Author Topic: Elite: Dangerous 1.3 - Powerplay (Read 17559 times)

AtlasBlue · March 22, 2015, 05:31:34 PM

Quote from: Flame on January 11, 2015, 06:18:59 AM

But muh Star Citizen

Star Citizen is a bit of a different game. The goal of Elite: Dangerous is to take it down a more realistic route in the future, while Star Citizen aims for a more fast-paced environment. A list of differences ripped from the Elite: Dangerous wiki are as follows (with a bunch of info about Elite i couldn't get around to talking about):

Heritage
Elite: Dangerous is the 4th installment of the Elite series, dating back to 1984. True.

Star Citizen has a heritage in the Wing Commander / Privateer / Starlancer / Freelancer series dating back to 1990. Also true.

Release Schedule
Elite: Dangerous was released on December 16, 2014. Expansions are planned for the future.

Star Citizen's projected release date is late 2016. Also true.

Story
Both Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen will have an on-going background story which will be influenced by the players and augmented with developer injected events.

Star Citizen comes with a single-player focused cinematic scripted campaign and is projected for general episodic releases starting from mid 2015, which will later be updated with free DLC expansions. Also true.

Ship Design and Planetary Interaction
In Elite: Dangerous, ships are rather large. Some capital ships are 2km long, while a lot of the smaller ships are designed to be quite aerodynamic, having symmetric hulls and storing their weapons in a weapons bay. This allows ships to enter 1:1 scale planets and perform freeform movement at hypersonic speeds. Pilots will be able to land on any planet they want, including gas giants, which will have procedurally generated clouds.

Star Citizen ships are more asymmetric and varied, storing their weapons outside rather than in a bay, and are therefore designed to be less aerodynamic. Landing on planets will use scripted in-game cinematics and will be restricted to specific landing zones, rather than Elite's manual landing on any planet the pilot chooses to land on. While the asymmetrical design part is true, Star Citizen will also feature landing on planetary bodies.

Travel
Elite has freeform (yaw/pitch/roll) travel with combat maneuvering. The galaxy is a 1:1 scale recreation, so pilots rely heavily on faster-than-light technology to get around. Ships are fitted with a frameshift drive that allows pilots to shift into supercruise, travelling faster than light (up to 2000c) to get around a star system. Pilots can enter hyperdrive to jump to a nearby star. Some systems are so close together that pilots can supercruise from one star to the next, although this is not the case for most stars. Pilots can pull others out of supercruise by interdicting them, forcing them to both revert back to normal space. This requires the interdicting pilot to chase after his victim in supercruise.

Star Citizen has a scaled down universe and will allow pilots to fly at 20% the speed of light (0.2c). Systems are scaled down to make travel times practical. Interplanetary travel will consist of autopilot and will not include freeform movement. Pilots can target known locations or tag a ship they want to ambush or track. To jump to nearby star systems, pilots must fly through wormhole-like jump gates. Source, please.

The Galaxy
The Elite galaxy is our very own Milky Way galaxy, accurately modeled with 100 billion star systems (400 billion total stars, accounting for multi-star systems). It is modeled after current galactic charts, and updates as new discoveries are made. Planets and moons orbit in 1:1 scale, providing a gradual but constant change in the environment.

Star Citizen has a galaxy containing 120 stars at launch. Time is compressed to a scale of 1:12 with 2 hour long days. Star Citizen will have a more casual take on scale and distance, being compressed to about 1:100 to 1:1200 scale, based on the assumption that at 0.2c it takes 30 minutes to cross a system. Again, source please.

Weapons
Elite: Dangerous has beam and pulse laser cannons, while Star Citizen will have slow-moving beam weapons on capital ships and pulse lasers on the rest of the ships. Elite: Dangerous also gives pilots a bit more freedom with their weapon choices, employing an arsenal of ballistic weaponry, missiles, torcreepes and more in addition to the energy weapons.
Star Citizen will offer a variety of weaponry, both ballistic and energy based.
Planetary Exploration
Elite: Dangerous will feature full freedom on the surface of a 1:1 scaled planet, allowing pilots to get out and explore the planets on foot (with the exception of gas giants - good luck with that!). While on a planet, players will be able to walk around buildings or their ships with multiple crew members, board and steal other landed or docked ships, operate land and underwater vehicles, explore the surface of a 1:1 scale populated planet with cities and towns, and enjoy a stroll through forests and hunt the planet's wildlife (if it exists) - all part of future expansions.

Star Citizen will restrict movement to certain locations on a planet, including (but not limited to) shops, city hubs, FPS arenas, and star ports. Pilots will be able to interact, buy goods, and much more. Pretty sure this is true, unfortunately.

Artificial Gravity
Elite: Dangerous employs rotating space stations to create gravity and does not include any form of artifical gravity generators, unlike Star Citizen. Ship interiors are presumed to have no gravity in Elite while Star Citizen will have gravity generators on most ships. True.

Flight and Combat
Each game handles flight and combat differently. An inherent flaw is provided with the aspect of space combat - there is no terrain, so very little is preventing the fighting pilots from circling around each other and just using turreted weapons. Elite features light speed pulse and beam energy weapons, making this issue more apparent.

To compensate for this, pilots in Elite have a reduced yaw (left to right turning) rate. This enforces a more realistic flight model by rolling and pitching the ship, which is less efficient but more comfortable for a human pilot. Excessive G forces can cause the pilot to redout or blackout, requiring them to plan their movements, but the pitch-and-roll style of movement aids in keeping the pilot in normal G levels. You can blackout/redout in E:D, too? Didn't know that.

Star Citizen has a more FPS approach to flight. This model requires a strong yaw which is more efficient but less comfortable for a human pilot. The game employs a G-LOC system as well, causing pilots to black out at excessive G forces. This means it is a lot easier to get into a loop and start turreting another pilot, but since the laser weapons are slower than light, the effect is compensated for. Coming from the amount of time I've played in Arena Commander (Star Citizen's in-lore flight simulator, often referred to as the "Dogfight module"), ships seem to succumb to the effects of zero-gravity more than ships in E:D, so combat feels more drifty and takes longer to stop the ship in a certain direction. Because of this, it's nearly impossible to actually loop around a ship and attack it with turreted weaponry.

Multiplayer
In Elite, players are separated into instanced groups on one huge server. Star Citizen employs a PVP-PVE slider which does not completely control engagements. Source, please.

Please note that I am not as knowledgeable in Star Citizen as a lot of people think I am (compared to other SC fans, that is. I mean Jesus Christ, we have some insane superfans...), so things I say in this could be very wrong. Also, please remember that Star Citizen is still in early development and a lot of what is said here could very well change, both OP's statements and mine.

Lastly, I do not mean to do this aggressively. I am both a fan of E:D and SC (In fact, pretty much all space sims in general), and I know that the two games' fans have a bitter hatred towards each other. I do not mean to start a war here.

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Flame · March 23, 2015, 01:33:00 AM

Alright, fixed it up! Thanks for the help.

Quote from: AtlasBlue on March 22, 2015, 05:31:34 PM

Lastly, I do not mean to do this aggressively. I am both a fan of E:D and SC (In fact, pretty much all space sims in general), and I know that the two games' fans have a bitter hatred towards each other. I do not mean to start a war here.

I understand your concern, but don't worry. The fanbases between the two games are in fact rather hostile, but the developers are actually rather supportive of each other. I'm really hyped for Star Citizen... and someone needs to make a thread about it already (unless there is one and I'm just not that observant). I'm planning on buying it when it released, but for now I'm satiating my digital hunger for space dust in Elite: Dangerous

Also, this is a bit off-topic, but is your avatar from one of The Glitch Mob's music videos?

AtlasBlue · March 23, 2015, 06:03:40 PM

Quote from: Flame on March 23, 2015, 01:33:00 AM

Alright, fixed it up! Thanks for the help.

I understand your concern, but don't worry. The fanbases between the two games are in fact rather hostile, but the developers are actually rather supportive of each other. I'm really hyped for Star Citizen... and someone needs to make a thread about it already (unless there is one and I'm just not that observant). I'm planning on buying it when it released, but for now I'm satiating my digital hunger for space dust in Elite: Dangerous

Also, this is a bit off-topic, but is your avatar from one of The Glitch Mob's music videos?

I really want to make one, but I'm stuff at making megathreads.

Also, I forgot where I got my avatar from, it's been on my computer for a long time and thought it would make a cool avatar.