Horizons Mode Requiring Massive and Seemingly Impossible (through launcher) download.

[KasaVaris]

Hi there.

New player here, always interested in Elite, but never felt I had the time. Got a bit of time off work for illness so decided to give it a go.

Downloaded on Steam (it was on sale) and launch the launcher. I find that on the bottom left I can only launch "Legacy mode" but I have to install Horizons mode. Now as far as I can tell "Legacy" seems to be an archived older version of the game, whereas Legacy is the "Real" game which will continue to recieve updates. When I click install it just says "preparing for update and doesn't budge" until I eventually managed to get it started last night............... at which point it started "syncing".......... at about 2mbps telling me that would take................. two days? TWO DAYS?

Why the hell would syncing (which I assume to be checking "legacy" files against Horizons for any descrepancies?) take so long? Also WHY do I need to do all of this anyway? Why would Steam download the legacy mode but NOT the Horizons mode, which as far as I can tell is the "main game"? What game on steam runs a 30 odd gig download and then basically tells you "Congraulations on downloading the demo" now please download the real game through our launcher which is seemingly much slower and less reliable than steam!

Is there any way around this, and will I be required to "resync" the entire game every time Horizons releases a 2kb patch or something?

Was looking forward to diving in but already not getting great vibes from how this is setup.

Best

 

[DrinkyBird]

The base game on Steam only contains the Legacy/3.8 client, you have to download the Live client via Frontier's servers - unless you buy Odyssey, which is downloaded from Steam in the form of the Live client.

Why Frontier did it like this I've no idea.

 

[KasaVaris]

That is............. absolutely crazy considering I can download from Steam at a reliable 50mbps and this crapy client doesn't seem to be able top 2mbps at the best of times........ but even if it downloaded at 50mbps it would still be crazy, just placing an extra step in the process for no reason.

 

[KasaVaris]

So Odyssey............ also keeps the base game up to date on steam? I didn't buy it cos it didn't have great reviews and I figured I'd see if I liked the base game before I started other stuff.

 

[Kenpachi85]

So Odyssey............ also keeps the base game up to date on steam? I didn't buy it cos it didn't have great reviews and I figured I'd see if I liked the base game before I started other stuff.

Yeah as far as I can tell since I got it after transferring from ps4 its been keeping itself up to date I haven't been waiting on downloads ever since install. Odyssey had a rocky launch and still has some issues but I prefer it over horizons and stay in odyssey most the time. Only time I revert to horizons is to go mine raw mats in a srv.

 

[AlSki]

The syncs times are not always accurate (either way). One thing that seems to take forever is that it works out the difference between what you have downloaded and should have at the end. That always takes forever, but then the download times jump to something more reasonable.
Also,

• Legacy = 3.8 = Non-Odyssey, AKA Horizon same as Consoles
  • Use this on PC if you want to play with CMDRs who cannot upgrade.
• Live = 4.0, which gets updates and comes in
  • Live Odyssey for those who paid for Odyssey.
  • Live Horizons for those who have not.

 

[Jack Winter]

And please don't go farming mats in 3.8 if you want them in 4.0..

 

[Markov Chaney]

I had all sorts of trouble with Steam after 14 until I uninstalled, went and deleted what was left in SteamApps, and reinstalled.

Steam then installed most of what was needed. The update mechanism in the launcher still claimed it would need a whole-game-download amount of data, but I think it just says that in error when you are out of sync in some tiny way. I left it alone for five minutes (ahhhh, tea!) and when I came back it was in the middle of a pretty tiny download and then away we went. It must have used the five minutes verifying what Steam had put there and deciding it was good enough without a re-download.

(I am playing 4.0, Live.)

 

[Markov Chaney]

(Note also the update data pulled by Frontier's launcher seems to go in several places temporarily and contains lots of duplication, so you need a good amount of space free on your OS partition, your game partition, AND your temp partition if that's separate.)

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Wait until you see the grind requirements. If you haven't had time enough for ED then you can kiss your spare time good bye from now on. I.E. if you want to get anywhere in exploring the content.