Who I am:
I am 30 years old, and have been gaming for a long time. I have spent hundreds of hours in my life playing FPS, MMO, RTS, RPG, space sim, fighting, racing, sandbox, and action games. I've had a blast this past month and I want to share my experiences with you all.
Why?:
I'm writing this as a thank you to Frontier Development, and to the Elite community. You all have spent a great deal of time investing your lives into this game and it shows. This review is free of charge, it's both a review and also might help guide a fresh commander reading this.
Review Outline:
I'm going to just write a little about each stage of the game. From Sidewinder to Anaconda.
Buying the game: The store was easy enough to navigate, bought the game and downloaded the launcher. I did hold out on buying the beta, but pre-ordered it once it dropped to $50USD.
Controls: Keyboard and Joystick.
Controls Review: Why is landing gear default to INS and JETTISON ALL CARGO to END, like one key away? I can only imagine it's some sick joke between the devs to create forum posts to laugh at. The rest of the controls offer a lot of flexibility and I was very pleased with the set up menu. Great work UI team! It was very easy to configure the controls. The deadzone actually works well, for the joystick.
Playing the single player combat demo: This was a lot of fun. The asteroids spinning around were great fun to pilot through. Cargo scooping was new to me, and I liked it. As I looked to my left and right, I noticed the great detail put into the weapons. The sounds of the ship creaking, engine straining, ship warning you about shields and hull breach, the ui effects when taking damage; these all left me in wonder. I sat there in amazement at this tremendous achievement in gaming. It was the most fun I've had in a game in a long time. I eagerly awaited release.
Release Dec 16th, 2014: I skipped the training missions, as I've played enough in the demo I thought. Starting for the first time in LHS 3447 Sidewinder and 1000 credits. I've never docked or undocked, only heard about supercruise. My first thought is credits, I see I have little cargo space so decide not to trade. The bulletin board has some missions, one pays a few thousand to find black boxes. It had nice descriptive text, I appreciated the attention to detail on the descriptive text.
Sidewinder review in one sentance: Is that duct tape?!
Exploring:
I didn't understand the discovery scanner, maybe there was a tutorial I missed. I figured it out after visiting a few different systems that were already explored vs unexplored.
Learning about Fuel in one sentance: I have to self-destruct if I run out?
Supercruise:
I had watched some videos of how to supercruise, so the next part wasn't so bad. I knew about the 75% trick and 7 second rule. I headed over to Eravate to find black boxes. This led me to my first encounter with Unidentified Signal Source.
Unidentified Signal Source Review:
I saw a funeral barge, with a ship that big must have been headed to a mass grave. Not sure what that's all about. The next few USS points didn't have black boxes in them. It took a while, and I had 3 out of 4 for about 20 minutes while I searched for the "right" USS.
I did not learn until later that staying at 0% speed spawns them in front of you.
As a kind of impatient gamer when being timed like missions are, I'd rather go to mission waypoints than random spots on the map. One mission might take me 30 minutes and the next time an hour. It's hard to judge how many missions I can do in a night. Maybe we could scan the USS and check for what ship types are there for a hint at least. Missions with USS ain't my thing and that's okay. I haven't done a single one since then.
Mission turn in:
Alright the station warned me these were illegal, but I didn't see any cops when I left so headed back and turned it in. This had taken me about an hour an half, to make 3,000 credits or so. I was not looking forward to doing it again.
LHS 3447 FPS Performance:
I saw many commanders but had a lot of lag in LHS 3447 during super cruise near the star, from 60fps down to 10 fps. I didn't know how chat worked yet, and didn't try to talk to anyone.
External Camera Realization:
I figured out at this point there was no external camera hotkey, surely this was some oversight I thought. I searched for a post on it, and saw the lengthy discussion. I'm less a combat guy and more an explorer type so I was disappointed that I wasn't going to be taking selfies across the galaxy anytime soon.
Scanner Review:
Without a head tracker I had to learn the scanner, which is great and terrible at the same time. I find it very difficult to judge the difference between an object that is 5km away and 200m away. Some numbering on the scanner spheres would make this easier for me to read. Overall though, I like the way it works and looks.
Nav Beacon Bounties:
I decided to head to Eravate to the nav beacon to try getting some bounties. After getting a few kills and many runners, I remembered I should have an eagle. I couldn't figure it out where it was from the ship, so I googled it.
I headed back and picked up the eagle, sold the sidewinder. I fitted it with some lasers I think.
Eagle Review in one sentance: What a beautiful sounding and looking ship!
Back in Eravate did some more bounty hunting and talked to my first commanders. They were nice sidewinders and we helped each other out. There was no pvp, we cooperated. I wish there were missions to patrol the nav beacons for a set period of time, or to kill x number of wanted faction at the beacon.
After getting a few 40k credit bounties, I upgraded to the hauler.
Hauler Review in one sentance: I'm going to get nightmares if I stay in this ship for long.
Did some trading, learned about trade routes. Refused to use Slopeys or third party tools. Didn't make too much but I made enough.
At some point I got the Adder and started trading down in Liaedin, an empire system in federation space.
Adder Review in one sentance: The engines are hands down the best sounding in the game.
From the adder I went to the cobra, this ship was the first ship that really put a smile on my face. It really felt free to be in a Cobra.
Cobra Review in one sentance: I'm all grown up now!
I started hearing about rares getting nerfed and became curious. I looked up a list of stations and spent a few hours plotting my course. I found this oddly satisfying. Here I am, plotting my course across the galaxy, a childhood dream come true.
My first rares run was great fun, but it took a long time. I had great fun along the way, and explored as I went. These were fun evenings. I played in Open and didn't interact with many pilots. They were few and far between.
After some time rares trading, I had refined my route pretty well and had enough for a Type 6. I bought one.
Type 6 review in one sentance: Back to the cobra!
I continued rares trading in my cobra, how can you not?! 440 boost! I was getting close to the asp soon.
At this point in the game I was just rares trading and fighting NPC pirates that interdicted me. I was not interdicted by a player until I bought the Asp, which is next in this adventure.
Asp review in one sentance: Wow.
I blew some steam off with the asp at nav beacons, this thing is so much fun to fly. It reminded me of the alien ship from Independance Day. It even kind of sounds like it. Even from the limited time you see it rolling around on screen in the film, it looks like it handles about the same in the game.
There was one docking where I stopped inches from the tower control, that Asp growl is hard to properly put to words how awesome it is. There was also my first boost death, but I had insurance.
Once I had the type A FSD in the asp, I headed over to the Pipe Stem nebula (Look for my name, I discovered 20 odd stars there first!), and explored around there. I wasn't really impressed, it's kind of just a dark cloud. I don't know what I expected. It was fun anyways to be that far from home.
Turning in the exploration one by one, I sat there for 30 minutes just selling stuff, that wasn't fun. I'm happy to hear there is a sell page button coming! I decide to not explore until it's easier to sell exploration data.
I thought maybe I'll go mining, after all I can defend myself pretty well now. I headed to a RES sit and after an hour of getting basically 2 or 3 tons of worthless metal and being pestered by cobras I realized maybe mining isn't for me. It just wasn't that fun to try to catch rocks before they despawn while dodging npc pirates. I didn't like that the chunks would despawn as quickly as they did.
Back to rares trading, I make enough for the Type7, but not before being interdicted by my first player.
First player interdiction: Submit, boost, it's a viper run!, boost, charging, he didn't say anything and isn't shooting me so I'm not stopping. Boost I'm gone no damage. He didn't chase me.
Type 7 Review in one sentance: Flys like a brick, lands like a feather.
I began palladium trading between a high population Agri / Extr system, to a High Population Industrial System and back. Nothing notable happens during this time. I become obsessed with speed running my routes. I realized after a while I was spending more time planning than I was flying! Now, I was a Federation Midshipman and could have bought a Federal Dropship (bug that got fixed) but I was surprised to see it had no Class 7 slot, making the ship effectively worse than the half as expensive Imperial Clipper. I hope they buff the dropship, or let us know when it will be useful (when are passengers coming?)
My next ship was the Python
Python Review in one sentance: This is hands down the best ship in the game.
I had some fun in this, I went to a capital ship combat zone and had it out with some pilots. I let a few go and killed a couple persistent ones. After a while I had about 5 chasing me and I had to FSD out. I swear there was some shenanigans with neutral / allied commanders switching sides to get the jump on me. I saw a couple commanders combat log. The repair bill was very high, it didn't seem really balanced to me. Alright, another career not really for me.
I went back to trading, in a python, it was nice for a time, being able to land at outposts. Nobody interdicted me, wonder why?
Eventually I traded it in for a Type-9, the money printer.
Type-9 Review in one sentance: I had no idea turning in supercruise could be this slow!
The view is great, the sounds are great, the cockpit is great. Overall, this ship is great. It just turns so slow in SC sometimes it's painful, but that feels right. I traded a bunch, speed runs!
My second player interdiction: It was an imperial clipper. I had a hold full of palladium (8 mill credits, 5 mill rebuy!). He didn't know I was packin heat. We rammed into each other on accident and that dropped my shields completely and my hull to 52%. The clipper had full shields still.
I backed up and shot my missles and torpedoes at him, but it barely dented his shields and I'm pretty sure he had to have used a shield cell. More surprising, he was clean and now I WAS WANTED! I can't believe I forgot to check if he was wanted first. Oh well, no regrets YOLO I needed a distraction and it worked!
This seemed to scare him as he boosted away from me so I made a run for it. Retract and jump, go bessie go! As I was about to enter super cruise I got a message from the other commander: "wwswddwd2dw2". I couldn't stop laughing, my heart was racing, palms sweaty, tears down my face. I warped to the system over after SC and prepared to dock... while wanted in a Type9.
Docking while wanted in a Type 9 worth 5 million rebuy carrying 8 million credits worth of cargo, even with enough to cover the loss, was quite a worrying prospect. Here I am, wanted, at the mercy of the station weapons and cops outside, just one scan away from death. I lined up a good 8k far away from the mail slot. I started boosting in, and after the last boost turned on silent running. Luckily, I evaded scan and landed safely.
After that, Open was much less populated for a while where I was. I started trading imperial slaves to boost my relations with the empire. Went back and bought an asp as a backup plan, just so I never start over in a sidewinder.
Then I heard about seeking luxuries, and a certain popular one in particular.
Without entering into the great debate on that, I just have to say the fuel bill was most welcome. After some time doing that, I traded in the Type-9 for an Anaconda.
Anaconda review in one sentance: It's like an aircraft carrier, in space.
This thing comes with a Yamato cannon! It's reminds me of the battlecruiser from Star Craft. Coming from the Type-9, this thing flies like a fat python and I really enjoy flying it.
I met my first station griefer in my Anaconda, he tried to kill me with missles inside with the PDT trick. Didn't work, I had it disabled. I brushed his ship's corpse off the port bow. Then he waited at the letterbox next time I came in to dock. He shot at me once, and the station instantly shot at him. Station guns have a nasty habit of not caring who's in the way, which is exactly what this cmdr intended, and it took my shields offline and straight to 50% hull. Even with the coming changes in 1.1, this will still happen, so look out for that. It will probably become the only way to grief stations in 1.1.
Now that I have a good buffer of cash, I traded in the asp for another Python. So I've got an Anaconda, a Python, and a fully fitted Viper now. I am really happy with the game, and had a great time overall.
Audio Review: The best audio in a game ever. I cannot put into words how good the audio is.
There's still so much to do, so much to explore, so much to see. I took the credits path in the game, and I feel like I am more free because of it. My only goals now are to reach elite trading, and have a python kitted out to fool around in. There's always exploring too. Once the Panther Clipper comes out, I'll be flying that around the moment I can. That or the Federal Corvette (drool).
It's been a pleasant experience, and I am thankful for all the hard work the devs have put into the game. I want to thank the community for bug testing the game, and helping getting it to the state that it's in. I want to also thank the kickstarter backers and beta pre-order folks for investing in the game, which I am now enjoying the fruits of.
I don't like to put scores or anything in my reviews, just whether or not I would recommend it. YES! I recommend it!
Thanks for reading!
Cheers Commanders, See you in the great big dark.
Fly Safe,
Vincent Starson
I am 30 years old, and have been gaming for a long time. I have spent hundreds of hours in my life playing FPS, MMO, RTS, RPG, space sim, fighting, racing, sandbox, and action games. I've had a blast this past month and I want to share my experiences with you all.
Why?:
I'm writing this as a thank you to Frontier Development, and to the Elite community. You all have spent a great deal of time investing your lives into this game and it shows. This review is free of charge, it's both a review and also might help guide a fresh commander reading this.
Review Outline:
I'm going to just write a little about each stage of the game. From Sidewinder to Anaconda.
Buying the game: The store was easy enough to navigate, bought the game and downloaded the launcher. I did hold out on buying the beta, but pre-ordered it once it dropped to $50USD.
Controls: Keyboard and Joystick.
Controls Review: Why is landing gear default to INS and JETTISON ALL CARGO to END, like one key away? I can only imagine it's some sick joke between the devs to create forum posts to laugh at. The rest of the controls offer a lot of flexibility and I was very pleased with the set up menu. Great work UI team! It was very easy to configure the controls. The deadzone actually works well, for the joystick.
Playing the single player combat demo: This was a lot of fun. The asteroids spinning around were great fun to pilot through. Cargo scooping was new to me, and I liked it. As I looked to my left and right, I noticed the great detail put into the weapons. The sounds of the ship creaking, engine straining, ship warning you about shields and hull breach, the ui effects when taking damage; these all left me in wonder. I sat there in amazement at this tremendous achievement in gaming. It was the most fun I've had in a game in a long time. I eagerly awaited release.
Release Dec 16th, 2014: I skipped the training missions, as I've played enough in the demo I thought. Starting for the first time in LHS 3447 Sidewinder and 1000 credits. I've never docked or undocked, only heard about supercruise. My first thought is credits, I see I have little cargo space so decide not to trade. The bulletin board has some missions, one pays a few thousand to find black boxes. It had nice descriptive text, I appreciated the attention to detail on the descriptive text.
Sidewinder review in one sentance: Is that duct tape?!
Exploring:
I didn't understand the discovery scanner, maybe there was a tutorial I missed. I figured it out after visiting a few different systems that were already explored vs unexplored.
Learning about Fuel in one sentance: I have to self-destruct if I run out?
Supercruise:
I had watched some videos of how to supercruise, so the next part wasn't so bad. I knew about the 75% trick and 7 second rule. I headed over to Eravate to find black boxes. This led me to my first encounter with Unidentified Signal Source.
Unidentified Signal Source Review:
I saw a funeral barge, with a ship that big must have been headed to a mass grave. Not sure what that's all about. The next few USS points didn't have black boxes in them. It took a while, and I had 3 out of 4 for about 20 minutes while I searched for the "right" USS.
I did not learn until later that staying at 0% speed spawns them in front of you.
As a kind of impatient gamer when being timed like missions are, I'd rather go to mission waypoints than random spots on the map. One mission might take me 30 minutes and the next time an hour. It's hard to judge how many missions I can do in a night. Maybe we could scan the USS and check for what ship types are there for a hint at least. Missions with USS ain't my thing and that's okay. I haven't done a single one since then.
Mission turn in:
Alright the station warned me these were illegal, but I didn't see any cops when I left so headed back and turned it in. This had taken me about an hour an half, to make 3,000 credits or so. I was not looking forward to doing it again.
LHS 3447 FPS Performance:
I saw many commanders but had a lot of lag in LHS 3447 during super cruise near the star, from 60fps down to 10 fps. I didn't know how chat worked yet, and didn't try to talk to anyone.
External Camera Realization:
I figured out at this point there was no external camera hotkey, surely this was some oversight I thought. I searched for a post on it, and saw the lengthy discussion. I'm less a combat guy and more an explorer type so I was disappointed that I wasn't going to be taking selfies across the galaxy anytime soon.
Scanner Review:
Without a head tracker I had to learn the scanner, which is great and terrible at the same time. I find it very difficult to judge the difference between an object that is 5km away and 200m away. Some numbering on the scanner spheres would make this easier for me to read. Overall though, I like the way it works and looks.
Nav Beacon Bounties:
I decided to head to Eravate to the nav beacon to try getting some bounties. After getting a few kills and many runners, I remembered I should have an eagle. I couldn't figure it out where it was from the ship, so I googled it.
I headed back and picked up the eagle, sold the sidewinder. I fitted it with some lasers I think.
Eagle Review in one sentance: What a beautiful sounding and looking ship!
Back in Eravate did some more bounty hunting and talked to my first commanders. They were nice sidewinders and we helped each other out. There was no pvp, we cooperated. I wish there were missions to patrol the nav beacons for a set period of time, or to kill x number of wanted faction at the beacon.
After getting a few 40k credit bounties, I upgraded to the hauler.
Hauler Review in one sentance: I'm going to get nightmares if I stay in this ship for long.
Did some trading, learned about trade routes. Refused to use Slopeys or third party tools. Didn't make too much but I made enough.
At some point I got the Adder and started trading down in Liaedin, an empire system in federation space.
Adder Review in one sentance: The engines are hands down the best sounding in the game.
From the adder I went to the cobra, this ship was the first ship that really put a smile on my face. It really felt free to be in a Cobra.
Cobra Review in one sentance: I'm all grown up now!
I started hearing about rares getting nerfed and became curious. I looked up a list of stations and spent a few hours plotting my course. I found this oddly satisfying. Here I am, plotting my course across the galaxy, a childhood dream come true.
My first rares run was great fun, but it took a long time. I had great fun along the way, and explored as I went. These were fun evenings. I played in Open and didn't interact with many pilots. They were few and far between.
After some time rares trading, I had refined my route pretty well and had enough for a Type 6. I bought one.
Type 6 review in one sentance: Back to the cobra!
I continued rares trading in my cobra, how can you not?! 440 boost! I was getting close to the asp soon.
At this point in the game I was just rares trading and fighting NPC pirates that interdicted me. I was not interdicted by a player until I bought the Asp, which is next in this adventure.
Asp review in one sentance: Wow.
I blew some steam off with the asp at nav beacons, this thing is so much fun to fly. It reminded me of the alien ship from Independance Day. It even kind of sounds like it. Even from the limited time you see it rolling around on screen in the film, it looks like it handles about the same in the game.
There was one docking where I stopped inches from the tower control, that Asp growl is hard to properly put to words how awesome it is. There was also my first boost death, but I had insurance.
Once I had the type A FSD in the asp, I headed over to the Pipe Stem nebula (Look for my name, I discovered 20 odd stars there first!), and explored around there. I wasn't really impressed, it's kind of just a dark cloud. I don't know what I expected. It was fun anyways to be that far from home.
Turning in the exploration one by one, I sat there for 30 minutes just selling stuff, that wasn't fun. I'm happy to hear there is a sell page button coming! I decide to not explore until it's easier to sell exploration data.
I thought maybe I'll go mining, after all I can defend myself pretty well now. I headed to a RES sit and after an hour of getting basically 2 or 3 tons of worthless metal and being pestered by cobras I realized maybe mining isn't for me. It just wasn't that fun to try to catch rocks before they despawn while dodging npc pirates. I didn't like that the chunks would despawn as quickly as they did.
Back to rares trading, I make enough for the Type7, but not before being interdicted by my first player.
First player interdiction: Submit, boost, it's a viper run!, boost, charging, he didn't say anything and isn't shooting me so I'm not stopping. Boost I'm gone no damage. He didn't chase me.
Type 7 Review in one sentance: Flys like a brick, lands like a feather.
I began palladium trading between a high population Agri / Extr system, to a High Population Industrial System and back. Nothing notable happens during this time. I become obsessed with speed running my routes. I realized after a while I was spending more time planning than I was flying! Now, I was a Federation Midshipman and could have bought a Federal Dropship (bug that got fixed) but I was surprised to see it had no Class 7 slot, making the ship effectively worse than the half as expensive Imperial Clipper. I hope they buff the dropship, or let us know when it will be useful (when are passengers coming?)
My next ship was the Python
Python Review in one sentance: This is hands down the best ship in the game.
I had some fun in this, I went to a capital ship combat zone and had it out with some pilots. I let a few go and killed a couple persistent ones. After a while I had about 5 chasing me and I had to FSD out. I swear there was some shenanigans with neutral / allied commanders switching sides to get the jump on me. I saw a couple commanders combat log. The repair bill was very high, it didn't seem really balanced to me. Alright, another career not really for me.
I went back to trading, in a python, it was nice for a time, being able to land at outposts. Nobody interdicted me, wonder why?
Eventually I traded it in for a Type-9, the money printer.
Type-9 Review in one sentance: I had no idea turning in supercruise could be this slow!
The view is great, the sounds are great, the cockpit is great. Overall, this ship is great. It just turns so slow in SC sometimes it's painful, but that feels right. I traded a bunch, speed runs!
My second player interdiction: It was an imperial clipper. I had a hold full of palladium (8 mill credits, 5 mill rebuy!). He didn't know I was packin heat. We rammed into each other on accident and that dropped my shields completely and my hull to 52%. The clipper had full shields still.
I backed up and shot my missles and torpedoes at him, but it barely dented his shields and I'm pretty sure he had to have used a shield cell. More surprising, he was clean and now I WAS WANTED! I can't believe I forgot to check if he was wanted first. Oh well, no regrets YOLO I needed a distraction and it worked!
This seemed to scare him as he boosted away from me so I made a run for it. Retract and jump, go bessie go! As I was about to enter super cruise I got a message from the other commander: "wwswddwd2dw2". I couldn't stop laughing, my heart was racing, palms sweaty, tears down my face. I warped to the system over after SC and prepared to dock... while wanted in a Type9.
Docking while wanted in a Type 9 worth 5 million rebuy carrying 8 million credits worth of cargo, even with enough to cover the loss, was quite a worrying prospect. Here I am, wanted, at the mercy of the station weapons and cops outside, just one scan away from death. I lined up a good 8k far away from the mail slot. I started boosting in, and after the last boost turned on silent running. Luckily, I evaded scan and landed safely.
After that, Open was much less populated for a while where I was. I started trading imperial slaves to boost my relations with the empire. Went back and bought an asp as a backup plan, just so I never start over in a sidewinder.
Then I heard about seeking luxuries, and a certain popular one in particular.
Without entering into the great debate on that, I just have to say the fuel bill was most welcome. After some time doing that, I traded in the Type-9 for an Anaconda.
Anaconda review in one sentance: It's like an aircraft carrier, in space.
This thing comes with a Yamato cannon! It's reminds me of the battlecruiser from Star Craft. Coming from the Type-9, this thing flies like a fat python and I really enjoy flying it.
I met my first station griefer in my Anaconda, he tried to kill me with missles inside with the PDT trick. Didn't work, I had it disabled. I brushed his ship's corpse off the port bow. Then he waited at the letterbox next time I came in to dock. He shot at me once, and the station instantly shot at him. Station guns have a nasty habit of not caring who's in the way, which is exactly what this cmdr intended, and it took my shields offline and straight to 50% hull. Even with the coming changes in 1.1, this will still happen, so look out for that. It will probably become the only way to grief stations in 1.1.
Now that I have a good buffer of cash, I traded in the asp for another Python. So I've got an Anaconda, a Python, and a fully fitted Viper now. I am really happy with the game, and had a great time overall.
Audio Review: The best audio in a game ever. I cannot put into words how good the audio is.
There's still so much to do, so much to explore, so much to see. I took the credits path in the game, and I feel like I am more free because of it. My only goals now are to reach elite trading, and have a python kitted out to fool around in. There's always exploring too. Once the Panther Clipper comes out, I'll be flying that around the moment I can. That or the Federal Corvette (drool).
It's been a pleasant experience, and I am thankful for all the hard work the devs have put into the game. I want to thank the community for bug testing the game, and helping getting it to the state that it's in. I want to also thank the kickstarter backers and beta pre-order folks for investing in the game, which I am now enjoying the fruits of.
I don't like to put scores or anything in my reviews, just whether or not I would recommend it. YES! I recommend it!
Thanks for reading!
Cheers Commanders, See you in the great big dark.
Fly Safe,
Vincent Starson
