Comparison to Elite Dangerous?

Nigel_Strange · Post by **Nigel_Strange** » Sat Nov 15, 2014 8:46 am

This does not bode well. I specifically require an offline game so that I do not have to be pestered by other people. Space may be infinite, but it's not big enough for me and other players.

mmRunner · Post by **mmRunner** » Sat Nov 15, 2014 10:55 am

From post: 174231, Topic: tid=11542, author=Nigel_Strange wrote:Space may be infinite, but it's not big enough for me and other players.

... worth to be used in a signature!

SeeJay · Post by **SeeJay** » Sat Nov 15, 2014 9:40 pm

From post: 174227, Topic: tid=11542, author=sundalo wrote:Chaos going on at the ED forums with regards to the promised offline single player function removed in exchange for an online all the time for solo and multiplayer. Talks of refunds and lawsuits now and we are just less than a month away, ouch lol.

And that's why I never have, nor will ever back a game Before release.

sundalo · Post by **sundalo** » Sat Nov 15, 2014 10:13 pm

Still looking forward to the release, but I sympathize with the backers with Internet concerns who are unable to play for various reasons. Hopefully Mr. Braben will address this issue on the premiere event party on the 22nd.

[Edited on 11-15-2014 by sundalo]

_-Caleb-_ · Post by **_-Caleb-_** » Mon Nov 17, 2014 3:44 pm

Confirmed: The game will be launched without offline mode...

No offline = no game, refund. :S (And im the webmaster of www.elitedangerous.es :S)

Kambalo · Post by **Kambalo** » Mon Nov 17, 2014 8:31 pm

And players are raging 417 pages in the main forum of people rage quitting and demanding refunds. Glad I didnt buy this game.

Nigel_Strange · Post by **Nigel_Strange** » Tue Nov 18, 2014 10:43 pm

I wonder if anyone remembers Hellgate London. That was a multiplayer/singleplayer game. They DID release it for single player, but you could not move your characters between single/multi.

Then, after a year or so, the just closed up shop. No more servers. All the time that you put into your multi-player character was just flushed, instantly.

You can't really depend on strangers for your gaming experience. That's why single-player offline is so important.

Post by **DaveK** » Wed Nov 19, 2014 9:02 pm

I would need SP and MP with profiles that carry over - at least with frame, money, equipment and experience points. I just wouldn't trust my connection to a server (and I'm getting 25Mb). I'm in the UK and even on Galactica I get several disconnects per session - Vice's patch to reconnect works for me 95%+ of the time so I'm a happy bunny!

Hopefully enough people will stick so there's enough money left to fully develop the game. Perhaps he'll give some info about offline play at the launch. Just because it's going to launch without offline, doesn't mean it'll never have the facility

He said, hopefully

Nigel_Strange · Post by **Nigel_Strange** » Thu Nov 20, 2014 1:28 am

I read a little about their justification for the dropping of offline. They want to be able to publish events and ensure that everyone has the same universe to explore.

To which, I would argue, neither of these issues is a problem for me. If I'm in offline mode, I have absolutely no interest if anyone else is seeing the universe in exactly the same way that I'm seeing it. It's my universe, and I can't even tell in the real world if anyone experiences qualia the same way I do.

As for events... they can provide these in patches that I can download (or choose not to if I decide that I don't want them).

Post by **DaveK** » Thu Nov 20, 2014 9:16 am

I'm totally with you on that! It sounds like it's 'no offline . . . ever' rather than 'no offline . . . just yet' and that's a complete no no!

It looks like the Kickstarter fund raising was just too successful. The game has so much money it can simply afford to ignore a significant section of its support base - so much for 'be part of the development'

OneoftheLost · Post by **OneoftheLost** » Thu Nov 27, 2014 5:13 pm

So mad about this. I was playing FFE up until the KS for this, and I backed without a second thought. They even answered me specifically when I asked about offline. ( My internet being incredibly spotty.) This announcement felt like a slap in the face and I never would have backed had I known that the development was centered around an internet connection.

On the brighter side it drove me back to evochron so...

Enjoying OFFLlNE SP as I type this on my phone.

Post by **DaveK** » Fri Nov 28, 2014 11:06 pm

From post: 174350, Topic: tid=11542, author=OneoftheLost wrote: On the brighter side it drove me back to evochron so...

Enjoying OFFLlNE SP as I type this on my phone.

Perhaps a name change to 'OneoftheFound' might be in order?

Anyway, wb!

Nigel_Strange · Post by **Nigel_Strange** » Sat Dec 06, 2014 5:31 pm

I preordered a Elite package a while ago (before they decided to pull the plug on offline mode).

Recently, they released a client, which I downloaded. It allowed me to play some combat tutorials, so I got my first taste of this game early.

Overall, the graphics and sounds are great. The little controls you have over your ship are kind of neat. The ship damage is interesting, especially when the cockpit loses integrity, and you're fighting without a windshield, breathing air from your space suit.

The controls, though, are a bugbear. I had to hunt down and edit an xml file in order to begin working on the control scheme, and it was apparently looking for tags that I thought I had erased, and thus invalidated all of the changes I had made. Very frustrating!

The ship (cobra, I think) steers like a cow. I'm used to slow-turning ships in EM, as I routinely drive a Starmaster, but the Cobra (or whatever is used in the tutorials) is so sluggish that it feels like trying to dogfight in an aircraft carrier.

Post by **Marvin** » Sat Dec 06, 2014 7:59 pm

From post: 174451, Topic: tid=11542, author=Nigel_Strange wrote:The ship (cobra, I think) steers like a cow. I'm used to slow-turning ships in EM, as I routinely drive a Starmaster, but the Cobra (or whatever is used in the tutorials) is so sluggish that it feels like trying to dogfight in an aircraft carrier.

That should only become a problem when ED's AI ships turn like EM's Vonari fighters.

Nigel_Strange · Post by **Nigel_Strange** » Tue Dec 09, 2014 3:31 am

Dogfighting in E.D. feels a lot more like dogfighting in a fighter jet rather than a space ship. I have to back to E.M. to get the hang of space flight again.

Still, the little details in the interrior of the E.D. cockpit are cool.

Nigel_Strange · Post by **Nigel_Strange** » Wed Dec 17, 2014 6:10 pm

The game opened yesterday, so I got my first chance to play it. Very impressed so far, actually. There are some weird issues with how the ship handles, but the universe feels big and the graphics are nice. No planetary landings, though.

There are two modes of play: multiplayer and solo. Both modes require online connection, but at least in Solo mode I can still play without being bothered by griefers, which is my typical MP experience.

In solo mode, the game world feels populated, but not overpopulated.

The ship does require some skill to navigate. You can't just jump to a gate and go through. Jumping between systems is pretty seamless. Within systems, you use a super-cruise mode, which is a bit like going superfast (multiples of c), but it requires a buildup and slowdown. Most importantly, within a system, there is no autopilot, so moving to a place requires a lot of careful piloting and finesse in order to get near your point.

If you happen to supercruise too close to a major body (like a planet) you will drop out of supercruise suddenly, and your ship will take damage, but you will not crash into the planet (which is a relief).

Post by **Marvin** » Wed Dec 17, 2014 8:35 pm

From post: 174578, Topic: tid=11542, author=Nigel_Strange wrote:Jumping between systems is pretty seamless.

Does that mean space is a sandbox (one continuous universe) or is it split up into boxes where you use pseudo hyperspace jumps to transit systems?

Nigel_Strange · Post by **Nigel_Strange** » Wed Dec 17, 2014 9:24 pm

It is hard to say. The same control is used for both jumping between systems and supercruise, so if you engage the control with a distant star system selected, it will engage the jump.

An interesting feature is how distances are represented. Objects in other systems are X Ly away, while within system they are Ls. As you get under a light second, it is in Mm then Km, and so on. Also, when you select a target and start moving toward it, it shows the distance above, and the ETA below. So, if you are going to a starbase in system that is 4 Ls away, before you engage supercruise, it will have your ETA measured in years. The ETA shrinks down to seconds as you engage supercruise.

That said, it is probably impossible, or at least infeasible, to determine whether the universe is actually seamless or not, because even in supercruise, it might take a year or so to get from one star system to another, and I, for one, have other things I'd rather be doing. However, I would add that when you select a distant star system, it shows up on your HUD like any other bracketed object, so that you can point at it and see where it is in relation to your own position in space, so it actually feels like a seamless universe, whether or not it actually is one.

What I meant by seamless is that there is no loading screen when you jump between systems. You enter a kind of warp state (which is indeed a creepy place) and you come out near the star on the other side already in supercruise mode (so that you have to turn to avoid getting too close to the star, which looms upon you really fast).

In EM, it is possible to cruise from one star system to another without using jump drive, but I have not done it, nor am I likely to. The game does not show me the ETA, but I imagine it would be measured in weeks, perhaps months or years, of ever-tedious void, and I didn't pack enough sandwiches to last that long.

I suppose for more realism, you could have the game simulate going into hibernation during travel, essentially making your computer screen black for the number of years it would take to get there, and not allowing you to wake your computer up for any reason during this time.

Post by **Marvin** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 3:54 am

From post: 174581, Topic: tid=11542, author=Nigel_Strange wrote:I would add that when you select a distant star system, it shows up on your HUD like any other bracketed object, so that you can point at it and see where it is in relation to your own position in space....

But no ETE or ETA when you throttle up? (Still, it does sound like it's seamless.)

Nigel_Strange · Post by **Nigel_Strange** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 8:36 am

I encountered some weirdness.

Last night, I took a contract to kill some pirates. I had to kill 5 and I had to do it in two hours. I wandered around the system, but could not identify any pirates, so I quit the game and went to bed (it was already late). When I played again tonight, I found that, although I had quit the game, the time on the mission kept ticking away. I guess this is the downside to online play: you can't really save your progress. The game continues to play without you. I do not like that. I also do not like the fact that I can't pause the game. I have other things in my life that sometimes require my attention, and I think I should be able to pause the game when I need to in order to deal with them.

Post by **DaveK** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 4:54 pm

From post: 174581, Topic: tid=11542, author=Nigel_Strange wrote: In EM, it is possible to cruise from one star system to another without using jump drive, but I have not done it, nor am I likely to. The game does not show me the ETA, but I imagine it would be measured in weeks, perhaps months or years, of ever-tedious void, and I didn't pack enough sandwiches to last that long.

A lot of sandwiches me thinks. I think it was Marvin who calculated that if you cranked you speed up to 4000+ you traverse a about one and a half sectors in an hour (real time). With a bit of trig and the sX, sY coordinates you can easily work out the linear distance between any two systems. Sapphire to Olympus would take around 37 days continuous flying in real time.

I jumped out 300 000 sectors in a fraction of that time

Sapphire to Thuban represents one of the shortest routes in the game - 13+ days!!

Nigel_Strange · Post by **Nigel_Strange** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 6:36 pm

Certainly peanuts compared to real interplanetary (or interstellar) distances. For example, I think I remember hearing it would take about 4 years to get a crew from Earth orbit to Mars. I imagine the crew spending all their free time playing EM, and jumping back and forth between Earth and Mars at about 5 seconds a trip, smacking their foreheads, and complaining about the lack of fulcrum jump capability in NASA spacecraft.

Post by **Marvin** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 8:11 pm

Four years would be a round trip ... unless NASA decided to launch at the wrong time. At optimum, the trip, one way, would take less than two years.

Post by **DaveK** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 10:03 pm

From post: 174596, Topic: tid=11542, author=Nigel_Strange wrote:Certainly peanuts compared to real interplanetary (or interstellar) distances. For example, I think I remember hearing it would take about 4 years to get a crew from Earth orbit to Mars. I imagine the crew spending all their free time playing EM, and jumping back and forth between Earth and Mars at about 5 seconds a trip, smacking their foreheads, and complaining about the lack of fulcrum jump capability in NASA spacecraft.

I'm pretty sure that's not quite what people think of when they say a game should have play longevity!!

:P:P:P

Post by **DaveK** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 10:07 pm

From post: 174599, Topic: tid=11542, author=Marvin wrote:Four years would be a round trip ... unless NASA decided to launch at the wrong time. At optimum, the trip, one way, would take less than two years.

Am I the only one who has found the ready acceptance of 'one way' to be both inspiring and surprising for private space companies (and now NASA since they no longer carry the can for the fall out from one way missions)? Think of Kennedy's Moon speech with the wording changed to omit the 'safe return' bit!