Elite: Dangerous (Elite Kickstarter) David Braben/Frontier

[originalbadboy]

can you actually fly to the planet ? I love space sims and after the bitter disappointment of x rebirth i am really looking forward to this and star citizen

Your free to go wherever you want , however u cant land on planets, that will come after the main release. The only real loading is when you hyperspace between systems, in local star system you use 'supercruise' which gets u round the system quickly. In theory u can supercruise between star systems as well.. One person is trying it currently but reckon it will take 24 hours in real time to do.There are no 'invisible walls' though.. You can go wherever u like.Basically its like frontier but without landing on planets and a whole lot cooler stuff like multiplayer and better graphics.

[eastyy]

yeah loved frontier gave real feeling of being in open space unlike alot of more modern space games that feel like smaller sectors.Hope they give plenty to do though

[originalbadboy]

yeah loved frontier gave real feeling of being in open space unlike alot of more modern space games that feel like smaller sectors.Hope they give plenty to do though

There's not a massive amount currently, you can trade good, and fight pirates for bounty but thats about it really. You can't do mining yet for example. There are some areas where they are constant battles going on that you can join, but generally there is no random content, or bulletin board missions etc currently. The game is still very much Alpha / Early Beta.

[Brad]

Resolution and frames per second please OBB? I know I harp on about this stuff all the time but it strikes me that technical awesomeness is something Braben would be striving for so I'm hopeful for something impressive.

[Silvergun X]

Framerates are all over the place at the moment, but that's forgiven with the current state of alpha. In heavy battles / federal ship defense areas it's a pure 60fps with a GTX 660ti, but if you're supercruising to a resource gathering area which is usually located in the middle of an asteroid belt, or the rings of a planet, I get absolutely mad stuttering.

A couple of people in the Alpha Discussion forum have already drawn up Supply/Demand for the few starports that are currently in the game. Even though trading is severely limited at the start with 4 cargo slots, no option to sell any hardpoints, and only 1000cr, you can do some easy trading to start off a Tea < -- > Robots supply run and make a decent bit of dosh inbetween crashes to desktop.

Best way to handle getting early game money safely given how ridiculously underpowered your little starting beam laser is. Combat is the quickest way to actually get stuff but also the most frustrating at the beginning until you've got better weaponry.

[Brad]

How come you guys are playing it already? I was like the third person to back it (slight exaggeration) but I can't!

Yes, silly of me to even check on performance issues so early on I suppose :-)

[Silvergun X]

I was one of the silly people that paid silly money to join in the Alpha testing. I can't say it's not been worth it so far though!

One thing I really do like is the fact that even though travel is currently quite time consuming, it's entirely a manual process. Unlike Frontier, which was hyperspace to system, autopilot to station. This time you have to supercruise your way to the system manually, make sure you don't overshoot the system and keep within the correct distance and speed, then shut down supercruise and manually dock. It's quite a satisfying thing!

OBB - I've not seen any mention of this on the alpha forums but I suppose I've not looked hard enough - Have you had any docking issues, where the hanger will randomly spit you back out to the surface, turn you 180 degrees so you're facing away from the exit, then lock you in place and either turn off your hud, or not actually let you launch?

[originalbadboy]

Yeah I also paid silly money for Alpha .. Also any updates the alpha backers get two weeks before main release, which for premium beta is about two weeks!

Performance wise I get pretty good frame rates currently running 1080p on High setting, I get 60 when there isn't much going on, however dip into a ring system (as per the screenshots), or approach a station and it will dip down to 30. Currently it seems the engine locks to 60 or 30 depending on the situation , which I think is what is leading to the stuttering. There is no way of locking the framerate currently as far as I know. Otherwise I would just lock it at 30 for now, Running on an AMD R9 270 2B card 3570K Core i5.

But then it is not optimized in any way shape or form (either from FD or Nvidia / AMD) , so in all honesty, its pretty impressive stuff. This game will eat CPU and GPU though, there is some crazy maths going on, you are going to need at least a proper quad core once its get released I would have thought. Reducing the settings and res of course will improve things, but I would say so far its not bad all things considered.

Unfortunately we had an 'episode' last night where someone (or multiple) people are hacking the game client to give themselves unlimited credits, which itself isn't a problem. However they then decided to buy massive ships and dump thousands of cannisters around space stations. Unfortunately the game cant handle that currently and as you connect to a 'instance' for multiplayer, they basically managed to completely cripple the game,.I was getting 1fps at one point, and then I just couldnt connect again as its was trying to connect me back to the same instance.

The Alpha forum was in uproar about it, and in all honesty I am surprised I (and others) didn't get banned from the forum as there was a lot of 'colourful language' and threats doing the rounds last night. TBH though its fair enough because as per usual the minority (the hackers) are ruining it for everyone else. And in effect they were causing a DDOS attack on the servers.

[originalbadboy]

OBB - I've not seen any mention of this on the alpha forums but I suppose I've not looked hard enough - Have you had any docking issues, where the hanger will randomly spit you back out to the surface, turn you 180 degrees so you're facing away from the exit, then lock you in place and either turn off your hud, or not actually let you launch?

Yeah I have seen that a couple of times, I believe I have seen it mentioned on the forums so I guess it will get looked at ...

[Silvergun X]

Unfortunately we had an 'episode' last night where someone (or multiple) people are hacking the game client to give themselves unlimited credits, which itself isn't a problem. However they then decided to buy massive ships and dump thousands of cannisters around space stations. Unfortunately the game cant handle that currently and as you connect to a 'instance' for multiplayer, they basically managed to completely cripple the game,.I was getting 1fps at one point, and then I just couldnt connect again as its was trying to connect me back to the same instance.

The Alpha forum was in uproar about it, and in all honesty I am surprised I (and others) didn't get banned from the forum as there was a lot of 'colourful language' and threats doing the rounds last night. TBH though its fair enough because as per usual the minority (the hackers) are ruining it for everyone else. And in effect they were causing a DDOS attack on the servers.

I know a few people had been hacking it (Blackley flying around in his Anaconda during Alpha 3 for example) but I wasn't aware of the credit hacking and canister dropping! Crazy. I missed all that.

[originalbadboy]

I know a few people had been hacking it (Blackley flying around in his Anaconda during Alpha 3 for example) but I wasn't aware of the credit hacking and canister dropping! Crazy. I missed all that.

Ordinarily I would have found it quite funny, and its great that people can do that sort of thing in the game, however there has to be limits and people were doing it on purpose last night for ****s and giggles. Part of the problem is the game cannot handle large amounts of canisters in the same area currently. I am sure that will change at some point.

But then there is the other side of the coin where (some) people are hacking left right and centre, and then stressing the game to its extreme, thats not on, regardless of their motives (which isn't for testing as they claim).

Cmdr Blackley is a dev so we will let him off that one.

[Silvergun X]

Cmdr Blackley is a dev so we will let him off that one.

Conflicting reports on this one I think, some say he is but apparently the developers confirmed it wasn't?

Would make more sense if he was.

[originalbadboy]

You gotta love DB's enthusiasm for all things Elite (and space for that matter).

Gamespot E3 Demo (Stage demo to follow today)

http://www.gamespot.com/videos/e3-2014-elite-dangerous-developer-demo/2300-6419611/

[VR46]

Pricing confirmed, as a side note, apparently this is amazing to play with the Oculus Rift V2

After the ?200 alpha, the ?100 premium beta and the ?50 beta comes the launch price for space game Elite: Dangerous: ?35.

That's what it costs to get the Mercenary Edition, which developer Frontier gives to all who pre-order the game. The standard edition costs ?39.99.

So, what do you get in the Mercenary Edition? Here's the list:

■A digital download Elite: Dangerous
■Your very own Eagle fighter ship docked in a secondary location in-game
■Exclusive pack of ship paint jobs
■A 'day one' ship decal
■A digital players guide
■A digital concept art book
■Plus loads more digital goodies to be announced over the coming weeks
Frontier says the only way to get these extras is to pre-order the game. Those who have already pre-ordered get the Mercenary Edition extras when the game is released.

And when will that be? Frontier is still saying 2014.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-09-15-frontier-reveals-elite-dangerous-launch-price

[eastyy]

i do wonder how much money they actually made from the beta/alpha sales though

i am really looking forward to the game but i really hope they give plenty to do