Elite Dangerous: Some Fun Exploration Stats

Some fun and absolutely amazing stats straight from today's ED newsletter .

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[FONT=&quot]It’s a big galaxy out there. Players have been out exploring Elite: Dangerous’ full-scale recreation of the Milky Way since launch, and together you’ve discovered 615,475 previously uncharted systems of the 400 billion in our galaxy.[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]On a simple average, that’s 17,585 systems per day, 732 per hour or 12 per minute. Good going, everyone.

But let’s put that in context, because with 400 billion star systems to explore the community have charted just 0.00015 percent of our galaxy. Let’s put it another way: if everyone keeps going at the current rate, it will take 150,895 years to map the entire Milky Way.

But with new players joining every day, we might just get the galaxy mapped before the turn of the hundred and seventieth century.

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The game has a ton of cool stuff - I'm just waiting to dive in until they deliver actual content.

But the core of the game is solid - and then some.

Mental note: buy this in the next 50,000 years.

So, who's playing this? How much of an MMO did it end up being?

wiretripped said:

So, who's playing this? How much of an MMO did it end up being?

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I've played it - and own it.

It's more of an online game with optional multiplayer - where the multiplayer features are all but nonexistent, apart from players existing in the same universe. You can coop and fight against each other - but there's almost nothing in the interface or HUD to facilitate those things. So, it's not a very social game at this point.

But the game is more or less barren, as far as I'm concerned. It has all the structure of a great game in place - but it has almost no content.

So, it's a huge sandbox where you have to invent your own reasons for being there - and there's really no story or "world" to explore, unless you consider huge empty space with the occasional samey planets a world worth exploring.

As such, it's more or less like a multiplayer Frontier without the ability to land on planets - and that's about it.

So, what do you actually do in the game? What type of content is currently implemented? Can you trade, do missions, encounter alien beings...anything like that? I'm really interested in the game but it might be too early to jump in at this point...

I take it you didn't play the original in 1985?

You start with a bad ship and an open universe. You can either trade legal, trade illegal, become a pirate, do missions, hunt pirates or scoop up space junk. Total sandbox.

The proceeds are then used to upgrade your ship and do more things you want.

Word of warning - this game needs a flight sim controller (it's more complex than a plane because of lateral and vertical thrusters in addition to yaw/pitch/roll) and has a totally shit tutorial. For example when learning to dock at a space port it actually changes the docking bay each time and sets the 9 minute timer that experienced players have. Even watching the tutorial vid is not enough since you don't get prompts for common errors (landing gear, wrong bay etc).

Fluent said:

So, what do you actually do in the game? What type of content is currently implemented? Can you trade, do missions, encounter alien beings…anything like that? I'm really interested in the game but it might be too early to jump in at this point…

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You can trade and do little text missions. No aliens at this point, AFAIK.

Again, it's more a game structure that's in place than a game of content.

Some people will claim that's not true and that it's full of content, so long as you provide the necessary support from your imagination.

So, I'd advise you read up on it on the forums.

The most accurate description I can provide is a multiplayer Frontier without planetary landings. That's more or less exactly what you'll get, except that combat is much better in Elite Dangerous.

I'm a KS backer and have played the game quite a bit around its release in December.

ED is not an MMO at all. It can be played in three modes: Open, group or solo. These options function like a filter. In open you can interact with all players, in group play you can interact with everyone who is a member of the same group (I have joined the rather large "MOBIUS" group for example which is a pure PvE group for PvE players who don't want to be totally lonely like in solo) and solo, well, is solo.
All modes share the same persistent universe so while you will never see or interact with another player in solo mode, things like the galactic market, political landscape and exploration is shared between all players.
The MMO or generally multiplayer options are very barebone still. You can't even group properly yet so flying to a destination with someone and actually finding the other person ever again can turn into a challenge .

What you can do in the game right now is trade, mine, hunt bounties or explore. There are definitely trading and bounty hunting missions if you don't want to free-trade or scan random ships for whether they carry a bounty. I'm not at my game computer now so can't verify but I believe there may also be mining missions. And exploration... you just fly from system to system and sell the data and, yes, you can even explore stuff in already explored systems. The person who scans a system first gets the most money but anyone can scan systems and still sell data at a lower price.
The goals you can work towards are better ships and better equipment or better rep with certain factions and eventually as you work your way up the ladder, you gain ranks and might even attain Elite status (which will take quite a while).

What many players are doing now in the game is upgrade to better ships so they do rare resource trade runs which have proven to be one of the most effective ways to amass a fortune. You just buy random rare resources at point A and the further you go from A, the higher the price basically. There is extensive info at the official forums on how to make cash.

Beyond that there is no real story and no context yet (no story mode). Frontier are working on a dynamic political system (there are three factions) but we'll have to wait and see what role we can really assume or to which extent we can actually affect the universe.

Generally, I'd say check the official forums for any more detailed info you might need or Frontier's official YouTube channel and then take it from there. There are as usual many very informative clips on YT (Scott Manley is a crowd favorite, for example).

Elite: Dangerous Sidewinder Paper Craft

I loved the original and I like this game a lot, but I'm annoyed at needing youtube or forums just to avoid wasting 4 hours of not knowing what's happening or how to make it happen.

While the modern game tendency of throwing you into a fight within 3 seconds of the opening cinematics is bad, it's almost as bad to have to spend 3 full days of your life shuttling tea and atmospheric condensers from A to B and back again before you can afford the equipment that will make a fight possible (winable). In the original 3 days of play and I'd be ranked dangerous and have military lasers and an escape pod. This remake seems more realistic but less fun - perhaps the myth that Braben was the technical guy and Bell the 'fun' guy has some truth…