r/ElitePS4 • u/Pjdavies2000 • Jul 09 '17
My first couple of days - and one huge fail!
The purchase: I bought Elite as an impulse buy. I've been having lots of fun with the Dreadnought closed beta on PS4 and had a fancy for another spaceship game. Having had my fingers well and truly burnt with NMS, I tried not to think about it too much, but this time bought a physical copy - at least it would have trade in value (NMS was a download)!
The tutorials: I rarely play tutorials, but had usefully checked the controller layouts first, and having seen the endless mappings and button presses, decided a quick flick through the tutorials was probably a wise idea - and it was! I spent about 4 hours just trying to get to grips with the basics, let alone master them! I never completed the advanced combat (has anyone!!!!)
The Open: After a few hours on tutorial I decided it couldn't be that brutal on day one in-game and took the plunge. And actually it wasn't PvP brutal - it was PvE brutal! All that training went to pot. I bounced around the space station like a flea in a box. However, I did learn one thing quickly - controller remap is your friend! For example, the 'O' button. Several times I would click into a side panel and tap O to exit, and then double tap (out of habit) to then start an overdrive in the engine and shoot at 290 clicks at the letterbox opening of the station. Several fines and warnings later, I remapped that to a less intrusive button combo!
The System: And that's how I spent the first few days. I couldn't work out what to do, beyond jumping in a large loop through all local systems in what I've later discovered is called 'the bubble'. I looked at missions, but they all had higher level ratings than mine - and given how brutal even landing a ship was, doing a missions sounded like carnage!!!!
The Mining: I found a local system with an asteroid belt - bingo! Money to be made, and my tutorial training was about to pay off... except it didn't! For about 15 mins I fired my lasers at the rocks and except for overheating, nothing - nadda- zilch! Oh yeah - I needed a mining laser, silly me. Only problem was, I couldn't afford one, and even if I could I'd also need a refinery, and I definitely couldn't get that!!!
The Voyage: The following day I had a good look through the galaxy map. It seemed that my jump capabilities neatly held me in 'the bubble' but there was a new system tantalising close - in fact it was (iirc) 6.35ly and I could jump a max of 6.13ly unloaded and with a fair wind 0.22ly; that's all that stood between me and existing the cage I'd been in for about 2 days!!!! When I tried jumping to this new system it would say it was too far for my FSD, but the fuel gauge seemed to suggest I had mucho fuel to make the jump - so started my idea: I was going to Cruise at max as far as I could and then jump, after all, I only needed to be 0.22ly closer... that should be easy, right?
The Lost Day: So I began my voyage to this new system, I kicked the FSD into full Cruise throttle and when I (eventually) reached max I found that I was 2.2d away travelling at that speed, so at that speed I'd need to travel for over 52hrs (real time!!!) to reach the system. No worries though, I only needed to move 0.22ly and then 'engage' and I'd be there in a few seconds. Simples! After almost an hour I realised it was still only measuring my distance from my starting destination in LS - light seconds; hmmm that was a worry, but carry on though. After a further hour I realised I'd used up over half the fuel and was getting dangerously close to not having the fuel to make the jump - ekk! But I kept going. Almost an hour later and, painfully, I checked progress. I'd managed to move about 0.13ly in about 3 hours in Cruise, and had all but used up my fuel. I gave up...
The Mission: Decided to self destruct as I'd run out of fuel, and felt this was a better use of my time than limping back and refuelling with my now limited funds. But this time I decided to just take the lowest paid data mission and hope I made it - the mission paid about 12,000 credits, and so if I made it, would be 11,900 credits more than my current balance, the risk was worth it! Unbelievably, as I mapped to the system that needed this important information, I realised it was also still within the bubble, and so I could jump to it! No word of a lie, is taken the mission and pocketed the cash in about 10 mins! 10 mins!!!! I could have done that in hour one of day one, but I didn't! Gargh!!!
My First Million: I was back in the game - there were tonnes of data missions, and most seemed to be paying a similar amount for a similar time commitment. After an hour I was going for missions that were paying 50-90k a trip, and soon after I bought a new ship! This one opened up a whole new world of cargo missions. Soon I was being paid up to 160k a mission, and was able to jump significantly further - the bubble was now a distant memory! Another new ship - with 18t capacity - and I tipped the 1m mark, something only a day earlier I thought would never happen!
The Lesson: The game purposefully plays you against yourself. The controls are varied and complex (at first) and 'simple' tasks like landing require skill and patience - many times I clipped the grilled entrance and was snagged like a fish in a net - but that's the fun, sort of, everything is difficult. After all, you are piloting a spaceship! It should be hard! The flip side is the missions are simpler, in the way they require the skill of the pilot in the role you play, not the skill to 'be' the mission.
TL:DR Fair enough! Basically, I bought the game with no research into it, and struggled for a long time. After a foolhardy mission that finished exactly the way it obviously would, I discovered I was playing the game wrong - or rather, the game was playing me! I'm now in control and loving the game!!!!
My Tip: Have a go - there is a sort of structure behind the vastness (at least in the early days) whilst you try and figure the skills out. Oh, and remap those god damn keys!
Good luck, CMDR!
