Newcomer / Intro What are you up to?

[]M[]

I haven't logged into Elite for a week or so because I was fighting a stomach flu thingy. It was miserable, but mostly over now.

Yesterday, however, I picked up the new DLC for X4 Foundations, and it's sucked me back into that game.

X4 is equal parts brilliant and frustrating. Well, not really, it's more brilliant than frustrating, but it can be highly frustrating sometimes

It's a huge game, full of alien races (both friendly and hostile) and ships and an entire economy and war simulation. You start out poor with a crappy ship and can become a billionaire mogul running your own empire. There are many, many ways to play and proceed. It's actually difficult to describe, it's so massive. The graphics are quite good, although not quite up to Elite standards.

I've put nearly 900 hours into the game over the years, and it is an unforgettable experience.

On the other hand, many things don't work as you'd expect, there are many odd bugs and interactions that can happen, and a lot of quirky stuff that's just...odd, I guess. And the UI is a whole game in itself. Learning the UI is a big hurdle.

But it's a space game, and a good one, and it's single-player (and moddable, although I'm running vanilla for this new expansion, at least for now).

So I expect I'll be focusing a fair amount of time on X4 for a bit (although I won't stop playing Elite -- this game is a permanent part of my life I think )

Here's a couple screenshots from yesterday, if you're interested at all.

Spoiler

This is my character meeting one of the leaders of the Boron race (new with this DLC). They live in a liquid environment, so they are always in these odd little space suits when outside their chambers. My character is the human-looking female (she's actually Argonian). You can see a couple Boron on the right, and my Paranid boss in the middle. We're standing on the bridge of a Boron ship, and you can see a planet or two in the background.
View attachment 352831

This is the Boron fighter they gave me so that I can fulfill my mission for them. You can see the small elevator there/ You walk into it and it lifts you into the ship, where you then walk to the chair and sit down (if you want to fly it yourself, that is -- you can also hire crew to fly the ship for you and you can be a passenger or stay behind and give orders from there -- it's complicated).
View attachment 352832

This is the Boron carrier I'm on. You can see the landing pads, and one is occupied (by my ship). The Boron ships have a unique style, quite different from any others. Actually, each race has its own set of ships that they use, and once you become friendly with a race you can buy them for yourself. You can even build your own ships, once you progress to the point of having a shipyard of your own.
View attachment 352833

I'm having fun with it at the moment, so I will no doubt sink a bunch of hours into it.

And that's what I'm up to

Hmmm... that does look interesting - tbh i've eyed it for a while on Steam and it is on a 50% sale atm... and winter's coming... ^^

...for now i've just been having a bit of a Sunday drive:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/stellar-screenshots.424051/post-10125887

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

I haven't logged into Elite for a week or so because I was fighting a stomach flu thingy. It was miserable, but mostly over now.

Yesterday, however, I picked up the new DLC for X4 Foundations, and it's sucked me back into that game.

X4 is equal parts brilliant and frustrating. Well, not really, it's more brilliant than frustrating, but it can be highly frustrating sometimes

It's a huge game, full of alien races (both friendly and hostile) and ships and an entire economy and war simulation. You start out poor with a crappy ship and can become a billionaire mogul running your own empire. There are many, many ways to play and proceed. It's actually difficult to describe, it's so massive. The graphics are quite good, although not quite up to Elite standards.

I've put nearly 900 hours into the game over the years, and it is an unforgettable experience.

On the other hand, many things don't work as you'd expect, there are many odd bugs and interactions that can happen, and a lot of quirky stuff that's just...odd, I guess. And the UI is a whole game in itself. Learning the UI is a big hurdle.

But it's a space game, and a good one, and it's single-player (and moddable, although I'm running vanilla for this new expansion, at least for now).

So I expect I'll be focusing a fair amount of time on X4 for a bit (although I won't stop playing Elite -- this game is a permanent part of my life I think )

Here's a couple screenshots from yesterday, if you're interested at all.

Spoiler

This is my character meeting one of the leaders of the Boron race (new with this DLC). They live in a liquid environment, so they are always in these odd little space suits when outside their chambers. My character is the human-looking female (she's actually Argonian). You can see a couple Boron on the right, and my Paranid boss in the middle. We're standing on the bridge of a Boron ship, and you can see a planet or two in the background.
View attachment 352831

This is the Boron fighter they gave me so that I can fulfill my mission for them. You can see the small elevator there/ You walk into it and it lifts you into the ship, where you then walk to the chair and sit down (if you want to fly it yourself, that is -- you can also hire crew to fly the ship for you and you can be a passenger or stay behind and give orders from there -- it's complicated).
View attachment 352832

This is the Boron carrier I'm on. You can see the landing pads, and one is occupied (by my ship). The Boron ships have a unique style, quite different from any others. Actually, each race has its own set of ships that they use, and once you become friendly with a race you can buy them for yourself. You can even build your own ships, once you progress to the point of having a shipyard of your own.
View attachment 352833

I'm having fun with it at the moment, so I will no doubt sink a bunch of hours into it.

And that's what I'm up to

I'm looking at this while waiting for my carrier to junp. However, their website isn't brilliant in saying "This is what you need to play it and this is what you need to download and this is how much it costs".

I am currently moving (slowly) towards what looks like a more populated area in the Formadine Rift. Here's hoping...

 

[Fnord Velkor]

I haven't logged into Elite for a week or so because I was fighting a stomach flu thingy. It was miserable, but mostly over now.

Yesterday, however, I picked up the new DLC for X4 Foundations, and it's sucked me back into that game.

X4 is equal parts brilliant and frustrating. Well, not really, it's more brilliant than frustrating, but it can be highly frustrating sometimes

....

I have had that (X4:Foundations) in my library for years (says last played 2019) - I just couldn't get dragged into it. I don't know whether it was the "build your own factory / shipyard / fleet / etc" ethos at the time but it just didn't fire me up. (Same with Subnautica.) I really ought to "give it a fair go mate" as the antipodeans would have it, especially since Elite has become so Thargoid-centric that I have not played it much lately. (Though if FDEV fixed the invisible planets in supercruise I might be able to handle more than an hour or so at a time exploring.)

P.S. Glad to hear you are getting better.

 

[]M[]

Stumbled upon this prediscovered system with seven planets with bio signs - the first three are Blatteum Anemones...

 

[Skürt Avil]

I haven't logged into Elite for a week or so because I was fighting a stomach flu thingy. It was miserable, but mostly over now.

Yesterday, however, I picked up the new DLC for X4 Foundations, and it's sucked me back into that game.

X4 is equal parts brilliant and frustrating. Well, not really, it's more brilliant than frustrating, but it can be highly frustrating sometimes

It's a huge game, full of alien races (both friendly and hostile) and ships and an entire economy and war simulation. You start out poor with a crappy ship and can become a billionaire mogul running your own empire. There are many, many ways to play and proceed. It's actually difficult to describe, it's so massive. The graphics are quite good, although not quite up to Elite standards.

I've put nearly 900 hours into the game over the years, and it is an unforgettable experience.

On the other hand, many things don't work as you'd expect, there are many odd bugs and interactions that can happen, and a lot of quirky stuff that's just...odd, I guess. And the UI is a whole game in itself. Learning the UI is a big hurdle.

But it's a space game, and a good one, and it's single-player (and moddable, although I'm running vanilla for this new expansion, at least for now).

So I expect I'll be focusing a fair amount of time on X4 for a bit (although I won't stop playing Elite -- this game is a permanent part of my life I think )

Here's a couple screenshots from yesterday, if you're interested at all.

Spoiler

This is my character meeting one of the leaders of the Boron race (new with this DLC). They live in a liquid environment, so they are always in these odd little space suits when outside their chambers. My character is the human-looking female (she's actually Argonian). You can see a couple Boron on the right, and my Paranid boss in the middle. We're standing on the bridge of a Boron ship, and you can see a planet or two in the background.
View attachment 352831

This is the Boron fighter they gave me so that I can fulfill my mission for them. You can see the small elevator there/ You walk into it and it lifts you into the ship, where you then walk to the chair and sit down (if you want to fly it yourself, that is -- you can also hire crew to fly the ship for you and you can be a passenger or stay behind and give orders from there -- it's complicated).
View attachment 352832

This is the Boron carrier I'm on. You can see the landing pads, and one is occupied (by my ship). The Boron ships have a unique style, quite different from any others. Actually, each race has its own set of ships that they use, and once you become friendly with a race you can buy them for yourself. You can even build your own ships, once you progress to the point of having a shipyard of your own.
View attachment 352833

I'm having fun with it at the moment, so I will no doubt sink a bunch of hours into it.

And that's what I'm up to

That looks interesting. I don't use Steam and like Tyres' says not much purchase info on the site.

Glad you're feeling better.

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

Aha! Stars! And first discos! \o/

 

[CMDRQuainMarln]

When Elite Dangerous Horizons was on sale last week I grabbed another copy for £5.
My long term plan is to leave this commander on the Fleet Carrier on long Fleet Carrier trips to refuel the tritium depot in Quain's absence.
But until the next expedition, I'm bringing this new commander up a little differently. The plan is for just 3 ships, each with the largest cargo capacity for the 3 pad sizes. I did the usual road to riches on a trip to Maia to get the meta alloy for Felicity to get the credits for the first permanent ship - the Dolphin. I've never warmed to the ship in the past having bought and sold one at least 4 times. This was mainly due to class 4 FSDs not being in stock where you can buy them and then not having the jump range to get out of the system. No joke!

With the Dolphin treated to the engineering Felicity can do, the FSD is fully engineered and the 5D thrusters done to grade 3 dirty plus drag. I decided to achieve the trade with 50 markets requirement for top notch shield engineering and try to make credits for the next ship - Python - with rare goods trading. The detailed surface scanner is still on the ship, so I map the ELWs at each station where a rare good is for sale as I go.
Rare goods trading is a joke for profit as I'm making 2 to 6 times more credits selling the exploration data for the mapped planets. I've even got first mapped by on a few of the 11 markets (out of 140 selling rare goods) so far. It's amazing that there are still unmapped ELWs in the bubble.
My ambition was to buy and sell all 140 rare goods in the game at least once.
I just bought Leathery Eggs at Ridley Scott for almost 25K credits each. I'm not convinced there will be a profit in this one, and it suddenly dawned on me how unwise a "Leathery Eggs" purchase from a station called Ridley Scott might be

I'm not sure if my appetite for rare goods trading will last for all 140 rare goods markets, but I seem to have warmed to the Dolphin enough to be OK with the idea of a trip to Jacques Station in Colonia for the rare good sold there. Definitely a return trip to be done riding Fleet Carrier, though.

So yeah, go figure. The Dolphin has grown on me with some more serious time flying it and I'm having fun fuel scooping really close to the star and charging the FSD at the same time. Easily makes up for the fuel scoop being slightly on the small side for the FSD. The Dolphin will never beat the Phantom, Asp X or DBX in my eyes as the jump range falls short of my benchmark 64ly which is required to reach my favourite place to visit in the galaxy - Far Oasis. There are multiple jumps of up to 127ly to get there.

Let's seen how many rare goods markets I get to before I'm sick of it. Maybe at least until I get to 50 markets....

 

[]M[]

Still busy with these pumpkins Anemones...

 

[Kram Nehpets Strebor]

After a few months in colonia, i'm finally headed back to the bubble.
Did what I needed to do. All the Colonia Engineers unlocked.
All weapons and suits now G5 with the mods I wanted.

Hopefully this will make bubble missions less painfull

Is it just me, or does the carrier jump sequence never get old

 

[KnezBP]

o7 o>

 

[CMDR Timber McWolf]

Haven't been doing much in the last few weeks due to the bug I mentioned having caught some time ago.

Trying to pick up where I dropped out, working on getting all 20 ships I own so far engineered through as far as the engineers I have unlocked can help me. Which also means having to collect tons of mats, which can get a bit tedious if you plan on getting your hold full. I would appreciate any tips how to get this a little more "streamlined" without using exploits like relogging. Keep in mind that I still am in the museum and have set up shop (for now) in the Suhte region.

 

[bugbait42]

Hmmm... that does look interesting - tbh i've eyed it for a while on Steam and it is on a 50% sale atm... and winter's coming... ^^

It does look interesting I agree. I do have some games on Steam - eg the Half-Life series, Subnautica, Age of Empires 3 DE, Rise of Nations 2 etc etc (but not Elite Dangerous as I got it from the Frontier website which I think was before it appeared on Steam) so I could take advantage of that offer. Only trouble is, I'm so busy with ED right now I'd need to make sure I have time to actually play it...

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

I don't do Steam

Actually, I don't really have time for any other games.

EDIT: That little exo stint just paid for the last tritium outlay. Marvellous.

 

[]M[]

It does look interesting I agree. I do have some games on Steam - eg the Half-Life series, Subnautica, Age of Empires 3 DE, Rise of Nations 2 etc etc (but not Elite Dangerous as I got it from the Frontier website which I think was before it appeared on Steam) so I could take advantage of that offer. Only trouble is, I'm so busy with ED right now I'd need to make sure I have time to actually play it...

I have quite a few games on Steam, though one in particular does tend to dominate this list... ;]

 

[bugbait42]

s I did in 2015)

I have quite a few games on Steam, though one in particular does tend to dominate this list... ;]

Nice collection there!

I have Portal on Steam as well and although I've got through a few levels on it, never really got the hang of it. Quite possible I won't play it again as I tend to concentrate on one game only for a while which atm is ED. If I stop playing that again (as I stopped in 2015) the most likely game I'll play again is Age of Empires 3 DE, but whatever.

 

[]M[]

Nice collection there!

Thanks, I'm just remembering that I actually used to play quite a range of stuff before EDO took over my life

I have Portal on Steam as well and although I've got through a few levels on it, never really got the hang of it. Quite possible I won't play it again as I tend to concentrate on one game only for a while which atm is ED. If I stop playing that again (as I stopped in 2015) the most likely game I'll play again is Age of Empires 3 DE, but whatever.

Portal was good fun and the sequel even better imo - quite a lot of "hours played" is basically play-through to complete time, ie: especially with adventures... then there are those few games i just keep playing, on and on... :]

 

[Codger]

I have had that (X4:Foundations) in my library for years (says last played 2019) - I just couldn't get dragged into it. I don't know whether it was the "build your own factory / shipyard / fleet / etc" ethos at the time but it just didn't fire me up.

It's a hard game to get into, for sure. There's so much to learn, and a lot of stuff is very un-intuitive. The game does not hold your hand, at all. It'll give you missions that you absolutely cannot complete yet, because you need resources/ships/reputation or whatever, and if you just run off and try to do them you get killed or lost or just confused. You have to go do something else until you build up enough.

But much of it is also brilliant and fun.

They've added a lot of fully-voiced missions and story lines to it over the years, and there's a whole new "Customized Start" feature that lets you set up the game start the way you want (you can even start with a bunch of money, a base, a fancy ship, etc. etc.), so they've tried to make it more accessible.

Still, the frustration factor can be really high at times!

I'm having a very good time with it this run so far, though.

I decided I needed to pause the main storyline and get some ships and income going first, so I scraped together enough to buy a crappy mining ship, and flew that out to some asteroids to see if I could get some valuable ore. I actually have never flown a mining ship before, and it was pretty interesting (and rather large). Every ship in the game is flyable, which is amazing I think.

Anyway, if anyone's interested in hearing more send me a PM. I can answer questions, too. But I don't want to put more into this thread, this is about Elite!

 

[]M[]

It's a hard game to get into, for sure. There's so much to learn, and a lot of stuff is very un-intuitive. The game does not hold your hand, at all. It'll give you missions that you absolutely cannot complete yet, because you need resources/ships/reputation or whatever, and if you just run off and try to do them you get killed or lost or just confused. You have to go do something else until you build up enough.

But much of it is also brilliant and fun.

Sounds a bit like another game we here know oh so well…

They've added a lot of fully-voiced missions and story lines to it over the years, and there's a whole new "Customized Start" feature that lets you set up the game start the way you want (you can even start with a bunch of money, a base, a fancy ship, etc. etc.), so they've tried to make it more accessible.

That’s interesting - so it has something a bit like Subnautica / NMS’s “creative” modes, ie: where you can experiment a bit without having to massively grind resources?

Still, the frustration factor can be really high at times!

Again this sounds a bit familiar…

I'm having a very good time with it this run so far, though.

I decided I needed to pause the main storyline and get some ships and income going first, so I scraped together enough to buy a crappy mining ship, and flew that out to some asteroids to see if I could get some valuable ore. I actually have never flown a mining ship before, and it was pretty interesting (and rather large). Every ship in the game is flyable, which is amazing I think.

Anyway, if anyone's interested in hearing more send me a PM. I can answer questions, too. But I don't want to put more into this thread, this is about Elite!

Mainly wondering how experiential / immersive the gameplay is, how much is played from live first person POV - or how much is menu / data / board&map strategy driven… i’m old(-ish), so i may not be using the correct contemporary terminology for this ;]

 

[Codger]

Mainly wondering how experiential / immersive the gameplay is, how much is played from live first person POV - or how much is menu / data / board&map strategy driven… i’m old(-ish), so i may not be using the correct contemporary terminology for this ;]

It’s pretty much up to you. You can play as a lone pilot doing missions or trading or pirating if you want. But you’ll probably get sucked into the economy and war sim stuff eventually. I tend to do the solo pilot about half the time—exploring a lot and getting the lay of the land first. Once I have a few credits I buy a mining ship and try to set it up to make some passive income while I explore and pursue missions or whatever grabs me. So as the game goes on and my resources grow I do stare at the map more. I get my crew to do the boring stuff

 

[]M[]

It’s pretty much up to you. You can play as a lone pilot doing missions or trading or pirating if you want. But you’ll probably get sucked into the economy and war sim stuff eventually. I tend to do the solo pilot about half the time—exploring a lot and getting the lay of the land first. Once I have a few credits I buy a mining ship and try to set it up to make some passive income while I explore and pursue missions or whatever grabs me. So as the game goes on and my resources grow I do stare at the map more. I get my crew to do the boring stuff

Hmmm… a mining ship that can run on auto?

Y’know, i’ve always wondered why my bot can’t go out and usefully mine some Tritium while i’m out hunting exobio samples (instead she apparently sips RDX in the FC bar, while still earning a cut of everything i do ;p) - sounds like a good balance between being able to experience gameplay immersively at first, but then being able to hand-off repetitive tasks?

That does sound nice. Very nice.