27
votes
Elite Dangerous discussion
Do we have any Elite Dangerous players on here? What does everyone think of the new ships? Any other recent changes you're excited about?
Do we have any Elite Dangerous players on here? What does everyone think of the new ships? Any other recent changes you're excited about?
I used to play a ton, then I took a break for a few years, but I did get back into it a couple months ago. I've always been big on exploration, and through the power of Exobiology I made more than enough money to buy a fleet carrier to use as a base out in the deep. It takes away the fear of smashing into a planet and losing months of data/money, which is kind of a double edged sword for me. I really enjoyed exploration before fleet carriers, as it felt like a real accomplishment to make it so Beagle Point all on your own just to say you did. The risk is much lower now. I don't usually even bother with AFMUs on my exploration ships anymore, as there's always a carrier somewhere nearby you can repair at these days, so it feels a lot different.
In terms of the new ships, the Type 8 and Corsair were alright, but I haven't settled on an equipment layout I'm happy with for those yet. I really liked the Cobra Mk V, as well as the Mandalay are both great for exploration (and can also be outfitted for other things as well). You can fit lots of handy things like shields, torpedos, limpets, and multiple SRVs, they run cool enough to scoop without throttling down for all but the hottest of stars, and they still have 40-50+ LY of jump range. They also have reasonably small landing footprints, which is very handy for Exobiology.
I did claim a system and build a few stations/settlements in it, but it was early on and I decided to hold off on further development until someone else figured out how to control the economy of the stations so I could make some of my orbital slots be actually useful. Haven't gone back to colonization as I'm out in the black a few thousand light years, but I'ma need to make my way back to the bubble soon to join up with the Distant Worlds fleet by the end of the year-ish.
I'd also like to give a Caspian a try, though I don't know if I want to buy/engineer one before the Distant Worlds 3 take off, as I already have a Mandalay and a Cobra Mk V ready to go. DW3 is exciting for me as someone who was on the previous expedition. Even in the face of the new fleet carrier reality for exploration, I think that the new expedition will be fun to participate in.
Anyways, here's my Inara fleet page if anyone is interested in my ship builds. Hope I'll run into some of you out in the black one of these days.
Edit/Post Script:
I also want to add that if you're new to Elite and have the opportunity to play in VR, DO IT! Flat-screen vs VR is the difference between playing a spaceship simulator game, and actually flying a spaceship. The VR experience is next-level, especially with the game's awesome sound design. Elite is probably my second favorite VR experience after Half Life Alyx, even in spite of the space legs not being full VR. The quality of the experience inside the ships more than makes up for it. VR makes combat so much more fun, as you can literally look up at the guy who just flew past you and follow them visually as you spin around. I mean, sure you can do it in 2D with headlook keybindings, but it's just so natural and intuitive in VR that it feels like a major unfair advantage in dogfights.
Could you tell me more about Distant Worlds?
I wasn't there for the first one, but the second one was basically a community organized, FDev supported several months long expedition out into the black. They had waypoints along the journey where we would meet up in cool systems, have SRV races, and such out in the black. They made the journey possible for someone playing fairly casually to keep up without too much trouble. There were no fleet carriers back then, so we all just made our way along with the expedition and did fun things together in the black. FDev worked with the organizers to have us build the Explorer's Anchorage station as a community event during the expedition, and I can't remember if the whole expedition went, but I ended up out at beagle point before heading back to the bubble. They also gave out ship decals for all the participants that went along, which I usually put on my exploration ship livery even now.
They've already started some pre events for DW3, using colonization to build systems out as a launch point for the next expedition, and when you sign up you agree not to bring your own fleet carrier, so it'll feel a bit closer to the previous journeys. There are a few official carriers that will be making the journey along with the fleet this time. I've signed up with my Mandalay, Cobra Mk V, and a Corsair outfitted for mining so I can help refill the fleet carriers while we're out in the black. They have their own private group if you're worried about gankers in open while you're along for the journey. I haven't been following along too much myself, but they have a roleplay backstory for the whole thing going on as well. It was fun in the past, and gave me a reason to play the game other than the solo content I usually play, so I figured I'd give it another go this time as well.
I'm an on-again, off-again player. I have around 1,500 hours in-game, and have completed most of the grinds (engineering, reputation, guardian), so I mostly just try out new content as it becomes available.
I dropped the game for a few years at the release of Odyssey. That update tanked my performance, introduced some very buggy gameplay, and I was miffed that I never got credited for my pre-order items.
I finally came back for the showdown of cocijo and protection of Earth. It sort of reignited my passion for the game, and I played heavily for the next few months. Let me tell you, supercruise overdrive is a game changer
I'm now back to playing a little more casually, but I still participate in many of the community goals. I also recently completed a second trip to Colonia to finish pinning all my engineering blueprints.
My feelings are a little mixed on the current state of the game. I'm glad that Frontier is back to developing it, after they shifted focus to other properties for so many years. Colonization was a great update, and I'm glad that truckers can now create their own long-term goals.
I don't love that the game now includes pay-to-win elements. Being able to outright buy pre-engineered ships and even space stations just feels contrary to the original pitch of being a trailblazing upstart, working up from a Sidewinder to controlling a grand fleet. I know that's the realities of business, but it does feel like it cheapens the game.
As a whole, I feel things are in a better place now than they were five years ago. They lost a lot of their original dev team to attrition, but the new team focused on Elite seems to slowly be getting up to speed on the codebase, and are now making more substantial fixes and improvements. The "orbital lines" rendering bug was finally fixed in VR, and just this week the dumb Odyssey unit AI was improved. Hopefully soon they'll take a look at some of the anti-aliasing issues that have long plagued the game.
Elite continues to be my comfort game. I can always hop in to do a few missions, take down a pirate warlord, or work towards a community goal. The VR experience is bar none the most impressive sense of scale you can experience in a video game, and the community's dedication to creating custom tools and meta-narratives around the game is unmatched.
Do any of you play with VR or a Hoyas? If so, why? Does it add that much to the experience?
Not anymore, but I played it for a while with a Rift S and a T Flight Hotas X. It was a great experience, highly immersive & unique. Sadly, my stick had way too few buttons available on it, so anything outside of flying from point A to B was cumbersome.
Why are you asking?
I'm building an "everything" corner arcade experience and deciding whether a hotas is a bridge too far. I have a VR headset but am wondering whether a Hotas (in addition to the wheel I purchased) is just a bridge too far. I need convincing to spend the money lol
I will say that if you're looking for a Hotas, anything currently available that is cheaper than VKB is going to not be worth it in the long run. I've tried the X52 (both the old pre-Logitech version and the current model), as well as the Thrustmaster T.X16000m setup, and they all started breaking down with ghost inputs from the buttons and pots wearing out within a couple months, especially on the twist axes.
After being frustrated with the cheaper options and even trying to upgrade one with a hall effect sensor myself, I splurged for the VKB Gladiator NXT stick and omni-throttle a few years back, and haven't had a single input problem since. They cost a third of what the high-end HOTAS setups from somewhere like Vrrpl would be, but for the price, the quality you get is excellent. Their config software is a bit janky, and I had to watch some youtube videos to figure out how to work with it, but the config is stored on the device itself, so once I had it set up how I liked it, I haven't had to worry about it again, even after a couple OS upgrades/reinstalls.
Wow, that's great advice. Frankly, I'll be buying this used and was looking at the Thrustmaster you mentioned. Now I have my marching orders - thanks!!
Funnily enough, I'm encountering this same problem and so is my friend. I have the x56 Logitech and he has the saitek version. How did the hall effect sensor swap go?
Like most of my projects it ended up taking much longer than expected, and I had bought my first VKB stick while I was still working on it. The hall effect sensor actually ended up working fairly well for a bit, and it was a direct replacement for the old twist potentiometer, but I had it and the magnet hot glued into the stick of the X16000 joystick, and it kept coming loose while I was testing it.
I had aspirations of making a new 3D printed case that would hold things better, but the VKB was working so well I never went back to it and instead worked on several of my other projects with my free time instead.
Got a link to the Hall effect sensor? I would like to do the replacement on mine.
I found an email from digikey that had a hall effect sensor in it, and it matches the rough timeframe of when I was working on it as well. The part is listed as:
I didn't get far enough along on the project to have a writeup on my blog, so unfortunately the details from 5-6 years ago are a bit fuzzy. I also can't find the bin where I put all the pieces of the joystick at the moment, but from what I remember the hall sensor itself is hot glued into the top of the metal stick, and I glued the magnet into the plastic case that sat on the stick and rotated around it after carving out a place for it.
Awesome! I will dig around myself and find more parts. I figure while I have the guts out I might as well replace it all with hall effect so I do this once and never again.
I will keep you updated, my fellow tinkering internet denizen.
I've played some with my hotas! I've had fun with using that for space flight and mech games, I just haven't had the room to justify using it lately. I got a Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X off eBay for like $40, well worth the cost of entry to see if it is something you'd enjoy. It came a bit worn, but haven't had issues with drift or ghost inputs. I didn't play Elite Dangerous enough to run into issues of limited buttons, though I could see it happening for some games if you're more used to M+KB.
It is a hard adjustment, I was having more fun but playing worse for a fair number of hours at each new game type on the hotas vs controls I was used to.
Good feedback. I've been playing a VR game in the style of counterstrike and while I'm having a blast and finding it super challenging, my skill level is 1/20th of what it is with mouse and keyboard.
I play with HOTAS and VR when I can. I have a Valve Index and plan on upgrading to the new Valve headset when I can. The HOTAS adds quite a lot and makes flying feel very natural. I did use M&K at the start but I can't go back to it now after the HOTAS.
The VR is an absolute game changer. It is immersion like no other and is both incredible and humbling. Seeing the wonders of space through your cockpit while sitting in the cockpit is absolutely breathtaking. Canyon racing on a ship launched fighter, seeing a black hole up close, flying around a space station, dodging pirates through an asteroid belt, and so much more are just a whole other level of intense and deliver waves of feeling.
Wow, that's a sell!! Games of choice? I like arcade style games but am so down for Sims too
I'm the OP! Elite Dangerous! Lol. Seriously though there are a ton of great VR games. Use the Steam refund to the fullest and find the ones you like best
You bet that I always do. ED it is!
I used to play a lot years ago, but I've always had trouble getting back into it. I gave it a try with Odyssey and found it took so long to get to and from short ground encounters that it almost felt like it was intentionally wasting my time. I loved flying cargo around and even got a HOTAS for it at one point, but I'm not sure anything else in the game ever really clicked for me.
My experience is very similar, got into it a few years ago and had lots of fun, but at some point the game became way too grindy for me. At that point I decided to venture into the unknown and start exploring which was fun for a bit, except for the fact that there was not much of a reward to doing that (Systems looked pretty much the same) other than having your name as the first to be there.
I used to play, but then I changed to Linux and configuring my joystick on it got so awkward that I didn't bother. Also I started to hate the engineering grind, and looking at recent news, looks like they've added ever more grinds.
Perhaps I should try it again some day, perhaps that side has gotten better in the last few years. Also I have never tried VR with Elite, Steam Frame might be a nice thing to try on it.
A while ago, I played a lot. (Steam says 784 hours). I was mostly into the PvP political/territorial aspect of the game. I liked it, but, eventually, I lost interest because there didn't seem to be an end to it all. Gain ground, lose ground; cycle again and again. I'd rather there were some stopping point, such as determining a winner for the month, or the quarter. Same reason I stopped playing Guild Wars 2. Always new things to acquire or craft, materials to gather, money to make, cosmetics to buy, stats to improve -- but no end.
I guess I've changed over the years. I'd sink hundreds of hours into a game, having fun just in the repetitions ("one more Battlefield match"). Now, I want a game with a conclusion, a point at which I'm done, and can put the game down, and move on to something else. I just don't have interest any more in a game that extrapolates to infinity.
I think when you were getting into it, I also just had a bit of a resurgence, and I think that was around the last time that I played much. Fun fact, every time I see you comment, I actually think about Elite Dangerous.
I popped back on for a bit during the Shoulder of Orion event for Distant Worlds 3 prep and did some hauling for a few weeks to help with that. Bought a Mandalay and tried out SCO but otherwise haven't done much lately. When DW3 kicks off in earnest I'll hop on again and keep up with that. Steam says I have 302 hours and that's my second highest after Kerbal Space Program at 718, but life's busy and I don't focus on games for very long anymore.
It's been a while since I've played, but a friend of mine is impressed with the new Caspian explorer ship. I was planning to play some more after the Christmas holidays.