I think I might take a quick trip to Colonia (haven't been there yet) before the expedition starts towards the core...
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Elite Dangerous: Horizons |OT| Just scratching the surface
- Thread starter Frontieruk
- Start date
Here is the website: https://www.distantworlds2.space/info-index
This post always has the latest waypoints: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...of-Discovery?p=7106451&viewfull=1#post7106451
This post always has the latest waypoints: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...of-Discovery?p=7106451&viewfull=1#post7106451
Getting matches like this makes me feel bad, I actually let the one guy kill me, lol. I try to quit out of these lobbies, but there aren't that many CQC players during the week. Most of the experienced guys only play the weekend.
Didn't see it mentioned but have you tried voice attack with the vr? It lets you use voice commands for almost anything. You can set macros to do things by voice also. I hear it works well with the oculus mic in the headset. I just got it on steam sale for $8 I think but it has a demo if you wanted to tool around with it.
Honestly I'm surprised you're even able to find a match.Getting matches like this makes me feel bad, I actually let the one guy kill me, lol. I try to quit out of these lobbies, but there aren't that many CQC players during the week. Most of the experienced guys only play the weekend.
DM games are pretty easy to get and I can get them anytime of day. They changed DM so it'll start with just two players, so that helps a lot. TDM and CTF you generally have to set stuff up in the CQC discord or play on the weekends at certain times (it seems like most of the CQC players are European).
What they need to do is integrate CQC into the main game. Some stations will have CQC Championship contacts that you can visit and sign up at to play. There could be local stuff (for the people who just want to maybe play a few rounds of DM or TDM). It would be against NPC players if there are not enough live players in the area.
Then there would be the larger CQC events (think Community Goals) that would drawn in players for a more structured experience.
The key is that all of this is in-game, it's not a separate mode.
Have a Megaship that goes around and does a touring CQC championship. It sets up a temp arena where ever it goes. Hell, they could have had a CQC Megaship follow Distant Worlds 2 to give people something else to do along the way.
Could you imagine having a CQC match against the backdrop of the Sagittarius A* and the Galactic Core?
Since it's all Telepresence no one risks losing their ships. It could even be cross play between Open, Private and Solo since, while it would be in-game it still sorta its own separate thing.
Then there would be the larger CQC events (think Community Goals) that would drawn in players for a more structured experience.
The key is that all of this is in-game, it's not a separate mode.
Have a Megaship that goes around and does a touring CQC championship. It sets up a temp arena where ever it goes. Hell, they could have had a CQC Megaship follow Distant Worlds 2 to give people something else to do along the way.
Could you imagine having a CQC match against the backdrop of the Sagittarius A* and the Galactic Core?
Since it's all Telepresence no one risks losing their ships. It could even be cross play between Open, Private and Solo since, while it would be in-game it still sorta its own separate thing.
Yeah, having it be a completely separate mode really disconnects it from the broader game. If I could dock up at a "CQC supporting" stations and then hop in a fighter and go play a few matches I'd definitely be doing that.
Even better, and less feasible, would be to hook up those awesome in-station displays to show feeds of different CQC matches going on.
sidenote: I found out those station displays actually have individually textured pixel objects that can be manipulated together to produce the image. Display inside display.
Even better, and less feasible, would be to hook up those awesome in-station displays to show feeds of different CQC matches going on.
sidenote: I found out those station displays actually have individually textured pixel objects that can be manipulated together to produce the image. Display inside display.
Way back when CQC was announced, they had said they had plans to integrate it. That's really the only way it has a chance of taking off.
Well, not the only way. They could easily do better or bigger prizes to entice people. Let people win engineered modules, fighters, or even ships. Prizes are too meager and no one cares about the leaderboard.
Well, not the only way. They could easily do better or bigger prizes to entice people. Let people win engineered modules, fighters, or even ships. Prizes are too meager and no one cares about the leaderboard.
A lot of improvements could be made for CQC. The majority of these have a lot been discussed to death on the Frontier forums, yet they just don't care really. Players still play it, so they aren't going to get rid of it, however, I don't think enough people play it to put more effort into making it better.
A couple of things I'd like to see:
Integrate it with the main game
This is probably the biggest one. It needs to be part of the main game. Right now it's just kind of this side mode you can do. The very least they could do is make it accessible through stations. I'd love to break up some of my trading with a game or two of CQC.
Add bots
A lot of new players are going up against players that have days of playtime in CQC. You probably won't even take these players' shields down, let alone kill them. Bots would be good for training and also getting games started faster.
Add more fighters
This one was always strange to me. They added new fighters to the main game, and yet they left them out of CQC when they could have been a great addition. The current meta has been around for years. Imperial Fighter=Condor>Eagle>Sidewinder. It would be nice to get some new ships to play with.
Rewards and incentives
This is a huge issue. The game just doesn't respect your playtime. So there are pretty much only two rewards for CQC. A permit and credits. The permit you get after you prestige once and isn't anything special really. The station has 20% discount on some stuff, but that's about it. It's more of a symbol status of going somewhere that few commanders can go.
The credits on the other hand are a straight joke. Here's my current playtime:
I have 40 hours (probably more considering the time I'm waiting for a match) of CQC and have made 683k credits. I could make millions upon millions of credits in the main game in 40 hours. People like to say it's fair because there is no rebuy cost and you don't have to buy anything blah blah. I do agree that you shouldn't make as much in CQC as in the main game, but this is pathetic and it doesn't respect your time as a player. CQC definitely needs better rewards and incentives to play, maybe make it a community goal to see players' interest in it.
CQC is fun and more players would play if they just didn't leave it to die. Once I get my prestige and permit, I'm taking a long break from it. I would never attempt to Elite it (that's like 20 days of playtime) in its current state.
A couple of things I'd like to see:
Integrate it with the main game
This is probably the biggest one. It needs to be part of the main game. Right now it's just kind of this side mode you can do. The very least they could do is make it accessible through stations. I'd love to break up some of my trading with a game or two of CQC.
Add bots
A lot of new players are going up against players that have days of playtime in CQC. You probably won't even take these players' shields down, let alone kill them. Bots would be good for training and also getting games started faster.
Add more fighters
This one was always strange to me. They added new fighters to the main game, and yet they left them out of CQC when they could have been a great addition. The current meta has been around for years. Imperial Fighter=Condor>Eagle>Sidewinder. It would be nice to get some new ships to play with.
Rewards and incentives
This is a huge issue. The game just doesn't respect your playtime. So there are pretty much only two rewards for CQC. A permit and credits. The permit you get after you prestige once and isn't anything special really. The station has 20% discount on some stuff, but that's about it. It's more of a symbol status of going somewhere that few commanders can go.
The credits on the other hand are a straight joke. Here's my current playtime:
I have 40 hours (probably more considering the time I'm waiting for a match) of CQC and have made 683k credits. I could make millions upon millions of credits in the main game in 40 hours. People like to say it's fair because there is no rebuy cost and you don't have to buy anything blah blah. I do agree that you shouldn't make as much in CQC as in the main game, but this is pathetic and it doesn't respect your time as a player. CQC definitely needs better rewards and incentives to play, maybe make it a community goal to see players' interest in it.
CQC is fun and more players would play if they just didn't leave it to die. Once I get my prestige and permit, I'm taking a long break from it. I would never attempt to Elite it (that's like 20 days of playtime) in its current state.
lol
I'm not burning out but sometimes playing a shooter is more exciting than jumping 41 times :P
I'm only one cycle behind, though. Anthem is intriguing me and taking up time, though.
Pretty good couple of days exploring.
Yesterday I found a triple T-Tauri system with six water worlds and an Earth-like.
Then today I found my first biologicals. I'm carrying an SRV, so I could get up close and personal. Pretty neat.
Now all I need is some Notable Stellar Phenomenon.
Yesterday I found a triple T-Tauri system with six water worlds and an Earth-like.
Then today I found my first biologicals. I'm carrying an SRV, so I could get up close and personal. Pretty neat.
Now all I need is some Notable Stellar Phenomenon.
Man CQC is my favorite part of elite and the fact that I needed to coordinate on a special discord channel to play some games got exhausting. CQC really needs to be beefed up and made part of the main experience.
Last night I was searching for Federation stations for some rank up missions and ended up dropping into my first neutron star system just by chance. Huge surprise and really cemented how beautiful this game is.
remind me to turn off orbit lines
Thanks man! Galvanized paint with the ship kit really makes the Python shine.
Unrelated note; fuck Fed rank grinding. I thought the rep was gonna be the most annoying part. Nooooo, those rank up missions are the bane of my existence. Appearing randomly, but ALSO requiring cordial rep with the local factions makes no sense.
I did almost all my Fed ranking at Sothis/Ceos running cakewalk courier missions back and forth. By the time the rank up missions popped up I'd already be on great terms with all the controlling factions. Took very little time at all.
I have the X-55, not too different from the X-56 save for less joysticks. I've got mine setup just how I like it if you want tips but I use voice attack so some things are not really bound to the HOTAS.
I don't think there is an ERA Discord for Elite but there are a lot of Elite Discords out there if you want any invites.
Haven't touched Elite for a while and use M+K or a CH HOTAS setup. Generally however:
Joystick => Standard roll, pitch & yaw to the respective axis. Targeting functions on a 4way hat, energy management on a different 4way hat
Throttle => Thrust, however you like it best (range: -100% - +100%, 0%-+100% reverse with modifier or toggle). Lateral and vertical thrust on a thumbstick on the throttle. From there on you can map defensive functions, navigation functions etc. however you like.
If a function is critical and potentially negative when triggered accidentally, e. g. silent running, you may want to assign it to something with a modifier.
You can start from there, but be prepared to play around with the mappings for a while. They're numerous and you'll take a while to find a binding you're comfortable with. For generating a visual representation of your bindings file (Google where to find it), you can use a helpful online tool: https://edrefcard.info
Edit: The Future of Elite Dangerous
Will Flanagan said:
When they let on last year that they'd more or less just started production of the next big update, I feared that we were looking at another Horizons situation. Release just in time for Christmas 2019, feature starved, undercooked, unbalanced etc.. Seems that at least this situation will hopefully not repeat. At the price of having to wait for about two more years. But here's still hoping for a good implementation of space legs or "Elite feet" and atmospheric exploration down the road!
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Latter half of 2020 is pretty far away. I wonder what it's going to be. Atmospheric planet landings? Walking around a station or a ship?
Here is what my dream is.
A complete redo of the entire engine (in Vulkan, for better performance in general) but that mainly is to allow for truely seamless transitions and seamless instancing. Think Space Engine. Think being able to fly from the surface of a planet to space without ever needing the "jump" to Supercruise where it's loading a new instance. You just seamlessly transition from what to the other and there is no loading, at least any that you notice. Same with jumps between systems, you can still have the hyperspace effects and what not but instead of the skybox completely fading out you still see it woosh by in the background to your destination. Sure, for short jumps it won't move much at all but for larger ones you'll see the systems fly by like you do in Space Engine.
Give us that ability to fly from any system to any other system in Supercruise if we want.
Granted, I don't know how it all works internally, but I have a hunch that the transition times have nothing to do with the engine and nearly everything to do with how instances and their transitions are designed.
When you hit that jump/supercruise key, the game client probably asks for info on your target location from the backend. It tells the backend that you want to transition into an instance in that target area, the backend checks if there are instances (other players) of that area already. If so, it tries to put you in one, telling that other player's game client that you're about to enter that instance, tells your game client that you're entering that instance. Otherwise it has to register a new instance for your client.
As I said, I don't know how it all works internally, but that communication is necessary. It can mean transferring a bunch of data packages across the globe a couple of times. Where 'time' is no predetermined entity, but can range anywhere from a second to dozens of seconds, depending on how much load is on the backend, and how long communication between all involved clients takes. But every step introduces a delay, that can vary greatly in length.
Support for Vulcan or the "Cobra" engine in all likelihood have nothing to do with it. Your best bet would be for them to either redo the game into a single player affair (like space engine?) or to radically redesign their instancing and client server concept. Eliminating transitions might be possible if you are permanently connected to a server and are always in the same instance. On the other hand, such servers would have a capacity limit and you'd also only be able to ever meet players on the same server. Which may be an issue in a game world the size of the milky way...
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2020 eh? well as long as the servers are on, I'll play every once in awhile. ED is still the reason I bought into VR and it's still the defining experience for me.
I just wish...well...lots of things. But after like 2,000 hours, I've gotten more than my monies worth. I'll just hope that big expansion actually comes out doesn't turn out to be them pulling our legs. I miss having a reason to play ED.
I just wish...well...lots of things. But after like 2,000 hours, I've gotten more than my monies worth. I'll just hope that big expansion actually comes out doesn't turn out to be them pulling our legs. I miss having a reason to play ED.
I mean if you're an ED player you know nothing but patience in your life.
True enough. I did wait 30 years for Braben to release a game that at least looked like the one that the original made me imagine.
They're talking about doing some adjustments to community goals and more community event work in the linked forum post. I wouldn't hope for any major feature additions to the game, but maybe they'll turn community events into something more interesting than filling a grind meter? It's also imaginable that they're hiding the odd new scan object or location every once in a while.
Edit: From the source.
Community Update (01-03) said:
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The 2018/08 community update mentions that the had around 100 people dedicated to the "Beyond" updates and that the team is now larger then anytime in the past 6 years:
2018/08 community update said:
More than 100 then.
The other night I decided to take out my old PvP bounty hunting build https://s.orbis.zone/2h1k and go to some engineer systems. Most wanted CMDRs ran because APAs have low DPS plus my aim is rusty, and the pack hounds work best at breaking hard points of hull tanks but not much else. I got killed by a meta FDL a few times at Wyrd, and noticed night vision made the mines very easy to see. I find the quad Plasma and rail FDL kind of boring so I wondered what other weird non traditional combat builds you all have enjoyed using?
Is there any quick checklist for flying, takeoff and landing? I played sometime ago and dont want to do the tutorials again
The tutorial is quick, just do it again if you can't remember how to fly, take off or land.
There's an ingame check-list for take-off only, you do it once in the tutorial then it's disabled.
I don't remember where you enable it again (either the game settings or the ship settings in the right panel).
For landing, just make sure you ask the station in the contact panel (left) before entering.
Depends on what control setup you're using, and you may want to set custom controls depending on what equipment you have.
For instance when I started almost five years ago, I used an Xbox 360 controller and TrackIR, so I mapped the throttle to the right stick, and some less-needed stuff I mapped to the keyboard, such as using J for supercruise and hyperspace jumps.
Now I use a HOTAS and HTC Vive (although I only bought the Vive about two weeks ago, used TrackIR otherwise).
Most important controls to have, and some of these you may need more of depending on what you want your ship to do (such as if you're going to do a lot of combat, do you need Shield Cell Banks and a quick button for that? If you did you would want heatsinks too.)
Throttle
Stick (for pitch and roll, yaw is optional and comes down to personal preference honestly, I prefer to have it. You might want to have another button that toggles roll axis to yaw axis if you don't want to have them all at the same time though)
Lateral thrust - ideally something analog (my HOTAS has that), but just to be able to take off and land easily, a digital option will get the job done. You would want analog if you're doing more advanced manuevers.
Landing gear button - You won't need this as often, so you could put it on your keyboard or something out of the way.
Hyperspace/supercruise
Deploy/retract hardpoints - There's an option for the primary fire button to deploy hardpoints. I personally don't like it and don't have that on.
Primary and secondary fire
Switch fire groups
Power distribution - Some kind of d-pad or 4-way thing to use for this. On HOTAS this is typically assigned to a POV hat. When I used to play with an Xbox controller, I used the d-pad for it. You will be messing with this frequently.
Something to switch to the four UI panels, maybe keyboard keys. The left and right panels you will need the most, up is social (chat, messages, etc.), bottom is vehicle launching (Horizons only), you'll also need something to navigate the UI panels.
Silent running button - depending on what you do, you may or may not need it often. It's up to you how convenient it should be.
Locking on/selecting targets - This depends on the equipment you have available. On my HOTAS I have a POV hat that can switch between all targets if I hit left or right, and enemy targets if I hit up or down. I can also look at a target and hit a button to lock onto it. I also have a button for cancelling lock-ons.
Engine Boost
Optional, or not depending on what you're going to be doing:
Shield Cell Banks (for combat typically)
Heatsinks (most often combat, but can be good for exploring in case you suddenly wind up in a system surrounded by 2-3 stars or something and you start burning up. Pretty much a requirement for using Shield Cell banks)
Chaff (pretty much anything but exploring needs this really)
Flight assist toggle (more advanced manuevers, some people fly with Flight Assist off all the time. Typically most useful for combat, but can be useful in other roles too)
Off the top of my head those are all I can think of, I'm sure there's probably things I missed that I use all the time though.
Since I got my Vive recently, I have gotten back into this game. I love the game, but I'm still amazed that after 4+ years the game STILL wastes your time in the dumbest ways.
I used to see lots of cases where I was in my combat-outfitted Anaconda and then a shildless Mostly Harmless Sidewinder interdicts me and says "Gimme your cargo or die!" and then I turn to look at him and he's pretty much dead.
Now it's stuff like what happened to me in my Fer-De-Lance today. I took a wing mission by myself to take out a bunch of pirates of a certain faction. An Imperial Courier of that faction that was Expert rank interdicted me saying "You have something I want." and was going to scan me. I figured I should just kill him for the credit on the mission, so I opened fire, barely dinging his shields and he suddenly just boosts away and charges his FSD and gets out! What a waste of time. Maybe I need a more effective PvE loadout on my FDL but good lord, it annoys me when the AI does stuff like that.
My current loadout on my FDL is 4 gimballed Multicannons and one huge fixed beam laser.
I've ranted about Engineers plenty since it came out a few years ago, but looking at it these days it still seems a waste of time unless you're getting heavy into PvP. Even then I imagine it still feels like a waste of time just because of how long it takes.
I used to see lots of cases where I was in my combat-outfitted Anaconda and then a shildless Mostly Harmless Sidewinder interdicts me and says "Gimme your cargo or die!" and then I turn to look at him and he's pretty much dead.
Now it's stuff like what happened to me in my Fer-De-Lance today. I took a wing mission by myself to take out a bunch of pirates of a certain faction. An Imperial Courier of that faction that was Expert rank interdicted me saying "You have something I want." and was going to scan me. I figured I should just kill him for the credit on the mission, so I opened fire, barely dinging his shields and he suddenly just boosts away and charges his FSD and gets out! What a waste of time. Maybe I need a more effective PvE loadout on my FDL but good lord, it annoys me when the AI does stuff like that.
My current loadout on my FDL is 4 gimballed Multicannons and one huge fixed beam laser.
I've ranted about Engineers plenty since it came out a few years ago, but looking at it these days it still seems a waste of time unless you're getting heavy into PvP. Even then I imagine it still feels like a waste of time just because of how long it takes.