Some advice please ;)

[FragCatcher]

Was thinking of buying Elite however I am unsure of what I would be buying. I noticed on steam there is an older Elite and a Horizons version. However it seems a lot of players were upset over this. If I was to buy Horizons what exactly would I be buying? What in the future would I have to buy if anything?

I never played Elite as a kid however I did dabble in a game called Oolite (IIRC) which I presume was a fan game. At the time I was to young to work and to poor to play anything better on my old busted laptop. Would be great if this is a fit for me. My other experiences with space games are freelancer, X:reunion/Terran conflict, (reunion being my favourite) Freespace, wing commander, independence war 2, and a few others.

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks

 

[Hurricane Moon]

horizons gets you the full game,go for it.....the first time it hooks into you...well.even though i knock it at times....nothing else comes close to the want to play ED
and every year a 30-40 quid season update...price may vary i suppose,but nothing more than what i put

 

[Flash_Baggins]

There is a 10 year plan for elite, each with a 'season' of expansions. Horizons is the second season. If you buy Horizons, you get the base game as well (I think) however if you just buy elite you wont have the things horizons gives (and will give) you. Id watch a few youtube videos first, as it really is a game you will love or hate (Like marmite )

 

[Don Alvarez]

My understanding is if you buy Horizons, you are buying everything from season one and everything to come in this second season. If you buy Elite, You are getting only the content tagged as season one.
.
In the future, you will need to buy future seasons of content as they are released, but these purchases will be optional.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Was thinking of buying Elite however I am unsure of what I would be buying. I noticed on steam there is an older Elite and a Horizons version. However it seems a lot of players were upset over this. If I was to buy Horizons what exactly would I be buying? What in the future would I have to buy if anything?

I never played Elite as a kid however I did dabble in a game called Oolite (IIRC) which I presume was a fan game. At the time I was to young to work and to poor to play anything better on my old busted laptop. Would be great if this is a fit for me. My other experiences with space games are freelancer, X:reunion/Terran conflict, (reunion being my favourite) Freespace, wing commander, independence war 2, and a few others.

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks

Maybe important, maybe not: The X-series is partly about flying a ship, and partly about being a Space Mogul, owning properties and fleets and organising that. Elite is pretty much about flying spaceships. You'll never own stations, bases and such, nor can you direct tradefleets. If that is what you;re after, ED is not for you. If you are looking for an awesome flight model, a load of different ships and a staggeringly huge galaxy to bumble around in, ED is perfect.

 

[Jason S]

OP a good strategy would be to buy only in sales.

So buy ED in a sale, next year buy Horizons in a sale etc.

Or skip a season or two and then buy the most recent version that is also heavily discounted in a sale which at that time is likely to be one year back.

The only reasons not to do this is if you are a big fan or have plenty of money or are impatient or you went for the lifetime pass.

If you buy every year one year back in sales the cost is not so high and you are nearly keeping up to date except one year back.

The cheapest way is to wait ten years until the game is completely done and in sale but you have missed playing the game for ten years then which is not so great and you would in that case risk the servers being turned off shortly after...

 

[Noddie]

Elite comes in "seasons", each with additional content in them "Dangerous" was 2015's content, "Horizons" is 2016's, and builds (and will continue to build) on "Dangerous".

At the moment the biggest different between "Dangerous" and "Horizons" is the ability to land on planets & I think a couple of ships. This year the plan to add some more content like multi-crew ships and stuff. You can just buy Dangerous on it's own for a budget price to see what you think of the game, before buying Horizons later if you want to - but that would cost you more than jumping right in with Horizons (as all content in Dangerous is also in Horizons).

Depends on how much money you have and what kind of stuff you want to do, to be honest. I have to say that I enjoy putting down on Planets and zooming about in a buggy. I'd just jump right in with Horizons, but if you're not sure, get Dangerous and see what you think. You can also play a "training" demo, and I'd do that and if you're in love, buy Horizons. If you're not so struck, get Dangerous and see how you go.

 

[Jason S]

Elite comes in "seasons", each with additional content in them "Dangerous" was 2015's content, "Horizons" is 2016's, and builds (and will continue to build) on "Dangerous".

At the moment the biggest different between "Dangerous" and "Horizons" is the ability to land on planets & I think a couple of ships. This year the plan to add some more content like multi-crew ships and stuff. You can just buy Dangerous on it's own for a budget price to see what you think of the game, before buying Horizons later if you want to - but that would cost you more than jumping right in with Horizons (as all content in Dangerous is also in Horizons).

Depends on how much money you have and what kind of stuff you want to do, to be honest. I have to say that I enjoy putting down on Planets and zooming about in a buggy. I'd just jump right in with Horizons, but if you're not sure, get Dangerous and see what you think. You can also play a "training" demo, and I'd do that and if you're in love, buy Horizons. If you're not so struck, get Dangerous and see how you go.

If ED is purchase in sale and then a year later horizons is purchased in sale this is much cheaper than buying horizons now as the sales seem to be over seventy percent discounted.

 

[danskmacabre]

The cheapest way is to wait ten years until the game is completely done and in sale but you have missed playing the game for ten years then which is not so great and you would in that case risk the servers being turned off shortly after...

That's a concerning thought.
ARE there any plans as to what happens when ED has finished it's development cycle?
I would hope that Frontier would release some sort of server software or something for people to continue playing once they shut down their servers.

There ARE really old games I still play from time to time, such as Freelancer and other PC games. I wouldn't be very happy if ED just stopped working after they stopped development.

 

[d8veh]

You don't need horizons. I bought ED 3 months ago. There's loads of learning you have to do first. After that, there's plenty to keep you occupied. When you've done everything, which could take years, you can get Horizons and do the new things. Everything you do in ED carries over including your ships, money and experience.

 

[Jason S]

That's a concerning thought.
ARE there any plans as to what happens when ED has finished it's development cycle?
I would hope that Frontier would release some sort of server software or something for people to continue playing once they shut down their servers.

There ARE really old games I still play from time to time, such as Freelancer and other PC games. I wouldn't be very happy if ED just stopped working after they stopped development.

To be fair they have stated that if that did happen they would like to release the server code. However ED has not been designed as an offline standalone game so how practical that would be is open to debate and they have stated also that at the moment they could not do an offline version due to its technical design or to do so would be too much work. So ED is being designed as multiplayer and it is questionable if it would ever become standalone. So to summarize there is a possibility that when servers are shut down you could continue to play, but that is only a possibility.

 

[Brian of Earth]

Personally, if you have the money and your PC will support it I don't see why you wouldn't get Horizons. But, I would really scope out your system first to make sure you can support it. I ran the 32 bit version (like everyone else) forever but the laptop I ran that on would NO WAY support Horizons. Having the means I upgraded the hardware to a workstation and the video card to a GTX-960 and got Horizons. Landing on planets and doing business with planet-based stations is pretty fun, good for photos. The SRV part is meh just now but there's loads of upside and you'd get season 2 updates as they came out.

But, if you had to wait to get that and start with the base game you are not losing that much, you'd still have plenty of learning to do and loads of fun to be had.