CBJ, an Elite question for you

mrbadger · Post by **mrbadger** » Fri, 18. Nov 05, 01:01

So, did you ever find the generation ship in Elite?

I did once, and made the mistake of trying to capture it, resulting in quite the most impressive and terminal attack I ever suffered in Elite...

My question is of course intended to establish your credentials in the space sim world....

Post by **euclid** » Fri, 18. Nov 05, 01:13

I've followed the big boy for hours but never tried to get closer. It bugged me for years that I may have missed something.

BTW: did you get the cloaking device and the anti-ecm. Did you survive the thargoid hyperspace interupt?

Cheers Euclid

karvala · Post by **karvala** » Fri, 18. Nov 05, 01:16

But did you ever find the space dredger?

Post by **CBJ** » Fri, 18. Nov 05, 01:22

I played Elite, the original version on the BBC Micro, for months on end. I remember the mission where you had to find the special ship (the name eludes me) and where you got the military lasers as your reward. I also remember being caught by the Thargoids in witch-space many times, but only occasionally being stuck there due to lack of fuel. I reached Elite at around 4am one morning and woke the entire household with my celebrations. Oh, and I read The Dark Wheel several times.

The generation ship was, of course...

Spoiler

Show

...a nice touch in the manual, a rumour that kept doing the rounds for many years but of course with no real substance in the game itself.

I didn't play any of the sequels, nor any of the games that followed in that mold because I didn't have a PC at home, until someone brought the demo of X-BTF into the office I was working in.

If you really want to you can delve into the forum history to find my first post here, and can read more about my "credentials". Be warned though, it's not a short post.

mrbadger · Post by **mrbadger** » Fri, 18. Nov 05, 01:26

I've followed the big boy for hours but never tried to get closer. It bugged me for years that I may have missed something.

I got close, and opened fire on it. The only result was that the fighters on its hull peeled off and destroyed me.
If you didn't open fire it just flew away.
I'm sure there was some benifit if you were able to actually last long enough, but I never made it past that first encounter.

Did you survive the thargoid hyperspace interupt?

I don't think so, it's been a while though. Was that in Elite 1? because that's the only elite I played.

mrbadger · Post by **mrbadger** » Fri, 18. Nov 05, 01:33

quote:

Spoiler

Show

...a nice touch in the manual, a rumour that kept doing the rounds for many years but of course with no real substance in the game itself.

It was in the game, unless there was some other huge ship not mentioned. I definatelly found it.
I attacked it though, which resulted in the ships attatched to its hull attacking me and ending that session rather quickly. If the ship I saw wasn't the generational ship then what was it?

I made it to Elite twice, then learned a painfull lesson about backups when someone overwrote my savegame which was only a weeks or so away from Elite status..

mrbadger · Post by **mrbadger** » Fri, 18. Nov 05, 01:37

Quote:

Did you survive the thargoid hyperspace interupt?

aha! I remember now. They weren't too hard to survive once you had military lasers and a fair bit of practice in combat.

Post by **CBJ** » Fri, 18. Nov 05, 01:42

mrbadger wrote:It was in the game, unless there was some other huge ship not mentioned. I definatelly found it.
I attacked it though, which resulted in the ships attatched to its hull attacking me and ending that session rather quickly. If the ship I saw wasn't the generational ship then what was it?

I never saw any large ships in several circuits round the 8 galaxies. There was a lot of variation between the implementations on different platforms, though, so if you were playing anything other than the original BBC Micro version it is quite possible that your version had some new stuff in it. The C64 version, for example, had Tribbles (not sure if that was the actual name, but they were based on the same premise as the relevant Star Trek episode).

Lidza · Post by **Lidza** » Fri, 18. Nov 05, 01:47

You boys still have time to play ELITE

... while you wait for X3 1.3 patch

http://www.spectrum.lovely.net/Elite.html

mrbadger · Post by **mrbadger** » Fri, 18. Nov 05, 01:52

I only ever played the first version on the bbc micro.

However, now my addled brain has started dredging up memories I seem to recall something about a salvage ship covered in fighters mentioned in the manual.
Mayhap it wasn't the generational ship I found after all. It was definatelly in the middle of nowhere though. I only found it because I was pirate hunting (drifting though space with a hold full of narcotics).

It was a huge vessel anyway, covered in fighters that peeled off and attacked me, but only when I attacked it first. My initial hopes of capturing it/getting some intersting cargo were dashed by the serious number of fighters that it sent at me.

Sad though it is I still wish I'd managed to stay alive long enough to see what goodies it dropped.

Post by **CBJ** » Fri, 18. Nov 05, 01:59

An interview with Ian Bell, one of the authors of Elite wrote:Q: Are the Generation Ships real?

IB: Ehhhm, well the thing about Elite is that there's lots of versions, and by lots of other programmers, and they might have put some in ... and there are some bugs around, that might have involved scale changes you see, and other bugs may have corrupted code ... so you never really know if Generation Ships have existed. People have sworn blind they've seen them.

Q: Can you just explain what a Generation Ship is, for those who don't know?

IB: Well, the Generation Ship is something Rob Holstall put into the manual, and ... I think I'll ... there weren't any in BBC Elite, I'll give you that. We didn't code any in, but bugs happen and weird things happen. I mean, it all adds to the mythos, it all adds to what Elite did when you were playing it at home in the evenings. There were no hard-coded Generation Ships in BBC Elite. But then you'd know that anyway having looked at the sources!

Memory can play funny tricks on you.

mrbadger · Post by **mrbadger** » Fri, 18. Nov 05, 02:02

Ok, that settles it, I must have just seen one of the salvage ships.

Never mind, only twenty years of belief flushed down the drain (sob..)

I can cope....

Xaffax · Post by **Xaffax** » Fri, 18. Nov 05, 02:36

Yeah I wasted my youth playing Elite on the beeb, and I didn't see any generation ships, but once I encountered this anaconda that seemed at least five times as large as any other. So it's probably a bug. (then again staring at at white lined on e tv screen for 12 hours, must do something to your brain.)

muppetts · Post by **muppetts** » Fri, 18. Nov 05, 08:19

Had C64 Elite and then Frontier on the Amiga, never made it too Elite, I thought you had to Have Military Lazers in order to destroy the hard ass SOb that was stolen from naval dock yards and that you had to follow through tips from people 'i saw it today it hauled ass out of here but should be still out there!'

I think it was a Cobra Varient, god I loved those military lazers, hanging out in Anarchy Space waiting for the next batch of dead people to tuen up. They never even got close enough to see most of the time, they used to blink into existance so you had a couple of seconds lead time to zero in (with my handy QuickShot II Turbo!) and massacre the lot before they had a chance to breath!

Travel all the universes but never saw anything new, the C64 version stuck to the same vain apart from tribles, you had to fly close to the sun to kill them! Ahh the fuel scoop great idea, skimming the sun...ahhhh rose tinted glass's coming out!

Deleted User · Post by **Deleted User** » Mon, 21. Nov 05, 13:20

CBJ wrote: I remember the mission where you had to find the special ship (the name eludes me)

Constrictor

Fancy forgetting that .

IO

mrbadger · Post by **mrbadger** » Mon, 21. Nov 05, 23:32

In Elite the ship I saw wasn't that generational ship, it was the so called salvage vessel.

It's hull was covered in viper (was that the right name?) fighters, which peeled off and thoroughly 0wned me every time I tried too attack it.

It was mentioned in the manual I think, but whatever I definatelly saw it (on the BBC vesrion). In fact it took me several days of re-tries with that particuler savegame before I gave up and moved on.

If you now prove that I didn't see this ship I'll be forced to become very worried for my sanity...

Apocholypse · Post by **Apocholypse** » Mon, 21. Nov 05, 23:33

Yes but, as this is directed at CBJ, shouldn't it be in a PM.

Laugh if he locks this!

(he will)

mrbadger · Post by **mrbadger** » Mon, 21. Nov 05, 23:35

He probably will, but I'm old and I don't care

suicidalfoetus · Post by **suicidalfoetus** » Wed, 23. Nov 05, 18:24

The "tribbles" on the C64 version were actually called "Trumbles", they might as well have been tribbles though as it amounted to the same thing. You bought one from a space trader and every few minutes they would multiply, any they would also consume any food that you bought. Eventually the number of Trumbles exceeded the cargo space available and they started wandering onto your viewscreen. Trying to line up a kill on a group of pirate ships was more interesting with a Trumble sitting in the middle of the cross hairs.

There was a way to get rid of them. I wonder if anybody reading these forums can remember how you killed all the Trumbles in your ship? Just to remind people that you couldn't use an escape capsule to get rid of them as at least one would "escape" with you and the whole multiplication process would begin again.

muppetts · Post by **muppetts** » Thu, 24. Nov 05, 16:29

muppetts wrote:
Travel all the universes but never saw anything new, the C64 version stuck to the same vain apart from tribles, you had to fly close to the sun to kill them! Ahh the fuel scoop great idea, skimming the sun...ahhhh rose tinted glass's coming out!

all ready done

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

CBJ, an Elite question for you

CBJ, an Elite question for you

Ok CBJ I've got it now