Elite / Frontier Your favorite planet?

Hmm... It'd be hard to say, I'm pretty much a tourist in Frontier - always looking for new sights and experiences. In FFE I really enjoyed view from Turner's World (Alioth 4's innermost satellite) - buzzing around on low altitude over the ocean, with ringed gas giant looming over the horizon - I will be more than happy to revisit the place in E4. Overall, the gas giant moons make interesting places. I always liked the New Kyoto port in Eta Casiopea too - surrounded by glaciers and placed on a planet that formed in supermassive gas giant's L-point it is an interesting place.

In both games I found Mayflower City on Landfall in Wolf 630 system to be a unique place.

In FE2 I always like to dive into the cloud layers of ringed gas giants - only to see the sky spanning arch of their rings from below.

Planets orbiting brown dwarves are also interesting with dimly glowing red orbs of their parent bodies hanging in the sky, often surrounded by visible rings and adorned with intricate patterns of cooler darker clouds in their upper atmospheres. The contrast between dull red glow of Phekda 6 and blinding electric blue of distant Phekda - a mere pin-point of blinding light, as seen from the Experiment is particularly striking.

And let's not forget about good old Merlin in Ross 154 with huge Aster hanging in the sky - Braben knew what he was doing when he chose the default starting point in Frontier.

Overall Frontier did an astonishingly good job evoking this kind of yearning for all those worlds that have to be in our galaxy, but that we will never see with our own eyes, I hope Elite 4 repeats this feat and expands on it, opening the whole kaleidoscope of sights-that-may-be before us once again.

Now, I was way too old for this when I first played FE2 in 2000something, but had I played it as a kid in 1993 when it was first out, there wouldn't have been a better way to convince me that I wanted to be an astronaut. :)
 
Anywhere with a suitably alien-looking vista, such as New Wicca in Zeiocan...

Zeiocan.jpg


... although Sol will always be "home" :)
 
nirvana, great choice.

i dont recall the names of the places i love to visit, but if you start heading up on the map (ffe), when the populated places start petering out, when it gets harder and harder to find a place, so far that you need to be fuel scooping, and likely struggling to keep your ship well maintained... those places. there's some real special gems out there.

one i recall, had a beautiful tiny blue ringed sun. i spent weeks of my life there... when i got stuck, save after save trying to get back... and i didnt mind. i was almost so far "north" i could have visited the argents quest place. mighta seen the thargoids without doing the quest if i stuck at!
 
one i recall, had a beautiful tiny blue ringed sun.
Some white dwarf, they look like that. You have to be careful when trying to fly close to them - gravity is much stronger than your engines can overcome. Then again, the sights are unforgettable.

i spent weeks of my life there... when i got stuck, save after save trying to get back... and i didnt mind. i was almost so far "north" i could have visited the argents quest place. mighta seen the thargoids without doing the quest if i stuck at!
An explorer, I see.
:salute: :D
 
Some white dwarf, they look like that. You have to be careful when trying to fly close to them - gravity is much stronger than your engines can overcome. Then again, the sights are unforgettable.

An explorer, I see.
:salute: :D

:D wellll... ya'know.... when you're on your third of fourth griffin after trading down for some tough military quest, you're credits are represented by such a big number you have to point at it while trying to say how much you have and and this time you've fired all the guys on 5 or 10 credits, and replaced them with guys on 20, just because, hey, what else ya gonna do with your money, sometime around then, when, maybe you've got an elite rating, or found out what that means (how many kills!?) and you've just kinda givin up on working towrds that accolade, maybe you've grown tired of climbing the ranks of both militarys, and you think you know all the best trading routes, including those convoluted 3, 4 or 5 system chains out in the weird places (and thats not including the jumps just to reach them), you'll no doubt have all the permits to get to those special places, and almost certainly will have spent some time exploring the various ships and paying attention to all their stats and so on, and also quite likely, if it's your first time getting to this kind of state in the game, you'll likely know everything about all the ships except... eeeeexcept! ... which ones have all the fuel (and/or cargo) scoops... and you're going to need that for what's next to do in the game.... you're running out of ideas, and... you really want to test this place out... find out how much really can be stored on a couple of floppies, how big this universe really is.... you start to wonder..... what's out there? maybe you've even been surfing the map already, and will have stumbled into some obscure faaaar out there tourist trap... out there so far that there's barely even any mining out there anymore. incidentally.... anyone actually wonder.... how much **** do all the people in this galaxy need to have mined for them? i mean... that's some seriously materialist heavy consumers... how much wrapping do they put on their food? do they wrap every pea, every armanth grain, individually? well anyways... yeah, ya gotta go exploring eventually, especially when you're rich, notorious and powerful. i will admit though... i did start exploring before i started mining. mining seemed like too much effort for not enough gain.... and this brings me back on topic... where's the good planets for mining?

where's the planets where all you find are gems and alien artifacts?

or do ya just hop up n down on planets until you find some spot better than the lowest two likely states of things to find?



actually, i've just remembered another planet i love to visit.....

io.

moons are planetoids too right? planetary bodies?? i can love to visit io right? i dont recall ever landing... but i just like the little fella. in real life and the game.
and one last aside... wouldnt it have saved a whole lot of fuss and hullaballoo on that whole pluto issue if those astronomers who came up with that stupid idea had just played elite? "oh, "planetary bodies"!? why didnt we think of that. boy that will save us alot of difficult head scratching and arguments and ruffled feathers."
 
Topaz, in Facece.

A beautiful and thriving planet. Also a focus for the military might of the glorious Empire.

We have a saying - "If you can't get it on Topaz, it doesn't exist!"
 
My favourite planet is 'Tianve' upper north east of galactic chart one (original Elite).

Via Oolite's OXP mechanism I've turned it into a tourist destination with the galaxies only 'accessible' pulsar....

You tube video of Tianve is here.

Cheers,

Drew.
 
I have to agree with turwhitt...

Facece was my base of operations for most of my Imperial life. I spent a lot (months) of time running back and forth between there and Achenar. After I finally bought the best ship in the game (IMHO), had enough cash to spare, etc.. I broke out from the Imperials and picked a direction and just ran...

But when I would reach50% funds, I'd turn around and head back to Facece for more profit runs.

I miss the simple pleasures of those days..
 
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