The Single Player/Offline Discussion Thread

[Zak Gordon]

Some great points here, and i'll join the 'I'm in it for the Single Player mostly' crowd

Here is a nice topic looking at the theoretical but distinctly real option of a 'warp-drive':

http://www.gizmag.com/warp-drive-bubble-nasa-interstellar/24392/

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[Note: This may be a huge post!]

Now lets look at the main conflict between the different Elite's and elite players. Combat:

Elite: didn't use Newtonian-physics and had earth/atmosphere based like dog-fighting in space.

Plus = the combat was often intense and fitted in with our frames of reference due to the historic link to aerial battles.

Minus = missed out on lots of space flight based stuff around gravity effects etc.

Frontier: Newtonian-physics and the combat nearly always became a 'space-joust' with 1 enemy at a time (sometimes more).

FFE: As above, but i found combat to be more likely to involve more than one ship at a time, less 'space joust' and more like in the original. I didn' come to FFE until a few years ago, so it had been all patched etc by that point.

Both having Newtonian-physics made space in general more interesting, and while the 'space-joust' combat of Frontier was not hugely fun, that seemed 'fixed' in FFE so both situations, Newtonian-physics AND more dog-fighting could exist side by side. So i hope we see something more like what we ended up with in FFE. I've played FFE over the last few days, just to be sure i was correct on this, and yes in FFE you can get into multi-ship dog fights, which were rare in Frontier. It is not quite the same as the dogfights in Elite (and earth based flight-sims), but it is a step in the right direction.

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Back to the single-player aspirations of Elite: Dangerous.

1. Space Flight: Carry on where the other games (Elite, Frontier, Frontier First Encounters) left off, in terms of ambition and simulation of space travel.

For space travel i'd have no issue seeing something like that 'warp bubble' manipulated to fit into the game so it would enable part of the function of what the 'Star-Dreamer' could achieve in the Frontier and FFE games.

If we have some kind of Elite-like 'Hyper-drive' for travel between systems, that is cool. And for in-system travel using a warp-bubble to speed up travel between points could work, without the need to adjust time outside of the bubble. I'm not too distressed if science has to be slightly adjusted to fit reasonable gameplay on this.

What i liked about the 'Star Dreamer' was that it made traveling 'real world' distances in space possible. What i didn't like about it was the suspension of disbelief in how time was (in effect) sped up for the whole universe.

Once i had jumped into a system i used it in a step-method, as this gave me the greatest appreciation of the beauty of space travel. So at first i would speed up time to maximum until i was about 10-15AU out, then i would slow down to half maximum until i was about 6AU out, then a quarter maximum from 3AU out etc (once combats were done). This made approaching the planet or space station a real pleasure to enjoy, while not taking up so much time but also not letting it all whiz by in a blur i could not appreciate.

So I would hope for some form of in-system travel that is fast enough, but not too fast, to ensure that feeling and wonder of space travel is retained.

2. Trade: Expand the economic system. There are many examples we could use (from the 'X' games to others) to include a wider array of trade goods in the game, and a real way to enact any penalty for ferrying certain forbidden items. I think all the Elite's added layers to this but it never felt 'fully' finished even in FFE. Have police Vipers that can scan your ship, have customs at star-ports that investigate your ship and business (you can make all the dialogues much more like they are in real life for this etc). Trade and crime can be fitted together to make you really feel the danger of being a smuggler or pirate, as opposed to the slightly hit or miss result Elite achieved so far.

Missions will be important in this also, the bullitin-boards of Frontier and FFE were a great way to get random generic content for the player to interact with, and i think that can be added to and improved upon quite a bit to really bring the feeling of a thriving, wheeling and dealing galaxy to life. Different tax rates, different goods related to different planets (some unique goods even), player owned property etc, there is so much that could be done here.

3. Factions: These were great fun in Frontier and FFE, so i hope they are expanded upon. From the military side to a more 'political' aspect maybe? They are certainly a strong contender for helping create the games atmosphere and background, and they just scratched the surface in the previous Elites imho.

I can go on with loads of things, but time is against me!

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The bottom line: For me the single player aspect has to be a priority, otherwise it is not really 'Elite' so much as an 'Elite-like'. And i would say to do a successful single player Elite: Dangerous, you need to take what the series has achieved upto this point and carry on to do the natural progression and expansion of that.

To be the successes it can be, Elite: Dangerous should not loose sight of where it has come from and the why of that. IF it simply goes chasing the pot of gold that most publishers are so obsessed with, it will simply be another flash-in-the-pan that most likely won't be long lived or long remembered, other than for it's infamy (of failing to adhere to it's roots).

We players are not simply cash-cows, and if treated as such often don't respond well, especially not in the area of PC gaming Elite is at home in, we are not facebook-game players (for the most part) nor 'casual' gamers with short attention spans etc.

Chris Roberts got nearly 100,000 people to put up money for a game they won't see for 2 years. Those are the risk-taking early adopters, the smaller percentage of people that will likely end up buying the game when it is finished. There is no reason Elite: Dangerous can not do the same.

 

[DraQ]

To say "want newtonian physics but with proper dogfighting" is oxymoronic, realistic flight physics in space are not condusive to re-enacting "Spitfire Vs ME109" business. Spitfires fly in air, and their flight dynamics are governed by aerodynamics (and you can get this nicely in Cliffs of Dover).

It all depends on the "simulation" aspect, and I think FE2 and FFE did a good job of being "space sims", the further you drop away from that then the game ceases to be a realistic simulation of a vehicle in the simulated environment. Just as docking and landing should be challenges, the challenge of fighting another ship in space is not easy, and maybe not even fun.

Actually it was already pretty fun in FFE and FE2 *if* you learned to do it properly and could be made far more fun by enriching the combat with an array of different weaponry (like mass drivers with different kinds of ammo - heavy slugs, high velocity slugs, frag, scattershot), different kinds of missiles with different propulsion, warheads and guidance, as well as being able to mount more of them, multiple hardpoints, directional shields, countermeasures, heat and energy management, some provisions for sub-targetting (as I'm pretty sure you could already aim for, say, drive in FE2 and FFE if you knew that it was possible - at least I managed to shave quite a few engines off with short bursts of beam laser before moving onto pulse sniping), drones, mini-turrets, active defences and so on.

What FE2 and FFE actually lacked was some way to ease players in and give them quick crash course of the mechanics and tell-tale sign of this deficiency was jousting.

Jousting didn't ensue because Newtonian sucked for combat. It ensued because 99% of Frontier players never learned to control their ships properly, presumably because they didn't know it was even possible.

FFE didn't reduce jousting by mechanical improvements (apart from better AI and fixing the group separation bug it was mechanically worse due to obligatory manoeuvring assist of sorts that couldn't be turned off).

It reduced jousting by automatically turning off set speed mode at the beginning of combat, instead of requiring players to switch it off manually.

In both FFE and FE2 I, or any reasonably skilled player, can pretty much stay welded to the less agile craft's tail once they manage to get close enough.

Besides, it's not like more arcade space sims ever had proper dogfighting. True, Frontier's combat was simplistic, but faux plane combat as featured in spacesims, including Elite, is already stripped of all the interesting stuff, like aerodynamics, gravity and so on, and thus even simpler and less involved.

 

[Kipper]

Jousting didn't ensue because Newtonian sucked for combat. It ensued because 99% of Frontier players never learned to control their ships properly, presumably because they didn't know it was even possible.

If 99% percent of players don't understand how your game works, your game is wrong.

You need to take at least 51% with you before you can say "Well, most people can do it just fine!"

 

[shrapnel]

If 99% percent of players don't understand how your game works, your game is wrong.

You need to take at least 51% with you before you can say "Well, most people can do it just fine!"

The FE2 manual was quite good for some explanations. But you would assume that a modern equivalent would have solid interactive tutorials, or maybe some "ship licence" test at the beginning of the game.

However, that sort of thing turns a lot of players off who feel they should be able to jump in and play. But I feel a game/sim of this depth and complexity should require some learning from the player and any player naive to that should be more careful with their purchases.

 

[The Space Pirate]

To say "want newtonian physics but with proper dogfighting" is oxymoronic, realistic flight physics in space are not condusive to re-enacting "Spitfire Vs ME109" business. Spitfires fly in air, and their flight dynamics are governed by aerodynamics (and you can get this nicely in Cliffs of Dover).

It all depends on the "simulation" aspect, and I think FE2 and FFE did a good job of being "space sims", the further you drop away from that then the game ceases to be a realistic simulation of a vehicle in the simulated environment. Just as docking and landing should be challenges, the challenge of fighting another ship in space is not easy, and maybe not even fun.

Fine then, lose the 'Newtonian Physics' then - I'd much rather have fun dogfights. For me, the combat in Frontier was the worst part - I tried doing it manually, and got nowhere, so it ended up being lock target, engage autopilot (for combat?) and hold Space. Another issue with Frontier was you only really fought one enemy at a time. Sure, there could be others visible on screen, but only one was ever actually attacking you.

There was a programme on a while back called 'Fighting the Red Baron', where they were comparing Star Wars to WW1 dogfighting, because that's effectively what Star Wars was - space age dogfighting. That's what made the Star Wars games so much fun. Combat in Frontier was boring - if that's what Newtonian Physics gives us, you can keep it.

I like the combat in Oolite - Elite D at least needs an option for that sort of combat.

 

[Kipper]

I guess you have to cater towards whatever will help the game sell units and be commercially successful, but push the envelope a little bit too by introducing some new things that people will need to learn, without requiring you to actually be an astrophysicist to understand it.

I don't think you can go far wrong if anyone can jump into a ship and fly it, but with room for those who spend the time being able to fly it much better. Easy to play - hard to master.

It would also be nice if ships had different handling characteristics (not sure how that works in a Low G environment since mass is less meaningful) so that you can be rewarded for sticking with and learning how to fly a certain type of ship better, instead of upgrading as soon as the option becomes available.

It would be nice to see a diverse galaxy of people in vehicles of all shapes and sizes, rather than just putting everyone on a path toward owning the biggest most expensive ship.

 

[Kipper]

Combat in Frontier was boring - if that's what Newtonian Physics gives us, you can keep it.

Couldn't agree more. X-Wing was great combat. Realism is important, but fun should always trump realism where the two can't co-exist.

 

[shrapnel]

It would also be nice if ships had different handling characteristics (not sure how that works in a Low G environment since mass is less meaningful) so that you can be rewarded for sticking with and learning how to fly a certain type of ship better, instead of upgrading as soon as the option becomes available.

It would be nice to see a diverse galaxy of people in vehicles of all shapes and sizes, rather than just putting everyone on a path toward owning the biggest most expensive ship.

One would assume that "handling" of the ship would be dictated by the strength of it's directional thrusters in a given area. I seem to remember that when manual flying in FE2/FFE it was useful to do a "reverse burn" to flip the ship around and use the rear thrusters when commencing the deceleration phase of the journey, as they were the most powerful on the ship.

If things like directional thrusters can be replaced with better versions (at maybe more internal space cost) then you can trade off your ship configuration for manoeuvrability over cargo space, etc.

 

[shrapnel]

Fine then, lose the 'Newtonian Physics' then - I'd much rather have fun dogfights. <snip>

I like the combat in Oolite - Elite D at least needs an option for that sort of combat.

This was the point of my original post. If they binned the idea of newtonian physics I, for one, would be bored of the game quite quickly I think. The challenge of learning to drive the vehicle properly was always one of the things that kept me involved in FE2, combat is a small and not that important part of the game for me. It's quite clear that is not the case for everyone.

I am noting something of a schism amongst support for Elite right now that seems to come from the comparative "Original Elite Vs FE2" viewpoints.

In an ideal world, FD will find a way to please all of these players. Perhaps with separate online servers and a switch option at the game start to choose "physics mode." Without that separation, it would be kind of harsh to bundle everyone together into a server where some people are subjected to having to wait for their ship to slow down, and others that could stop "on a sixpence" (as just one example).

However, if they were to choose one over the other, then a whole chunk of the support base could end up disappointed.

Maybe they will come up with something magic that works for everyone, we'll see.

 

[Geraldine]

I am noting something of a schism amongst support for Elite right now that seems to come from the comparative "Original Elite Vs FE2" viewpoints..

That schism as existed ever since FE2 came out and will never end unless....we could have both flight models on the same server. It would be interesting to see how the different flight models would perform against one another. Both have their advantages and disadvantages

 

[Kipper]

Do you really think its a 50/50 split between who preferred Elite vs FE2 combat?

FE2 was a vast improvement over Elite for planetary landings, flying different ships, better graphics and countless other things, but combat? Nope, sorry. Played it and loved it but found combat far less intense.

 

[Geraldine]

Both games were very popular Kipper and personally (once I learned to fly using Newtonian) I found the combat every bit as intense as Elite. I like both flight modes so for me I would be happy with both options.

One thing Newtonian does allow (outside of combat) you to do though is have fun with orbital mechanics, so there are options outside of combat for people who really like their sims with a capital "S".

 

[Non Grata]

How about:

The starter ship comes with a 1 tonne "combat assist computer". This piece of equipment works like a docking computer, only for combat. It makes combat easier by taking care of the physics (Elite mode).

However there needs to be some limitation when using this piece of equipment, such as the ship's maneuverability being decreased by 20% due to power being diverted to side thrusters (e.g. main 25g thruster becomes only 20g).

For some players they will be very happy using it, but for others they have the option of ditching it and flying manually (Frontier mode), and be rewarded with a more maneuverable ship.

 

[JohnnyS]

Perhaps a simple choice between either option? Those that prefer one over the other get to choose? That way no one can ever complain about getting their backside handed to them because it's chosen at a root level.

Whilst we're off the subject and onto physics: I'd still like to be able to load up my Panther Clipper with shield generators and bounce off of planets. Please.

 

[OneoftheLost]

I prefer Elite style flight myself. Full newtonian never once became FUN for me. It was just more work. Orbital mechanics I find extremely tedious. I would however, enjoy a quasi-newtonian. I.e. the ability too fully control all of my thrusters, and turn off the fly by wire, and glide around. That could make for some intense dogfights.

One thing I would like for SP, is the focus on GAMEPLAY. Pioneer is a key example of this. A large group within the Pioneer fanbase is obsessed with just flying around looking at stars. I find that as exciting as watching paint dry. I couldn't care less if the system I'm in has a green dwarf nova neutron moon, it is background to the important stuff.

Earning credits, and reaching Elite.

I really hope Elite Dangerous focuses on these aspects, and not so much on getting the exact canyon on mars right.

Now, I wouldn't mind missions and rewards for exploring! It would be cool if you could find abandoned ships, and other such things, like DB mentioned in the FAQ. Heck scouting missions could be a blast. Sneak into a system, feel like star-trek and get paid to do it? yes please.

 

[Kipper]

Both games were very popular Kipper and personally (once I learned to fly using Newtonian) I found the combat every bit as intense as Elite.

Don't get me wrong, I played Frontier to death and yes - sometimes the fights went down to the wire (and sometimes you got blown up).

I just personally felt that I had less control over what was going on in Frontier than I did in Elite; and that it took less skill because all I had to do was swivel around and aim, no dogfighting, chasing etc.

I think combat is going to take place at low speeds anyway; how else can it be if you think about it with local jumps rather than accelerated time? .. and the video of course.... But having said all that, I would like to see the ability to enjoy playing around with the orbital stuff, and a bit of challenge to landing/docking in different situations, and the ability to do crazy maneuvers in space. Just with more X-Wing combat

 

[Jumpin' Jack Flash]

It looks as though the 'Stardreamer' time control won't be featured in the single player game and certainly won't be in the multiplayer side of things.
'Local Hyperspace' travel is mentioned though in the frequently asked questions.
Has anyone any idea how this would work in practice?
Does this mean that the 'standard hyperdrive'/Military drives used in the previous Frontier series of games no longer features in Elite Dangerous?...I'm confused a bit on this. :S

Jack.

 

[The Space Pirate]

It looks as though the 'Stardreamer' time control won't be featured in the single player game and certainly won't be in the multiplayer side of things.
'Local Hyperspace' travel is mentioned though in the frequently asked questions.
Has anyone any idea how this would work in practice?
Does this mean that the 'standard hyperdrive'/Military drives used in the previous Frontier series of games no longer features in Elite Dangerous?...I'm confused a bit on this. :S

Jack.

I don't understand why StarDreamer can't be included in the SP mode - but after trying Oolite, I haven't got any worries about 'Local Hyperspace'.

I just personally felt that I had less control over what was going on in Frontier than I did in Elite; and that it took less skill because all I had to do was swivel around and aim, no dogfighting, chasing etc.

That's why I didn't like the combat in Frontier - to me, combat whether in space or in the air is all about getting on the other guy's six.

 

[Capt. Hook]

Like Geraldine above and others, I have played all versions of Elite to a great extent. My take on things is that while the later incarnations of the game were ok to a point when it came to flight and combat, when it came to actual fun and a real sense of winning against the odds etc, the original elite wins for me.

I would like to see the option for players to choose how to fly their ships tbh.

 

[Steve]

I'm not sure it was the control method or "Newtonian" physics that hindered combat in Frontier. To me, it was the AI behaviour of the enemy ships, swooping in for a few laser hits, retreating to 4km or so, swooping back and repeat ad nauseum. If they'd been programmed a bit better, I'm sure dogfights etc would have been amazing.