What are you playing?

[Complicity]

Are Freelancer and the X games better?
I remember reading somewhere that X2: The Threat was supposed to be Morrowind in space.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Freelancer is like Baby's First Space Sim with its minimal keyboard usage and how it forces you to play through the campaign before the actual sandbox opens up (unless you just start a Lan game by yourself or use a mod to skip this stuff). Not bad, but probably not with the same depth as the other games.
The pre-Vocaloid "dynamic" voice acting also adds a bit of hilarity, as all your employer have like one VA who does very noticable pauses between sentence fragments.

Haven't really gotten to try the X-series out properly, but they look a lot more intimidating.

[Kugelfisch]

The X series is Elite plus Autism extra strength but without any positives that you just might imagine.

If my explanation of Elite sounded negative, that's because I both love and hate it. It is what it is and it's best in class, but that's all it is.
It perfectly captures space. Very mundane but also extremely frightening at the same time.

Entering close to a sun is normal but also scary every time. And just when you get used to it, a black hole is scary shit. As is entering the atmosphere of a planet, judging carefully for the borderline max speed but still safe angle.

Again, space trucking. How hard can I push things? I don't want to crash but I want to arrive as quickly as possible. Traveling to planets a good half hour away from the star, passing others just by a few thousand kilometres, entering at critical speeds and angles.
It's a lot like driving country roads at 85kpm, always an inch away from a crash, always at peak load and a bit over.

It's mundane and the most scary thing in one. Elite is possibly the game that scare me the most but also bored me the most. I hate it and I love it.

[rabidtictac]

Elite Dangerous is a space trucker sim. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Everything else is bare bones as fuck, has always been and will always be that way.
Never, ever join a faction. It brings limitations with just about no rewards ever.

No clue about wonky controls as I only ever played it with HOTAS and it works perfectly for that. So well that I could play the game blind and was able to play it perfectly when I crushed two fingers on my left hand. It was the only thing I was able to play for several weeks. I am sure I mentioned space trucking on 2.0 or 3.0.

Don't look for a point of the game. It has none. It's just kinda there, like Euro Truck Simulator or Spintires/Mudrunner/Snowrunner.

Hey, fair enough. I didn't bother doing any combat yet because it seemed gay as fuck. I'll probably do exactly what you said and get myself a nice little cargo hauler with a decent cockpit view and then run courier and transport/passenger missions until I get bored of the game. It's very relaxing.

Snowrunner/Mudrunner aren't games for me, but it's kinda nice that genre exists for those who want it.

You just know the whole reason FSD jumps in Elite land you right next to the system's star is so the devs can hear reports of players shitting their pants. Or dying because they went AFK like a retard and barrelled straight into the sun.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

I gravitate towards hauling stuff around myself in these games, since combat can tend to be dangerous.
This is especially true if it's a game like Escape Velocity or its clone Endless Sky, or really any 2D space sim with Asteroids-style Newtonian physics. My brain just can't handle dogfights in this environment.

[rabidtictac]

Elite: Dangerously Fast Mailman saga continues. I bought a Hauler. Really like it. It feels like the ship has more visibility than the Adder, but that might be the arrangement of windows rather than overall coverage. It's still kinda limited. What I really want is glass on every side so I can become one with the stars in a way that doesn't involve death.

Bought a Cobra Meme III. Tried it out. Meh. Good stats, not a fan of offset view. Into the trash it goes (sold for credit to buy a new ship after a couple test flights.)

Bought an Imperial Eagle. It has everything about the Eagle that I liked, except with some decent fuel capacity. Jump range of around 10-15 is tolerable. I probably won't sell this one.

So far, I have a Hauler that I definitely won't sell and that's about it. I made a custom sidewinder as a backup ship in case I fly into a sun. The sidewinder is pretty fucking cool actually. I'm gonna fit some econosuits in my Hauler and set it up as a passenger/courier/explorer vessel. I've noticed that speed and maneuverability seem largely irrelevant outside of combat. My Hauler gets 30 lightyears per jump and barely spends any time outside of hyperspace, low wake or a docking bay. I might get shot down by a ganker, but I'm not planning on hauling anything valuable. Just data and worthless humans. The Hauler itself costs almost nothing to replace. So assuming I do get interdicted, a ganker won't benefit from it.

Next ship I have my eye on is a Dolphin. Looks pretty nice and has upgraded stats for hauling, passengers and exploration. I'd like to eventually head to systems a little closer to Sol.

[Kugelfisch]

Most people are terrible at interdictions. Might just be because playing with stick and pedals gave me an edge due to being able to control all vectors of movement simultaneously but I don't think so.

Tell me when you've first been to that fucking system with super valuable goods, only to find out the planet is half a fucking hour real time from its star.

[rabidtictac]

I don't recall that. Most people are terrible at interdictions you say? Because I've been interdicted constantly since I started accepting sensitive data deliveries and I haven't yet been caught.

I sold the Dolphin. Didn't care for it. Bought a Type 6, didn't care for it. It has a line in the glass right in your fucking vision center and it kept glitching out and flashing.

The only hint I might like is a location somewhere in the local bubble that sells most or all ship types. I keep visiting spaceports and they all sell between 5 and 10 ships, about half of which are usually locked to faction loyalty. I can't get an Imperial Courier yet because the ebil empire doesn't love me enough.

[Kugelfisch]

NPCs will interdict you all the time as well and they are even worse at it.

Man, the galaxy is too large for me to just know that shit. All I know is that I hung around Altaïr a lot. I believe the stations there are pretty well stocked. Or at least they were back then.

For the ultimate trucking, get that market price program and use a route planner. Also look out for special events like some place needing loads of one thing for some mining project or something. Those are the money makers.

Just check a planet's distance from its star. Unless you fancy a long trip like that and have something to watch on the side anyway.

[rabidtictac]

Nah, it's all good fam. I'm gonna wait until I'm at around 10million cash before I bother learning trading. I'll do passenger stuff and higher rank courier work. Maybe try out mining for fun. It's just a bit of a pain that I can't find a station to sell me more vehicles to try out.