Re: Prime Gaming 2 December 2024 (Extremely Grumpy Edition)

On Mon, 02 Dec 2024 12:44:58 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

* Elite Dangerous (via EPIC)
    Still think it would have been better if you could play it offline.
    (Okay, this one is good)

So here it is, my rambling Steam review of Elite Dangerous,
posted after 10,000+ hours of game play...
 _ _ _ _ _ _ _
So I'm into Elite Dangerous (and Odyssey)
over 10,000 hours, from playing ED and Odyssey
over 10 years, so it makes sense that I give it
a "thumbs up".

But it's not a game for everyone. Except for missions
to push for changes in the Background Galaxy Simulation
(BGS), there's not much of a story to follow. Sure,
the Thargoids have invaded human space, but one can
take or leave combat with them, for the most part.

So what is this game? It's really a simulator, with
game elements bolted-on. If you want a space flight
simulator, where you can explore new worlds, land on
them, get out and walk around, this may be the game
for you.

I like the PVE gameplay. PVP, on the other hand, is
tough, because the PVP players tend to have their ships
overpowered compared to a casual gamer such as myself.
I play as part of a player group, and we have our own
player minor faction (PMF) in the game, so I do see
combat from time to time -- again, PVE, not against
other players.

I recently spent some time doing missions for our PMF
in one system, in order to expand to another system.
There's a sense of accomplishment in getting that to
work, but ultimately it doesn't change the galaxy much.

The galaxy: The Milky Way, simulated 1:1, is quite a
formidable structure to cross. One jumps in their starship
from star to star, a few dozen light years at a time, depending
on the engineering on their ship. (If you have a carrier,
you can jump 500LY per jump -- but this is “end game" content,
getting a carrier is 5 billion space bucks plus upkeep.)

However, there's an overcharge one gains through interaction
with neutron stars, which increases jump range 4-fold. Using
these, one can cross a lot of galaxy in a reasonable amount
of time -- I once went from Colonia back to the bubble in less
than 4 hours. (Driving the "Neutron Highway" can get tedious
and boring, so be prepared with some good music or an audio book.)

Anyway, I should mention that I wouldn't still be playing this
game without belonging to a player group, where we chat and
coordinate our activities on Discord. Space can get boring
otherwise.

If you got this far, thanks for reading.
 _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Since then, a few things have changed:

Power Play 2.0 has been released, for which there has been
much excitement, and:

The last remaining "Titan" (Thargoid capital ship) started
heading for Sol, which will probably mean widespread devastation
for the Solar system.  Sol is being evacuated as much as possible,
but population is 22 billion.  Currently, no Sol permit is needed
to enter Sol, so everybody can get in on the lucrative and
challenging rescue missions.

One complaint I've heard about the rescue missions is how tenacious
the hunters (aka "glaives") can be against unengineered passenger
ships -- and they almost always hyperdict ships jumping out of the
system.  I could write all day about how to avoid losing passengers
to the nefarious Thargoids, but others on the web have longer screeds
on how to do this.

I will say this:  the Thargoid glaives have a missile that
will disable your frame shift drive, so you can't jump away.
They also have a fierce lightning attack designed to take
down your shields -- and once they're down, they send in
limpets to attach to your hull and spirit away passengers.
(This is generally bad for business.)

--
-Scott System76 Thelio Mega v1.1 x86_64 NVIDIA RTX 3090 Ti
   OS: Linux 6.11.10 Release: Mint 21.3 Mem: 258G
   "Disc space - the final frontier!"