Almost in the same age as Asteroids and Galaga, Elite stands almost alone.
1st person perspective! ...in multiple senses of the word.
You were not tied to just moving a little ship on the screen left/right or rotating/thrusting.
You were IN the ship and the universe moved around it.
And that universe was unforgiving!
You could get attacked by pirates even in the "safest" system.
What was both routine and mundane, docking at a station, was in itself almost enough to prepare you for dogfighting. Most of us had to do trial-and-die/error learning how to do that well.
Any hyperspace jump carried the risk of a Thargoid ambush, the largest of which could tax the skills of even the best players due to the sheer numbers of Thargoids+Thargons you could end up facing. I don't recall ever beating such a fight "fairly", I always had to use the energy bomb, run away, and/or die. About 4 Thargoids was my max and then only if I got lucky.
As for the actual dogfighting, pitch + roll but no yaw was "limiting" for those of us who did play flight sims, but that limiting also forced us to work harder in dogfights. If you wanted to chase the enemy, you better be able to turn and roll with him! (Incidentally, the lack of yaw made side lasers almost useless to me in Elite.)
The different views was also an improvement on what came before. You could go past an asteroid and switch between front, side, and then rear view to get the feeling that it was receding in the distance.
Distance and speed mattered more than just range of your weapons. Against some ships, you could out-corner them and get inside their turn radius. Battles couldn't always be won because you could out-twitch the enemy. You had to manage your resources -- switching between lasers to keep their heat below max, maybe fire off a missile if you think they won't ECM it, keep your "best" shield towards the biggest threat, and keep moving or they'd (more quickly) shoot you to bits.
There was a hidden oxymoron and paradox.
Despite the menus when you docked at a station, you never really left the ship you piloted.
...yet it still felt like you were going PLACES.
Albee wrote:I played it for 18 months or so, as I recall, and have to admit I did find it rather 'samey' after a while, a problem that Oolite has done much to address with its vastly improved graphics and wealth of OXPs.
I even feel that way about Oolite, and am struggling to add and modify various OXPs to give more diversity to the systems. I added many of the OXP stations, but modified their spawning conditions so they typically were exclusive events. There might be a Superhub, Sothis, Globe, or Nuit station in a system (along with the main station), but there was only ONE of those and it was the same one there the next time you visit. Each one of those has slightly different commodities market prices/amounts, to match their special roles.
My Switeck's Shipping OXP tries to give more complex behavior to the most common but least appreciated ships in the game: traders! It goes further and tries to do the same for pirates and Thargoids. Yet no new ships were added. You may never notice any of the changes unless you know where to look...or until one day it kills you!
![[EliteWiki]](/images/elitewikismall.png){kind=small}
Capt. Murphy's OXPs
