Books ! And Spaceships !

11 days since last post .... oops. What have I been up to ? Let's allow the non game stuff to be first up :

Mum trip ! Good trip. Nicely chilled out and good to see the mum and sister again. (There may also have been bonbons, sherbets and marshmallows raided too). Those away trips always wipe me out though and I've enjoyed chilling out this long weekend.

Which included books .... the Book Barn have been running a sale this weekend and I may have paid a visit. Almost didn't because I woke up yesterday with a huge headache. Like one of those headaches that's definitely interfering with rational thought. I'll blame that for these being liberated :

Robert Heinlein - Podkayne of Mars and I Shall Fear No Evil
Kim Stanley Robinson - 2312
Greg Bear - Hull Zero Two
Larry Niven and Steve Barnes - The Descent of Anansi

The two Heinlein books are a couple of rare ones I don't own yet, KSR wrote the excellent Mars series, always been curious about Greg Bear and I've enjoyed everything I've read from Larry Niven. I've finished off Embers Of War, more coming about that at some point.

It was also great having a lunchtime catch up with someone who's been an amazing friend over the last few years too. I hope that the headache wasn't making me too dour company :-).

I've definitely been enjoying being back in Elite though. Yesterday's session was pretty awful for making progress (my combat ships were outclassed in the fights I was putting them in) but it did melt away that headache. I have more ships now. Many more ships ...

Warning - picture spam incoming.

That's the most spectacular though. This is a gorgeous game when the planets literally align. Here we have the Greater Dragonbug emerging from the space station when the orbiting planet was in total eclipse. Oh and look at that ring eclipse too.

That's Greater Dragonbug, the Adder class sister ship to the Hauler.

That's a smaller Viper 3 class ship, called Mini MagPew. There will be a lot of references appearing in these names. My last character had a Viper called Space Viking .... and the obscure reference follows from there.

Before finally escaping the new starter zone in the Cobra Mk3, Keelas Wings. A handy ship which got upgraded for early mission running, raising the cash for the next two. Trading and courier missions got very lucrative, especially for the smaller ships. However, it does help to know where the best systems for it are. Usually, the missions from one station will have their destinations distributed across the local area. Unless .... the local area only has a couple of stations in it. For those, all of the missions go to a couple of stations so you can do loads of courier jobs at the same time for more profit.

Oh and click for bigger in the screenshots !

Not completely aimless now. There is a plan ....

The plan may involve coffee.

It didn't involve a new paintjob for this one after scraping across the landing pad down there. That's Long Sight Base, which is on a higher gravity world (1.3g) which puts much more strain on the thrusters.

More ships ! That one's the Dauntless, an Imperial Eagle named for the other Eagle I had (Undaunted). A nice little ship, nippy and packing a punch from the railgun I had in there. But outclassed by pretty much anything else out there. It did better than the replacement :

That's the Mighty Magpew, which was .... anything but. Odd, because I seem to remember this ship being better for my last character. Could be those headache issues. This one nearly got blown up a couple of times as I ran away very quickly from bigger ships that totally outclassed it.

This one got me back on the right track though. That's a Diamondback Scout called Day Tripper, which let me learn the new exploration system. Previously, you'd ping the system to find out roughly what was in it and then would have to fly to everything to scan it. Now, you still ping the system but have an analysis system that's like having a telescope and spectroscope. So instead of guessing whether a planetoid is worth scanning, you get that from the spectroscope now and then check them out further via the telescopes.

It's so much better. Anyway, that ship earned me almost 19m credits which was a great return on its 3m investment. But I'm on to the next one already :

That's the ... have a look at the next pic. :-D It's a Cobra Mk4 that I'm going to use for some more intensive mission running to unlock the Imperial ships. Oh and for fun and profit too.

One plan for this time around is to go up the list of ships available, from cheapest to most expensive, finding a useful purpose for each one. The Cobra 4 is for mission running, I'll run the first freighter until I go up another Trading level and then it's a Dolphin totally misused to do planetary landings for prospecting.

I've definitely been enjoying back in Elite. It feels like my hands have been agreeing too. I haven't had the physical issues erupt like they do with Skyrim or WoW.

Oh ! What's the ship called ...

There we go. Zoom in for name. One thing about this picture though, there's some really daft design in the Elite world. That's an Outpost, which has all of its landing pads on the outside. Some of them are in really odd positions, with obstructions on the landing pathway. So for this one, you have to come in curved (or from above). Whereas if the landing pad was reversed by 180 degrees, you'd be coming in from the space side instead of the station side.

A small criticism :-D.