Only first impressions, but Elite IV will blow this away.

[Demolisher 2]

What I don't understand is why the OP thinks anyone will agree with him that X series is not as good as Elite (4) on the X-UNIVERSE OFFICIAL FORUMS???

[pjknibbs]

If Elite 4 comes out and it IS better than X3 then I, for one, won't have any problems saying so on this forum--and neither should anyone else. However, I think the main problem people have is him saying that a game which doesn't exist yet, and from past form never will, is better than X3...

[ginger_hammer]

One thing I did really like playing Elite 1 on the BBC Micro is when you Jump into another galaxy there is a chance of getting hijacked by the Tharganiods (or something) then finding yourself in the middle of nowhere surrounded by bad guys! If you didn't have enough fuel to jump out you were basically screwed.
Maybe something in X3 similar would be cool (besides the stuck forever in nowhere bit) The khaak spring to mind...

[pjknibbs]

One thing I did really like playing Elite 1 on the BBC Micro is when you Jump into another galaxy there is a chance of getting hijacked by the Tharganiods (or something) then finding yourself in the middle of nowhere surrounded by bad guys!

I have to say I think that was one of the WORST features of the original Elite. If you managed to kill all the Thargoids, but you didn't have enough jump fuel left to reach the nearest system, your game was effectively over. Having random, unforeseeable deaths in a game was very 80s, for sure, but I don't think it would go down so well with a modern audience!

[danskmacabre]

Hi everyone I'm new here.

I played Elite 1 on my Commodore 64 many many years ago when I was probably about 18-19 or something.
Loved it to death, played it to death, it was the reason I bought a C64 wayback then (That and the Ultima series).
I found a website somewhere once where you could play the original Elite on your browser. I found you should never try to go back, it's not nice...lol

I never bothered with any of the elite games after that, I did play Privateer 2, which was great fun, then Xwing-tie fighter, which I loved.

I more recently (well several years ago) played Freelancer, which I completed and loved. I still play it every now and then on some free game servers.

So here I am with X3, I have actually bought this a couple times as well as X2, but I have moved a fair bit in the past (nature of my job) and lost the game.
I have never really had a lot of time to sit down and get right into the X series, it's a very intense and in depth game to get into, what with being a family man and a busy job it's not that often I get long sessions of game playing in.
Anyway, gonna give it another try soon and see how things go, I have downloaded lots of the tutorials and stuff.
One thing I can say though, graphically, X3 is beautiful.

[ldwater]

Elite 4 is closer to vaporware than anything else.

I understand that Elite / Frontier is the grandfather of many modern ship based space games - but it wasn't amazing by any standards. Its more of a 'rose tinted' hindsight that makes us feel that they were better because they were revolutionary at the time - the same how DOOM & Half life revolutionised the FPS.

Elite 4 has been speculated back & forth as a MMO, then single player, and back again - it just shows how much they havent thought it through just yet, and even if Elite 4 is coming and will be great I feel that Egosoft has raised the bar very high and David Braben will have to get his act together if he wants to make a game better in scope & appeal than Egosoft has with the X series.

[esd]

I understand that Elite / Frontier is the grandfather of many modern ship based space games - but it wasn't amazing by any standards. Its more of a 'rose tinted' hindsight that makes us feel that they were better because they were revolutionary at the time - the same how DOOM & Half life revolutionised the FPS.

I see it a bit like athletes. In the 80's, an athlete may have been good, but now he's got no chance against modern athletes - he's aged.

Elite was an Olympian, but it can no more compete today than Mark Spitz could beat today's US Olympic Swimming Team.

[Witchking]

E

I understand that Elite / Frontier is the grandfather of many modern ship based space games - but it wasn't amazing by any standards. Its more of a 'rose tinted' hindsight that makes us feel that they were better because they were revolutionary at the time - the same how DOOM & Half life revolutionised the FPS.

I have to disagree, with this part of your post. I played Elite when it first came out on a Speccy, no game before or since has immersed me so much. Sure the graphics were wireframe and pretty crap but to have created such an immersive game and done it in 48k was astonishing. I don't know if Elite IV will ever come out but if they come close to making if feel like you are there, like the original did, then I will be a happy chappy

[ScorpiusX]

Theres a few things from Frontier that I miss when playing X:

1) Recon missions, find the base on a planet then fly close enough to photograph it. Also the mission to Nuke said base, find the base fly straight "down" at it launch the nuke and jump straight through the centre of the planet.

2) The Assasination missions imo were better too, you were told the system, time the target was leaving and serial no and type of ship. Of course they could be real pains in the backside too.

3) Then there was the flight physics too, fly your ship at X velocity on one vector then shut your engines down, your ship would continue on the same vector at the same velocity, but you were able to rotate your ship to fire at pursuing enemies or to do really fast fly bys and blast em. Come to think of it though it could be a real pain when closing on a target and you fail to kill them on the first pass and spend 6 months decellerating just so you could come at them again.

4) This ones from Elite. I miss the Tribbles

All in all though the X series far surpasses Elite and Frontier. I cant comment on First Encounters though because although it was promised and I saw screenshots of it, it never was released for the Amiga, and because of this "I AM NOT GOING TO HOLD MY BREATH" waiting for Elite IV. If it is released I'll buy it and play it but I cant see it replacing X237:Attack of the BBC Micro Xenons which will no doubt be out first.

[cale_online]

3) Then there was the flight physics too, fly your ship at X velocity on one vector then shut your engines down, your ship would continue on the same vector at the same velocity, but you were able to rotate your ship to fire at pursuing enemies or to do really fast fly bys and blast em. Come to think of it though it could be a real pain when closing on a target and you fail to kill them on the first pass and spend 6 months decellerating just so you could come at them again.

as much as i like realism in games, i do have to admit spending several days trying to stop is actually annoying... lol

i do think i-war(1&2) got it perfect with flight physics tho, if you are going fast, and turn, you will spend a short time going backwards, but with your main engines facing the way you was heading, you've got all that power forcing you the other way, so you soon get going again.
or you can turn the hole thing off and just slide forever and ever, much as you would in real life. (assuming you're not in any gravity fields!)
but that usually ends badly. lol
"oh no a planet!"..."stoooooop!"*boom*

i do love the fact that x3 has latteral thrust now, (i guess x2 had a software upgrade for it?). hardly any other space games have it, which actually ruins it for me cos its a great feature thats really usefull.

[GCU Grey Area]

i do love the fact that x3 has latteral thrust now, (i guess x2 had a software upgrade for it?). hardly any other space games have it, which actually ruins it for me cos its a great feature thats really usefull.

Agree, though I wish I could fly backwards at more than 10m/s. Really miss Elite's retro-rockets - once ended up having to complete a secret mission by turning the ship round so it pointed directly away from the planet & blasting the retros continuously until they burnt out - far too many Thargoids waiting at the jump point to attempt a more conventional approach.

[The Inter-Galactic Kong]

The flight physics was actually my least favourite part of Frontier, closely followed by the 'combat'.

[cyborg991]

If you want a benchmark in combat see Freespace 2. Both games could learn a lot. A hole lot.

[Gothsheep]

You know, I actually didn't find Freespace 2's combat to be that exceptional. I mean it was good, but it wasn't like the great end-all. It had a good grounding, but it didn't handle inertia well.

X3 handles it..decently enough, which makes flying interesting. My favorite game for that was one I like to talk about a lot: Tachyon: The Fringe. Tachyon did an interesting trick where you could actually disable your engines temporarily, and let Newtonian physics take over so you could turn and face different angles from the direction you were flying. Then when you wanted to, you let go of the button, your engines kicked back on and you flew like normal again. It was pretty slick, I thought. A little gimmicky, but often helpful. (Especially to use your afterburners to get you up to max speed and then kick that on to 'cruise' to wherever you're going)

I will say that I liked the way Freespace handled 'space'. I wish they would make a Freespace 3 that took the idea of local hyperspace anywhere within a system, and then galactic hyperspace by use of special nodes, and tried that concept with an open world design. Might not work, but I think it could.

[cyborg991]

Ok it never was great but it worked well and so did the game

[Ravenstar]

My favorite game for that was one I like to talk about a lot: Tachyon: The Fringe. Tachyon did an interesting trick where you could actually disable your engines temporarily, and let Newtonian physics take over so you could turn and face different angles from the direction you were flying. Then when you wanted to, you let go of the button, your engines kicked back on and you flew like normal again. It was pretty slick, I thought. A little gimmicky, but often helpful. (Especially to use your afterburners to get you up to max speed and then kick that on to 'cruise' to wherever you're going)

I will say that I liked the way Freespace handled 'space'. I wish they would make a Freespace 3 that took the idea of local hyperspace anywhere within a system, and then galactic hyperspace by use of special nodes, and tried that concept with an open world design. Might not work, but I think it could.

Add to that - Bruce Campbell (Of Evil dead fame) doing the voice of the pilot. That was pretty cool - but gimmicky at the same time.

[CBJ]

David Braben is actually in a very difficult position now with regard to Elite IV. With the original Elite and its successors having legendary status, fans' expectations of what Elite IV might be like have always been sky high. As the years have passed, those expectations have got higher and higher, to the point where it not only has to be as good, or better than, the original Elite series games, but now also better than a whole host of other games that have come out since. What people now expect is a game that is vast in scope, with a huge array of must-have features, and graphics that are at least up to decent modern standards.

Such a game will be very expensive to develop and will also run a high risk of disappointing fans, and therefore not being the success it needs to be given the cost, if it doesn't meet their expectations. He can't just kill off the rumours of its eventual release without upsetting a lot of people, but if he does decide to actually start serious work on something to meet fans' expectations then he's going to need a lot of finance behind him if he's going to achieve even a fraction of what fans expect of him. The only other alternative, namely to develop a game that takes the series in a slightly different, and perhaps more achievable, direction, is also a very high-risk strategy.

Personally I don't envy him but, like any other fan of the original Elite, I'd love to see it happen.

[Ravenstar]

I can't see it happening anytime soon - if it were in serious development then surely Frontier Developments own website would have something about it.

But there is nothing.

play.com are taking pre-orders with an expected realease date 2 years from now. How stupid is that?

[SteveMill]

Elite 4 is closer to vaporware than anything else.

I understand that Elite / Frontier is the grandfather of many modern ship based space games - but it wasn't amazing by any standards. Its more of a 'rose tinted' hindsight that makes us feel that they were better because they were revolutionary at the time - the same how DOOM & Half life revolutionised the FPS.

Elite 4 has been speculated back & forth as a MMO, then single player, and back again - it just shows how much they havent thought it through just yet, and even if Elite 4 is coming and will be great I feel that Egosoft has raised the bar very high and David Braben will have to get his act together if he wants to make a game better in scope & appeal than Egosoft has with the X series.

No - disagree. Gameplay is timeless and that is what Frontier had in spades.

I'm a great fan of the X series but I'd take the one man against a universe of competing factions over the pocket economics focused passive universe any day.

What I miss in the X series gameplay is:

Challenging combat - after a short time death becomes voluntary.
An active universe - in Frontier you had factions that meant something and missions that were not trivial. X has nothing to compare to taking an assassination mission in Frontier, plotting a route across the galaxy to ensure you got there on time. Stalking and ambushing the ship and engage in a vicious battle against serious odds to succeed etc.

Where X excels is the whole corporate economy side - and that is great fun. Frontier had nothing like that. It did have an economy based on fixed values but lucrative trade routes generally meant enormous risk - which delivered the (for me) greater game play thrill of making, say, a risky run carrying high value goods into an anarchy system which might take over an hour of challenging battles against superior odds which in the end might force me to jump out. Jumping into a system and swatting away a few inept pirates just isn't the same.

There is no danger in the X series unless you tie one hand behind your back by not flying a good ship or are just plain too stupid to use a jump drive if you've been near-terminally casual in your approach.

I'd buy an un-bugged Frontier 2 with half-way decent, say, X2 level graphics now.

The X series is the best game in town when it comes to space sims but it doesn't touch the wanabee Han Solo in me.

[Gothsheep]

Add to that - Bruce Campbell (Of Evil dead fame) doing the voice of the pilot. That was pretty cool - but gimmicky at the same time.

Bruce Campbell wasn't gimmicky, he was awesome. Two of his lines in that game are ones I like to quote when I'm playing games like X3. His saying, "What the hell am I doing out here?" always comes to mind when I've wasted 20 minutes looking around some sector for something I can't find. More so, I always love the way he says, "Whelp, I'm off to visit Baron Hajad and his brainwashed slave horde!"