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Elite Dangerous: Horizons |OT| Just scratching the surface

Mengy

wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
The video was cool and all, but I still don't like the ship designs... I like the Diamonback... the Imperial ships... and really that's about it. Python/Anaconda/Corvette are especially boring. Then again I do like a lot of what I see from Star Citizen. I get that Elite is going for a more realistic feel but even so, I prefer the look of a real space shuttle to say the Adder, which just kind of looks like the shuttle's fat cousin.

I'm just the opposite, where I love almost all of Elite's ship designs but I don't care much for Star Citizen's ships. Elite's look more rugged and durable to me, like a "real" ship would, where Star Citizen's mostly look a bit too fantastical and fragile, like they wouldn't be able to survive a single laser blast without flying apart in shreds. IMHO of course.
 

DrBo42

Member
Star Citizen goes for the more fantasy approach to sci-fi ships, like Star Wars. X-Wings and TIE fighters are ridiculous ships that honestly don't make much of any sense. SC goes for cool first rather than practical. Which is why most of their ships are so visually pleasing. The Constellations especially are gorgeous. Honestly Elite has some really boring design but they make sense within the world and flight model.
 

Onemic

Member
How good would you guys say Elite Dangerous is now compared to when it released? I know the game got a lot of flak for there being nothing to do and missions either being extremely repetitive or not working altogether. Has any of this been fixed? Are there any big new features introduced since the game first launched?
 

DrBo42

Member
How good would you guys say Elite Dangerous is now compared to when it released? I know the game got a lot of flak for there being nothing to do and missions either being extremely repetitive or not working altogether. Has any of this been fixed? Are there any big new features introduced since the game first launched?

Not really, no. The missions mostly work but there's really no compelling reason to do any of it, and they're uninteresting. Landings were added but surfaces are just another empty area with very little reason to fly down there. Hopefully 2.1 fixes some of this with the mission overhauls but I'm not holding my breath.

Full disclosure: I'm the very vocal negative voice here.
 

Widge

Member
Sounds like original Elite!

Fly about and make money. Looking forward to update 2.1 then, I've not started playing the game yet but may hold fire for the content to appear.
 

derFeef

Member
When will this update hit? I very much fell in love with this game, but only the mechanical and atmospheric parts of it.
 

DrBo42

Member
When will this update hit? I very much fell in love with this game, but only the mechanical and atmospheric parts of it.

Spring.

Horizon details from the Frontier store:

2.0 – Planetary Landings
Available Now
A whole new angle on the galaxy. Journey from the stars to the surfaces of strange worlds, and hit the ground running in the new Scarab Surface Recon Vehicle.

2.1 – The Engineers
Coming Spring 2016
Everything changes. Introducing an expanded mission system and game-changing loot. Craft exotic weapons and modules for your spacecraft and build a ship unlike any other.

2.2 – Guardians
Coming Summer 2016
Take what comes and strike back with double. Bring a second ship to every combat encounter with Ship-Launched Fighters and defend your passengers against the deadliest threats in the galaxy.

2.3 – The Commanders
Coming Fall 2016
Team up and stand together. Forge your own identity with the new Commander Creator, then share your bridge with Multi-Crew and fly with friends.

2.4 – TBA
A secret revealed in Elite Dangerous: Horizons’ final expansion.
 
Wow, I've played close to 350 hours. Haven't done that with a single game in a loooooong time. My next highest is Dark souls II at 233 hours.
 

Wreav

Banned
Call me a whiner, but the idea of "seasons" based on calendar years is REALLY FUCKING STUPID when you have to wait 6 months for the first installment.

The fact that this bleeds into no Rift support at launch is just a terrible deal all the way around.
 
Call me a whiner, but the idea of "seasons" based on calendar years is REALLY FUCKING STUPID when you have to wait 6 months for the first installment.

Well, I'm sure they weren't planning on this. They stuck to their schedule last year. Definitely disappointing, though--it better be worth it.

whiner
 

derFeef

Member
Wee more time to save money...
Speaking of money... what's the first ship I should get? I fell in love with the design of the Diamondback Explorer and it should suit my needs but that will be a while. I guess an Adder and make money with mining?
 

Burny

Member
More like "dat deferred tax year", with the delay being just a side effect.

/accounting

Wouldn't be surprised if it's not just a side effect of accounting shenanigans, but a necessary delay that just needed an occasion for happening. :p

After all, just counting 2.1's major features, they're adding the NPC character creation/generation, remodeling the mission generation around the characters, probably involving basic dialogue, and adding the crafting feature, possibly requiring some redesign work of existing ship and equipment assets, not to mention balancing.

No idea how far along they are, but if the first of those features were to be as half baked as some other aspects of the game (power play? :p ), the game would probably have to live with that going forward. There won't be all that much opportunity of improving the system again if the basics are broken, if the devs are to be assigned to other expansions after that. For the most important world/character building update so far, that would be a major bummer. >.< At least I'd hope they do the ground work on the NPC system properly.
 

Mengy

wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
The crafting feature is what I'm most looking forward to, even more than the missions. For us explorers they have the chance here to really give us some nice options. I'm curious to see if they actually do or if it's all just focused on the usual combat crowd.
 

Onemic

Member
The crafting feature is what I'm most looking forward to, even more than the missions. For us explorers they have the chance here to really give us some nice options. I'm curious to see if they actually do or if it's all just focused on the usual combat crowd.

Right now, is exploring at least fun? In a game like this, I think I'd be more interested in the exploring aspect rather than the combat.

Is the game really 1:1 with our current scientific mapping of the milky way?
 

hepburn3d

Member
Right now, is exploring at least fun? In a game like this, I think I'd be more interested in the exploring aspect rather than the combat.

Is the game really 1:1 with our current scientific mapping of the milky way?

It's a 1:1 scale with an accurate amount of stars to with plus or minus 1 million :D I'm guessing.

It really is fun. If you explore for the money and XP it burns out quick. If you explore for the discovery it's amazing.

I'm currently 34k ly out with distant worlds to and it's an amazing experience finding an earth like world this far away
 

Onemic

Member
It's a 1:1 scale with an accurate amount of stars to with plus or minus 1 million :D I'm guessing.

It really is fun. If you explore for the money and XP it burns out quick. If you explore for the discovery it's amazing.

I'm currently 34k ly out with distant worlds to and it's an amazing experience finding an earth like world this far away

Sweet, is planetary exploring fun too, or are they all pretty much empty worlds?

Also what type of phenomena did they add to the world? Is it possible to find pulsars/neutrons stars, supernovae, nebulas, blackholes, etc? Is gravity approximated decently? Are the planets/stars and other phenomena static or dynamic in that they can interact with each other i.e. a star collapsing into a pulsar, a comets trajectory being changed due to gravity from a planet/star, two black holes combining and giving off gravitational waves(I know that's a long shot but still :p)
 

Wreav

Banned
Nearly all of those galactic phenomenon you described would not even be visibly changing to our perspective, and no none of those are in the game except for black holes and nebula.
 

Person

Member
There's neutron stars, but they're really dense and dangerous, you can see them, but they're a small dot. They have some gravitational lensing, but you won't see it against a dark background, but you can in a nebula or against the light of the core.
The body exclusion zone for neutrons are very very very big, so you won't really be able to get near one at any conceivable measure

You can definitely see nebulas once you're inside one, but if you're close to the parent star, the ship dims the cockpit window so the sun doesn't blind you - once you're about 200-ish Ls away from the drop-in point, you'll definitely see the colors of the nebula, if they're big enough, it'll fill your field of view

Black holes have a lot of lensing, they aren't very dangerous but they're neat to look at
 

Person

Member
Sweet, is planetary exploring fun too, or are they all pretty much empty worlds?

Also what type of phenomena did they add to the world? Is it possible to find pulsars/neutrons stars, supernovae, nebulas, blackholes, etc? Is gravity approximated decently? Are the planets/stars and other phenomena static or dynamic in that they can interact with each other i.e. a star collapsing into a pulsar, a comets trajectory being changed due to gravity from a planet/star, two black holes combining and giving off gravitational waves(I know that's a long shot but still :p)

The planets are pretty empty, gravity affects ship landing, not in the same way KSP does, but enough to give you a very hard time if you're over something with 2.5Gs and you're sitting in a big ship

doesn't mean you can't find cool looking planets though, I often land just for views and screenshots
 

Onemic

Member
There's neutron stars, but they're really dense and dangerous, you can see them, but they're a small dot. They have some gravitational lensing, but you won't see it against a dark background, but you can in a nebula or against the light of the core.
The body exclusion zone for neutrons are very very very big, so you won't really be able to get near one at any conceivable measure

You can definitely see nebulas once you're inside one, but if you're close to the parent star, the ship dims the cockpit window so the sun doesn't blind you - once you're about 200-ish Ls away from the drop-in point, you'll definitely see the colors of the nebula, if they're big enough, it'll fill your field of view

Black holes have a lot of lensing, they aren't very dangerous but they're neat to look at

A neutron star is dangerous but a black hole isnt? Why is that?

And does the body exclusion zone straight up stop your ship from getting pulled in and destroyed by tidal forces or is it just a warning? If I got really close to a black hole or neutron star what would happen?
 
Not sure why he says black holes aren't dangerous--they are, especially because it can be hard to tell how close you can be before you get deaded.
 

Person

Member
A neutron star is dangerous but a black hole isnt? Why is that?

And does the body exclusion zone straight up stop your ship from getting pulled in and destroyed by tidal forces or is it just a warning? If I got really close to a black hole or neutron star what would happen?

Well, I've been just 30km from the black hole, dropping myself into normal space to get closer and my temperature only went to 30% before I decided I would pull out, wanted to see the effects up closer

neutron stars are literally the size of like, a dot, like any other in the sky. But the size of the body exclusion zone they have is usually taller than your screen on jump-in, so it's very very difficult to spot the line unless you've done a lot of neutron farming before. You just can't get close enough to them at all, and they're really difficult to see. Plus, they heat you up faster than a hot pocket in a microwave.

The body exclusion zone drops you before you're in any real danger, but since it's an emergency drop, you take hull damage, and it's much easier to inflict on yourself near a neutron star.
 

Person

Member
Not sure why he says black holes aren't dangerous--they are, especially because it can be hard to tell how close you can be before you get deaded.

Any body can kill you if you fly close enough to it, but the ship emergency drop usually takes care of that. You'd have to try to kill yourself with most black holes, and they're pretty hard to miss

When you target one, you can see exactly how far away you are from one, and you can also see your heat

While they can kill you, it's far more likely you'll die by a hard landing, neutron star, white dwarf, or even a field of brown dwarves

They're pretty eerie, but mostly harmless compared to all the other things that you could die by. Like I said, I've been <30Km from a stellar mass black hole (can't find a picture) but here's one I've been 60km away from: http://i.imgur.com/fwnnHEr.jpg

I've done plenty of debug-cam close fly-bys without taking any damage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CttGRmt-uwM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBp3mplYFPY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2A78cuLIIg
 
I'm extremely disappointed to hear that there is no planned client updates until 2.1/1.6 which has been delayed until June. This means anyone holding out hope about native Oculus support anytime near launch can give up that hope officially now. Also the crashing near RESes that myself and many other's have reported since Horizons' launch is going to be something sticking around for quite sometime. This is the most disappointed I've been when it comes to Frontier and Elite. There are major bugs that will be hanging around for at least 3 more months.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDange...d_news_cmdrs_no_new_fixes_until_next_planned/
 

Onemic

Member
Nearly all of those galactic phenomenon you described would not even be visibly changing to our perspective, and no none of those are in the game except for black holes and nebula.

I just read the David Braben AMA on reddit and it seems like most of those things are either in or are planned to be in at some point(minus gravitational waves obvs :p)

Well, I've been just 30km from the black hole, dropping myself into normal space to get closer and my temperature only went to 30% before I decided I would pull out, wanted to see the effects up closer

neutron stars are literally the size of like, a dot, like any other in the sky. But the size of the body exclusion zone they have is usually taller than your screen on jump-in, so it's very very difficult to spot the line unless you've done a lot of neutron farming before. You just can't get close enough to them at all, and they're really difficult to see. Plus, they heat you up faster than a hot pocket in a microwave.

The body exclusion zone drops you before you're in any real danger, but since it's an emergency drop, you take hull damage, and it's much easier to inflict on yourself near a neutron star.

Ok. Im sold. This is literally like my dream game come to life. Like literally, my career path to get into graphics is partially because Id want to create/modify an engine that could do pretty much everything Elite: Dangerous is already doing. Can you give some examples of some exploring you can do and benefits from doing them? Since Im already expecting the mission system and bounties to be really bad I need exploration to at least be pretty good.

So far I've done the very first tutorial on flying and flying with a mouse is really weird. Im guessing a flightstick makes flying a lot easier? Also is there any chance that the HTC Vive will be supported at some point in the near future?
 

frontieruk

Member
I just read the David Braben AMA on reddit and it seems like most of those things are either in or are planned to be in at some point(minus gravitational waves obvs :p)



Ok. Im sold. This is literally like my dream game come to life. Like literally, my career path to get into graphics is partially because Id want to create/modify an engine that could do pretty much everything Elite: Dangerous is already doing. Can you give some examples of some exploring you can do and benefits from doing them? Since Im already expecting the mission system and bounties to be really bad I need exploration to at least be pretty good.

So far I've done the very first tutorial on flying and flying with a mouse is really weird. Im guessing a flightstick makes flying a lot easier? Also is there any chance that the HTC Vive will be supported at some point in the near future?

Plug a 360 pad in, it does a very good job ;) and yes it's the "first officially supported" vr headset due to vive being steamVR the ruckus caused when this was announced was pretty funny.
 

Person

Member
I just read the David Braben AMA on reddit and it seems like most of those things are either in or are planned to be in at some point(minus gravitational waves obvs :p)



Ok. Im sold. This is literally like my dream game come to life. Like literally, my career path to get into graphics is partially because Id want to create/modify an engine that could do pretty much everything Elite: Dangerous is already doing. Can you give some examples of some exploring you can do and benefits from doing them? Since Im already expecting the mission system and bounties to be really bad I need exploration to at least be pretty good.

So far I've done the very first tutorial on flying and flying with a mouse is really weird. Im guessing a flightstick makes flying a lot easier? Also is there any chance that the HTC Vive will be supported at some point in the near future?

I think it's already supported

I'll be honest, exploration is pretty barren, but I like it anyway for the few and far in-between cool places.
 

Person

Member
I'm extremely disappointed to hear that there is no planned client updates until 2.1/1.6 which has been delayed until June. This means anyone holding out hope about native Oculus support anytime near launch can give up that hope officially now. Also the crashing near RESes that myself and many other's have reported since Horizons' launch is going to be something sticking around for quite sometime. This is the most disappointed I've been when it comes to Frontier and Elite. There are major bugs that will be hanging around for at least 3 more months.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDange...d_news_cmdrs_no_new_fixes_until_next_planned/

Honestly, I really don't mind. Releasing things before they're ready is exactly what got this game so many bugs in the first place. I'm glad they're taking a breather to do what should've been done a while ago. If it's not now, it'll be later, with a lot more bugs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/48lsif/fd_revenue_warning/d0kpbgy
 
Honestly, I really don't mind. Releasing things before they're ready is exactly what got this game so many bugs in the first place. I'm glad they're taking a breather to do what should've been done a while ago. If it's not now, it'll be later, with a lot more bugs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/48lsif/fd_revenue_warning/d0kpbgy

I'm cool with the 2.1 delay and I'm not that surprised by no Oculus updates but no plans for general bug fix client updates until the June, 2.1 release is a big disappoint. I can't mine right now due to constant crashing. The only thing they are planning to do is to prevent the server from putting the bugged mission types on the bulletin boards. Client bugs, broken AI, 3 more months for any updates.
 

Person

Member
I'm cool with the 2.1 delay and I'm not that surprised by no Oculus updates but no plans for general bug fix client updates until the June, 2.1 release is a big disappoint. I can't mine right now due to constant crashing. The only thing they are planning to do is to prevent the server from putting the bugged mission types on the bulletin boards. Client bugs, broken AI, 3 more months for any updates.

I mean, yeah, it is a bit of a bummer that we have to wait so long before we see anything new, but at least we know it's coming eventually.
 

DrBo42

Member
I'm cool with the 2.1 delay and I'm not that surprised by no Oculus updates but no plans for general bug fix client updates until the June, 2.1 release is a big disappoint. I can't mine right now due to constant crashing. The only thing they are planning to do is to prevent the server from putting the bugged mission types on the bulletin boards. Client bugs, broken AI, 3 more months for any updates.

Seems absolutely insane to me. This first dlc season really is ridiculous in terms of roll-out. They better get their shit together. At this point I can't really imagine them releasing everything else within the year. Whatever 2.4 is will most likely be gutted or moved entirely into next season.
 

Jedi2016

Member
Eh, I'm okay with this, mainly because I won't be back to civilization from the Distant Worlds trip until the end of summer anyway, so hey FDev, take your time!!! :)

I'm currently 34,000+ ly's from Sol, over the half way point to Beagle now!
Yeah, I'm in the same boat, months away from any change in a patch from having any effect on my gameplay. So I'm entirely "meh" about the delay.
 

LeBart

Member
Seems absolutely insane to me. This first dlc season really is ridiculous in terms of roll-out. They better get their shit together. At this point I can't really imagine them releasing everything else within the year. Whatever 2.4 is will most likely be gutted or moved entirely into next season.

Honestly I hope after what happened with 2.0 they move away from the one-year cycle. If it's gonna take them 18 months to release all the Horizons content instead of 12 then they should just take that time and make it good. I really don't care if season 3 begins in mid 2017. In fact I would be pretty stocked if it did.

They've added and immediately abandonned so much stuff at this point, they can't keep doing that forever. I think if season 3 is just called "let's take a year off and fix some shit" and is nothing but bug fixes and improvements of existing features, it'll make more people happy than a fancy new gimmick like walking around your ship.

Frontier need to ask themselves if they want more money more often or a more satisfied user base. The way things are going right now, I don't know that many people will be left to buy season 4 or 5.
 

DrBo42

Member
Honestly I hope after what happened with 2.0 they move away from the one-year cycle. If it's gonna take them 18 months to release all the Horizons content instead of 12 then they should just take that time and make it good. I really don't care if season 3 begins in mid 2017. In fact I would be pretty shocked if it did.

They've added and immediately abandonned so much stuff at this point, they can't keep doing that forever. I think if season 3 is just called "let's take a year off and fix some shit" and is nothing but bug fixes and improvements of existing features, it'll make more people happy than a fancy new gimmick like walking around your ship.

Frontier need to ask themselves if they want more money more often or a more satisfied user base. The way things are going right now, I don't know that many people will be left to buy season 4 or 5.

I agree with everything you're saying. The problem is they need empty gimmicks like landing and walking around your ship to move copies and keep the doors open. Their ability to monetize appearance items etc has been extremely weak. I mean FFS, how long did it take for us to get an Anaconda skin? Haha. Hard to see what the future is going to be for the game if they keep up such a weak performance update/feature-wise. Customers aren't going to buy the season packs until the end of the year or wait to get the previous year's content if their timetable and delivery of content continues to be this bad.
 

Pomerlaw

Member
Not really a delay, it has always been planned for Spring, and Spring ends June 21st ;)


Braben said ;
Just to be clear, although we plan no major updates before 2.1 The Engineers, there will still be minor updates. These are not going to stop.

So bug fixes could (probably will) happen until then.,
 

mcrommert

Banned
Hey everyone...new to the game and got the non horizons version and have a few questions. Playing on a 360/xbox one pad and having issues with controls. Remapped thrusters to directional pad...but still don't feel like the default controls are really getting the best of the of the game. I have a keyboard in front of me and have no issue mapping stuff like charging ftl on it, but i think maneuvering controls aren't great
 

~Cross~

Member
I'm fine with the delay. But if I was getting a Rift with the intention of enjoying ED, I'd be salty.

Isn't the point of steamVR to let any VR system work out of the box with games that support it? Sure a lot of time was being used to get it more in tune with the Vive but people can already play Elite with a DK2 just fine. Whats stopping them from playing on a release version?

I ordered a Thrustmaster 2960703 T-Flight Hotas X Flight Stick. Good buy for Elite/Star Citizen or no?

Thats basically a hotas x and its what I use. As long as you use a custom keybind set for it it'll work great.
 

Person

Member
Great budget stick. Isinona uses it and he's one of the best pilots in Elite--look up his Youtube channel.

He also uses an x52, but yeah, before my HOTAS x broke to something I did, it worked perfectly. The plastic is a bit sticky, so it doesn't feel nice of you have sweaty hands, but you can't find a better HOTAS for that price (maybe a black widow of you live in England). Functionally, it's perfect and the build quality of thrustmaster is generally quite good. If you run out of buttons, bind modifiers.
 

Person

Member
Isn't the point of steamVR to let any VR system work out of the box with games that support it? Sure a lot of time was being used to get it more in tune with the Vive but people can already play Elite with a DK2 just fine. Whats stopping them from playing on a release version?

They stopped supporting the incremental SDKs for every version of the rift after a certain point, because it would mean that would have to keep pushing updates for it, and decided it wasn't worth it until the SDK stabilised (CV1).

You can still play with a DK2, but you'd have to downgrade your SDK or something, which would affect other rift games that might have moved onto the newer versions.

Don't quote me on this though, I have no idea if I remember any of this correctly, but it was something along those lines.
 
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