This article is written for people actually playing Elite:Dangerous - if you are not playing you can probably stop reading here, as it will mean nothing to you.
The first beta for fleetcarriers in Elite:Dangerous comes to an end. Time to update my thoughts on them.
At this point we can buy a fleetcarrier which comes with a commodities market pre-installed and add modules to outfit this beast of a ship with, enabling it to do other things - like offering repair facilities etc. And the carrier loses much of its value darn fast - it is expensive to buy and you only get a fraction of the money back when selling it.
I don't think we already are at the end of the line currently.
I believe shortly before the start of this beta FDev said: "we want the purchase of a fleet carrier to be a meaningful decision" (no exact quote, it's from the top of my head). This sentence left me thinking a lot.
I will now enter the field of wild speculation and nothing I will predict is by any means provable... I am just thinking here. So don't expect any of that to be correct - I will try to point to the reasons for my thinking - but I may be utterly wrong with anything or everything I come up with in this article. So, I'll pop open a bottle of beer and just think into the keyboard from here on.
Take a look at this video CMDR Rheeney has created, if you haven't done so already. It shows different looking carriers in the docks within the Beta:
Rheeney says in the title we may see "Livery Options" for carriers here. While this is entirely possible I think - and somewhat hope - this is only part of the truth. Another part that made me think a lot was how quickly FDev was in stating Universal Cartographics will be available in the future as if it wasn't something difficult to do, almost as if it were planned anyway. And with that news something clicked and my speculations started:
In the current beta the Drake Class Carrier can be purchased - that is a very specific name for the only type of carrier there is. I think what we see in above video are entirely different carrier classes, not only livery options for the Drake Class Carrier. Painting and thruster colors could be livery, but there may be more to the actual shape of the carrier.
Also remember the old Idea of different carrier roles? Maybe that idea is still current.
Imagine the additional modules we can buy now could be purchased for all carriers, but one module is standard - and can not be exchanged except by selling your carrier and buying an entirely different one. You can only have one of those "core modules" on your carrier at any time, depending on the carrier class. With the depreciation this would really be a commitment, wouldn't it?
I guess the Drake Class Carrier is actually the "Trader Role" of carriers. That's why it comes with a market place installed as default.
The one with the ball-shaped bow may be the science-carrier - the exploration role. It could come with cartographics installed instead of the commodities market. That's why they were so fast in saying it will come... it was planned anyway, just not in the carrier class released in the first beta.
The pink one: I think by others already sometimes referred to as the "Hammerhead" could be the mining role - probably offering something completely new like additional refineries or contruction sites that allow to actually build further stuff from what they have mined. Whatever this will be.
Search and Rescue carriers? Bounty Hunter carriers? Smuggler carriers? These all were roles annouced back last year - I currently have no idea what their special module might be, but it could be possible to think of something I would believe.
Maybe we do not even get all carrier types on the release in June, but just the first few models - and additional carrier classes may be added whenever they are ready for market. I think this would be an exciting development perspective for the game - and maybe a reason not to jump at the first carrier that becomes available to players.
I guess in a few months we will know if these are just dumb ideas of a slightly drunk gamer or there is something to it.
2020-04-19
2020-04-05
Pre Fleetcarrier Thoughts
After quite a few optimistic annoucements of "Fleet Carriers" (thank you for this great wording, CMDR Wotherspoon), now there was another one. This time with a level of detail that almost looks like they might really be implemented.
The annoucement was made last week "live on tape". If you want to see the complete one hour not-so-live stream, here it is.
Maybe a short introduction for people not yet playing Elite Dangerous. Within this game you have exactly one commander you are playing. You can have many space ships - but have to park a ship in a station to be able to switch to another ship, which obviously has to be parked in the same space station. If you are in an area far out from inhabited space, there are no stations - and therefore you can not change ships. Spacestations are stationary (hence the name), you can not move them anywhere else. Believe me on this one, I have rammed quite heavy spaceships into stations, they did not move a bit.
So here come Fleet Carriers now - they can be owned by players and are personal space-non-stations - They can offer most services Space stations have without being stationary.
With the annoucement youtube, reddit and the game forums at Frontier Development (FDEV) went crazy. I couldn't say it better than our CMDR Bob Lowkey said it on our discord, so here is the quote:
And I would like to thank FDEV for that alone. All that whining and yelling on all those platforms by themselves provided an excellent entertainment value. Chapeau!
Most of those complaints seem to orbit around the idea, that people wish to play the game exactly like they did without the carriers, and that carriers don't change that playstyle now - or something like that. All in all logic is in short supply in most of the complaints. It almost seems like those players believe, they are forced to buy a carrier and use it all the time. I am pretty sure this is not the case, if you wish to continue playing like you did before, you should be able to do that.
I personally see those carriers as a massive increase in options how to play this sandbox game I like so much. To be honest I have so many ideas how I want to use this thing, that the hardest part will be deciding on what to try out first.
Sure, I am also not 100% in line with all the design decisions and they are not completely arranged around the play styles I enjoy, but I am able to accept, that this asset maybe has not been designed for my own personal preferences, but had to be a bit of a compromise to also appeal to other players.
So, what I want to do with these? A few examples:
They, for the first time, allow to play markets in Elite Dangerous. The ability to buy and sell goods and set prices on your carrier is total new gameplay. Galaxy-Tycoon style, being the boss on your space-flying farmers market. This is like a new game within the game by itself. I want to try this out - and taking into account how bad I am in trading sims, probably lose a fortune while doing so.
BGS support vessel is the next big thing: When our in game faction is at war, can I place this thing near one of the combat zones to provide refuel, repair and re-arm services to our combat ships? That'd be a great addition.
Will there even be respawn on the carrier in case of ship destruction occuring? I sure hope so, then this can also become the hooning base our community always wanted. So when doing racing events in narrow canyons on some planet, you can place a carrier in orbit to ensure respawn near by. All those wonderful canyon rich worlds outside the bubble can now turn into playgrounds of speed addicted low altitude flyers (yes, I am looking at you, CMDR Sanderling).
Exploring the galaxy 500ly a time: So I can jump my carrier somewhere and just have a light weight scout ship analyse the systems around it. If I find something interesting nearby, I can easily pick up the fitting ship to exploit that point of interest - and at some point jump the carrier on to the next center of exploration.
Ohh, and the most important part: FDEV said, the carriers are "indestructable" - I say: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! I see hours of fun ahead of me trying to get this massive ship I have into the most dangerous places I can think of.
Please file all your further ongoing whining about the announced carriers directly here in the comments, where they will go mostly unread by the public. Thank you.
And for the time being, turn up your subwoofers and watch this fleetcarrier megajumping (yes, this is the technical term, don't ask) into another starsystem:
The annoucement was made last week "live on tape". If you want to see the complete one hour not-so-live stream, here it is.Maybe a short introduction for people not yet playing Elite Dangerous. Within this game you have exactly one commander you are playing. You can have many space ships - but have to park a ship in a station to be able to switch to another ship, which obviously has to be parked in the same space station. If you are in an area far out from inhabited space, there are no stations - and therefore you can not change ships. Spacestations are stationary (hence the name), you can not move them anywhere else. Believe me on this one, I have rammed quite heavy spaceships into stations, they did not move a bit.
So here come Fleet Carriers now - they can be owned by players and are personal space-non-stations - They can offer most services Space stations have without being stationary.
With the annoucement youtube, reddit and the game forums at Frontier Development (FDEV) went crazy. I couldn't say it better than our CMDR Bob Lowkey said it on our discord, so here is the quote:
Fleet carrier reveal there's so much salt on the stream already makes the Dead Sea seem like spring water.
And I would like to thank FDEV for that alone. All that whining and yelling on all those platforms by themselves provided an excellent entertainment value. Chapeau!
Most of those complaints seem to orbit around the idea, that people wish to play the game exactly like they did without the carriers, and that carriers don't change that playstyle now - or something like that. All in all logic is in short supply in most of the complaints. It almost seems like those players believe, they are forced to buy a carrier and use it all the time. I am pretty sure this is not the case, if you wish to continue playing like you did before, you should be able to do that.
I personally see those carriers as a massive increase in options how to play this sandbox game I like so much. To be honest I have so many ideas how I want to use this thing, that the hardest part will be deciding on what to try out first.
Sure, I am also not 100% in line with all the design decisions and they are not completely arranged around the play styles I enjoy, but I am able to accept, that this asset maybe has not been designed for my own personal preferences, but had to be a bit of a compromise to also appeal to other players.
So, what I want to do with these? A few examples:
They, for the first time, allow to play markets in Elite Dangerous. The ability to buy and sell goods and set prices on your carrier is total new gameplay. Galaxy-Tycoon style, being the boss on your space-flying farmers market. This is like a new game within the game by itself. I want to try this out - and taking into account how bad I am in trading sims, probably lose a fortune while doing so.
BGS support vessel is the next big thing: When our in game faction is at war, can I place this thing near one of the combat zones to provide refuel, repair and re-arm services to our combat ships? That'd be a great addition.
Will there even be respawn on the carrier in case of ship destruction occuring? I sure hope so, then this can also become the hooning base our community always wanted. So when doing racing events in narrow canyons on some planet, you can place a carrier in orbit to ensure respawn near by. All those wonderful canyon rich worlds outside the bubble can now turn into playgrounds of speed addicted low altitude flyers (yes, I am looking at you, CMDR Sanderling).Exploring the galaxy 500ly a time: So I can jump my carrier somewhere and just have a light weight scout ship analyse the systems around it. If I find something interesting nearby, I can easily pick up the fitting ship to exploit that point of interest - and at some point jump the carrier on to the next center of exploration.
Ohh, and the most important part: FDEV said, the carriers are "indestructable" - I say: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! I see hours of fun ahead of me trying to get this massive ship I have into the most dangerous places I can think of.
Please file all your further ongoing whining about the announced carriers directly here in the comments, where they will go mostly unread by the public. Thank you.
And for the time being, turn up your subwoofers and watch this fleetcarrier megajumping (yes, this is the technical term, don't ask) into another starsystem:
2020-04-03
We just wanted to do some mining...
At the end of 3305 some commanders of The Buur Pit that - for reasons not comprehensible to this writer - actually like mining, founded the BPMC: The Buur Pit Mining Company. With their company slogan "Making Billionaires since 3305" they are not exaggerating.
As I have learned through the course of the economic adventure this article is about, there are "Leaderboards" for squadrons within Elite:Dangerous. And so the madness started. Those leaderboards are reset every two months...
Sometime in February someone noticed we are actually in the Top 50 of squadrons in the trade category. We were very proud of this as we are a fairly small squadron and found that to be quite an archievement. Only a few weeks later someone noticed our crazy mining folks have somehow pushed us into the top 10 of miners. From there it went down the drain pretty much and more people started to mine as they learned there are a lot of credits to be earned.
Sure enough we were in the Top three soon after. At that point we realized, that we are not competitive game players, we just wanted to win. Early March spreadsheeting started to happen and soon enough the whole squadron was just focused on making money. Especially as there is a trophy to be won, so we really wanted to stay in the Top 3 places and at least get the shiny bronze trophy for our spaceship dashboards. See here you can see how it ended:
 |
| Spreadsheet Magic provided by CMDR NeokeVenice |
You can nicely see the race with Dark Enterprise (DE), another player faction in the game, at the last days. With our international community we basically had people mining 24/7 somewhere - from Europe to the Americas on to New Zealand and Australia... We could create a continuous income for this. It was completely crazy, some time mining with 10 or 15 ships together, on the way learning new mining techniques to optimize outcome.
After those last few days I can say one thing for sure: I dont want to mine an asteroid for quite some time anymore.
We do not plan these things, but if we get to the point where this community has a common goal, we are a bit on the unstoppable side of things. #ForTheBobblehead
2020-02-24
PitBowl
Conservation ov Momentum shall not be denied to any man, regardless ov his race, status, gender or creed. -- https://totl.net/Rights/I have tricked the BuurPit into a bit of scientific research. Some time ago commander Snert and myself did a few experiments of ramming ships and pushing away the other with that. Already then I noticed that the physical concept of "Conservation of Momentum" is implemented rather badly.
So I brought a relatively low massed ship and rammed his heavy Imperial Cutter. With this different masses, according to physics as we know it, I should hand over some momentum to the heavy ship and myself bounce backwards. Only if both ships have the same mass, the incoming ship should exactly come to a stop and hand over all of its momentum to the other. If you want to read up about that a bit, I recommend the all-knowing trash heap (does anyone else remember where this reference comes from, BTW?): Wikipedia - it has an article with nice illustrating animations.
But in Elite:Dangerous something else happens: My smaller ship always comes to a complete halt and tries to hand over all momentum to the heavy target, that shoots away. Except, it again hits something (like the ground), then it will give up all momentum again.
Also, I guess due to the netcode behind the game, it can take some time for the momentum to arrive. This is actually a noticeable delay, so after ramming I stand still and the target starts moving a little later.
So last weekend I accumulated my willing guinea pigs to try this: Arrange a lot of space ships like bowling pins and get someone to crash into that, to see the momentum distribute through the group. It turns out the first part is already extremely hard: herding a fleet of mad spaceship commanders to actually just park close enough to each other. It is even much less possible to archieve a dedicated formation, so we gave up on that relatively fast.
To have a reference at least in one of the three dimensions, we did this on a planet, just above the surface. Also it looks better seeing ships tumble in gravity. So here is some video footage of what happened:
Most parts are rather irrelevant for the science, but "Act 4" of this video actually shows the effect - even though just at the side of the screen because of my bad camera works. You can see the purple-pink-ugly-thing being crashed into... it starts moving, shortly after that hitting the next ship. That stops the purple ship and accelerates the next.
Act 3 should actually have worked, but it did not - I can currently only assume that this is because the purple ship is trying to distribute its kinectic energy between multiple ships and this is just too much for the in-game physics model and it gives up.
So generally one could build upon this, but honestly: herding commanders is hard. Sadly the "just turn everything off and do nothing" part always fails to reach someone.
As the final we tried another idea we had in mind - and having so many people with the same type of ship in the same place was an opportunity: We played spaceship Jenga, by stacking all ships on top of each other, then switching all flight assist systems off and letting a ship at the bottom of the tower boost out of it. It is also in the Video.
2020-02-16
Low Gravity Speedbowling?
Because there is so much to find out about this game, some commanders of our squadron decided to found a dedicated science division.
Where questionable ideas lead to great explosions…. Meet the
Boonlabs Scientific Suicide Squad
(B3S)
We are planning an event on the planet right below our home station on the next weekend.
Today I had a bit of time to work on one of the questions that came up in our discord (I assume it was CMDR PrimtimeCasual): Can I speedbowl there?
The B3S deployed one of its highly trained monkeys (me) to find this out. I have picked the obvious ship to analyze this question, an unengineered stock Anaconda. This thing can usually reach speeds that are otherwise only seen in plate tectonics.
Roughly 200km above ground I switched off all flight assist system, pushed the thrusters to "full up", pointed the nose roughly 60° to the ground and started accelerating.
Speed increased a lot slower than on the usual speedbowling worlds and the angle of accelaration felt a lot tighter, but you can speedbowl on worlds <1g it seems - just a lot slower. But still you reach speeds your ship is normally not capable of getting to.
Picture of proof:
As you may be able to see on this picture I have reached 1005m/s at the time of screenshooting. After that I was a bit busy to not crash into that mountain right in front of me. Not the best choice of speedbowling alley here maybe.
So I am now looking very much forward to see commanders showing up to next weeks event at multiple times the speed of sound.
Further research is required from dedicated speedbowlers to find out whether the mediocre speed I have reached is due to me being bad at this, due to the questionable choice of ship or due to low gravity. I can't wait to see your reports on this.
Today I had a bit of time to work on one of the questions that came up in our discord (I assume it was CMDR PrimtimeCasual): Can I speedbowl there?
The B3S deployed one of its highly trained monkeys (me) to find this out. I have picked the obvious ship to analyze this question, an unengineered stock Anaconda. This thing can usually reach speeds that are otherwise only seen in plate tectonics.
Roughly 200km above ground I switched off all flight assist system, pushed the thrusters to "full up", pointed the nose roughly 60° to the ground and started accelerating.
Speed increased a lot slower than on the usual speedbowling worlds and the angle of accelaration felt a lot tighter, but you can speedbowl on worlds <1g it seems - just a lot slower. But still you reach speeds your ship is normally not capable of getting to.
Picture of proof:
As you may be able to see on this picture I have reached 1005m/s at the time of screenshooting. After that I was a bit busy to not crash into that mountain right in front of me. Not the best choice of speedbowling alley here maybe.
So I am now looking very much forward to see commanders showing up to next weeks event at multiple times the speed of sound.
Further research is required from dedicated speedbowlers to find out whether the mediocre speed I have reached is due to me being bad at this, due to the questionable choice of ship or due to low gravity. I can't wait to see your reports on this.
2020-02-08
Virtualize Everything
Working in IT, the trend to virtualize everything can not be ignored. For example, all Google has is a single Raspberry Pi dangling from the wall outlet in some californian office building - everything else you see are virtual machines running on that bugger, and we all really hope they have a spare SD-Card somewhere.
Following this trend I decided to virtualize my reality. Last week I got my Oculus Rift S delivered and started testing it for example for playing Elite: Dangerous. Sure, there are other uses, but honestly: Who cares?
The setup started with some anger management requirements on my side, as my f...riendly USB port just wouldn't work with the headset. I sure have a USB 3.0 controller and why the f...rag does the headset always complain about the port not being usb threeish enough for it to run. That makes no sense. Well it didn't at first, until I learned that some of my ports are obviously on another controller, that is USB 2.0, of which I did not even know I owned it. Put it into a port marked as actually being USB 3.0 and it workes like a charm.
After some setup (log in to facebook! Aye! --- Measure your room for your safety! Aye, it's facebook, nobody has privacy concerns there --- Look, what the cameras are always seeing, when you are playing! Wait, what? this device is connected to my Facebook account; ah, whatever. --- and so on) it worked. The setup, though somewhat concerning for the IT-savvy, was excellently guided and easy to do.
And then it began: Find out how to start the game in VR. I expected this to be very hard, so put on my headset, ready to wrangle Steam and watch growing blue bars for hours. Okay, Steam, how do we go. And steam said: "Oh, you are wearing a VR headset. Should we start your game in VR mode?". Ah, yes. That's it, it worked. Instantly.
And then, the game is in 3D, you can look around and it feels as if you are in the hangar. For the first time I got a sense of scale in the game. And my Spaceships are huge. Not big, literally huge - I was blown away and just had to stare at my ship for a few minutes in awe before entering the cockpit.
And since then I spent all the time of rather dull flight looking around and it is so much better. I start noticing the details of my spaceships, and the level at which these are done in game is amazing. For example the "Krait Mk2" I own, is from now on and forever the "Hobo Ship" in my mind. Cables are just fixed to the ceiling with Ducttape or lying around openly.
Following this trend I decided to virtualize my reality. Last week I got my Oculus Rift S delivered and started testing it for example for playing Elite: Dangerous. Sure, there are other uses, but honestly: Who cares?
The setup started with some anger management requirements on my side, as my f...riendly USB port just wouldn't work with the headset. I sure have a USB 3.0 controller and why the f...rag does the headset always complain about the port not being usb threeish enough for it to run. That makes no sense. Well it didn't at first, until I learned that some of my ports are obviously on another controller, that is USB 2.0, of which I did not even know I owned it. Put it into a port marked as actually being USB 3.0 and it workes like a charm.
After some setup (log in to facebook! Aye! --- Measure your room for your safety! Aye, it's facebook, nobody has privacy concerns there --- Look, what the cameras are always seeing, when you are playing! Wait, what? this device is connected to my Facebook account; ah, whatever. --- and so on) it worked. The setup, though somewhat concerning for the IT-savvy, was excellently guided and easy to do.
And then it began: Find out how to start the game in VR. I expected this to be very hard, so put on my headset, ready to wrangle Steam and watch growing blue bars for hours. Okay, Steam, how do we go. And steam said: "Oh, you are wearing a VR headset. Should we start your game in VR mode?". Ah, yes. That's it, it worked. Instantly.
And then, the game is in 3D, you can look around and it feels as if you are in the hangar. For the first time I got a sense of scale in the game. And my Spaceships are huge. Not big, literally huge - I was blown away and just had to stare at my ship for a few minutes in awe before entering the cockpit.
And since then I spent all the time of rather dull flight looking around and it is so much better. I start noticing the details of my spaceships, and the level at which these are done in game is amazing. For example the "Krait Mk2" I own, is from now on and forever the "Hobo Ship" in my mind. Cables are just fixed to the ceiling with Ducttape or lying around openly.
 |
| This red cable going into that vent opening there? Why? I mean this is a space ship and this kind of cable management raises questions about the quality of the ship that is supposed to keep me alive at multiple times the speed of light in space. |
But VR does more: It tricks your brain. Looking down, I got to see myself in game and my first thought was: Hey, you've lost some weight, this is great. Only a few seconds later I noticed, I am not looking at real-me, but some digital dude.
 |
| I have a joystick and a thruster on a table - and these in game move precisely the way I move the real things. So the brain totally believes what it sees. |
You may notice on that last picture, that the zipper of the jacket is a bit of to the left at the bottom. You won't be believe how often I already tried to shift it into the middle by pulling my real-world sweater sideways.
As a summary: VR is fascinating, though expensive. And I feel a followup purchase of a new and better graphics card approaching - My GTX1060 can handle it, but in some situations reaches it's limits.
2020-02-01
Rescue Operations For Damaged Space Stations
In October 3305 I visited the space station "Titan's Daughter" for the first time - and warned about the dangerous location this has been built in. You can find my comments on that in the Article about the third part of the PitTrip. All warnings have been ignored and so the inevitable happend: The station got hit by something really hard and is now being evacuated.
With the increasing speciesism in the galaxy this was obivously blamed on our thargoid neighbours instantly. Even though no one has seen an attack happening news outlets around the galaxy know who is to blame for the damage from the first second; even though it is much more likely that a space station that close to an asteroid belt has just been hit by a rock. The green stains could even be hinting to the thargoids trying to extinguish fires in a disaster relief effort.
But we, as humans, have nothing better to do than attacking the helpers at first sight, forcing them into yet another war that will have no winners.
Instead of playing wargames (It's a strange game... The only winning move is not to play) I decided to help in evacuating the station in distress. My Saud Krüger Orca class ship is perfectly equipped for this kind of operations, so I transferred it to the Taygeta System and started rescue operations by transferring passengers from Titan's Daughter to a nearby Rescue Megaship.
During operations like these radio comms a critical for success of the operation. Therefore it is of great importance for all commanders to keep radio discipline in voice channels and reduce the usual chatter. Prompt communication and efficient operations allowed me to do a roundtrip, evacuating 70 civilians from the station, within roughly five minutes. If many commanders participate in these missions, it should be possible to rescue all inhabitants from the station quickly.
Here is a video of such an operation
------ Game immersion barrier -------
Really, the in game athmosphere around these burning station is great. The voice acting from station personell really gives the feeling of a distress situation. And all the fire and explosions... WOW. If you are playing E:D, you should go there, it is a great part of the game.
And with the ongoing improvements of voice recognition I really hope we will be able to have in game bi-directional radio comms soon... the dialogues in this video are faked.
With the increasing speciesism in the galaxy this was obivously blamed on our thargoid neighbours instantly. Even though no one has seen an attack happening news outlets around the galaxy know who is to blame for the damage from the first second; even though it is much more likely that a space station that close to an asteroid belt has just been hit by a rock. The green stains could even be hinting to the thargoids trying to extinguish fires in a disaster relief effort.
But we, as humans, have nothing better to do than attacking the helpers at first sight, forcing them into yet another war that will have no winners.
 |
| Titans daughter early 3306 |
Instead of playing wargames (It's a strange game... The only winning move is not to play) I decided to help in evacuating the station in distress. My Saud Krüger Orca class ship is perfectly equipped for this kind of operations, so I transferred it to the Taygeta System and started rescue operations by transferring passengers from Titan's Daughter to a nearby Rescue Megaship.
During operations like these radio comms a critical for success of the operation. Therefore it is of great importance for all commanders to keep radio discipline in voice channels and reduce the usual chatter. Prompt communication and efficient operations allowed me to do a roundtrip, evacuating 70 civilians from the station, within roughly five minutes. If many commanders participate in these missions, it should be possible to rescue all inhabitants from the station quickly.
Here is a video of such an operation
------ Game immersion barrier -------
Really, the in game athmosphere around these burning station is great. The voice acting from station personell really gives the feeling of a distress situation. And all the fire and explosions... WOW. If you are playing E:D, you should go there, it is a great part of the game.
And with the ongoing improvements of voice recognition I really hope we will be able to have in game bi-directional radio comms soon... the dialogues in this video are faked.
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