Elite: Dangerous

ZeroThreat wrote: »

In game, is your player name the same as your username?
Just wondering, cos my username is my email on the login screen.

You can see your actual commander name and change it here:
https://support.orerve.net/http/commander/profile

Trading
I spent ages trading and even created my own google docs trading tracker but trading will not make you much money. I think max legal trading will get you with 4 cargo slots is about 1200 on advanced catalysers between A-Prime and Dahan. I've heard suggestions that selling liquor on the black market at i-bootis is meant to be lucrative but I havent tried it. I think trading is not that lucrative because they know that people will implement trading calculators and have the best ships bought in no time. They spoke in an earlier blog about having gold-rush type scenarios where for a limited time medical supplies could be in high demand which will draw a lot of players to one system which I think makes a lot of sense.

Gun for hire
To make money I've discovered that it's much better to go the Federation Distress signal location in Eranin and join the fight there. You need to use the far-right section of the right hand panel to set your faction though which is something I had missed earlier on (it's not obvious to be fair). Join the federation and get 500 per kill or join the Eranin defense forces and get 400 (Otherwise you don't get paid).

When you get there I'd reccomend trying to figure out what side the other human players are on and join them as humans are the most unpredictable and will sometimes wait until you are vulnerable before attacking for a cheap kill. Now that I've got an Eagle with 3 hard points I just chase the human players away by knocking out their shields and giving them a small bit of hull damage so that they supercruise out of there and into another server instance Once proper comms between players is available then I expect you will see much better PvP as you will be able to call on friendly ships to help.

Bounty Hunting and piracy
The resource extraction sites are more fun but a lot more risky. You can attack Wanted ships but also use your cargo scoop to scoop up cargo that has been dropped by damaged ships. Also, apparently you can target sub-systems (left panel) on the ships that are mining and target their cargo holds to force out their contents without destroying their ships but I havent tried being a pirate yet.

First ship upgrade
Make about 4-5000 and then buy a second pulse laser for about 2200. At that stage your ship costs 37200 so if you get blown up it will cost 5% of that in insurance to buy it back with 2 lasers (about 1860 credits). Make sure you at least kill 4 enemies and earn 2000 before you get blown up again or you'll be back to the basic ship.

Docking
Just one other thing about that video, the guy complained about getting knocked around by other ships on the way through the docking gate. It may have been because he is not entering and exiting the gate on the side with the green lights. Again, its not that obvious until someone points it out. Here's a vid of me docking under duress but at least I dock on the green side

E3 Trailer:

No and I don't think its planned either, I can't remember why but I think it has to do with them wanting to keep a feeling of immersion.

I had a real up and down day on premium beta. I lost about 10k when I was blown up 5 times in a fairly short time so I started exploring the other sites outside of the common ones to reduce my rage I found a few "unidentified signal" zones where at most you got 4 NPCs attacking you at once and I got quite good at taking out that many by making good use of my shields early in the battle and then switching energy towards my weapons when there was less chance of being pecked away by my target's buddies. There seemed to be some friendlier players about too that didnt go for the kick in the face when you're down tactic which was nice for a change.

Man, the amount of times I've been taken out by other players with no provocation is unbelievable. I was starting to get paranoid to be honest. The worst happened when I was helping a guy out today as he was clearly running away from several NPCs when I entered the area. Of course he waited until I had taken damage and then swooped in for an easy kill. I tried to make a run for it but he finished me off. Like I said, the sort of character that kicks the guy on the ground after someone else has done the hard work.

It is a beta and they are working on changing the punishment and consequences for murdering other players. The key point is that every player is part of the Pilots Federation so murder gets reported automatically and griefing reports might well be crowd-sourced. War zones and wanted targets are a different story though.

Yeah it sounds good alright, I hope they can pull it off especially with the Irish connection.

I think the majority of people who signed up for Premium beta and Alpha are people who had a history with the original game. It is a bigger risk if you have never played any of the Elite series but as humanji says it does get you all the DLC too. I reckon the standard beta will be out in 2-4 months for €60 but an official date has not been announced other than them saying that the release version will be out by the end of this year.

Another good reason to get ED is if you intend to get the Oculus Rift DK2 as they have already added full support for DK2 and it is meant to be amazing.

Glebee wrote: »

Is there much to the game so far or is it much like Star Citizen very a very limited play area?

400 billion star systems. Most of the players will stay within several hundred star systems and mainly NPC events will occur outside of that. You hyperspace between star systems and exit out of hyperspace near the main star of each system (ie the star which has the nearest habitation). When you exit near the star you can then travel to any planets, space (trading, upgrades) or other points of interest such as conflict zones (gun for hire combat with and against players and NPCs), distress calls (same), unidentified signals (NPC events) and resource extraction sites (mining, piracy, bounty hunting).

You travel within a system using Supercruise which allows you to travel up to speeds which are many times the speed of light and sort of takes you out of the multiplayer element while you are supercruising. You can be interdicted by pirates or the local police while in supercruise so that pulls you out of it and then you have to either defeat the pirates and collect the bounty, run away from the pirates back into supercruise (made more difficult as the proximity to nearby ships means it takes longer to power up supercruise), submit to scans from the cops or run away/fight the cops if you are wanted or have illegal/stolen cargo.

Landing on planets and walking around your ship is planned for later DLCs.
TLDR: The playable area far exceeds SC as far as I know but I'm waiting for a bit more development before buying SC myself so I can't say for sure.

You won't be able to buy Premium beta after mid July so there is a chance that they might announce the standard beta start date then. I think they have a bit of a way to go yet so i don't expect it to start for a few months yet.

Single player combat scenarios now available for standard beta backers:
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=25169