How long is this thing supposed to take to install?
If the launcher is still synching files when I return from my trip, I’ll be asking for my money back!
Don’t know what the problem was with the launcher but looks like I got it working like it should. Will play a bit tomorrow when I’m not busy working.
I bought it and played it last night. It looks like it did in my head back in 1986.
I’ve only seen some videos (so far) but I agree. I’m wary of the potential time-sink of getting this…
Wow. I had never heard of this game when someone gave me an, um, borrowed copy sometime in the late 90s. Having no background, no manual, no online references and no way to ask any legit player, I assumed the PITA difficulty of docking was something that required a code wheel or some other pseudo-lock, and pretty much gave up on it after a few hours.
I’ve never heard of it since, until now, either, and had no idea it had such a following.
On my Amstrad, at least, you could Save your game in any given system, and when you reloaded you would be docked in the local space station. I abused that mightily until I had enough for docking computers - I played that game for years, probably over a thousand hours, and never manually docked once.
I played the Amiga 500 version for years. My docking method was to get as close as I could to the station (but far enough back that exiting ships wouldn’t hit me), wait until the port was almost aligned with my ship and then go to full throttle while trying to match the rotation and hope I survived the inevitable ‘scrapping’ as I did my suicide run. 
The docking computer was awesome.
There was also a bug in that version which allowed you to jump past the original 7 light-year limit. IIRC you selected a destination within range, started the jump cycle and with about 5 seconds to go, click on another destination anywhere else on the map and you’d end up there.
On my PC I started a new game, saved, edited the save with a hex editor so I had a docking computer and continued from there. Can’t remember where I got the information about which particular hex to edit though - probably from whoever I um… loaned the game itself.
The only use for a docking computer in the new one is the musical accompaniment. 
Otherwise, it functions as an additional suicide option. :smack:
I didn’t assume that, but I did assume is yet another one of those Nintendo Hard games and gave up on it after trying on the first station multiple times. It still to this day seems pointless to make docking so hard.
Then again, I’m not a big fan of games that give you no direction on what to do at the start. It’s not that big a deal that I didn’t make it to the other station–I didn’t know I was supposed to buy things to sell. I thought I was buying food to eat and stuff.
Played a few more hours…
Picking up a lot of mystery fines, no idea how. I suspect they are either because I’m running some courier missions and it’s faction related, or I’m doing something incorrectly during docking. I usually just sit docked on the landing pad, without getting elevatored inside, so maybe that’s where I’m getting them?
I did charge up my weapons and fire around a bit, until noticing I was getting yelled at by the station since it was a no-fire zone. Probably another fine.
The more I play it, the more I’m annoyed with it.
A lot of it is down to its always-online, MMO-Lite structure. There’s no Pause button, which is annoying for when I want to pause it. You can’t have more than one save-game (so my wife can’t play). You can’t save the game before accepting a mission to see how it turns out. And the mission time limits are in real time, so you can’t accept a good looking mission at the end of a play session and save it for next time.
Earlier today, I was playing with my little Hauler, and bought enough expensive cargo to bring my money down to only a few thousand. Then I was distracted by a small child whilst docking at the next station, and crashed into the docking window. I then couldn’t afford to replace my ship. Whilst you can always get a free ship and start over with your sidewinder - and I assume it become much less of an issue later in the game, when you’ve got a big ship and tons of cash - it’s still a major setback that, in any other game, I’d ‘save scum’ to get past. I’d certainly do it in previous versions of Elite.
I understand the economy system means that they want to keep people online and contributing to the flux, but the downsides are getting to me.
I’ve only seen one downside so far: the launcher.
Late Friday night/early Saturday morning, I finally did something in the game other than just undock and experiment with the controls. Haven’t been able to play at all since then because the launcher keeps freezing upon login!
The P key pauses the game. At least, it does on mine; it may have been something I set up manually.
Also, I assume it’s “sort of” of a pause, and that things are still going on around you, just as if you had left the game. Maybe the pause only means something if you’re playing in “solo” mode?
Apparently I fixed my login issues. Disabled the LAN setting autodetect and the launcher started working again.
I’ve now accumulated enough credits from missions to buy a Hauler.
Here’s a great site for haulers. With that and running missions, I’ve amassed over a quarter million.
This doesn’t do anything but grey out the screen and show you the options - everything still happens in the background, whether you’re in Solo mode or Open Play.
The lack of a pause button is still the biggest single thing stopping me playing more than I otherwise would.
This, however, is awesome.
Well, you can’t do a “full pause” in Open Mode for a very simple reason; what if you’re in combat against another player? Does the other player have to pause as well?
Oh, I know why they do it. But it also doesn’t pause in Solo Mode either, presumably because it’s easier to have the same functionality in both modes.
But just knowing why they do it doesn’t stop it annoying me, and it doesn’t stop it being the reason I don’t play as much, especially in the early evening when I normally play a game or two when the kids are playing, and I need to play games that I can just tap a key, and get up and walk away from.
It’s why I stopped playing Guild Wars 2, and I suspect it’s why I’ll stop playing Elite.
Ye cannot break the laws of physics, [del]Cap’n[/del] Commander. 
The whole thing operates in real time and time will not pause. The lady of the house knows that I have to stop in a safe place, like landed on a platform or at least stopped in a no-fire zone, when she needs me.