I bought Elite Dangerous when it went on sale, right after the newest update. It had been on my wishlist for a while now, but it just seemed like the right time.

Then I heard about the second Distant Worlds expedition.

It seemed like something interesting, so I started to scramble around to gather the resources to make the trip.

My Commander wouldn't have even attempted the trip if not for two things. The first was a very generous player who cut me in for part of a high-value wing mission, and the second was couple of overly successful mining missions.

This still didn't quite optimize what my commander actually has, it was just enough money to make the journey sort-of practical.

Of course I fly all the way out to the first way point, some 5,500ly from where I was based, and immediately start having regrets. Is my ship really good enough? Am I a good enough pilot to survive the unknown? What could I have done to make the trip easier and faster?

(As it turns out, rather a lot so far. At the very least if I had taken another hour to engineer my FSD I could have added another 5ly to my jump range. As it stands the first waypoint station doesn't sell the equipment that I would need to be able to do it here and flying back to the 'bubble' of civilization would take me hours of gameplay I'm not sure I have time for. Especially since I would then have to turn around and come back to the waypoint.)

It could be an interesting UF story, and maybe a way to pull in *insert fandom here*. A sort of gold-rush has kicked-off resulting in a large mass of civilians of various abilities grabbing whatever ships are out there and flying out into the void to see what is there (and to get the naming rights of anything they find.) This could be a group heading out from known UF space, or maybe a group heading in largely unaware of how crowded the galaxy really is.

I picked up Elite a while ago, and quickly determined that it was unplayable without a HOTAS setup, which I keep telling myself that I'm gonna pick up Real Soon Now

--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

By an odd coincidence, I've been playing around for the last little while with a thing that uses the idea of "it's way the hell far away" to bring in an IP with a deep backstory and thereby justify why it's never been seen in UF before. Nothing to do with Elite Dangerous, though. I haven't played that in... gosh... a couple of years, at least, because:

>I picked up Elite a while ago, and quickly determined that it was
>unplayable without a HOTAS setup, which I keep telling myself that I'm
>gonna pick up Real Soon Now

I got by for a while with my old Wingman Extreme and doing the rest via keyboard, but eventually I got curious and bought a HOTAS rig. Unfortunately, the furniture my system is set up on doesn't really lend itself to that kind of hardware, so using it was really awkward, and I eventually got fed up with it—but by then I'd forgotten how the improvised set up with the Wingman had worked, and I couldn't be arsed to learn it again.

I keep meaning to look into some other way of setting the thing up, but I never get around to it. One of these days. I mean, there are years' worth of expansions I have, but have never seen.

--G.
That's one distinct advantage No Man's Sky has: the controls are a lot less insane.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.