So, here's a bit about me...
I didn't play the original Elite - it was released in the same year as me (as it were), and being a couple of months earlier than I was, I wasn't quite physically or mentally capable of playing it at that point
. However, a few years later we had an Atari, and Frontier is one of the big cool games of my early(ish) childhood. I've also been playing it more recently on the PC thanks to DOSBox 
. I saw the Kickstarter for Elite Dangerous and thought "zomg, yes please!", and backed at about thirty quid shortly afterward. Then, with a couple of days remaining on the Kickstarter and having read through the various pledge rewards numerous times, I went "Sod it" and upped to ninety quid instead. Saves me paying extra later for all the expansions and stuff, I figure 
.I played a bit during Beta but got killed when I tried fighting instead of running away at an Interdiction (not even sure what type of ship it was...might've been an Eagle but I can't remember - wasn't very big anyway, and I was still in the starting Sidewinder). Then gave it a rest for a while and loaded it up again (after a rather lengthy patch time) a week or two ago. Found a reasonable trade route (a couple of thousand profit per trip is reasonable to me in my four-ton-capcity Sidewinder, I figure
) and did that for a while, then remembered to start checking the Bulletin Board and took a few trade missions as well. Profit suddenly increased dramatically and a few days ago I decided to buy an Adder rather than trying to claw all the way to a Cobra in the Sidewinder. I've done a few more missions and stuff but haven't had the ship for very long so far.I play in Solo (my thoughts on playing alongside other people coming up...) and while I was still in my Sidewinder I wasn't Interdicted at all for ages. Then, suddenly, I started getting Interdicted once per trip through a system but managed to avoid it every time. Then one time I for Interdicted thrice in a row whilst flying from one space station to another within the same system. Managed to avoid the first two but the third was going all over the place and I couldn't quite manage to hold it long enough and I got pulled into normal space and had a massive delay on my hyperdrive thingy (I've since read on the forums about the fact you can submit to an Interdiction in order to avoid this delay and apparently some hull damage as well). I got shot at in the arse a bunch of times whilst trying to run away (no idea what kind of ship it was - didn't really fancy turning around for a look
) but eventually managed to make it with about 47% hull left, got the rest of the way to the space station and got repaired. That's the nearest I've come to being destroyed so far - my Adder's been Interdicted a couple of times but I managed to just leg it. In my Sidewinder I can't even fight because I took the guns out to get more cargo space, unaware until I did so that cargo space is achieved by having special cargo container thingys rather than just how much of your space is taken up by any equipment (as it was in Frontier, which naturally is what I'm used to ). But it added an extra light year or so to my jump range so that was okay (I could've easily bought 'em back anyway). I might swap back to the Sidewinder at some point and kit it out for some combat practice (haven't fought anything except in a couple of the solo training mission thingys), but for now I'm happy doing cargo missions mostly between stations in my current star system .Veering slightly away from Elite Dangerous and more into general gaming, my views on PvP are that I'm not a fan. If people want to fight each other, fine, but I don't think it should ever be forced. This is why I never play any online games that have a "Public" feature and will always just make myself a private, passworded room to play in. My experience of any game which anyone can join is that you always get idiots who seem to have nothing better to do than go around killing other people just for the fun of it. No thanks. I much prefer co-operative to competitive gameplay - I would rather all the players gang up to kill some kind of AI thing so that everyone gets to feel good that they killed it (assuming that they did
) and no-one is left going "Aww, I lost, that's no fun" or "Aww, now I made that other person feel bad because I beat them". And so the only MMORPG I've ever played was Everquest (back in the day...) and my favourite tabletop game is a co-operative card game in which you're all superheroes working as a team to bring down a villain .So, as I said waaaay back up there at the top of this Wall of Text, I saw a link to this group from the official ED forum and have finally got round to joining it, so maybe I can meet people and know that they're definitely not gonna try and blow me up
. I haven't yet used the chat feature or anything so if anyone happens to see me and wants to say hi, apologies if all I do is float there silently (whilst IRL frantically checking my keybindings to remind myself what the "open chatbar" key is) or, if we're not parked right next to a space station, continue flying as though I didn't "hear" you . Actually, it's entirely possible that I won't "hear" you, since it isn't too obvious when you receive any kind of message, as far as I've noticed so far, what with the "message received" noise being so quiet and the chat window sitting so unobtrusively in the top-left corner where I hardly ever look .Anyway, it'll be nice if I can say hi to someone in-game and hopefully I won't accidentally crash into anyone whilst docking or something. I haven't yet had any problems with docking (I imagine it's more difficult if you're in a bigger ship, though
), although I did bash noses with (what looked like) a fellow Adder earlier today when I took my eye off the screen for a moment after entering the letterbox in order to press the key to lower my undercarriage. Didn't take any damage though, so that was okay . But since I doubt I'm the only person to try and enter the letterbox at a speed of around a hundred and dodge past any annoying slow NPCs taking their time going through the letterbox, all I can hope is that an accident doesn't happen at some point . Assuming, that is, that I actually meet anyone at all in this great big empty vastness that is space (even if I'm only about fifteen lightyears from Sol or something ).Sorry, that was rather a long intro, wasn't it? Well, gratz if you made it through, lol
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