Oolite Bulletins

Honestly I don't have a doom and gloom view on this. (following is copied from what I wrote elsewhere)

Basically I think this will really work well for most kind of Elite players. Someone who was looking for more depth of world and events can now watch the various powers plays on each other and plan their allegiances accordingly. They could get deep into that level of interaction, if they want.

While this won't give EVE players what they might have wanted, it will give some of the veneer of scope which should hopefully satisfy them. Are they player led factions? No, but how many players actually lead factions versus following them anyway?

And for the old school players like myself, I can continue playing as I have before with no real changes - except that those galactic events are going to have an impact on where I go and what I do. Suddenly it's worth reading GalNet News for more than just story reasons. I might want to avoid certain areas or jump in to try and find an opportunity.

And maybe, just maybe, there will be a faction I feel I can get on board with and feel invested about helping them succeed. If not, no worries, I'm used to being in it for myself.

All in all I can see this playing out very well, without changing the core of what Elite is whatsoever.

(and now back to my live feed )

I wouldn't read too much into how much power a single individual will wield in 1.3. It will give the world a more concrete sense of conflict and politics and ramifications, and allow players to influence it, but I doubt you'll see huge swings in the galaxy overnight or even every week. It would probably take months to wipe out a faction from existence, for example, and that would be with constant losses.

Honestly, I don't think this will hurt old-school Elite players in any way, and might just give them a little something extra to worth with if they so choose.

So the last newsletter mentioned the Mac release of Elited Dangerous and surprise surprise my Mac of 2011 doesn't meet the minimum specifications due to not enough video ram (1 GB is needed) but the ones of 2011 have 512 mb.

O well just glad that I pledged at the most basic level. So it's Oolite all the way for me now.

That's a shame, Pag - harsh!

That's a shame, Pag - harsh!

Yep. The point is when I pledged my system wasn't that old so I had hope that I could meet the requirements. They requirements weren't even clear at that moment. But it's not so bad anyway as I have not the room for many games left at the moment.

Oolite is nice and small enough (although with oxp's it can grow on the HD) and for me it is the only real game in spirit of Elite. And best of all its free and developed by a friendly and active community.

When it becomes available to you, do try it - there are quite a few people running ED (using lower settings) on below-spec Windows machines.

Ok will try. I don't have high hopes that it runs well.

The Mac port is live - good luck, amigo! Beware station interiors - they really hammer the GPU.

Hmm. Pledged, finally the Mac version is out, but I read so much about it that I lost interest.

Disembodied wrote:

Your choices and actions will have a direct and visible impact on the balance of galactic power.

Because that's what it's all about, isn't it? A 100-billion star galaxy that you can skip across in a weekend, and where whole solar systems can be turned upside down with a flick of your joystick. Do you think maybe some people might have a teeny bit of an ego problem?

Don't get me wrong, I've indulged in a fair amount of galactic conquest in my time - but as the driving force behind an empire or a species, not as a captain of a single starship. Frontier are rapidly going bonkers.

It is an odd paradigm to strike and some what contrary to my mind. On the one hand you have this VAST universe, brain smashingly huge. Then on the other hand you have the capacity of anyone to Zaphod Beeblebrox it. Also this game is being played round the planet. All it's going to take is a concerted effort from a "goon squad" to significantly t*at things up whilst most people are asleep.

I can see how it's cheaper to set up a dog fight than a rat maze and the more people invest in the world the longer they'll stay (on average). Also you cater for the amorals who just want to burn stuff (providing the necessary conflict). Problem is after the third time some assh*le has burned your carefully build sh*t to the ground, the intelligent mind starts to wonder why their bothering, turn off the computer, go down the pub and have a long hard stare at their choice of free time pursuit.

This doesn't happen to the assh*le. It's like a china shop of constantly replenishing figurines, and they've got the baseball bat. The gratification is instantaneous.

The problem here is the disparity between short term gains and long term investment.

pagroove wrote:

... my Mac of 2011 doesn't meet the minimum specifications due to not enough video ram (1 GB is needed) but the ones of 2011 have 512 mb.

There are a couple of Mac users on the ED forum running the game on 512MB GPUs.

My configuration : iMac mid 2011 21,5" Core i5 2,5 GHz RAM 12 Go AMD Radeon HD 6750M 512 Mo
All Mac betas worked fine full screen, haven't tried the best graphics though, all is more or less set to "medium"
Should be all right for you and other players who do not meet the minimum required configuration...

Ok that certainly looks promising. I let you know when I tried it. Can take a while though.

A thread started by Drew concerning Thargoids in Elite canon, old and new - thought it may interest some of you.

This will stand up in court. Some anonymous random guy on the internet, on the zero-credibility LT forums, quoting some guy he allegedly knows, who allegedly used to work at Frontier:-

by Ringu » Thu May 21, 2015 6:15 am

Victor Tombs wrote:
Is there any news concerning an offline game?

Apologies for spoiling your mood, but the news is not good.

I work with a guy who just came from Frontier, and he says Braben pushed the online-only version at great expense in all areas just because it would allow some cool stuff to happen in the minds of the coders, and that despite many very logical arguments against it, he wrote it in to the game at such a level it would take massive effort to remove.

Braben is a dick, just as he's always been.

Game of Thrones in Space

<chortles>

Game of Thrones in Space

David Braben White Walker, anyone?