I imagine that a lot of people will be firing up emulators to play Elite while waiting for Dangerous.
There has been a lot of heated debate on this forum about what I call permadeath gameplay. Some people call it Iron Man or Hardcore. The argument has been done to death and I would like to keep that argument out of this thread. There are others already.
Something that seems to be coming up a lot though is the idea that it is somehow impossible to progress in this style of play without having fun. I contest that it is not really any harder than what might be called casual play if you have the right attitude. Elite is in my experience perfectly balanced for permadeath play. Almost as perfectly as, say, Nethack.
So, for those that want to give permadeath a try, here are some tips from my experience. I will try to keep it generic as there will be a lot of personal variations and people can add their own ideas. Also I will try to avoid spoilers. If you want to find this stuff out from your own experience stop reading now.
The first thing is to have a good fighting never say die attitude. I mean get psyched, get pumped. And get in the zone. It is part of the fun.
There are some golden rules that help avoid those situations where it seems death is inevitable.
1. Do not press J if your laser is overheated or you energy and shields are not full.
2. Always fly with an escape capsule.
3. If you can, have some spare fuel and a hyperspace destination set.
4. Situational awareness is vital. Do not lose track of which ships you have damaged and where they are. Priorities targets.
5. Do not be tempted to play chicken with enemies. It isn't worth it and one day it will get you killed. Damage them as much as possible from a distance and then spiral into close range, and if you can, get behind enemies.
6. If you have a bad legal standing be very careful. If your docking computer gets damaged it can mean the end of your career. I have managed to manually dock with vipers after me but it took hours of slowly approaching the station while evading fire and all the time my mind was screaming at me "It isn't worth it, you will only die trying to dock." It takes balls to not give up and just reload a save in this situation. My answer? - It is a lot more fun dying trying to dock that dying by giving up now.
Anyway most times I have found myself in that situation I died. Avoid if you want to live.
7. Fit a laser on the back and learn to use it. You will need it. There will be times when your only hope is to turn your back on you enemies and get some distance or run towards the station. You need to be damaging them at this time while spiraling away.
8. Even if you think you have shot that missile still hit ECM. There will be that one time you were mistaken and it will kill you.
9. Always remember that if you die that is it. Game over man! If you forget this you will make mistakes. Perhaps not when actually fighting but in general you will get into a situation where you cannot escape death and if that happens it is no use saying "Iron man mode is too hard". Iron man mode did not force you to play stupid. Also if you forget this then just load a different commander and play a casual game. There is no point in playing this style of play unless you actually want to....
It has been said that some missions are too hard and possess an inherent risk of death. I get that but in my experience I only needed to die from a mission once and then think about it a bit and the next time it was ok.
Anyway, I just wanted to share some advice from my experience. Maybe others have some good advice to add, I am thinking the kind of advice that avoids mission spoilers and the like but I am not boss of this thread so anyway...
There ya go...
There has been a lot of heated debate on this forum about what I call permadeath gameplay. Some people call it Iron Man or Hardcore. The argument has been done to death and I would like to keep that argument out of this thread. There are others already.
Something that seems to be coming up a lot though is the idea that it is somehow impossible to progress in this style of play without having fun. I contest that it is not really any harder than what might be called casual play if you have the right attitude. Elite is in my experience perfectly balanced for permadeath play. Almost as perfectly as, say, Nethack.
So, for those that want to give permadeath a try, here are some tips from my experience. I will try to keep it generic as there will be a lot of personal variations and people can add their own ideas. Also I will try to avoid spoilers. If you want to find this stuff out from your own experience stop reading now.
The first thing is to have a good fighting never say die attitude. I mean get psyched, get pumped. And get in the zone. It is part of the fun.
There are some golden rules that help avoid those situations where it seems death is inevitable.
1. Do not press J if your laser is overheated or you energy and shields are not full.
2. Always fly with an escape capsule.
3. If you can, have some spare fuel and a hyperspace destination set.
4. Situational awareness is vital. Do not lose track of which ships you have damaged and where they are. Priorities targets.
5. Do not be tempted to play chicken with enemies. It isn't worth it and one day it will get you killed. Damage them as much as possible from a distance and then spiral into close range, and if you can, get behind enemies.
6. If you have a bad legal standing be very careful. If your docking computer gets damaged it can mean the end of your career. I have managed to manually dock with vipers after me but it took hours of slowly approaching the station while evading fire and all the time my mind was screaming at me "It isn't worth it, you will only die trying to dock." It takes balls to not give up and just reload a save in this situation. My answer? - It is a lot more fun dying trying to dock that dying by giving up now.
Anyway most times I have found myself in that situation I died. Avoid if you want to live.
7. Fit a laser on the back and learn to use it. You will need it. There will be times when your only hope is to turn your back on you enemies and get some distance or run towards the station. You need to be damaging them at this time while spiraling away.
8. Even if you think you have shot that missile still hit ECM. There will be that one time you were mistaken and it will kill you.
9. Always remember that if you die that is it. Game over man! If you forget this you will make mistakes. Perhaps not when actually fighting but in general you will get into a situation where you cannot escape death and if that happens it is no use saying "Iron man mode is too hard". Iron man mode did not force you to play stupid. Also if you forget this then just load a different commander and play a casual game. There is no point in playing this style of play unless you actually want to....
It has been said that some missions are too hard and possess an inherent risk of death. I get that but in my experience I only needed to die from a mission once and then think about it a bit and the next time it was ok.
Anyway, I just wanted to share some advice from my experience. Maybe others have some good advice to add, I am thinking the kind of advice that avoids mission spoilers and the like but I am not boss of this thread so anyway...
There ya go...
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