Here’s what I’ve learned and done so far from playing Elite Dangerous alll last night;
First off, I had to make an account with Frontier. It seems required to make an account, JUST to play the game. That is… meh. 3rd party login site. At least it was free.
-The game takes place in the 34th Century. Roughly, the year 3302. However, I think the game has lasted longer than this, and may had started in the year 3300.
-There is no Pause button. Even though I’m in ‘Solo Play’, I’m still playing online.
-Planets rotate and orbit around their Sun in realtime. Can’t say the same for Space Engineers.
-I currently have almost 100,000 Credits(95,846), thanks to completing a quite long pirate-killing contract in a nearby system from my start system (and turning in bounty kills). Doing bounties is indeed, quite profitable.
-I think that the expiration time of contracts, is in real-time. And what’s extremely annoying, they will expire even if you’re not playing. So it’s like signing up for a raid, of expecting to have enough time to execute and complete it. This sucks! However, I don’t see any penalties for having the contract expire.
-Docking at Spaceports(the ones that spin counter-clockwise), I thought was an automatic process…it’s not. I do like the challenge, but trying to enter a spinning opening that’s really narrow..well, it’ll take time to master.
-I learned not all Spaceports can repair or even refuel your ship, no matter how much money you have. That sucks. My only guess is, price? Maybe it’s too expensive(even with nearly 100k Credits)?
-Learning to micro-manage where power is being put into, is important in life or death situations. I haven’t fully learned which goes where. Only thing I have, is putting all power to Weapons makes your attacks stronger.
-Combat (dogfighting) is a bit slow, but I think it’s the fact I’m in the stock Sidewinder. The lasers I get by default (which are loaned) do very little damage (even when I manage to take down the enemy’s shields). There was one time I was having a spinning match (I was winning), and it took 5 minutes until the guy died. And I had full power to Weapons.
-I will admit, I feel I actually do need a joystick. Flying my ship is a bit challenging with a mouse. Trying to stay behind an enemy with the limited button capabilities I have (plus looking down to see what thruster setting I’m on)… yeah.
-A real fun thing is making sure I’m slow enough to reach my destination. You can easily overshoot if you’re going too fast (or crash into the planet you’re trying to reach.. nearly did once, but was able to pull down at the last second on the stick to avoid collision).
-Modules and upgrades for your ship, cause a “Buyback” charge to happen. This increases, depending on what is bought. If you die, you have a choice of either paying the buyback to restore everything that was lost, or going back with the stock Sidewinder and not getting back what you lost.
-If you die, you can either respawn back at your original starting station, or the last landed on station.
And that’s pretty much it (that I can think of). I don’t know if I have enough money to afford my very own ship. Don’t even know which one to get, or what system’s Spaceport I can go that has the best deal. My only assumption is to look through some Youtube videos. There, I should get my answer on what to do.
What I do know, is having ship insurance is important. When you die, your insurance will cover the cost of a new ship (and this can get quite expensive with the bigger, badder ships). Died only once in Solo Mode (due to thinking I could handle a Strong signal(and the enemies that lurk within).