Elite: Dangerous

Things have improved for me, though still not fully stable. I can log in after 4/5 attempts, will occasionally crash out when i hyperspace and will always crash out if i open galactic or system map.

Problem is that it is pretty difficult to try to mine without being able to open maps. I got myself a cobra, threw in a refinery and a mining laser and headed out to some "ring clusters" with some asteroids in them but the mining laser is not breaking any chunks off them. I can't tell what the asteroids are composed of. Are there types of asteroids which can't be mined?

If i can't go mining where should i head to go bounty hunting - just wander around the system looking for unexplained signal sources?

jumbobreakfast wrote: »

That's strange. Have you gone through the usual troubleshooting for games (drivers etc). What are your specs?

Yes, updated drivers etc. recently.

Specs are a little odd: 8 year old PC with "core 2" quadcore cpu, 4core * 2.8ghz and 4 gb ram. Running 32 bit windows vista.

However it has a gtx970 with 4gb DDR5 ram graphics card installed in it.

I was going to buy a new PC but we are about to purchase a house so i had to defer that until the summer. In the meantime i bought a shiny new GPU which i will transfer to the new PC when i get it.

Anyway I am not sure it is my hardware that is causing the problem since there seem to be a number of people with the same complaint. May well be a software problem on my end though, and could be down to 32 bit vista. there can't be many people running a machine old enough to run vista 32 who are playing this game so i don't expect would be a high priority to fix.

I will live with the instability until i grab a new machine + occulus rift next summer.

Need to figure out some way to access maps out of game though, there must be a website that will do the job for me and i can alt tab out or even run a laptop beside me with the map open.

I'm finding Joystick+Keyboard works well. I'm using a Thrustmaster T16000M.

jumbobreakfast wrote: »

Permit allows you to travel there even if you are aligned with the Imperials rather than the Federation.

Diplomatic immunity!

Andrew76 wrote: »

For a second I thought you meant the Solo mode, not having that would be a disaster. Not having an offline mode I don't care about, not sure what the attraction of it is other than not having to worry about server downtime etc?

Not everyone has access to stable broadband and I think a lot of people were hoping to be able to play it offline on laptops when away from home or whatever.

The main issue is that they were asked about it several times and responded several times that it was definitely going to be in the game. If they said no to begin with there wouldn't be the drama. That and the stated reasons for why it can't be done were all non-forced design decisions.

Andrew76 wrote: »

It just seems like they promised too much during the kickstarter and/or the release date is unrealistic - what's in the beta right now coupled with the latest batch of issues make Dec 16th seem way too soon. Unless there's tons of content they are going to release soon after.

If they don't have something massive up their sleeve for the 22nd and they release essentially what's there now then it'll be a joke. It's not even just the bugs, the game is very, very light on content for rather crucial aspects such as trading. The travel inside of star systems is a pain in the ass to do as well, it gives a great sense of the vastness of space but after the 50th time doing it it's a bit of a dose because it has the forbidden combination of being boring but also requiring a lot attention. The game design is weird in a lot of ways, a lot of thinking that would better fit games from my childhood than games from today.

Fian wrote: »

Isn't that part of the point though? Grinding furbolgs / fire res gear in WOW had nothing on the grind to elite in the 80s - part of the nostalgia factor in this game is the move away from instant gratification towards an element of "it takes commitment to achieve in this". I don't use grind in a very perjorative sense there - the grind can be fun while also being a significant effort.

But I remember in the original long after I had bought every upgrade available in game I continued trading (accumulating more meaningless & useless credits) and killing to eventually move that "deadly" to "elite". I enjoyed that phase of the game too, although if i could go back I should have downgraded my military lasers since they just made combat too easy and took some of the fun out of it.

I don't find aspects of games that I strongly disliked as a young person (boring travel etc) to be the kind of nostalgia that I want in my life as I get older. There's a difference between "not instant gratification" and "needlessly tedious."

jumbobreakfast wrote: »

If you want to play single player then get a copy of oolite

Never knew oolite existed until I saw your post, if I hadn't joined the ED Beta I would certainly have given that a spin.

I am just hoping that the patch on Thursday will fix my crashing when i open maps or jump in hyperspace. I assume both of those are symptoms of a difficulty in drawing down data from the servers (since those are the times you have heavest demands on them) so it must be fixable. sometimes i have difficulty logging in when i am in a larger space station as well, though generally not with the simpler ones.

Actually as I type this i wonder if my Anti virus is to blame, I use Norton suite. I think my broadband is 150mb/s so that end should be alright.

Ill say it again: x52 or x52 pro. The game was designed to run out of the box with that model of stick. Buy it. You wont be dissapointed (have had mine 4 years no issues).