Elite : Dangerous

[GreenPiggy]

The other thing I love about it is I can keep more pips in engines because you don't need to nurse the weapon power

[Lowe]

Yup, or shields as per my case.

[Pob255]

How not to dock, unless you have plenty of credits spare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv4bMbx5pB0

lol it almost brings back the buttock clenching that was the auto pilot of elite on the bbc.
For those of you to young to ever know this joy the auto pilot would roughly align you then slam the throttle to full, 6 times out of 10 it would nail it, with the other 4 time it would ether slam on the breaks just before it slams you into the station and realign you or clip the entrance stripping off your shields and half your hull.
And ever now and then it would just get it wrong and splat you against the station.
You'd think we where crazy for using the buttock clenching roulette that was the auto pilot but it was still often better odds than manual docking, stations rotated fast in the original about 90-95% of your maximum rotational speed, it took a lot of practise.

[KeyboardDemon]

I remember that, but as i recall the BBC Micro version had an option to turn off the docking animation, if you used that option pressing C when you were in range would instantly dock your ship.

[Lowe]

Yeah, I always turned the animation off as a kid because I got sick of waiting for energy banks to replenish because the docking computer hadn't quite got it right. You're not wrong about the old rotational speeds, far quicker than it is now and the slot was narrower too. That said with inputs being digital in the past it was easy enough to align by holding the key down for a period of time until it was slightly overdone just prior to docking, and the stations rotation would sort itself out. Took a bit of practice but it was doable.

Docking with Flight Assist off in EDangerous is a little more 'interesting'. Very easy to get it wrong and pancake yourself so I mostly don't bother.

If I get chance tonight I'm going to see about building a quad railgun Viper, or something along those lines. Not sure if the Viper has enough power to run 4, but if it does it should be funny to see what kind of damage it inflicts never the less.

[Lowe]

So quad railgun, waste of time. Viper has enough power, but one shot doesn't do enough damage and it massively overheats the ship. Even with heat sinks you're just wasting energy compared to cannons. Anything else just isn't viable by comparison.

[Ttaskmaster]

Over the weekend I took down an Anaconda... in an Eagle!!!
Granted it was only an NPC one, but still... eh, eh, eh!!

Multi-Cannon, Beam Laser and a Heat-seeking Missile rack - Took almost everything I had and a lot of careful positioning... but I walked away from it, he didn't, Score 1 for Cmdr Cousland!!!

[Lowe]

Hah, good work.

Anaconda's are tricky to take down if you try and dogfight with it - turrets can rip you apart if you're not careful. However it has a huge blind spot directly behind the main engines. Once you get to that position and close the gap you can sit there with pretty much impunity and take them apart. This won't work with a player though, they'll just FA off, turn and shoot...

[Ttaskmaster]

Do they not turn real slow, then?

I was hoping to find out before long, but they're about to wipe everything for Beta 2.0 tomorrow...

[Pob255]

I remember that, but as i recall the BBC Micro version had an option to turn off the docking animation, if you used that option pressing C when you were in range would instantly dock your ship.

Yeah, I always turned the animation off as a kid because I got sick of waiting for energy banks to replenish because the docking computer hadn't quite got it right. You're not wrong about the old rotational speeds, far quicker than it is now and the slot was narrower too. That said with inputs being digital in the past it was easy enough to align by holding the key down for a period of time until it was slightly overdone just prior to docking, and the stations rotation would sort itself out. Took a bit of practice but it was doable.

Docking with Flight Assist off in EDangerous is a little more 'interesting'. Very easy to get it wrong and pancake yourself so I mostly don't bother.

If I get chance tonight I'm going to see about building a quad railgun Viper, or something along those lines. Not sure if the Viper has enough power to run 4, but if it does it should be funny to see what kind of damage it inflicts never the less.

what? That's really weird I never knew that and I played elite ALOT on the bbc
I know the electron version didn't have docking animations, you just hit the auto-pilot and it instantly docked, which allowed you to do things like attack ships near the station or the station itself and dock before all the defence force vipers killed you, which you couldn't do on the bbc version as the station closed it's doors if you attacked it.

The old bbc micro joysticks where not digital but analogue ones, the accuracy of the stick on them was really good, shame the same couldn't be said about the ergonomics, they where near torture devices to use.
http://wouter.bbcmicro.net/pictures/...cks/index.html

[jimbouk]

We had some Voltmace joysticks:

(linky for pics source). Not the most robust things, made 2 player games difficult when one of the players could only go up and not down!

[Pob255]

We had some Voltmace joysticks:

(linky for pics source). Not the most robust things, made 2 player games difficult when one of the players could only go up and not down!

Ok starting the derail the thread, but yes, I think that's the the thing we got because the normal ones were so uncomfortable, only had one and I never managed to break it (and I went through a lot of joysticks on my spec'y)

[Lowe]

Do they not turn real slow, then?

I was hoping to find out before long, but they're about to wipe everything for Beta 2.0 tomorrow...

Nothing I've heard suggests at a wipe until Gamma. So I wouldn't worry too much.

[Allen]

I have been trying a Viper with 4 x C2 Cannons, nowhere near the "one shot" power that Lowe has in his video, but still reasonably good, taking out enemies with 2-3 salvo's. Once I rack up enough kills to afford the 30k C4's I will swap to them, or I will switch back to hauling for more credits.

I think I need to get a stick for dogfighting though, using an Xbox controller makes it very difficult to line up the shots properly.

[Lowe]

4x C2's is still more than decent and capable of doing a lot of damage, the trick is landing all of the shells. This isn't always that easy depending upon the angle that your target presents - this becomes more apparent when rocking a pair of C4s alongside the C2s. If you're looking along an edge, you need to roll so that the majority of your hard points are aligned along their vector. It's fairly obvious stuff when you're watching a video back, but in the heat of battle easily overlooked.

Once you've got C4's, get a Kill Warrant Scanner. Assign it to your secondary fire group. Then, go into Solo mode and head to the Resource Extraction Site by Freeport. Have a nosy around the asteroid belt and scan a few ships - you'll see some large bounties available, and with your newly acquired firepower you should be able to make mince meat of them fairly easily and rack up some good coin.

[Ttaskmaster]

How does the fine/bounty thing work?

I'm gonna find some reading on it, but it seems that if I take down someone red-flagged up as WANTED (I assume they're wanted in that same system?) I still end up getting a fine for firing and another for killing...

What about if someone attacks me, or if they send me a threatening text message (as NPCs often do) - Do I still get fined?