Elite : Dangerous

[Ttaskmaster]

Managed to get a bit of play in last night - my scavenging is proving rather profitable, made about £80k in an hour.

You mean you just hang around outside Freeport and people drop stuff, or is this scavenged from recent fights?
I'm guessing this is illegal cargo (from smugglers who drop their shipments at teh first sign of an Imperial Cruiser ) that you grab and sell at Freeport, simply chancing that no-one will interfere?

I'm also guessing your Hauler holds *much* more cargo than my poxy Sidewinder will?

80k CR would be nice, as I've somehow managed to rack up a 30k bounty on my head already and only have 6k CR to my name!

[Lowe]

Nope, I'm just flying around in Supercruise looking for Unidentifiable Signal Sources. Drop out of SC and sometimes it's a trading ship... sometimes it's cargo without an owner. Other times it's a trap set by pirates. You never know what you're going to get so need your wits about you. On one I got really lucky, found 10 canisters of gold, that little lot made me 45k in one go.

Hauler can carry 16 units, and has another trick up its sleeve. You can keep the engines on and still have 0% heat output.

[Ttaskmaster]

How does that heat thing work?
I assume that's my temperature to the left of the radar?

Doing the 'Silent Running' Combat Scenario, where I have to take down 3 scouts and avoid the merc in a Cobra, I had a heck of a problem getting it done.
I'm running silent, firing off the beam laser and deploying out heatsinks whenever my ship starts whining about overheating.
Half the time I still overheat and start sparking/dropping hull health - What am I missing?

The other half of the time, the Cobra seems to appear from miles away and start blowing me up (almost managed to kill him once). What am I probably doing that makes me so visible to him and from how far away can he detect me?

[Lowe]

The gauge to the left of the scanner is indeed your heat. There's also a waveform graph on the right hand side which is linked to your heat, it's how 'visible' your ship is to sensors that read your emitted heat, i.e if you're on other people's 'radars' and can't be locked or scanned. If you are at 0% heat, your cabin will ice up, and you'll disappear off the radar entirely. I don't know the exact threshold but when it's low (but not zero) you'll be inconsistent on the radar, flickering on and off. This stops people getting gimbal locks on you.

That said, the two HUD instruments aren't necessarily linked as such. When using silent running for example, all it does is close the vents that your ship uses to regulate its own temperature. So in this case you can potentially have a high heat build up inside the ship, but little being given off making you less visible. The best way to minimise your heat is to go to the right hand panel, select the module tab and then turn everything off manually. You can see how each system impacts your heat output (without silent running on) and then strike a balance depending on what exactly it is you're planning on doing.

[Pob255]

Anyone else thinking that Sept 20th will be the release of Beta 2.0? That's the 30th anniversary of Elite... Fingers crossed!

Stop reminding me how old I am

[Ttaskmaster]

See, this^ is what I love so much about Elite!!

You can start fine with just the basics and even though there's a fair bit to learn, it's not exactly difficult either!!
Tell me once, I get it and go off to have loads of fun

[RobinXe]

Glad to see there's lots of others getting as into this game as I am.

Lowe, are you still tooling about in a Hauler? If you like the balance it offers then wait til you trade up to a Mk6; it's fast, it's manoeuverable, and it has by far the longest jump range of any of the current ships. What once looked like a series of filamented islands on the star map is replaced with a massive orb of potential links between systems!

[GreenPiggy]

Beta 2 on it's way!
Beta 2 to be released 30th September
We still have our collective foot firmly pressing the pedal to the metal on the development of Elite: Dangerous, both on ‘under the hood’ work and forward facing features to get the game ready for release before the end of 2014.

We’re delighted to announce that Beta 2, our second beta phase, will be released on Tuesday 30th September, as the culmination of our 10 days of celebration of the 30th Anniversary of the release of Elite on the BBC Micro - see what we did there…?!

It’s been quite a few weeks since we released Beta 1 on 29th July. Here’s why:

Elite: Dangerous wouldn’t be an Elite sequel without the ability to progress from ‘Harmless’ all the way to the exalted status of ‘Elite’. In Beta 2 all pilots have a visible combat rating, so now you can start to work your way up to ‘Elite’!


As well as a rank, in Beta 2 you have reputations. Your reputation is tracked within each system and separately against the galactic power blocs involved in that system. Reputation can be positive and negative, and affects the pricing of services offered to you in stations or outposts controlled by the Federation, Empire or Independent Alliance.

Beta 2 also allows you to start to discover and explore new star systems and planets and even to sell the data on them.

We have now added a detailed system map for each star system – this is populated for known systems, and the map is also the repository for distributing new exploration data as it comes in from those intrepid people pushing out the frontiers of human space.
The system maps are also the visible in-cockpit tip-of-the-iceberg of what has been a big step forward in the detail of the science used to model the creation of planetary bodies, their compositions, atmospheres – even life – within star systems and the systems used to determine their economies, placement of starports etc.
This work has in turn allowed us to open up around 500 star systems in Beta 2. The familiar 55 Beta 1 systems are still all there, with an additional approximately 100 light year push out to the frontier and beyond in the direction of unexplored space – after all, you need things to discover!

Another potential winner from the Lakon shipyards has been added, the Asp Explorer. The Asp Explorer is very versatile and its design parameters and layout can accommodate modules that make it a perfect ‘grand tourer’ for your voyages of exploration.

Beta 2 also provides much greater variety for modifying all types of ship. There are different Life Support modules, Engines, Hyperdrives, Power Distributors, Sensors, Shield Generators and Cargo Racks. You also are given much more information on upgrades to inform your choices. PRO-TIP: shields and drives are tuned for particular hull masses.

Ships and their systems are subject to gradual wear and tear in Beta 2 – the extent of this of course depends on how careful a pilot you are!

There are new Dumbfire Missile racks, Plasma Accelerators and Cannon. Oh – and the mine launcher first seen in the Beta 1 video has now been added - plus mines, too!
Whilst we are on the subject of weapons, there is a new class of non-lethal missile-deployed weapon in Beta 2 called a ‘cargo hatch disruptor’. If your target’s shields are down and you fire one of these, it will attach to the target and use targeted ECM to cause their cargo hatch to open. Cargo will then spill out involuntarily. Think of it as a means to fill your piratical boots with a slightly clearer conscience – the disruptor doesn’t explode so your victim lives to fight another day, and you get a correspondingly smaller bounty on your head.

Outposts, the exposed, isolated galactic equivalents of the run-down roadside café, the remote research base, the windswept motel that we described [in newsletter 37], are to be found in the more off-the-beaten-track places of Beta 2.

Beta 2 also contains the Occelus starport types. The Ocellus starport is stronger, better protected from radiation and more expensive than the Coriolis class stations and slightly smaller, and much smaller than the giant Orbis. The Occellus stations can be moved from place to place with the attachment of a giant drive system, and tend to appear at the end of the first ‘gold-rush’ phase in a new system, marking the start of a more law-abiding way of life. They were described in detail [in newsletter 38].

Beta 2 extends the visibility of other ships in supercruise, whether they are player or AI. You can also buy a module that allows you to track any other ship that jumps into supercruise or hyperspace by following their supercruise ‘wakes’.

As you can see, there is a whole lot more going on in Beta 2 - so there is also now a new live ‘newsfeed’ addition to station services which provides news items about happenings from the far flung reaches of the dynamic, connected Elite: Dangerous galaxy as well as player generated activity in the local system.

We have re-purposed the single player combat scenarios into a series of optional simulator tutorials to aid newcomers to Elite: Dangerous in developing their piloting skills. There are also new, safe simulator tutorials for docking and travel, so to learn these skills you no longer need to scrap a small pile of Sidewinders! A new pre-flight check system in the initial start-flow provides quick, basic instruction of the ship’s main controls, too.

There are also a host of general qualitative improvements in Beta 2 – some of the more obvious ones include the planetary rings that now have rock, ice and metal variants with matching dust motes and depth, and the response to lighting of distant views of ring systems has been improved.

There is a lot more music, and Backer’s names (from the appropriate crowd-funding reward tiers) have been added to the Beta 2 NPC database too!

Those of you who have the appropriate hardware will be pleased to know that SLI/Crossfire support in Beta 2 will allow those with suitable high-end rigs to play in 4K ultra-high definition. Never ones to waste the opportunity for another gratuitous 4K screenshot, here goes…:

Of course Elite: Dangerous is still very much a work-in-progress – we continue to work hard on more features, improvements and optimizations for the full release. Watch this space!

[Ttaskmaster]

Great, now I'm gonna be flying around with "Crap pilot, easy pickings" over my Cmdr name...!!!

[GreenPiggy]

Great, now I'm gonna be flying around with "Crap pilot, easy pickings" over my Cmdr name...!!!

But 450 more systems to do it in

[RobinXe]

If anyone is going to EGX next week, pop along to the E:D stand and say hello! I'm hoping we'll be playing Beta 2, or something close!

[Lowe]

Last night I traded up my Hauler for a Viper. This is where I've been wantin to be for some time and frankly it feels like home.

Forget trading now, I'm all about the hunt and kill. That said I did manage to splat myself on an asteroid whilst reversing keeping a kill warrant scanner locked on a cobra haha!

The noise the Viper makes is *amazing*, it's like a snarling animal that spits at you when you're slowing down. Currently only packing 4x C2 cannons, but it's more than sufficient to make a mess of most ships in short time. Absolutely loving it.

[suedenim]

What controllers are pilots here using?

[Lowe]

Logitech 3D extreme, FacetrackNoIR. Dabbled with Voice Attack but it didn't work very well in a loudspeaker based play area with ambient mic. My Bulldog snoring would often raise shields or lower the landing gear haha!

[Goobley]

Does the game play well with just a normal gamepad/keyboard and mouse? I'd really like to pick this up at launch and much as I'd like a joystick setup it's not feasible as I have to move around so frequently.

[KeyboardDemon]

What controllers are pilots here using?

I tried the Logitech 3d Extreme and didn't like it, using the Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X controller and think it is awesome, it works really well, there are better controllers available but as far as I can tell the Thrustmaster is by far the most popular and it's about a third of the price of the next best rival.