Long time SC backer and Long time ED player as well.
SC vs ED:
Graphics award goes to SC by a mile. Looks amazing. But requires a mega high end PC to achieve this. I mean, my god, its using the CRYSIS 3 ENGINE!!! So what do you expect!! Hopefully optimization helps with this as the game matures, no one knows. Im ruining 2 x 980s in SLI at 3440 x 1440 and it STILL slows down in places.
Sound effects of course go to ED, by a mile. SC really sounds "pew pew" arcade-y, maybe it gets better maybe not
Flight controls? I give the nod to ED, because Im a fan of simplicity. SC flight control is SO complicated/convoluted right now. In ED all you have is the "Z" key for flight assist off which some people, myself included, might use to temporarily tighten a turn in a dog fight. In SC their FA off mode is called coupled / decoupled and it is SOO much different than ED's FA off. You decouple, you literally become a "flying turret" across space. Imagine you are "traveling" left to right, along a course line. But you can face 360 degrees in seconds, firing all over the place, without changing your course trajectory. Imagine dog fighting an eagle in ED, you're behind him, he's moving away from you, and in .5sec he is all of a sudden FACING you and shooting at you, while flying BACKWARDs. SC Arena is full of this, and its only the tip of the iceberg. Their IFCS (intelligent flight control system) has so many mode toggles: COMSTAB on/off, coupled/edcoupled/ G-Safe on/off , ESP (enhanced stick precision) on off. And unlike EDs FA Off, you actually NEED to use ALL this stuff to be competitive in SC dogfighting. Arena Commander currently feels like Call of Duty in Space. You have mouse aim guys behaving like spinning/flying turrets in space. It doesn't "feel" like space flight at all. The combat emphasis is currently heavily heavily biased towards aiming (think BF4 headshots!) rather than flying.
Control Equality: Goes to ED. SC arena combat is heavily biased towards mouse aim users. Go try and play WarThunder arcade battles with a joystick and you get the idea here. How precisely you can put your aim circle for your turret/gimball weapons onto your targets lead indicator determines the dog fight winner. And a mouse, hands down, wins. Which brings me to my next point.
In SC, Gimbals and turrets do NOT auto track. Yes, imagine in ED, for all your gimbaled and turreted weapons, you had to MANUALLY use your mouse (or god forbid joystick) and place the aim points onto the target (or target's lead indicator if using ballistic weapons). Thats what SC does. So you can see, its a mouse aim field day. Now, supposedly, once multi crewed ships are implemented, turrets will either be:
manned (human or NPC character), so they will of course, auto track and auto fire. or
unmanned, and will have targeting control software/data throughput pipes and will hopefully auto track and fire similar to ED
But, they have never said if they will implement auto tracking for forward firing gimbals. Joystick players are begging for it. Mouse-aim players are fighting it to the death. Combining manually mouse aiming gimbals with the insanity of decoupled flight, and you feel like you are controlling an avatar of a spinning turret traveling through space, not an actual 20,000kg star fighter.
Ship design / variety:
I give design to neither. If you like real military aircraft adapted to space, you will like SC. If you don't, you won't. The Retaliator looks like a B-1B bomber + F-111. The new Vanguard looks like an F-14 Tomcat + P-38. Walking around your Super Hornet in your hangar you feel like you are pre flighting an F-18E Super Hornet. Complete down to the US Naval aircraft type landing gear, complete with catapult tow-bar hook ups on the nose gear. Some of the big transport type ships at least look futuristic, but you cant see those in your hangar. But variety? I give the win to SC. They already have WAY more ships on their site than ED does.
Variety of (promised) things to do in the universe?
Goes to SC, by a mile. There are ships designed to be info runners. There are ships designed to be in flight re fueling tankers. There are ships designed to be explorers complete with ground rovers for once you land. There are ships designed to be luxury transports. Cargo ships. Bombers designed for taking out capital ships. Aircraft carriers complete with player controlled fighters in their hangar. Capital ships that take 70+, yes 70+, HUMAN players to staff (Javelin). Dedicated Racers (ala Formula 1 cars in space). Long range strike fighters. Short range fighters. Mining ships. Dedicated Salvage Ships. SAR craft (Search and Rescue). Dedicated repair ships. Dedicated hospital ships. Dedicated Missile Boats. Assault craft designed for rapid insertion / boarding, complete with player controlled space marines inside. The list never stops. Again, like the ship design, it goes right back to modern military inspiration. You can really feel they are making a modern day battle group in space. I cant even begin to list the kind of stuff they promise. You'd have to check their forums. But as well all know, these are ONLY PROMISES, so anything can happen. I personally fear they have promised so much, it will be impossible to put together.
Pay to Win Rep:
The winner here is of course ED. And by winning, I mean, ED can NEVER be accused of being a P2W game. Frontier doesn't let us spend money on ANYTHING except cosmetic skins. SC is the exact opposite. Imagine if you could drop down 250 USD cash and have an Anaconda on day 1. Thats what SC is doing. Imagine if could spend real cash on A class shield gens for it too. Yup, in SC you can. Now, to their credit, the Devs over there have rationalized it like this:
They know they have 2 kinds of players. Players with no money and lots of time (i.e. school kids on vacation or unemployed). And players with extra money and no time (i.e., players who have real jobs). In ED, the Anaconda is basically unobtainable to any player with a real job (i.e., Monday to Friday, 9 hours a day) and friends and god forbid a family. "Grown up" players like this play a game for an hour or two at night, on a few week days (IF they are lucky and have time) and maybe 6 hours TOTAL on a weekend. You will never get an Anaconda in ED like this. NEVER. So SC has said we understand players who are like this, and if they want to skip the grind for cash, go right ahead! On the opposite spectrum, to their players with no jobs but lots of time, they have said everything that you can buy for real cash can also be bought with in game currency that you get while playing/grinding like normal. Bottom line is, the SC devs are trying to appeal to a guy with a full time job who still wants high-end (end game, if you will) equipment while also not alienating the free player with lots of time and no money. Will it work? No one knows. But imagine in ED, if on launch day, you went to the closest anarchy nav beacon (Ngaliba) in your Eagle and when you got there, you found 29 other players in A-Spec Anacondas floating around....This will happen in SC.
Bottom line is I feel there is room for both games to survive. SC is still a LOOOONG way from release and ED has plenty of time to mature and gain loyal followers.
