Oolite Bulletins

What're everyone's experiences of how difficulty changes in different versions (or remakes) of Eilte?

Apart from Oolite, I've only played the Amiga version of Elite.

Pirates were easier to deal with on the Amiga because they conned hostile as soon as they were in scanner range. Not sure if that was the case in the original. On the other hand, the Thargoid Documents mission (aka secret plans) was brutal. It was implemented as turning every ship in the systems you visited into Thargoids. You had to use the escape capsule every jump, as you couldn't deal with them all (particularly as you only had a single laser temp, used by all your weapons). You had to complete the mission by plotting a route only using star systems with a high enough tech level that you could buy a replacement capsule.

The supernova mission was a hassle, too. If you didn't scoop replacement fuel after the leak, you couldn't escape the nova after launching.

As an alternative to the "eject in every system and buy a new Escape pod" approach on the Amiga, you could also use your 3 shot retro engines - battle as hard and as long as you could into the system - kill the engines, flip over, hit the retro-rockets, this got you away from the Thargoids long enough (usually) for lasers to cool and shields to recharge and then as they worked out where you'd gone - and caught up with you - you could battle a little bit longer...

It was more "seat of your pants" than jump-eject approach and I racked up quite a large kill count this way (but you still had to make sure you had either an escape pod or retro-rockets or both fitted each jump).

I think I'd tried using the retro-rockets, but without huge success. Weren't they higher tech than escape pods anyway? I think I got lucky twice at Corporate States, getting to the station without any other ships appearing. At least we could shoot down missiles on the Amiga.

Queex wrote:

I think I'd tried using the retro-rockets, but without huge success. Weren't they higher tech than escape pods anyway? I think I got lucky twice at Corporate States, getting to the station without any other ships appearing. At least we could shoot down missiles on the Amiga.

My fading memory lets me down - the info is probably on the Interweb somewhere...

DaddyHoggy wrote:

My fading memory lets me down

You're not the only one suffering from 'fading memory', DH... and it doesn't improve any, believe me!
I can't even remember how I got to G9 in PC Elite Plus (if in fact I did)... is it a myth, perchance?

I played the Spectrum Elite - the one with the RemLock Lenslok - for months before making it to Elite.

A year or two later I was round a friend's house and he dug out his Speccy and his recently-bought version of Elite. His version did not have the RemLock Lenslok security device, and it took him and a friend about 3 hours to get to Elite.

So, the Spectrum Elite was both very, very tough and trivially easy.


Edit: mis-remembered the name of the Lenslok device.

Back in the day, myself and a couple of others used to share a friends Commodore64, taking turns. So in a nutshell we never really got anywhere.
It was a long time ago, and my recollection is vague, but I remember it being pretty much like vanilla Oolite only with wireframe ships etc. I'm sure those C64 FerDeLances were a lot more viscious though.

Well the Electron version was much easier than Oolite. For some reason I couldn't save my game so every session was "ironman mode". I could get to dangerous in one sitting.

The memory thing is a bit anoying. I was convinced that you could buy ships in the origonal game. Aparrantly not.

Not that I ever saved enough money to find out. Back then the only trading I did was lazer fire

Jumped out of Witchspace to find a Thargoid Carrier waiting for me. I threw lasers at it, then saw spit something out. 'Oh, a Thargon', I thought, then 'No, that's a Thargoid'. Fortunately it only got to spit one out before I toasted it. 2000Cr well-earned.

Pirates are getting more fractious now, though. Some of them are even using fuel injectors to chase me down. That was an unwelcome surprise, but I've learned to be more wary.

As the subject header implies, "difficulty" is an extremely relative term. I played the original Elite on my rubber-keyed Spectrum, complete with a printed overlay that sat between the keys to remind me what keystroke did what. I played it, but not so much as to get beyond being rated as Competent I don't think, probably because I had a 100-odd other Speecy games to play instead.

Roll on a few years and I picked up Elite Plus to play on my dad's laptop (in the days when the term "laptop" meant something the size and weight of a concrete breeze block) and fought my way to the rank of Archangel over a summer in between academic years at University. I seem to recall being more than capable of shooting incoming missiles out the sky so consistently that I almost never used my ECM, ever.

Now, I certainly can't say the above about Oolite when it comes to missile defense! I'm just thankful for the AMS my iron-arsed Cobby sports. Difficulty changes as you progress in all the games mentioned; the better you do, the more shiny stuff you install on your ship, the more secure you feel, the tougher opponents you face, the more risks you take... the more likely you are to have to punch out in an Escape Capsule!

Personally, I love the additional equipment and missions (Random Hits, Escort Contracts, Hired Guns and Pirate Coves are my favourites) as it really adds to the immersion far more the atmospherics type OXPs do, nice as they are. Plus I'm playing Oolite on an Eee PC, so anything with lots of pretty shaded graphics just won't show up at all on my netbook, whereas the Fugitive Pirate (Bounty: 250Cr) and his five friends wanting to use me for target practise certainly does show up!

I played on the Beeb and also had no problem shooting missiles down but normally I'd taken anything out long before it got to me. It seemed to take forever to become Elite but back then time wasn't a problem so much as an elastic resource. I also played the speccy too when a friend bought the Firebird (a la Lenslock) version of Elite. I preferred the Beeb version but remember being extremely impressed by what had been done on the Speccy (Couldn't be done on a spectrum they said!).

I'm really only just getting used to the feel of Oolite on the laptop and because I have a low end machine with less than the OS distributors recommended RAM I notice a difference in performance when I add or remove some OXP's - but I had to take a peek! I found myself blaming the software for things that I shouldn't like my reaction time which has increased exponentially and my visual acuity which has decreased by a similar factor. I only really became aware I was doing that after reaction time improved after hours of playing.

Queex wrote:

What're everyone's experiences of how difficulty changes in different versions (or remakes) of Elite?

As I took out my third sidewinder in succession last night, I had a flashback to the Spectrum Elite's Sidewinder - it was a sod to kill. It moved differently to every other ship in the game and could not be tracked with simple movements of one's own ship. It took me ages to work out a tactic for dealing with them.