Elite Dangerous

[QuantumPion]

ThinClient, thanks for your time.
I would download it today and start as soon as I buy a Logitech 3D Pro joystick later (already tried keyboard in the training and quit, no chance at all).

- Which mode should I start with? I'm not going solo / no other friends to play with.
- What are the main objects for a starter ? (Absolutely no idea about the gameplay yet)
- Should I bother with the training section?

1) Just play online mode. There's not really much chance of getting attacked by another player unless you are looking for trouble (in a warzone or event area).
2) getting a feel for the game and making some money to afford a better ship and equipment
3) sure, the training missions are a good way to make sure you know how to land/dock and your controls are set up good.

Starting out, first do some billboard cargo run missions. Do a few of these until you can upgrade your frame shift drive to at least class C (to find best selection of equipment, go to high population high-tech systems. Use the galaxy map tools to figure out where they are).

Next, start trading rare goods (extremely high profit margin, requires practically no capital). You need to transport them 120-150 LY but net you 15,000 per ton. In a sidewinder with 6 cargo that means 90,000 per trip, which takes maybe 15 minutes or so. There are various websites which list where rare goods can be found but a sample run is from Eranin to Leesti.

Once you've made your first rare good run or two it's up to you to decide what you want to do next. You can upgrade to a new ship - the eagle is good for bounty hunting if you want to try dogfighting. The hauler or adder is good for more rare goods trading.

 

[Markbnj]

It's not 2 billion systems. It's 400 billion systems.

Thanks for the report. It does sound fun, and I'm probably going to pop for it. But on that 400 billion systems claim, I just wanted to point out that if they have very efficient test code that requires 50 milliseconds to access each system and verify that it exists, the test will require 634 years to complete.

So I guess we'll have to take that on faith.

 

[ThinClient]

ThinClient, thanks for your time.
I would download it today and start as soon as I buy a Logitech 3D Pro joystick later (already tried keyboard in the training and quit, no chance at all).

- Which mode should I start with? I'm not going solo / no other friends to play with.
- What are the main objects for a starter ? (Absolutely no idea about the gameplay yet)
- Should I bother with the training section?

I play with keyboard and mouse. I do very well.

There are many people who rock games with joysticks. I am not one of them. :\ My brain am cannot joystick.

There's nothing wrong with solo mode or private party mode. Private mode is basically solo mode if you don't have friends to join you. Nothing wrong with playing in open play, either. It's a lot of fun to have other players involved.

The main objectives for a starter player are to get used to your ship and combat. Learn how to travel between systems, learn how the FSD system works, learn how to dock, etc. If I haven't answered the question properly, then I must have misunderstood the question, sorry!

I would certainly try the training scenarios several times, but don't worry too much about failing them repeatedly. You can't change your weapon selections and they give you some crummy weapons for starter players. Play them a few times and move on. Don't spend too much time on them.

 

[ThinClient]

Thanks for the report. It does sound fun, and I'm probably going to pop for it. But on that 400 billion systems claim, I just wanted to point out that if they have very efficient test code that requires 50 milliseconds to access each system and verify that it exists, the test will require 634 years to complete.

So I guess we'll have to take that on faith.

I'm not sure what you mean. Take what on faith? The existence of 400 billion separate and unique accessible star systems?

It's true, lol.

There are people who've taken weeks flying as far out as they have the patience to fly. I saw one guy on the Frontier forum the other day talking about how he's made it 14,000 lightyears from Sol and he's nowhere near the opposite end of the galaxy.

The systems are already in place. They're even named properly, according to real star charts of our galaxy provided by NASA.

 

[DigDog]

celestia does the same.
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

 

[ThinClient]

celestia does the same.
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

Hey, that looks pretty neat

 

[Markbnj]

I'm not sure what you mean. Take what on faith? The existence of 400 billion separate and unique accessible star systems?

What I mean is that it is impossible for even a piece of computer code that only takes 50 milliseconds per check to have checked them all. Therefore, by definition, any statement that there are 400 billion visitable systems is being made based on the design capabilities of the system, and not on any basis that has practical meaning.

 

[ThinClient]

What I mean is that it is impossible for even a piece of computer code that only takes 50 milliseconds per check to have checked them all. Therefore, by definition, any statement that there are 400 billion visitable systems is being made based on the design capabilities of the system, and not on any basis that has practical meaning.

Why would you ever need to check all of them all at once?

It doesn't seem like your effort to have to check all of them sequentially has any practical meaning.

 

[ThinClient]

I've been playing with SweetFX to fix the colors and bloom. More screenies to come in a few minutes as I collect them. Also, I edited my config file to give myself 70 FOV. By default, the game's max FOV slider setting only gives you 60 which feels like my face is smashed up against the windscreen.

 

[ThinClient]

Notice the corrections between the blotchy areas of the star's surface, now gloriously gorgeous.

 

[ThinClient]

Stations textures really look good now with color correction and proper lighting.

 

[ThinClient]

Ooooo, dark and foreboding!

Station internals look infinitely better.

 

[ThinClient]

The maintenance bay looks pretty wicked.

Leaving the station:

 

[Worthington]

Looks good man!

 

[Omar F1]

Quantum / ThinClient, thanks very much for the tips, it will help me to start and get over the track faster.

I play with keyboard and mouse. I do very well.
There are many people who rock games with joysticks. I am not one of them. :\ My brain am cannot joystick.

Never used a joystick before, but lets try and learn something new.

 

[Markbnj]

Why would you ever need to check all of them all at once?

It doesn't seem like your effort to have to check all of them sequentially has any practical meaning.

True, I could check four at a time with a four core processor. So, more like 155 years.

 

[ThinClient]

True, I could check four at a time with a four core processor. So, more like 155 years.

Why do you need to "check" any of them? Why would you be doing seemingly arbitrary work? Why would all of them need to be checked? What the hell are you even checking for?

I don't understand what your objection is. Oh no! A task that has no reason to be executed would take a really long time!!

 

[Markbnj]

Why do you need to "check" any of them? Why would you be doing seemingly arbitrary work? Why would all of them need to be checked? What the hell are you even checking for?

I don't understand what your objection is. Oh no! A task that has no reason to be executed would take a really long time!!

It wasn't an objection of any kind. It's simply an interesting claim to me, in that it can't be verified in any practical way. What they are saying, at heart, is that the procedures that generate the content can generate 400 billion playable systems. That number comes from some mathematical constraint or thin air. It doesn't really matter. They might as well have said "endless" or "infinite."

 

[QuantumPion]

What's your name Thin? Add me to your friend list.

 

[ThinClient]

It wasn't an objection of any kind. It's simply an interesting claim to me, in that it can't be verified in any practical way. What they are saying, at heart, is that the procedures that generate the content can generate 400 billion playable systems. That number comes from some mathematical constraint or thin air. It doesn't really matter. They might as well have said "endless" or "infinite."

Except that the database already exists and every single star system has been named according to star charts given by NASA. It's not just procedurally generated as players eventually get out there. The galaxy already exists no matter how hard it is for you to believe it.

Not all systems exist at one time. If no player is around, there's no system render. Only the closest 160 million systems closest to Sol are densely populated. The farther out you go, at least initially, the fewer NPCs and stations there will be until it drops off to no population. This is where players come into play to help their favorite faction push out their reach of control.

Even in those initial 160 million systems, if no player is around but there are still systems with stations that have trade routes active between them, the database keeps a record of what would be occurring in the economy if NPCs were actively running the goods in those trade routes. If a player IS around, the systems are generated and NPCs are actively generated and the economy functions based on what NPCs actually make it between stations as opposed to being blown up or whatever.


...additionally, where are you getting this arbitrary 50ms period of time? I dunno about your computer, but my computer does teraflops per second or some junk, not 20 calculations per second. Even an xbox 360 does 20,000 million instructions per second.

You are so wrong it hurts.

The AMD FX 9350 does 100,000 mips.

The Intel I7 3770K does 176,000 mips.

The 5960x does almost 300,000 mips.

The FujitsuK with 700,000 cores does 10 billion mips.

An ARM Cortex A dual core processor used in some of the first netbooks and tablets do 7,500 million instructions per second.

Where are you getting your 50ms per system? Come on...

 

[ThinClient]

What's your name Thin? Add me to your friend list, I am CMDR Rawrzbear

Request sent!

 

[QuantumPion]

Nearly got my ass handed to me tonight. I was trying out bounty hunting in my poorly equipped ASP when an ace pirate flying a cobra, I think using rockets, named zerocool ambushed me. Managed to barely escape to neighboring system. Unfortunately he had wake scanner and interdictor! I barely managed to escape the interdiction and get back to port, taking heavy damage. The repair bill was more than the bounties I had racked up

The expensive ships really are useless for PVP. Asp is good for taking out NPC anacondas for bounties but they are too slow and vulnerable and really expensive vs other players. I'm thinking about ditching the ASp for a Type-6 and a viper instead.

 

[Markbnj]

Where are you getting your 50ms per system? Come on...

Either you don't get my point, or I don't get yours. If you had 100 "zones" in a game you can envision how you would test them all pre-launch, perhaps in an automated way. If you had a tool that loaded each zone, made sure there were no errors, checked for missing objects, looked for geometry holes, whatever, you can envision running that against each zone and confirming that it is put together correctly. Just arbitrarily I assigned a value of 50 ms to the time it would take to do that. Now how do you perform a similar test on 400 billion "zones?" Until you do, how do you know that they load and everything works right in them? You can validate that the static data is correct. That can be stored in a terabyte or two, probably. But can you actually test that 400 billion systems work within the game?

 

[QuantumPion]

Either you don't get my point, or I don't get yours. If you had 100 "zones" in a game you can envision how you would test them all pre-launch, perhaps in an automated way. If you had a tool that loaded each zone, made sure there were no errors, checked for missing objects, looked for geometry holes, whatever, you can envision running that against each zone and confirming that it is put together correctly. Just arbitrarily I assigned a value of 50 ms to the time it would take to do that. Now how do you perform a similar test on 400 billion "zones?" Until you do, how do you know that they load and everything works right in them? You can validate that the static data is correct. That can be stored in a terabyte or two, probably. But can you actually test that 400 billion systems work within the game?

There aren't 400 billion different zones. The properties of the star systems are procedurally generated. But you are sort of right that even if you just wanted to glance through a list of all the stars possible to visit, it would take forever :awe: . And if the data for each star system was a mere 50 bytes (name, x/y/z coordinate, type, etc), it would require 20 TB of storage for the galaxy. Again however, it's all procedurally generated. That's how it is possible to actually browse to any star in any part of the galaxy without having to download 20 TB of data.

 

[Stringjam]

I think the whole huge galaxies thing isn't really a selling point.

I'm looking forward to checking out this game as planets and structures become available to explore.

I personally would rather have a single, interesting galaxy with truly explorable environments than 400 billion procedurally generated galaxies with pseudo-planets that are really just basic models with a texture slapped on them.

Engines can create that stuff for infinity, but it takes a lot more labor and involvement to create a single planet or space station that you can port to, get out of the ship, and explore.

Doing some reading about this game, it seems like the developer has that kind of goal in mind, so I'm pretty excited about where he is going to take it if that's really the case. I'll be keeping a close eye on it.

It's a good time to be a fan of space combat / exploration games right now.