Neil Smalley

RoShamBo

Did it all the time. That's what rear Millitary lasers were for...

stevencotton

Actually rear lasers are useless unless you had a mining laser on the back. Mining lasers are very powerful but very slow, so if you're handy you can pick ships off with one or two hits. To become Elite on 8 bit machines you had to kill 65535 ships. You'd have to kill 180 ships a day, every day, for a year to become Elite

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

Or just cheat of course

The cloaking device was a godsend

Nimbus

Cloaking device? What cloaking device?


For anyone who got "Elite" Status on the BBC, what happend to the instument display when you got that stauts? If you got it, you should know the answer.


Stevecotton.

Interesting fact. I wounderd where my youthhood went

RoShamBo

iTrader: (1)

Numbus

Didn't it change colour or something - think it went all white - cant really remember.
I reached Elite after weeks of playing it at every spare moment.
I had it on BBC B on disc - it was soooooo much better on disc than on cassette which took ages to load & was cut down loads.

Ro.
Edited to say - Yeh what cloaking device ?

[Edited by RoShamBo - 11/12/2002 10:31:30 AM]

[Edited by RoShamBo - 11/12/2002 10:52:17 AM]

RichS

Like RoShamBo I had it on disc on a BBC 'B'.
Only took a few moments to load up..

So what did happen to the display when you reached "Elite" status?

(Oh and yes - I occasionally shot the space station so I could pick off the police as they exited... )

stevencotton

Screen went blue on the Spectrum version when the cloaking device was in operation, and it sucked energy like there was no tomorrow!

carl

There was an ECM jammer too, which rendered the opposition's ECM systems useless

Neil Smalley

I measured it in right on commanders. 32 ROC's got you Elite status. By the time you got to Deadly you were only half way through .

Mining lasers were ok but were'nt really a lot of cop. You could get a lot more money in other ways. Sitting just outside a space station taking out the vipers with a millitary laser was a much better use of the rear slot(IMHO)

Best trading route I ever found
Furs to Zarece->Isence
Computers/drugs back again for a 100 credits per ton profit.

There was a level 12 planet just in range for those expensive upgrades and an anarchy planet only 4.2LY away from Zarece for those smuggling runs.

A good tip was to sell a missile or 2 at the very start, which then gave you enough money to buy a ton of computers at Lave before jumping twice to Zarece.

You only needed to dock 3-4 times after that to afford a docking computer.

Easy money.

Neil Smalley

There are of course, no corners in space

krankyd

I still remember the sound of the lasers on other ships attacking you - I thought it was brilliant!

I turned up my TV to full blast and used to really annoy my parents!

ChristianR

iTrader: (1)

i had the amiga 500 version of the game. I remember once that my hyperspace got broken in a battle, and I was stranded in the middle of no where. I put some heavy wait on the forward thrust, put up the time scale, and left it for about 4days!!!

Also, does anyone remember sometimes when you went into hyperspace, you would get pounced on by the thargoids, and be stuck in this area with lots of them. I used to always get killed when that happened!

stevencotton

Neil,

Yep selling your missiles was the best thing to do in order to make more cash faster straight away. With docking, at least on the Spectrum version, you don't actually have to line the docking bay up with the horizontal, you can just fly straight into the centre; docking computers just saved you the travelling time to the Coriolis since docking was a sinch

I just noticed, the number of kills required to be Elite wasn't 65535 - it's 6400. The 65535 kills number I mentioned was when you got negative overflow on an 8 bit machine reducing your rating to Harmless again "Right On Commander!" messages occured every 256 kills.

These days I prefer Frontier, although I still play the original Elite now and again. There is a Palm version, but the guy wont release it because he didn't getthe OK from David Braben. Shame really, nobody else bothered to ask his permission for all the other versions! At least Frontier and FFE are free now, althoughI didn't really get on with FFE, I shall have to give it another try.

Elite FAQ


[Edited by stevencotton - 11/12/2002 4:48:31 PM]

Neil Smalley

The straight into the space station trick worked with galactic hyperspaces too. Actually, lining you ship up with the docking port and flooring it worked pretty much every time too.

I did do too much hanging around in witch space though, although never found a space dredger.

RichS

Docking computer saved you from having to fly to the space stations? - Did it? or did it did it just automate the docking procedure? - That's how I remember it.

I never bothered with a DC anyway - I just flew straight into the space station at full speed - found it much easier that way...

Oh and the sound of being attached by pirates etc still haunts me today...

carl

Saved you from flying to the space station in the speccy version (you had to wait until the big 'S' appeared on the scanner, then hit the Docking Computer button -- 'C' IIRC ), but it just automated the docking sequence to the Blue Danube Waltz on the BBC version.

James Neill

iTrader: (1)

stevencotton - There is sort of Palm version here - called Void

http://www.palmgear.com/software/showsoftware.cfm?prodID=7015

RoShamBo

iTrader: (1)

I was playing "The New Kind" last night - crikey those pulse lasers are useless.
I even switched it to "wireframe" for a real sense of nostalgia

Ro.

Devil's Refugee

Dredgers never existed in the game, it was a myth (were they not called "Generation Ships")

Still the best game from that era I've ever played.
Lost many hours of my youth playing it.

Neil Smalley

But at the time We did'nt know dredgers were'nt in the code. 'Your sinclair' even did an April fool about them. They showed a spoof local map with Earth,Mars etc etc on as well as a picture of what looked liked an enlongated asteroid.

I was even more proud of my score of over 2 million in sabre wulf. There was a place where you could back into a dead end and if you positioned yourself just right, and flick autofire on the joystick you could'nt be got. I left it running all day when I was a school and came back to a multi million point score and got my name in C&VG

stevencotton

James,

I didn't like void to much, I prefer Space Trader on the Palm.

Neil,

Sabre Wulf, up out of the starting position, turn right into the dead end then look left, autofire on (or, if you had a Kepston Competition Pro which is still the best joystick in the world, tape it down ), and that's your high score

Steve.

Neil Smalley

Steve

That's it exactly. I used to prefer the quickshot 2 myself. Mainly because it looked like the one on Airwolf.

stevencotton

The Quickshot was common but had too much travel and wasn't very sturdy. The Quickshot II microswitch version was even worse! The leaf-switch Kempston was definitely the dogs, even if it did look like an **** sex toy. I used to destroy opponents in Daley Thomsons Decathlon 1500m with the Kempston, the Quickshot had way too much travel to be of any use Still got my Kempston

MATTeL

I went through a tonne of Quickshot II joysticks!

Loved Elite on the BBC and C64. It was the only game allowed at school (BBC) becuase apparently is was educational, nothing to do with the Computer Studies teacher being completely addicted and running a league!

Hated Frontier when it came out, the docking computer had too many bugs such as flying me into a planet as it was the shortest path![img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

Always my first purchase the DC... I hated docking: Line up, get the spin right and edge forward... still shudder about that the amount of control needed.

Fanstatic game though... just wish there was an updated version of the original for all of the formats available today, or have I missed it (again)?

stevencotton

Unfortunately not for "at least two years yet", Frontier Developments say about Elite 4. You can get stuff like Elite:TNK though.

I'm actually after someone that owns an Archimedes, are there any Archimedes owners here?

Steve.

Neil Smalley

Steve,

You missed a trick with Daly's and a quickshot. You redfined the 'run' key as fire, and just flicked the autofire on

A quickshot joystick used to last me about a year, I'd then salvage the switches from an old one and solder them onto the broken one. I never got into the Kempston JS, and the Atari VCS one was even worse. Did I mention it looked like the one on airwolf I even customised it with a sharks mouth over the handle. Took me ages but looked sooo

Was thinking about Elite this morning. You realise that this thread is now about the size of the Game Now THAT was real programming. I still can't work out how they did most of it.

What's really needed is a massivly multiplayer version of Elite. Set in the same universe etc That would really Rule, and would mean the end of my spare time as I knew it.

RoShamBo

iTrader: (1)

Yeh - imagine having dogfights etc - fantastic.

Ro.

MATTeL

That would be the coolest thing ever!

The trouble would be finding each other!

stevencotton

There is one in development but it doesn't include real time flying in space against others, it's just too hard to do. I'm one of the developers for The Saker Project but it's still in alpha and I wouldn't recommend trying it yet, but it is online multi-player and runs in a web browser. It's a pure strategy game rather than arcade but should be good fun once it's up and running, just wish I had more time to work on it.

Steve.

ChristianR

iTrader: (1)

multiplayer elite! oh yes I think I would loose lots of months though!