Heading back into the pilot's seat

I've gone back into the internet spaceships !

Also Lego happened. And Thorntons Easter eggs. (Other easter eggs are available too)

More on the Lego in a future post but I would happily recommend the 20th anniversary Pod Racer model. Nice build and a lovely model.

I've been thinking about going back into Elite for a while but one thing that has kept me away has been the various new changes that have been introduced since I last played almost a year ago. I've been enjoying coming back in, although I have retired a character again. Cmdr Keela Danne has retired to one of those Earth Like planets she found for some serious chilling out while the space ship empire gets handed over to new management.

Enter Cmdr Iceangel (again) as I go back to the name of my first character. The ship up above is the Money Spider, named for the smallest ship in the game, the Sidewinder. These ships are like paper ... if a laser goes off in the next star system, this ship will probably explode.

But it's a nice ship to start in, even if you take off the shields and weapons and pray no one has a go at you.

Oh ! Cmdr Keela retired with 348m credits in assets over 19 ships and .... zero insurance claims. As in, no deaths for that character. And I was occasionally poking things with the lasers, just running away quickly when the damage was getting too great.

Ship 2 is the Undaunted, an Eagle class light fighter ship. I've been playing the new new player experience thing that's ... new with the latest patch that arrived on Tuesday. That's added a few systems that are permit controlled, so only the newest players can jump into them. The intention is that with those safe areas and a nicely beefed up set of help menus, new players can learn the game.

Definitely weird starting off with a ship that's capable of autodocking and (another new thing) autolaunching. I've actually turned those off because I don't trust them yet. I did a little docking and landing tutorial a while ago (video link). Gosh that's quiet after watching someone else's video. Maybe he's loud. And I hate my voice still. Oh ! I think that may have been video 3 where I messed up by not realising that the nVidia Shadowplay was recording my voice as well as Audacity, hence the bad volume settings.

Anyway ! Eagle. Good ship for fighting and it's one of 6 that's available in that starting area. Oh and you're limited on modules too, with only E and D modules available. Only lasers too. The 6 ships are the starting Sidewinder and then the Eagle, Hauler, Adder, Viper 3 and the ship I'll leave the zone in, Cobra Mk3. It's a good selection of ships. (Although the Hauler is still nasty !)

And then there's the Dragonbug :

A little ship, built for being your starter hauler ship. But it's slow and only has one laser hardpoint, so I'll be in an Adder or Viper 3 next time I play.

Oh and the game is still rather pretty :

Criticisms :
The texture work of the asteroid interior is a bit dodgy.
Anti-aliasing has done a number on the yellow guard rails on the walkways.

But it's a starbase dug into an asteroid. This is awesome ! Elite is definitely one of the prettier games out there and there are stellar sights which look so much better. I do like how the spot light is illuminating and scattering off the dust between it and the spaceship. Also nice reflection off the right hand side of the pad.

Other things from resetting :
Inara.cz has recovered from the save game reset, with a few niggles.
EDSM is very confused and wasn't updating. Hopefully that fixes before I go out exploring again.
The trade system is so much better now, you can find the best trades from within the game now, instead of having to ask sites like EDDB. It's still a good idea to ask EDDB for trade routes ... but if you're going from one station to the next running courier missions, this is so much better than it was before.

So yeah ! Back in the pilot seat, enjoying it too. Hopefully my hands hold up to it. My right hand is getting more prone to RSI issues now and didn't like the Skyrim session that I had on Monday. And other bits of me don't like the play until eyes close of a Stellaris session.

And it's so pretty.