Elite Dangerous Catch-All

Gave up tonight, servers were running pretty badly. Disconnecting, couldn't load mission screens, bugging out in FSD etc

Veloxi wrote:
Maq wrote:
omni wrote:

Not to beat the same drum all over, but EDTracker is a very good alternative to TrackIR, and now it has Opentrack support, it works in any game that supports TrackIR. The only thing missing is the forward/back degree of freedom.

Ah, I didn't notice that they were selling them prebuilt with enclosures now. I didn't get one because if it required a project it'd never get done.

OK, that's totally affordable. Bought!

Hey, what exactly are these enclosures?

Answered more in PM, but essentially, before they offered enclosures, all you received was this:

http://edtracker.org.uk/index.php/sh...

But yeah, if I was buying again now, I'd go for the prebuilt with enclosure previously linked, for the extra £3:

http://edtracker.org.uk/index.php/sh...

The addition of the magnetometer is £10 on top of that, and if you want a micro USB cable, another £3 (whatever your local currency converts to). The EDTracker guys do say they all use the not magnetometer version, so it's optional extra that may stop you having to press the recalibrate button every two hours or so, I don't have an issue with doing that, though. I also know someone who is about to attempt to add the magnetometer to his own 'old' version, we'll see how that pans out.

Stupid question but why would I need a micro USB cable? Having asked that can I use one that's lying around?

The EDtracker is a USB device that requires a micro USB plug - the kind that almost all cell phones use these days. Yes, you can use one you have lying around. I'm still on the lookout for an ultra thin one, but haven't been able to find anything yet - The charging cable I got with my Nexus 10 is thinner than most USB cables I have/can find, but it's only 1m which is no good.

What extra hardware is required on top of the ED tracker module? Is it just the accelerometer output from the MEMS module?

If you buy a prebuilt one (either in an enclosure or not), they do it all for you. You just have to plug it in and install the software, as well as the Arduino driver.

If you're going to build your own, then I'm not sure but It's all detailed on the website, and way above my head

Well, they've got another sale from me (with magnetometer). At one point in my life I would have tried to construct my own head tracker using LEDs and a webcam (I was part of a team that created some cricket and tennis ball tracking systems in a previous life), but I just want to rest when I get home from work these days.

Maq wrote:
  • DO: Fill up spare cargo space with stuff your mission destination will buy so you can turn a little extra profit.
  • DON'T: Perform any substantive upgrades on your starting Sidewinder. I disagree with Gremlin here. [...]
  • DO: Perform cheap upgrades that allow you to haul more cargo. As of the last reset I'd stripped the system scanner and shields from my sidewinder and replaced them with cargo racks; [...]
  • DO: Try out combat and exploration in your free Sidewinder (without upgrading) to get a feel for what other route you might want to go when you upgrade. Personally I'd recommend just sinking every available penny into getting to a Cobra as soon as possible as they really are the workhorse of Elite and capable of being loaded out for just about anything.

Good luck.

Good points. I'll just throw out these additional thoughts:

  • Running without shields requires you to be able to not run into things, so be confident of your piloting skills first.
  • I probably stuck with the Sidewinder too long for pure cargo hauling, though it is a nice zippy ship if you upgrade it. Now that I finally have a Cobra, I will say that I think the Sidewinder is better for light smuggling. It's much easier to zip past the guards and into the station with the smaller ship.
  • With the Cobra, be warned that the good modules will be size class 3 and 4, and can run into the millions for the A-ranked stuff. You can work you way up to them, of course.
  • Still, upgrading from the stock FSD will save you a ton of time, because it's much easier to plot routes with a range of 11ly than 6. A upgraded hauler will probably get you better bang for your buck, though.
  • Trading has been messed up for the past couple of days, so the in-game tools are currently full of lies. This is supposed to be fixed today, so we'll see...
  • Once you can confidently travel 150ly in safely, rare commodity trading gives you good returns for small ships. Really big ships still make their dough with bulk shipping.

Maq and Gremlin, thank you!

I caved in last night, pre-ordered and downloaded the "single player combat training" thing, and even got to play a bit before bed. Hard, but impressive. I'll definitely need to fiddle with the M&K settings some before I find something I'm comfortable with.

Anyone know if this single-player download in the actual game itself, that just has this little scenario unlocked, or will I need to download again tomorrow after the official release?

How big was it? I think the full game is only 4 or 5 GB download.

I'm not sure, it was an installer that started running but only showed a progress bar and DL speed, not the size of the file(s). After watching a few seconds and estimating it's several Gig's worth, I went downstairs and only came up a couple of hours later.

Tamron wrote:

I caved in last night, pre-ordered and downloaded the "single player combat training" thing, and even got to play a bit before bed. Hard, but impressive. I'll definitely need to fiddle with the M&K settings some before I find something I'm comfortable with.

Anyone know if this single-player download in the actual game itself, that just has this little scenario unlocked, or will I need to download again tomorrow after the official release?

I suspect that it is the game itself (the full thing is about 3.5GB last I checked). That said, it still won't save you from downloading whatever patches are going to get released by tomorrow, and traditionally big patch releases have tended to slow to a crawl.

I'm also expecting, based on today, that the first day may have some connection issues, unless the problem is not quite enough server nodes and they're planning to spool up a ton of Amazon cloud nodes for release. Which is possible: they built it to use cloud servers for a reason.

Gremlin wrote:
Tamron wrote:

I caved in last night, pre-ordered and downloaded the "single player combat training" thing, and even got to play a bit before bed. Hard, but impressive. I'll definitely need to fiddle with the M&K settings some before I find something I'm comfortable with.

Anyone know if this single-player download in the actual game itself, that just has this little scenario unlocked, or will I need to download again tomorrow after the official release?

I suspect that it is the game itself (the full thing is about 3.5GB last I checked). That said, it still won't save you from downloading whatever patches are going to get released by tomorrow, and traditionally big patch releases have tended to slow to a crawl.

I'm also expecting, based on today, that the first day may have some connection issues, unless the problem is not quite enough server nodes and they're planning to spool up a ton of Amazon cloud nodes for release. Which is possible: they built it to use cloud servers for a reason.

I wonder what time exactly on the 16th will see the launch. Being on Euro-time, I'm hoping it's during the day here, so I can set it to DL at home by remote while I'm at work, and at least hope to be play by the time I'm free at night

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/sXvdC22.png?1)

This would suggest a midnight launch... presumably GMT.

omni wrote:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/sXvdC22.png?1)

This would suggest a midnight launch... presumably GMT.

That's only 9 hours away... or am I being too optimistic and it's 24+9 hours? midnight is always a shady term in these circumstances.

That is 9 hours and 8 minutes away.

Followed by 12 hours of crushed, unstable servers.

Is there a way to find people in-game? Friends list, private chats channels etc? what's the community support like?

LiquidMantis wrote:

Followed by 12 hours of crushed, unstable servers.

I'm confused. Are there really millions of players out there that didn't jump into beta that are expected to jump in a launch. I love this game but I don't see it having that kind of appeal.

Second, I just learned that you're able to change your hud colors by altering the graphics setup. Seems legit and allows you to make it virtually any color you'd like. Here's some links:
http://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangero...
http://arkku.com/elite/hud_editor/

And a tutorial on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0gq...

Loads of streamers are doing this, but personally, I'll wait until they add the customisation options in-game. WIth current stability, I'd rather not do anything at all that could add to the issues.

Tamron wrote:

I caved in last night, pre-ordered and downloaded the "single player combat training" thing, and even got to play a bit before bed. Hard, but impressive. I'll definitely need to fiddle with the M&K settings some before I find something I'm comfortable with.

Anyone know if this single-player download in the actual game itself, that just has this little scenario unlocked, or will I need to download again tomorrow after the official release?

I have a separate download for the full game in the "my account" section - but I am unable to download the full game (link does not work).

No pre-loading the game client for non-beta users? I've been through this before, it's going to be a nightmare.

Flintheart Glomgold wrote:

I have a separate download for the full game in the "my account" section - but I am unable to download the full game (link does not work).

I'm hoping that I can just turn on the launcher and start downloading tomorrow. I'm pretty sure it's the same launcher everyone gets because it has the option to log in.

That raises another question though, am I going to have to delete the singleplayer combat demo, and if so how?

omni wrote:

How big was it? I think the full game is only 4 or 5 GB download.

Where are the game files hiding? All I can find is 14 MB of launcher, and I'm pretty sure the demo I've been playing is bigger than that. Even if the original Elite fit multiple galaxies onto one floppy disk.

(Just beat the "Sidewinder Face-off" mission! And learned that maneuverability is more important than speed.)

Tamron wrote:

Is there a way to find people in-game? Friends list, private chats channels etc? what's the community support like?

Right now, you've got two ways to find people: adding them to your friend list, and joining private groups. Groups are by starting player name. The GWJ group list that I'm aware of is currently:
Veloxi
fogrob
Spaceman Spiff
Masher_66
Certis

Add your name to the GWJ player list, and friend us all up. [Edit: This info should be in the first post, if we start a new thread for release.]

If you treat it like a solo game where you occasionally run across someone you know you'll have a better time than if you try to party up for everything. Player wings, essentially parties, are on the roadmap for Q1 2015, but they're not in yet. Until then, I think the best multiplayer stuff will be indirect things, like picking a minor faction and everyone descending to that system and improving their position with missions and stuff. Plus swapping trading tips once that gets ironed out again.

As far as I'm aware, all the chat is one-to-one. I haven't messed with it much yet. It was a deliberate design decision to try to avoid channels filled with spam, but they've been rethinking it. I hope they add some more options soon; an in-system broadcast channel and a broadcast-to-friends channel would be super useful.

Bear wrote:
LiquidMantis wrote:

Followed by 12 hours of crushed, unstable servers.

I'm confused. Are there really millions of players out there that didn't jump into beta that are expected to jump in a launch. I love this game but I don't see it having that kind of appeal.

We'll find out. In some ways, this game is an experiment to see how much of a market something like this has past the initial Kickstarter. Remember, if you heard about the Kickstarter, you're in the minority. There are a ton of people who didn't know the game existed until after gamma started. The good news is that, rather than having a traditional server setup, I believe that they went with a Amazon cloud based virtual server cluster, so they can theoretically spin up as many (or as few) nodes as they end up needing.

misplacedbravado wrote:
omni wrote:

How big was it? I think the full game is only 4 or 5 GB download.

Where are the game files hiding? All I can find is 14 MB of launcher, and I'm pretty sure the demo I've been playing is bigger than that. Even if the original Elite fit multiple galaxies onto one floppy disk. :D

The launcher is just the launcher. If you go into the launcher folder and look in the "Products" folder you'll find actual game files. Mine only has the demo in it at the moment which is 1.5 gigs.

Hey Veloxi, 2.06 has this in the patch notes:

- Prevent getting stuck when alt-tabbing

Actually, you're right - the most recent launcher has a separate option for the combat tutorials than the full game. In that case, I have no idea if what you have downloaded already is anything to do with the main game :S

EDIT: As for the alt-tabbing fix, if I think I'm going to be doing a fair bit of that, I switch to windowed mode, full screen and use borderless gaming application. Although this is a ploy I use with multiple games, not just ED. Hopefully it makes someone's life easier though

omni wrote:

Actually, you're right - the most recent launcher has a separate option for the combat tutorials than the full game. In that case, I have no idea if what you have downloaded already is anything to do with the main game :S

EDIT: As for the alt-tabbing fix, if I think I'm going to be doing a fair bit of that, I switch to windowed mode, full screen and use borderless gaming application. Although this is a ploy I use with multiple games, not just ED. Hopefully it makes someone's life easier though :)

Elite has borderless mode built-in now, by the way. It's in the graphics settings.

Aha. It's in my AppData folder, rather than Program Files where I was looking.

And, yeah, just the demo -- no predownload of the full game.