and my scooped cargo (which included 3T of Gemstones) paid off the exasperated sounding Shipyard mechanic
As before, the game took note of my damage and played appropriate FMV - no soldier in a vest offering to buy me a drink this time, instead this nice lady saying “Well done, we didn’t think you’d make it. Enjoy your stay.”
I’ve got my next Right On, Commander - slower than my last ones, but I did take a small vacation out to the Cemiess system to re-film a landing on the high(ish)-G world of Emerald:
Source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CgDSaI2yUUQ
(The last time I’d filmed the “death bounce” landing, I’d not actually put my undercarriage down - so just to prove I’m not a totally numpty I went off to let gravity do its thing once again, but this time with wheels in the way. In a further test, an unshielded Cobra lost 41.3% hull when letting the autopilot do the landing. Good job, Otto!)
Anyway, here is my message:
…which I think puts me at just under a thousand kills away from Deadly
(The last time I’d filmed the “death bounce” landing, I’d not actually put my undercarriage down
- so just to prove I’m not a totally numpty I went off to let gravity do its thing once again, but this time with wheels in the way. In a further test, an unshielded Cobra lost 41.3% hull when letting the autopilot do the landing. Good job, Otto!)Anyway, here is my message:
…which I think puts me at just under a thousand kills away from Deadly
Are you playing the original version here? I've tried JJFFE, but it has a horrible whiney engine sound instead of the original which I can hear here. (Not that the original sounds are great of course)
Aye, the original via DOSbox (MagicDOSbox on my Android tablet with Bluetooth mouse & controller) with a couple of hex edits: Earth is no longer a beigeworld and beam lasers are pointing out of the correct bit of my ship
I’ve notched up my next RoC:
…about 7 months in-game since the last one, which is about the same as previous times on the trade route I’m currently plying. Although I could probably increase my kill rate by trekking down to my well-worn path around the Old Worlds, it gets to feeling a bit grindy after a while - my present stomping ground (roughly on the border between the Federation and Alliance) gives me some nice variety in docking ports and the chance to indulge my new side-mission: trying to spot all the different types of ships in the game, in the wild
I know some vessels will probably only be available in shipyards, but (adjusts binocular strap around anorak hood) so far I’ve spotted a Wyvern:
…and a Griffin:
I’ll have to do some combat photography to capture a few of the wilder specimens, but it’ll probably take a while to catch’em all for my Spotter’s Guide (pages 86 to 129 in the First Encounters manual).
…about 7 months in-game since the last one, which is about the same as previous times on the trade route I’m currently plying. Although I could probably increase my kill rate by trekking down to my well-worn path around the Old Worlds, it gets to feeling a bit grindy after a while - my present stomping ground (roughly on the border between the Federation and Alliance) gives me some nice variety in docking ports and the chance to indulge my new side-mission: trying to spot all the different types of ships in the game, in the wild
I know some vessels will probably only be available in shipyards, but (adjusts binocular strap around anorak hood) so far I’ve spotted a Wyvern:
I’ll have to do some combat photography to capture a few of the wilder specimens, but it’ll probably take a while to catch’em all for my Spotter’s Guide (pages 86 to 129 in the First Encounters manual
).Today featured a pair of strange occurrences while transporting a desperate passenger - firstly, I was denied docking permission at a surface port; not an unusual thing except this time it was because Traffic Control was busy. Normally this only happens when the Rozzers are trying to launch if you’ve been a naughty CMDR, or a “retirement” target is launching just prior to your contract fulfilment.
This appeared to be a ship in the process of launching, but I couldn’t spot the ship model:
…and unfortunately I’d temporarily removed my Radar Mapper to fit the passenger cabin. After a short time waiting for the invisible vessel to move I decided to try a different port, at which point I spotted the second unusual thing:
In the geo-dome to the right you can see a Church Of The Analogue Universal Time - fairly common in Frontier Elite 2 but I’d never seen one in FFE until now. I tried to get my external camera to view the building close-up to see if it was still displaying the correct time:
…which was a bit tricky because the whole dome kept being culled at certain angles, but it didn’t look to be the correct time Perhaps it was showing local time instead? After a bit more fiddling I finally managed to get a better angle:
Source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=17qiXT3k5bo
Has there been a schism within the Church?
This appeared to be a ship in the process of launching, but I couldn’t spot the ship model:
…and unfortunately I’d temporarily removed my Radar Mapper to fit the passenger cabin. After a short time waiting for the invisible vessel to move I decided to try a different port, at which point I spotted the second unusual thing:
In the geo-dome to the right you can see a Church Of The Analogue Universal Time - fairly common in Frontier Elite 2 but I’d never seen one in FFE until now. I tried to get my external camera to view the building close-up to see if it was still displaying the correct time:
…which was a bit tricky because the whole dome kept being culled at certain angles, but it didn’t look to be the correct time
Perhaps it was showing local time instead? After a bit more fiddling I finally managed to get a better angle: Has there been a schism within the Church?Pew! Pew! Pew!
If I’ve been keeping count correctly, that means I’ve got less than 500 kills until Deadly.
I’ve had my Military Drives shot out twice since my last RoC which has necessitated trips back to the core systems to find a sufficiently advanced shipyard, but the heavy damage I’ve been taking has at least given me some new FMV talking heads upon arrival - this lady (with a slight French accent?):
… told me “That was a neat fight, we don’t dish out medals but you can have a free drink in the bar if you want”
If I’ve been keeping count correctly, that means I’ve got less than 500 kills until Deadly.
I’ve had my Military Drives shot out twice since my last RoC which has necessitated trips back to the core systems to find a sufficiently advanced shipyard, but the heavy damage I’ve been taking has at least given me some new FMV talking heads upon arrival - this lady (with a slight French accent?):
I’ve decided to stop farting around in Alliance space and make my way back down to the Old Worlds for a bit of bounty hunting - and as I approached Lave Station, I got a horrible sinking feeling in my gutty-wuts:
I carefully counted the marteaux de noobs, counted them again just to be sure, and then went, “oh knackers!”
The wonderful @Beetlejude has recently painted this for me:
…and they’re all Lave Station - but there appears to be four noob hammers in the centre picture - had I made an incredibly embarrassing mistake and provided the wrong screenshot? I quickly flashed up FE2 and started a fresh game in Lave; after requesting undocking permission I selected the rear-view camera, annnnddd….
…breathed a sigh of relief
This is actually a cool little thing: whatever industry required the higher-G of the four sponsons being fitted since the time of the original Elite had been reduced by the time FFE started in 3250, hence the removal of two of them - and the complete removal by the time Elite Dangerous started.
I carefully counted the marteaux de noobs, counted them again just to be sure, and then went, “oh knackers!”
The wonderful @Beetlejude has recently painted this for me:
…and they’re all Lave Station - but there appears to be four noob hammers in the centre picture - had I made an incredibly embarrassing mistake and provided the wrong screenshot? I quickly flashed up FE2 and started a fresh game in Lave; after requesting undocking permission I selected the rear-view camera, annnnddd….
…breathed a sigh of relief
This is actually a cool little thing: whatever industry required the higher-G of the four sponsons being fitted since the time of the original Elite had been reduced by the time FFE started in 3250, hence the removal of two of them - and the complete removal by the time Elite Dangerous started.
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Deadly is so close now, I can almost smell it
It smells like the expanding debris clouds of 3000 pirate ships, which I imagine would be like rum, sulphur and a hint of Dior Fahrenheit cologne (given the vintage of the game).
I’ll not get a notification when I rank-up, so I’ll have to keep an eye on my CMDR status screen in about a week’s time.
It smells like the expanding debris clouds of 3000 pirate ships, which I imagine would be like rum, sulphur and a hint of Dior Fahrenheit cologne (given the vintage of the game
).I’ll not get a notification when I rank-up, so I’ll have to keep an eye on my CMDR status screen in about a week’s time.
Today was the day, as I docked in Riedquat - halfway day
Just a measly 3000 more kills to go now
Things have been pretty interesting in the Old Worlds recently - I got my Military Drives shot out (yet again) while transiting Leesti; the shipyard there only stocks Class 1 Hyperdrives which meant my Cobra could manage an awesome one full light year The only other system in range was Diso which had a similarly rubbish shipyard - so after a bit of a ponder about what to do (I didn’t want to lose my Cobra) I performed the following: strip out as much equipment as possible (which wasn’t much due to the low-tech shipyard), part-exchange for the cheapest ship available, then re-buy my Cobra.
This gave me back my completely-stripped original hull, but now with a Class 2 Hyperdrive they’d found out the back, or something. This was enough to let me reach Zaonce with its smorgasbord equipment - though the best drive they had was Class 2 Military. Not too much of an issue with the ranges I’m operating at, with only a slight increase in jump times. The increased cargo capacity would let me recoup my costs a bit quicker as well.
I’ve also recently tried out Chaff for the first time - I’d never bothered due to having ECM fitted and even the manual says it’s pretty much useless, but I thought I’d give it a go anyway. The following snapshot was taken just after a missile hit me (you can see it in the upper-right corner) so you can guess how effective the system is
At least the launcher icon made me laugh
Just a measly 3000 more kills to go now
Things have been pretty interesting in the Old Worlds recently - I got my Military Drives shot out (yet again) while transiting Leesti; the shipyard there only stocks Class 1 Hyperdrives which meant my Cobra could manage an awesome one full light year
The only other system in range was Diso which had a similarly rubbish shipyard - so after a bit of a ponder about what to do (I didn’t want to lose my Cobra) I performed the following: strip out as much equipment as possible (which wasn’t much due to the low-tech shipyard), part-exchange for the cheapest ship available, then re-buy my Cobra.This gave me back my completely-stripped original hull, but now with a Class 2 Hyperdrive they’d found out the back, or something. This was enough to let me reach Zaonce with its smorgasbord equipment - though the best drive they had was Class 2 Military. Not too much of an issue with the ranges I’m operating at, with only a slight increase in jump times. The increased cargo capacity would let me recoup my costs a bit quicker as well.
I’ve also recently tried out Chaff for the first time - I’d never bothered due to having ECM fitted and even the manual says it’s pretty much useless, but I thought I’d give it a go anyway. The following snapshot was taken just after a missile hit me (you can see it in the upper-right corner) so you can guess how effective the system is
At least the launcher icon made me laugh
Just "measly 3000 kills"! Lol.
The last month has been a bit slow - only one Right On Commander - thanks to a family holiday; although I could still play (thanks to my Android tablet) I didn’t want to annoy the family with lots of mouse clicking so I mapped everything onto my Bluetooth gamepad. Having the mouse mapped to a thumbstick was interesting to say the least
The game is certainly playable like that, and I’d say it feels more like flying a spaceship, but encounters with swarms of pirates became just a bit too difficult. The game really does require the swift movements of a mouse to be able to avoid multiple beam lasers. Something I might revisit in future, but I was happy back shoving the mouse after my hols.
One oddity that cropped up today - try and spot the difference between these two pictures, taken before and after this morning’s trade run:
Not the credit balance - but the bit just to the left. No damage taken on the run, no extra equipment fitted, nothing I could see in the message feed - but for some reason a bit of my hull had dropped off leaving me 1t less of cargo space
I reloaded and tried the journey again and kept my original 8t free space - bizarre!
The game is certainly playable like that, and I’d say it feels more like flying a spaceship, but encounters with swarms of pirates became just a bit too difficult. The game really does require the swift movements of a mouse to be able to avoid multiple beam lasers. Something I might revisit in future, but I was happy back shoving the mouse after my hols.
One oddity that cropped up today - try and spot the difference between these two pictures, taken before and after this morning’s trade run:
Not the credit balance - but the bit just to the left. No damage taken on the run, no extra equipment fitted, nothing I could see in the message feed - but for some reason a bit of my hull had dropped off leaving me 1t less of cargo space
I reloaded and tried the journey again and kept my original 8t free space - bizarre!
@Backer42 - I'm glad you've enjoyed the thread, but I'll have to explain the screenshot problem - it's definitely not the fault of the wonderful Magic DOSbox app 
I'm playing on an Android tablet that I use as a standalone device for emulators - when I want a screenshot I take a quick snap with my phone, and this means I get things a bit skewed on occasion. Using image correction to square things up a bit sometimes introduces distortion, as can be seen in the picture you chose. I've just taken this screenie of Earth (I haven't altered the image at all) and on my tablet screen it measures 73mm by 73mm:
Among the many superb features of Magic DOSbox is the ability to alter horizontal zoom, but I've not required it with FFE as it's a perfect match to my tablet screen.
Also, I'll have to question this:
Hmmm, not quite what I'd call a perfect circle there
I'm playing on an Android tablet that I use as a standalone device for emulators - when I want a screenshot I take a quick snap with my phone, and this means I get things a bit skewed on occasion. Using image correction to square things up a bit sometimes introduces distortion, as can be seen in the picture you chose. I've just taken this screenie of Earth (I haven't altered the image at all) and on my tablet screen it measures 73mm by 73mm:
Among the many superb features of Magic DOSbox is the ability to alter horizontal zoom, but I've not required it with FFE as it's a perfect match to my tablet screen.
Also, I'll have to question this:
Not an ellipse anymore? I've taken the liberty of rotating your altered Earth image by 90deg:
Hmmm, not quite what I'd call a perfect circle there
Your tablet screen is not a perfect match for FFE, which is designed for 1,33 aspect ratio CRT*) like every game of that era, while your widescreen tablet screen is 1,6.
*) And that is where the misconception comes from: GPUs of that era sent a 320x400 image to the CRT which squeezed it to the 1,33 aspect ratio on its screen surface (just as your tablet squeezes everything on its screen). All the artwork including the 3D engine was created with that in mind. As all lines were doubled by the GPU, the artwork itself only contains 200 lines. That's why FFE's 3D engine renders Earth this way and looks wrong when squeezed vertically to widescreen.
To illustrate: This is how the artwork looks in memory (which some emulators render to their window surface):
(orb squeezed vertically)
This is what gets sent to the monitor:
(orb squeezed horizontally)
And this is what you look at on actual (CRT) monitor after it squeezed that back to 1,33:
This is how it look liked when you played FFE in 1995.
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Frontier First Encounters, like its predecessor, is rendered at 320x200 - a 16:10 ratio, which just so happens to be the exact screen ratio of my Android tablet. Planets are circular, as are WitchSpace tunnels and all other round objects.
It’s been a few decades since I played FFE on my DX2-66 and SVGA CRT monitor, but didn’t the game have small black borders at top & bottom? I can’t remember planets being vertical ellipses like in your altered screenshot and I have vague memories of my monitor doing weird things at certain resolutions, like ending up with a thin, compressed view in the centre of the screen
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