*** The Official Elite: Dangerous Thread ***

[seabiscuit]

Frontier: Elite 2 (and First Encouters) was a game I poured so many hours into as a kid. I would have loved Elite: Dangerous to be basically that, but updated. No shared galaxy/economy. No multiplayer. Well, ok, possibly co-op with friends. But multiplayer PVP whether it is wanted or not, griefers etc. along with a seemingly generic FPS added in for Oddysey just don't inspire me like randomly generated cities on alien planets did.
I'd have preferred no space legs (for now), but make the galaxy richer and more varied, make it interesting to explore and see..
And let me enjoy it on my own.

 

[wolfie138]

i'm like that. liked the Novlogic Delta Force games because they were single player, could just jump in and play a mission w/out having to find a lobby/team/group of non-***holes etc etc. The addition of a mission editor spawned a whole other aspect that kept the game going and provided almost endless fun, and they introduced Joint Ops for those times where you wanted to play online in a team if you wanted. in my mind, that's the perfect game set-up.

 

[Vern1961]

I actually first played Elite 2 on the Amiga, before graduating to the PC. Lost hours in that game.

Sadly my memory of First Encounters is a buggy mess which wasn’t addressed by the patch which you had to send off for and came back on a floppy disk!

 

[bazzabear]

The second floppy (or it might even have been third) mostly resolved it.

 

[Firegod]

Well after owning this game since Nov last year I've finally been able to get the darn thing to launch! I've done a load of troubleshooting today with my rig. I've ruled out Anti-Virus, I've ruled out PC hardware issue. I've done work on testing various NICs, ruled out VPN, ruled out home network entirely by tethering to my phone, etc, etc. And the reason I was seeing "Failed to syncrhonise time with server"... was because TLS1.0 was disabled! I use IISCrypto to assign "best practise" settings and after a bit of Wireshark hunting it appears the launcher does various key exchanges and hello's etc, all in TLSv1.0. Then afterwards it appears to fall into TLS1.2. I've sent this on to the Frontier support people (as I have a ticket raised). In this day and age I'm quite shocked that is still using TLS1.0. Surely a small update can be done to re-write the launcher to use TLS1.2 and above. Regardless, I can now launch the game. Shame I have to reduce my security to do so though. Thought I best post this in case any others have similar issues - there is nothing about this that I can see on the net.

 

[bazzabear]

Rookie question here:

I just started playing ED again from scratch, having not touched it for probably 5 years. Well pre-Horizons last time anyway.

On my previous game, I never set eyes on the Thargoids, but this time around I just went to a distress call and found a fleet of massive ships all destroyed with a Thargoid ship zooming around. Needless to say I scarpered as quick as I could! But it showed no real sign of attacking me. I tried to scan it and failed. Is there anything else I should have done?

 

[NeilF]

Rookie question here:

I just started playing ED again from scratch, having not touched it for probably 5 years. Well pre-Horizons last time anyway.

On my previous game, I never set eyes on the Thargoids, but this time around I just went to a distress call and found a fleet of massive ships all destroyed with a Thargoid ship zooming around. Needless to say I scarpered as quick as I could! But it showed no real sign of attacking me. I tried to scan it and failed. Is there anything else I should have done?

And here we hit upon another of ED's poor design choices. Thargoids need you to ideally use specialised weapons, introduced in truth just to create a whole new path of grind busy work. So if you stumble across any Thargoids while "zooming around" your traditional weapons are not really suitable.

 

[NeilF]

I'd have preferred no space legs (for now), but make the galaxy richer and more varied, make it interesting to explore and see..

Yep, the fact the biggest development effort ever for ED created a whole new easter front of issues by bolting on a mediocre FPS, instead of moving the core gameplay forwards, underlines the continued poor design choices that have plagued the game IMHO.

And if we consider what they did add for explorers? A few dozen hard coded plant assets to point and click at. I mean, a solid procedural engine using inputs from stellar forge and terrain maps, to create diverse and unique plant life wouldn't have been of any interest now would it ie: Seeing a truly unusual planet in a system and wonder if that's resulted in unusual plant life?

The reward for exploration should be what you discover, not simply finding the same hard coded plant asset for the 5th time and pointing and clicking at it...

 

[bazzabear]

And here we hit upon another of ED's poor design choices. Thargoids need you to ideally use specialised weapons, introduced in truth just to create a whole new path of grind busy work. So if you stumble across any Thargoids while "zooming around" your traditional weapons are not really suitable.

Oh I wasn't suggesting I should have attacked them (the ship was 10 times the size of mine!) But I wondered what was the intent of that set piece. Should I have been scanning the wreckage? Of would the Thargoid ship have blasted me out of the sky if I'd hung around?

 

[Screeeech]

Oh I wasn't suggesting I should have attacked them (the ship was 10 times the size of mine!) But I wondered what was the intent of that set piece. Should I have been scanning the wreckage? Of would the Thargoid ship have blasted me out of the sky if I'd hung around?

I was a Thargoid hunting main last time I played, (it's all I did) it took me probably a week to get the correct ship build, (engineering grind. But honestly - my first experience taking on the first one, was one of the best gaming combat experiences I ever had, man it was intense - took me 40 minutes to kill it, and I only just got out alive.

I don't want to spoil it for you, but if you're going to investigate the Thargoids, you're going to need to be kitted out otherwise it'll be costly. You'll need some specialist weapons (remote flack and guardian gauss cannons) you don't need the biggest ship, my anti-thargoid build, is a shieldless krait-mkII.

You'll also need to learn to fly with assist off, and to cold orbit. I learnt most of this by killing the system authority anacondas in anarchy systems, just practise. Interdict them, kill them - kill the reinforcements until they send the advanced tactical response guys, who are basically invincible

Unfortunately to get the correct equipment it's a really awful grind, I'd recommend watching some of the youtube videos on how to do it the fastest, but it feels like Frontier never played their own game in regard to the grind, it's really not fun. Which is a shame as I feel it's an unnecessary barrier to one of the more awesome aspects of the game.

 

[SPG]

One of the worst game design choices ever was forcing players to use "Bespoke" weaponry for Thargoids. The game was already on its knees then they thought would be a great idea only to find people left it in their droves.

Said it before and I will say it again, it needs dropping to single player and handing over to the MOD community who could actually do something with it and turn into a proper game.

Still not got a VR rig and until then this game will stay uninstalled and when i do get a VR i will fly around SOL visiting all the planets then uninstall it again.

Will never buy a frontier product again TBH.

 

[NeilF]

One of the worst game design choices ever was forcing players to use "Bespoke" weaponry for Thargoids.

Wow! And there's some good competition for that position :-
- The unbalanced busy work mechanics of engineering
- CQC as stand alone gameplay/mechanics
- Multicrew
- Fleet carriers on release
- Odyssey FPS

 

[bazzabear]

Well I'm enjoying it for now at any rate.

As an example of either my idiocy or the game designs, I was spending ages zooming around each system to explore each planet before I finally worked out how to use the FSS.

 

[SPG]

Oh it's great for about 200hrs of playtime do not get me wrong and I would recommend it for that and only that.

 

[NeilF]

Oh it's great for about 200hrs of playtime do not get me wrong and I would recommend it for that and only that.

Yep, got an epic amount of play out of it for year(s). But Engineering was the first sign the talk from the kick starter was only that...

It basically made outfitting and upgrading weapons a grindtastic paper sissors stone lizard spock -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsnBg0Utf5k

 

[bazzabear]

Oh it's great for about 200hrs of playtime do not get me wrong and I would recommend it for that and only that.

Interestingly, 200 hours is almost exactly what I put into it last time around, 5 years ago.

What I'm actually trying to do at the moment is build up my muscle memory of all the controls to such a degree that I can play it in VR without it being a constant exercise in looking through the tiny gap over my nose to see my keyboard. When I first got VR I tried Elite. i only managed to take off and leave a space station and it was absolutely jaw dropping. But I couldn't do anything more complicated than that.
So I decided (and then never got around to it until now) to find some time to play it in pancake mode for a week or so, then transition to VR.

 

[NeilF]

Interestingly, 200 hours is almost exactly what I put into it last time around, 5 years ago.

What I'm actually trying to do at the moment is build up my muscle memory of all the controls to such a degree that I can play it in VR without it being a constant exercise in looking through the tiny gap over my nose to see my keyboard. When I first got VR I tried Elite. i only managed to take off and leave a space station and it was absolutely jaw dropping. But I couldn't do anything more complicated than that.
So I decided (and then never got around to it until now) to find some time to play it in pancake mode for a week or so, then transition to VR.

Tried VR, and found it too painful control wise, and didn't like the loss of clarity. Found EDTracker the best compromise...

 

[Screeeech]

One of the worst game design choices ever was forcing players to use "Bespoke" weaponry for Thargoids. The game was already on its knees then they thought would be a great idea only to find people left it in their droves.

It is terrible design choice.

I think they got so much right with the Thargoids themselves, the combat etc, even some of the other more hidden stuff you can find that's Thargoid related - is super cool. And it's fine that they're as tough as they are - that for me was the attraction.

However, getting the guardian artifacts, I think was the most annoying, pointless and lengthy thing I've ever done in a game. It drove me NUTS driving around for hours and hours and hours in the buggy, shooting those damn sentinals.. then logging out and logging in again to respawn the artifacts, so instead of it taking 100000 hours to get, it only takes 10000 hours. You simply cannot put players through that sort of experience and expect them to enjoy it, or recommend it to others.

Without youtube guides on how to get that stuff, I'd probably never have even known where to start..

 

[azazl187]

Well after owning this game since Nov last year I've finally been able to get the darn thing to launch! I've done a load of troubleshooting today with my rig. I've ruled out Anti-Virus, I've ruled out PC hardware issue. I've done work on testing various NICs, ruled out VPN, ruled out home network entirely by tethering to my phone, etc, etc. And the reason I was seeing "Failed to syncrhonise time with server"... was because TLS1.0 was disabled! I use IISCrypto to assign "best practise" settings and after a bit of Wireshark hunting it appears the launcher does various key exchanges and hello's etc, all in TLSv1.0. Then afterwards it appears to fall into TLS1.2. I've sent this on to the Frontier support people (as I have a ticket raised). In this day and age I'm quite shocked that is still using TLS1.0. Surely a small update can be done to re-write the launcher to use TLS1.2 and above. Regardless, I can now launch the game. Shame I have to reduce my security to do so though. Thought I best post this in case any others have similar issues - there is nothing about this that I can see on the net.

I can only imagine how much work and patience you put into troubleshooting and getting to that conclusion. I doubt they will change the TLS level as I believe that they have to resign a load of certificates. I maybe wrong though as my experience with TLS/SSL stopped when I changed professions a few years back.

I hope the game is worth it and we'll done for finding an answer and sending it over to the dev team. Work like this should be congratulated as it isn't easy troubleshooting such things.

 

[NeilF]

It is terrible design choice.

I think they got so much right with the Thargoids themselves, the combat etc, even some of the other more hidden stuff you can find that's Thargoid related - is super cool. And it's fine that they're as tough as they are - that for me was the attraction.

However, getting the guardian artifacts, I think was the most annoying, pointless and lengthy thing I've ever done in a game. It drove me NUTS driving around for hours and hours and hours in the buggy, shooting those damn sentinals.. then logging out and logging in again to respawn the artifacts, so instead of it taking 100000 hours to get, it only takes 10000 hours. You simply cannot put players through that sort of experience and expect them to enjoy it, or recommend it to others.

Without youtube guides on how to get that stuff, I'd probably never have even known where to start..

Consider, with YEARS to prepare, how vapid and unutilised the entire Thargoid invasion was. Frontier had one chance to invest in the mechanics in ED ready for the Thargoid invasion, but alas they squandered it, like to many opportunities in ED.

Consider if leading up to the Thargoid invasion:-
- If CQC type gameplay had (instead) been put in the core game, so missions/tasks could be undertaken where you holo-me into a fighter to undertake an attack/defense mission.
- If blockage type mechanics had been put in so stations could be blockaged and you'd have to exist say 100km out and run the gauntles of defense to get in/out of stations.
- Imagine how the above type of mechanics could have been leveraged in so many other ways for general gameplay (eg: For Factions or Powerplay powers). Note: Even orchestrated Powerplay PvP fighter tasks to dictate the outcome of a position.
- Imagine if the Thargoid position was in effect a Powerplay view where you could undertake tasks to affect next weeks positions.

Instead we have invisible Thargoid fleets attacking stations during server down time...

It's as if FD just didn't have the desire or design talent to create layers of mechanics to make the most out of the game...