With Elite: Dangerous looming I've been feeling the urge to play a space-game. The last good one I remember was Freelancer, I really enjoyed that game on the Wireplay multiplayer server.
Released in 2003 it's a bit dated now in terms of graphics but was a pretty detailed game with a huge fan and modding community. There isn't so much information around for it these days, but just enough in archives to get the good stuff.
It's a pretty big world, and without hints from other people it would get too boring before you found them. Still, I never did finish the campaign story the first time round, so I discarded my old save-games (yes, I have save games from 2003) and started afresh. I enjoyed the campaign more so than the first time I tried it. I paid more attention to reputation and was more careful about which factions I took missions for this time, as I knew this could be game-breaking if you're constantly being swarmed by enemies.
I was a little disappointed all my efforts were reset at the end of the story. Still, a single run against the "DSE" storage units outside Fort Bush put my rep back to tolerable, and a single (albeit expensive) bribe for the Junkers at Rochester Base sorted me for the rest of the game.
I knew I wanted to get a Sabre very heavy fighter so knew I had to keep the pirates neutral and also level my character up and get enough money for the top-spec stuff. Which leads to the backbone of the non-story game; trading.
Back in the day, it was the Diamond Run that everybody raved about, and I can remember doing it frequently. Head off to Solarius Station in Omega-11 (or Freital Base if you're friendly with the Red Hessians). This is where all the diamonds come from, so it's cheap. Paying ~$200 per unit you'd then wind your way up to New Tokyo via Sigma-13 and sell them on for $1650 a unit. You could then carry on to Tau-37 and stock up on Niobium from Falkland base for $160 each and turn back to Rheiland going "across the top" through the often hostile Omicron Alpha and Beta and down to Leipzig Station in Dresden and selling your cargo for $1600. You could shorten the journey a bit by paying higher prices when you purchased, so it depended on how long you wanted to spend travelling or how hostile systems were.
What wasn't around in the early days was the rather nifty Freelancer Companion, which is a small app that lists the best trades from your current location, with the added bonus of routing information it can also work out the profile per distance. This was a bit of an eye opener as the Diamond Run, whilst grossing the most income is only rated at $117/sec out and $102 back. Using this tool, other routes became far more profitable.
The best route (which apparently will only work in Single Player as the jump-hole is locked in multiplayer) is to take Cardamine from the Junker's Yanagi Depot in Sigma-13 at $510 a unit, through the very close (about 5K) jump hole to New Berlin to sell on the planet at $1349. This nets $621/sec, which is staggering compared to the infamous Diamond Run. Sure Cardamine is a restricted item but the Rheiland police don't get enough time to scan and make you drop before you've docked with the planet. You can get $221/sec on the return trip with Engine Components. Each trip is only a couple of minutes long so it's a great way to rapidly cash, and level, up.
In the end, I got my Sabre from Planet Malta ($560K), Class 10 Adv. Brigandine Positron Shield ($312K), two Prometheus from the Viking wreck (Omicron Alpha, 6D), I had already picked up Diamondbacks from a wreck Sigma-13, 5C. Topped it off with some Skyblast B's from somewhere and a Adv. Debilitator for the shields from Detroit Munitions.
And that's pretty much the most powerful ship you can put together in the normal game. And then of course, unless you're really into your roll-playing games it gets really, really dull. I enjoyed the nostalgia of drifting through space, having the odd epic-laser battle and finally destroying ships in New York with a single shot. But once you've got your character as you want, what's the point in playing any more? This time round it took me 20 hours from beginning to end, including leaving the game open whilst getting snacks etc. I remember I managed to get about 60 hours of the multiplayer with other people. Not really superb.
This then is my fear for Elite: Dangerous. Also having picked up the free The New Kind 30th anniversary edition of the original Elite and spec-ing up my ship in about four hours, I'm wondering whether I'll keep interest in the new game, out later this year.
There is a lot more to explore in Elite: Dangerous, all 400 billion stars in our galaxy - but that's an impossible feat, nobody will visit them all (do the maths, it's staggering) - so what is there to do? Even in multiplayer, with no ability to quickly get from one side of the galaxy to another it's likely you'll never come across another human player if you decide to step out of the starting "core" systems. You can explore systems, make money, and improve your ship - so what's left once you've done that?
Pretty much combat. There are vast oceans of games that don't have any levelling or building characters. You just pit yourself against an enemy and fight to the death. And this is where Freelancer fell down, it's too easy to make the game easy by keeping on the good side of everybody and it's also too easy to kill ships once you've got yours levelled up, as your ship is so far more advanced.
Elite should be able to keep people coming back before if the combat is accessible and but not easy - and critically, the AI fly their ships in a believable fashion. You won't be able to spend a great deal of time fighting humans because of their rarity and mostly because a lot of them will cry when you get in the way of their trading simulation and promptly ignore you (removing themselves from your environment).
Time of course will tell, but hopefully more than 20 hours of time.