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Elite Dangerous » Cmd Roguey, Chapter 1
Posted by Roguey on Sunday 14th December, 2014     1 comments

During the past few days ive been playing Elite: Dangerous. The main reason for getting back into it, was that Frontier decided not to wipe our progress at launch. The past our progress has be wiped at very major version.

So instead of opting for the trade route (easiest and safest way), I went down the combat path - praying on wanted ships. I started with a Sidewinder, installing one pulse laser and one multi-cannon when I could. This did okay but I was looking for something better. At this point I was scouting around looking for wanted ships everywhere.

Being a alpha/beta backer I noticed we get a free eagle - dubed as a freeagle by some. At first I was a little apprehensive of the Eagle because on paper it didnt look much better - although the extra gun (1 top, 2 lower) might of been useful.




So, after moving the weapons onto the Eagle, I had to save up some more money for the extra multi-cannon - power was limited. So finally with all 3 guns the Eagle seem pretty good. I used the pulse laser to bring down the shields, then the multi-cannons for the hull. I had use the multi-cannon sparely because they cost a fair about to rearm (as they are ammo based weapons).

After while I noticed that I good place to look for wanted ships was around the jump-beacon in LHS 64. After building my money up I started to upgrade some of the modules including the power-plant, power coupling etc. These made a good improvement, and even allowed me to get a 40,000cr bounty (10 + 30k);





I did try and take on Dropships, but they were way too powerful for my Eagle. Of-course the Eagle wasnt bullet-proof and a death resulted in a lost of all the current bounties and a 6k cost to re-buy the ship back (with all the upgrades).

My goal was to save up enough money for a Cobra Mk3 - skipping many of the other ships below it (many of the ships have their own purposes). Like most of the Elite players, the Cobra seems more special than the others. However being a combat route I needed enough money to actually arm the ship after buying it, no point having to fall back on trading/package delivery.





Now I got the Cobra (with fairly basic armament), I am starting to look for more wanted ships - to get more upgrades. I did notice that the Cobra had much better basic sub-systems installed than the Eagle, although I guess thats understandable. I have only used the Cobra a few times but already it feels much stronger and safer. So far I havnt lost the ship yet, however this might be to do with me being cautious because of the Eagle. The last thing I did last night was to upgrade the power-coupling on my Cobra - so it could handle the firing of all 4 guns for longer (power doesnt seem a problem at the moment).

I do find a bit odd that ive killed quite a lot of ships but only have the combat rating of novice - I guess its better than being mostly harmless Smile

I do want to head over to Lave sometime, but before I do I want a longer jump-range and a bit more money. I am hoping there are more bounties there.

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Double Rainbow
Posted by Roguey on Tuesday 18th November, 2014     0 comments

It doesnt happen often... seeing a double Rainbow. However today I managed to get a picture of one just outside my window;



The one on the left was very strong, whilst the one on the right was hard to see; disappearing now and again. I did think about having a look over there, but isnt that an old-wife's tale?... there is gold at the end of a Rainbow?

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Elite Dangerous » A bit further in
Posted by Roguey on Thursday 28th August, 2014     3 comments

As you may of seen, ive spending a bit of time playing Elite: Dangerous Beta 1.03. At-first it was a bit confusing (like most games), although Beta's games are often even more confusing as there can be a lack of documentation, things missing etc. I think now I have gotten the grips of things.

When you start in your Sidewinder you wonder what to do; so I started to explore, fight and test things - it doesnt matter if you destroy it, as you get another free one. Although being in the weakest ship does mean you have hard start (top-heavy).




For awhile, I wrestled with the controls - changing between keyboard, mouse and gamepad until I found something which works for me. I thought my controls were bad when I struggled to hit anything with my C2 pulse lasers. I later learned that fixed weapons are by default hard to use, but offer more damage than automatic-aim guns. So now ive settled for the gamepad with the keyboard for short-cuts.

At the moment the primary goal is to make money, or credits. These credits can be used to buy better weaponry, trade with more expensive wares or to upgrade ships. Whilst the current line-up of ship isnt that big at the moment, each ship feels like it has a purpose.




I recently upgrade to a Hauler, thinking it wasnt going to be a big upgrade, but I was wrong. The extra cargo-bay makes a huge difference to my trading. The 4 units in the Sidewinder seems very small now.




One thing I like with fighting is that if you start to attack friendly ships, you end up with a bounty. The higher the bounty, the higher chance of getting shot down, either from NPC's or other players. So it doesnt really pay to attack other players, unless they been hostile to others.

For the past few days ive more or less stayed away from combat. The reason is that I feel my C2- weapons arent all that good. I find that I miss most of the time with non-gimbal weapons, and C1 gimbal pulse laser is a bit weak. I feel I will return to fighting once ive upgraded my ship a few times, probably when I get a Cobra MKIII.

The online mode is good, but I do feel at the moment its not used to its full protential. Sure its good to see other people around and that but I feel the communications panel needs a major overhaul (hard to see text and unable to talk to someone when they go out of your area). I would also like to see group events (like GW2 style where people can just wonder into them) and guilds. Maybe these feature are already planned?

I must admit its nice seeing a bulletin board again, when it was removed from the x-series I felt it removed some of the immersion from the game. Sure, its quicker to get your mission from 7km's away but why bother to land?



This brings me onto my next point; landing. At the moment 90-99% of the landing is manual. Whilst it may not sound too bad, landing at the start of the game is a relatively complex task until you get used to it. I did buy a docking computer later on, but after it drove straight into another player's Anaconda, I removed it and continued to do it manually (I had 9% hull left after the ram).

Which brings me onto my worse point so far; grinding. It would be unfair to think any open-ended space space-sim wouldnt have any grinding. However at times it does feel at times you are simply flying backwards and forth just to transport wares. I know there are other things to do than trading, but I dont feel they offer as much credits. Without the credits you will be stuck inside the Sidewinder for a very long time - working up 100,000cr will take you a very long time otherwise.

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GUILD WARS 2 » Re-playing and hate of RnG
Posted by Roguey on Friday 1st August, 2014     2 comments

Hi there, for the past couple of weeks/months ive been re-playing Guild wars 2. My main focus was to build an legendary weapon; The Bifrost however after much grinding (something ANet said wouldnt happen in Gw2 at launch) completing 3 out of 4 parts ive decided to stop (or at a greatly reduced time).



My main reason for this is that The Legend can only been found by random number generator (RNG for short), either through the Mystic Forge or randomly from a monster drop. Sure you can pay someone else for it, but at the current prices it will take around 45 days of grinding gold, to give to someone else. I must of tried maybe 20-30 times with exotics and 300-400 times with rares (with no luck).

RNG is big part of GW2, making you either poor or rich. Some people can spend months playing and yet get very little of worth, yet others can drop in randomly and get the most expensive loot in the game. There is attribute called luck that increases your magical find but this only works on monsters killed, nothing else. I have no idea why luck doesnt work on chests.

Generally good loot is very hard to come by, and even if you find an odd exotic its only worth a couple of gold at-most. Today I did some digging into prices.. what I came up with is that prices have slowly increased;



Around the 15th April (the Wardrobe patch) that items increased by x2-3 times. I have also noticed that supply of items is dropping, but yet demand is steadily increasing. I can only guess this is due to people leaving the game?

It was said that Arena-Net were going to look into Precursor building; by adding a hunt of some kind... however so far that hasnt happened (this was posted over a year ago). How long do you wait? Yet, instead we get living story season 2; which for me has been a bit of disappointment. So far just one map, a few monsters, 1-2h stories, a few skins and more RNG.

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X3AP » Creating an random universe
Posted by Roguey on Tuesday 21st January, 2014     0 comments

For a bit of fun ill thought ill write some code in VB6, to see if I can make a random universe for X3AP. I quickly learnt its not as simple as because you need to add things like gates and link them all together. A little time later, and my code is generating random universes. Whether this is the start of something, I dont know but I have a few ideas...