Elite: Dangerous — A report from a wanderer between the stars about his journey from an inhabited bubble to the open star cluster of the Pleiades

— First and foremost — I never regret that I came this way at all. And I say this because the Elite: Dangerous universe motivates players both for free travel and for classic space battles, trading and mining. And although there are plenty of fans of free flight, adherents of active gameplay consider this kind of travel nonsense. Well OK ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

– Anow let me introduce not quite, of course, a logbook in video format, but my dedication to both the entire Elite: Dangerous universe and my first foray into free space 🙂

At the same time, I advise you to watch Leonid Moskalev’s video, which inspired me to edit my video. Feel the atmosphere, so to speak!

And finally, I can’t promote a video about daredevils who dared and jumped to the very edge of the galaxy, to those stars that hang above the void, the intergalactic void!

Let’s go back to our sheep 🙂

–The only thing I regret, so this is about the fact that I only got used to the free camera about halfway through my trip. Eh, how many beautiful frames are lost =\ Whatever one may say, the view from the cockpit is a completely different matter..

— I went on a flight on an Asp Explorer, and only then, in the Pleiades, I saved up on a Krait Phantom. Although if it were up to me, I would stay on Asp Explorer. The bottom line is that Krait is good, it lands where Asp does, it jumps further and I crammed everything I wanted into it, but… Asp is the champion for the best view from the cockpit!

Krait is good in this category, but not enough! And, of course, Asp has better maneuverability and even a set of sounds. And this is to say that the worst for me was the Daimondback Explorer. There the design was subjectively bad, and there were sounds as if in almost all maneuvers the ship was about to fall apart. Damn, I heard such sounds in Fallout, but there rusty metal moaned like that, but here it’s like a new and fully functional ship =\

And so I’m loitering in the darkness, losing altitude and gaining altitude to find the point and angle I need for a screenshot, and then… I probably went too fast on the turns, but one way or another I collapsed and flew, as if a stone had been thrown from heaven. I tried to brake, pressed the button, but to no avail. And maybe one more time? And one more time?! Shar-r-rah! Goodbye shields and hull! I… Survived? Damn, I survived! I’m fucking in business! Almost. I killed the shields completely, and the hull integrity indicator dropped from one hundred to twelve percent! 12%, Karl! Naturally, I exhaled, forgot about all the screenshots and immediately flew to the finish line, to the station located there, so that they could fix me there. Because 12% of the body is nothing.

Why did I fall like https://nonukcasinosites.co.uk/scratch-cards-not-on-gamstop/ a stone from heaven?? Why did the braking not work as it should have?? Because the planet I was maneuvering over had one and a half gravity! And, you know, you can feel it! I won’t describe exactly how, but take the word of someone who, one system before the finish line, almost flew to the start, wasting the time spent on the flight and all the baggage of not only priceless, but information that I scanned in seventy-odd jumps. Then I already landed on planets with double gravity, but the first extreme experience became priceless!

— Having experienced such a cosmic extreme, I think I can give a little advice still very green beginners. If you are just starting your journey in Elite: Dangerous, but are already thinking about your first foray into the unknown, head towards the Pleiades! First of all, it’s close. Secondly, you will be able to feel both the thrill of cosmic loneliness and the opportunity, if something happens, to give up on everything and hit the gas, so that if something happens, in a dozen, or maybe a couple of dozen jumps, you can get to civilization. Try to overcome not thousands, but three hundred light years, so that you can decide later… But you need it? And, if necessary, how far can you go?? To the center of the galaxy? Or a voyage in a circle around the center? Weak? 🙂

— I also advise you to think about the Pleiades, because here and only here (okay, the galaxy is big, not only here) a showcase with an assortment of cosmic pearls awaits you! Well, yes, and in the habitable bubble there are both yellow and red, blue and white stars with pulsars and even, if memory serves, with one black hole. But it is in the Pleiades that large and bright stars await you, which will give an excellent, contrasting picture both in space and on the planets! And here you will find not only double and triple stars, but double, triple and systems with higher multiplicity! That is, two, three, or even four stars, each of which has its own planets, but these stars still revolve around a common gravitational center and are considered a single system! Sometimes two binary systems are formed from four stars, which again revolve around an invisible peg of the gravitational center.

And there are tons of such systems! For example, you fly into one, scan everything up to 100% and head to one, to another, and then to a third planet to get vouchers and see the beauty, and the navigation first gives you, say, 20 light seconds, then 73, then 120, 235 and… 12837 and 78535! Ta-da-dam! Why so many? Yes, because there are planets from another star, the system of which you still need to fly to. Just fly, because within the double fsd system the jump is impossible! Only flight, fortunately at least with increasing superluminal speed. Nightmare, melancholy and horror? Oh yes, I’ve seen this opinion. But, objectively speaking, such a thing doesn’t lack atmosphere! In one such system, by the way, there is a black hole around which its planets revolve. Whoever knows will understand, because there are a ton of tourist routes leading to this singularity.

And right there, in a small but very interesting cluster, you can encounter another civilization, the alien mind of the Thargoids! More precisely, with their objects and ships. And, if you suddenly try to get your hands on some alien artifact, you will immediately become a marked object for interceptions! Every now and then you will be intercepted, but not in space, but right in the wormhole, in hyperspace between one system and another! Try to fly to the Pleiades to encounter such an adventure and immediately feel a little helpless in the shell of a ship in which all the lights suddenly go out!

Darkness, the abyss of space, powerlessness to change anything and aliens overboard. And sounds. Yes, sounds in space. This assumption. What sounds? Like the moan of whales. And so you sit, wait, and frost grows on the glass of the cabin. Close your eyes, imagine that you are not in space, but in the depths of some ocean. Imagine that you are hanging there and a whale swims nearby. Or even two whales. Or maybe three. The seconds are ticking and something will happen! Or maybe it won’t. But there will definitely be a lot of impressions! And all this awaits you in the Pleiades!

— But now I must move from praise to criticism. The point is that Elite’s main competitor, Star Citizen, in my eyes is still just a demo, which sometimes they try to present as an almost finished, almost release version of the game. But ED sometimes too clearly resembles… No, not alpha, but a beta version of something more. At other moments, I literally see how work in one, another, and a third direction was interrupted, forcing the developers to leave everything as it is or, at least, quickly patch up a very obvious semi-finished product. What exactly is wrong?

— First, again and again about the black hole. More precisely, holes.To. I’ve already met at least three of them. On the one hand, they are incredibly cool, but… Unfortunately, the quantum singularities of the Elite: Dangerous universe have become one of the main disappointments of both the journey to the Pleiades and the entire acquaintance with the world of the game as a whole. Because a real black hole is one of the most dangerous space objects! Its gravitational influence is capable of attracting and tearing apart not only ships, but even stars! Didn’t calculate the trajectory and speed during approach? Say goodbye to life. More precisely, you will be destroyed, melted and split into atoms and elementary particles by a giant interstellar vacuum cleaner and at the same time you will remain intact, but will freeze forever, being recorded on the irrational event horizon!

Hello Interstellar! Hello Elite: Dangerous! But no, here you have some kind of bullshit… From all the gigantic power of the black holes in the Frontier galaxy, all that remains is that same black color and… gravitational distortion of light, that is, the gravitational lens effect known to astronomers.

That’s all! And even though you put your nose into the blackness, nothing will happen! Because together with the black hole there is a continuous security system, so God forbid! :)) In a sense, by the way, this implementation of the phenomenon is reminiscent of anomalies from X4: Foundation. Only in X4 the anomaly pushed the ship away from itself, but the engines at full power could overcome the effect in order to pass through the wormhole. And here… As if nothing. Perhaps there are other, special black holes in the game that were given a little more special effects? I know about supermassive Sagittarius. And perhaps I’ll see and find something else, but now these gorgeous objects are implemented somewhat poorly.

— As, indeed, some stars and some planets. Anyone who has flown enough knows that stars that are at least somewhat close in class to the Sun are not ideal, but they are worked out to at least a solid four.

But the class of white and blue giants is represented by just a large ball with a texture like an ice planet, to which a backlight was simply attached from the inside.

I’m not even talking about plasma exchange, that is, accretion between two closely located stars.

The unfortunate brown dwarfs were completely suspended in space with authentic, but eerie-resolution textures from the worst gas giants. Yes, yes, the planets here are like that, so I look at one and see excellent textures, detailing and so on, I fly to another and see soap, such that you could tear your eyes out! =\ How cute! And how impressive! =\

— Now it seems to me that the route of the inhabited bubble – the Pleiades – is the road from Moscow to the construction site of space St. Petersburg. Or at least a path to a promising province. And yes, in this way I’m hinting that I’ve flown through enough (well, for starters…) uninhabited systems, but I haven’t become a discoverer. It’s sad, but maybe there will be more 🙂 I just don’t understand why, tell me why in systems where there are no stations, anarchy is written in the policy column, when in fact the system is simply uninhabited! Yes, I understand that if there is no power, anarchy reigns. But where there are no people, there is no anarchy! Well, write that the system is uninhabited! So after all, the atmosphere will be a plus, otherwise you can’t fly anywhere from human intrigues – there is anarchy everywhere and there is no peace anywhere. 🙂

— Geological marks, and biological marks too. What’s wrong here? It’s just that all the beauties that I saved on screenshots were all found by chance, by eye and all that. But geological markers know nothing except a random area for collecting pebbles. Well, okay, along with the pebbles there are also volcanoes, or rather fumaroles, but you won’t be full of them forever. And okay, the developers threw pebbles at the bottom of the gorge, but if suddenly the geological mark points to a plain, it is, of course, convenient, but terribly stupid.

Should I remember how on one plain I found a boulder that was nothing but a whole rock outcrop! I don’t know, I’m not a geologist, but in my opinion, a rock outcropping is a little more than one boulder on a damn flat plain =\ Hey, I scanned planets in Mass Effect to find out about rivers, giant myceliums, some special mountains and faults! But Mass Effect has never been in space! And here such potential is simply wasted on nothing!

And biological marks are both laughter and sin at the same time. For example, I found a planet without an atmosphere, but with life. OK, I landed, released the TRP, took a sample and… That sample looked very much like spores, but was recognized by the on-board computer as nickel… Or maybe manganese. Or maybe molybdenum. Or maybe yttrium. In short, it wasn’t life, it was just a zone of geological farming. Why? Yes, because Odyssey with the profession of an exobiologist is not something new, but something that was put on the back burner and now taken out to spite Star Citizen 🙂 But Odyssey is not there yet, so we have what we have, that is, the consequences of the management’s decision that we should not spend money on development, but make money. Right here and right now! And the players… They want too much. Wipe off!

In short, Odyssey is needed like air! It is especially needed by those involved in the thirst for travel! It is urgent to improve the textures and refine the geology and exobiology. At least. And, if Frontier copes with its most ambitious addition, the game will turn out not yet perfect, but candy! At least marketing seems to give hope..